Those learned men who are a terror to children and an ignominious sight
in lovers' eyes, all those butts of a traditional humour where there is
something of the wisdom of peasants, are mathematicians, theologians,
lawyers, men of science of various kinds. They have followed some
abstract reverie, which stirs the brain only and needs that only, and
have therefore stood before the looking-glass without pleasure and never
known those thoughts that shape the lines of the body for beauty or
animation, and wake a desire for praise or for display.
There are two pictures of Venice side by side in the house where I am
writing this, a Canaletto that has little but careful drawing, and a not
very emotional pleasure in clean bright air, and a Franz Francken, where
the blue water, that in the other stirs one so little, can make one long
to plunge into the green depth where a cloud shadow falls. Neither
painting could move us at all, if our thought did not rush out to the
edges of our flesh, and it is so with all good art, whether the Victory
of Samothrace which reminds the soles of our feet of swiftness, or the
Odyssey that would send us out under the salt wind, or the young
horsemen on the Parthenon, that seem happier than our boyhood ever was,
and in our boyhood's way. Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see
the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every
abstract thing, from all that is of the brain only, from all that is not
a fountain jetting from the entire hopes, memories, and sensations of
the body. Its morality is personal, knows little of any general law, has
no blame for Little Musgrave, no care for Lord Barnard's house, seems
lighter than a breath and yet is hard and heavy, for if a man is not
ready to face toil and risk, and in all gaiety of heart, his body will
grow unshapely and his heart lack the wild will that stirs desire. It
approved before all men those that talked or wrestled or tilted under
the walls of Urbino, or sat in the wide window-seats discussing all
things, with love ever in their thought, when the wise Duchess ordered
all, and the Lady Emilia gave the theme.