We will insist, with the reader's permission, on this comfortful saying
of Albert Dürer's in order to find out, if we may, what Modesty is; which
it will be well for painters, readers, and especially critics, to know,
before going farther. What it is; or, rather, who she is, her fingers
being among the deftest in laying the ground-threads of Aglaia's cestus.
For this same opinion of Albert's is entertained by many other people
respecting their own doings--a very prevalent opinion, indeed, I find it;
and the answer itself, though rarely made with the Nuremberger's crushing
decision, is nevertheless often enough intimated, with delicacy, by
artists of all countries, in their various dialects. Neither can it
always be held an entirely modest one, as it assuredly was in the man who
would sometimes estimate a piece of his unconquerable work at only the
worth of a plate of fruit, or a flask of wine--would have taken even one
"fig for it," kindly offered; or given it royally for nothing, to show
his hand to a fellow-king of his own, or any other craft--as Gainsborough
gave the "Boy at the Stile" for a solo on the violin. An entirely modest
saying, I repeat, in him--not always in us. For Modesty is "the
measuring virtue," the virtue of modes or limits. She is, indeed, said
to be only the third or youngest of the children of the cardinal virtue,
Temperance; and apt to be despised, being more given to arithmetic, and
other vulgar studies (Cinderella-like), than her elder sisters; but she
is useful in the household, and arrives at great results with her
yard-measure and slate-pencil--a pretty little Marchande des Modes,
cutting her dress always according to the silk (if this be the proper
feminine reading of "coat according to the cloth"), so that, consulting
with her carefully of a morning, men get to know not only their income,
but their in being--to know themselves, that is, in a gauger's manner,
round, and up and down--surface and contents; what is in them and what
may be got out of them; and in fine, their entire canon of weight and
capacity. That yard-measure of Modesty's, lent to those who will use it,
is a curious musical reed, and will go round and round waists that are
slender enough, with latent melody in every joint of it, the dark root
only being soundless, moist from the wave wherein
"Null' altra pianta che facesse fronda
O che 'n durasse, vi puote aver vita."*
* "Purgatorio," i. 108, 109.
But when the little sister herself takes it in hand, to measure things
outside of us with, the joints shoot out in an amazing manner: the
four-square walls even of celestial cities being measurable enough by
that reed; and the way pointed to them, though only to be followed, or
even seen, in the dim starlight shed down from worlds amidst which there
is no name of Measure any more, though the reality of it always. For,
indeed, to all true modesty the necessary business is not inlook, but
outlook, and especially uplook: it is only her sister Shamefacedness, who
is known by the drooping lashes--Modesty, quite otherwise, by her large
eyes full of wonder; for she never contemns herself, nor is ashamed of
herself, but forgets herself--at least until she has done something worth
memory. It is easy to peep and potter about one's own deficiencies in a
quiet immodest discontent; but Modesty is so pleased with other people's
doings, that she has no leisure to lament her own: and thus, knowing the
fresh feeling of contentment, unstained with thought of self, she does
not fear being pleased, when there is cause, with her own rightness, as
with another's, as with another's, saying calmly, "Be it mine or yours,
or whose else's it may, it is no matter; this also is well." But the
right to say such a thing depends on continual reverence and manifold
sense of failure. If you have known yourself to have failed, you may
trust, when it comes, the strange consciousness of success; if you have
faithfully loved the noble work of others, you need not fear to speak
with respect of things duly done, of your own.
136. But the principal good that comes of art being followed in this
reverent feeling is of it. Men who know their place can take it and
keep it, be it low or high, contentedly and firmly, neither yielding
nor grasping; and the harmony of hand and thought follows, rendering all
great deeds of art possible--deeds in which the souls of men meet like
the jewels in the windows of Aladdin's palace, the little gems and the
large all equally pure, needing no cement but the fitting of facets;
while the associative work of immodest men is all jointless, and astir
with wormy ambition; putridly dissolute, and forever on the crawl: so
that if it come together for a time, it can only be by metamorphosis
through a flash of volcanic fire out of the vale of Siddim, vitrifying
the clay of it, and fastening the slime, only to end in wilder
scattering; according to the fate of those oldest, mightiest, immodestest
of builders, of whom it is told in scorn, "They had brick for stone, and
slime had they for mortar."
137. The first function of Modesty, then, being this recognition of
place, her second is the recognition of law, and delight in it, for the
sake of law itself, whether her part be to assert it, or obey. For as it
belongs to all immodesty to defy or deny law, and assert privilege and
license, according to its own pleasure (it being therefore rightly called
"insolent," that is, "custom-breaking," violating some usual and
appointed order to attain for itself greater forwardness or power), so it
is the habit of all modesty to love the constancy and "solemnity," or,
literally, "accustomedness," of law, seeking first what are the solemn,
appointed, inviolable customs and general orders of nature, and of the
Master of nature, touching the matter in hand; and striving to put
itself, as habitually and inviolably, in compliance with them. Out of
which habit, once established, arises what is rightly called
"conscience," nor "science" merely, but "with-science," a science "with
us," such as only modest creatures can have--with or within them--and
within all creation besides, every member of it, strong or weak,
witnessing together, and joining in the happy consciousness that each
one's work is good; the bee also being profoundly of that opinion; and
the lark; and the swallow, in that noisy, but modestly upside-down, Babel
of hers, under the eaves, with its unvolcanic slime for mortar; and the
two ants who are asking of each other at the turn of that little
ant's-foot-worn bath through the moss "lor via e lor fortuna;" and the
builders also, who built yonder pile of cloud-marble in the west, and the
gilder who gilded it, and is gone down behind it.
138. But I think we shall better understand what we ought of the nature
of Modesty, and of her opposite, by taking a simple instance of both, in
the practice of that art of music which the wisest have agreed in
thinking the first element of education; only I must ask the reader's
patience with me through a parenthesis.
Among the foremost men whose power has had to assert itself, though with
conquest, yet with countless loss, through peculiarly English
disadvantages of circumstance, are assuredly to be ranked together, both
for honor, and for mourning, Thomas Bewick and George Cruikshank. There
is, however, less cause for regret in the instance of Bewick. We may
understand that it was well for us once to see what an entirely keen and
true man's temper, could achieve, together, unhelped, but also unharmed,
among the black bans and wolds of Tyne. But the genius of Cruikshank has
been cast away in an utterly ghastly and lamentable manner: his superb
line-work, worthy of any class of subject, and his powers of conception
and composition, of which I cannot venture to estimate the range in their
degraded application, having been condemned, by his fate, to be spent
either in rude jesting, or in vain war with conditions of vice too low
alike for record or rebuke, among the dregs of the British populace. Yet
perhaps I am wrong in regretting even this: it may be an appointed lesson
for futurity, that the art of the best English etcher in the nineteenth
century, spent on illustrations of the lives of burglars and drunkards,
should one day be seen in museums beneath Greek vases fretted with
drawings of the wars of Troy, or side by side with Dürer's "Knight and
Death."
139. Be that as it may, I am at present glad to be able to refer to one
of these perpetuations, by his strong hand, of such human character as
our faultless British constitution occasionally produces in
out-of-the-way corners. It is among his illustrations of the Irish
Rebellion, and represents the pillage and destruction of a gentleman's
house by the mob. They have made a heap in the drawing-room of the
furniture and books, to set first fire to; and are tearing up the floor
for its more easily kindled planks, the less busily-disposed meanwhile
hacking round in rage, with axes, and smashing what they can with
butt-ends of guns. I do not care to follow with words the ghastly truth
of the picture into its detail; but the most expressive incident of the
whole, and the one immediately to my purpose, is this, that one fellow
has sat himself at the piano, on which, hitting down fiercely with his
clenched fists, he plays, grinning, such tune as may be so producible, to
which melody two of his companions, flourishing knotted sticks, dance,
after their manner, on the top of the instrument.
140. I think we have in this conception as perfect an instance as we
require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in
music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician
and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by
the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This
represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks
ago, in contrast with another which I was watching in its reality;
namely, a group of gentle school-girls, leaning over Mr. Charles Hallê,
as he was playing a variation on "Home, Sweet Home." They had sustained
with unwonted courage the glance of subdued indignation with which,
having just closed a rippling melody of Sebastian Bach's (much like what
one might fancy the singing of nightingales would be if they fed on honey
instead of flies), he turned to the slight, popular air. But they had
their own associations with it, and besought for, and obtained it, and
pressed close, at first, in vain, to see what no glance could follow, the
traversing of the fingers. They soon thought no more of seeing. The wet
eyes, round-open, and the little scarlet upper lips, lifted, and drawn
slightly together, in passionate glow of utter wonder, became
picture-like, porcelain-like, in motionless joy, as the sweet multitude
of low notes fell, in their timely infinities, like summer rain. Only
La Robbia himself (nor even he, unless with tenderer use of color than is
usual in his work) could have rendered some image of that listening.
141. But if the reader can give due vitality in his fancy to these two
scenes, he will have in them representative types, clear enough for all
future purpose, of the several agencies of debased and perfect art. And
the interval may easily and continuously be filled by mediate gradations.
Between the entirely immodeset, unmeasured, and (in evil sense)
unmannered, execution with the fist; and the entirely modest, measured,
and (in the noblest sense) mannered, or moral'd execution with the
finger; between the impatient and unpractised doing, containing in itself
the witness of lasting impatience and idleness through all previous life,
and the patient and practised doing, containing in itself the witness
of self-restraint and unwearied toil through all previous life; between
the expressed subject and sentiment of home violation, and the expressed
subject and sentiment of home love; between the sympathy of audience,
given in irreverent and contemptuous rage, joyless as the rabidness of a
dog, and the sympathy of audience given in an almost appalled humility of
intense, rapturous, and yet entirely reasoning and reasonable pleasure;
between these two limits of octave, the reader will find he can class,
according to its modesty, usefulness and grace, or becomingness, all
other musical art. For although purity of purpose and fineness of
execution by no means go together, degree to degree (since fine, and
indeed all but the finest, work is often spent in the most wanton purpose
--as in all our modern opera--and the rudest execution is again often
joined with purest purpose, as in a mother's song to her child), still
the entire accomplishment of music is only in the union of both. For the
difference between that "all but" finest and "finest" is an infinite one;
and besides this, however the power of the performer, once attained, may
be afterwards misdirected, in slavery to popular passion or childishness,
and spend itself, at its sweetest, in idle melodies, cold and ephemeral
(like Michael Angelo's snow statue in the other art), or else in vicious
difficulty and miserable noise--crackling of thorns under the pot of
public sensuality--still, the attainment of this power, and the
maintenance of it, involve always in the executant some virtue or courage
of high kind; the understanding of which, and of the difference between
the discipline which develops it and the disorderly efforts of the
amateur, it will be one of our first businesses to estimate rightly. And
though not indeed by degree to degree, yet in essential relation (as of
winds to waves, the one being always the true cause of the other, though
they are not necessarily of equal force at the same time,) we shall find
vice in its varieties, with art-failure,--and virtue in its varieties,
with art-success,--fall and rise together; the peasant-girl's song at her
spinning-wheel, the peasant laborer's "to the oaks and rills,"--domestic
music, feebly yet sensitively skilful,--music for the multitude, of
beneficent or of traitorous power,--dance-melodies, pure and orderly, or
foul and frantic,--march-music, blatant in mere fever of animal
pugnacity, or majestic with force of national duty and memory,--
song-music, reckless, sensual, sickly, slovenly, forgetful even of the
foolish words it effaces with foolish noise,--or thoughtful, sacred,
healthful, artful, forever sanctifying noble thought with separately
distinguished loveliness of belonging sound,--all these families and
graduations of good or evil, however mingled, follow, in so far as they
are good, one constant law of virtue (or "life-strength," which is the
literal meaning of the word, and its intended one, in wise men's mouths),
and in so far as they are evil, are evil by outlawry and unvirtue, or
death-weakness. Then, passing wholly beyond the domain of death, we may
still imagine the ascendant nobleness of the art, through all the
concordant life of incorrupt creatures, and a continually deeper harmony
of "puissant words and murmurs made to bless," until we reach
"The undisturbed song of pure consent,
Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne."
142. And so far as the sister arts can be conceived to have place or
office, their virtues are subject to a law absolutely the same as that of
music, only extending its authority into more various conditions, owing
to the introduction of a distinctly representative and historical power,
which acts under logical as well as mathematical restrictions, and is
capable of endlessly changeful fault, fallacy, and defeat, as well as of
endlessly manifold victory.
143. Next to Modesty, and her delight in measures, let us reflect a
little on the character of her adversary, the Goddess of Liberty, and her
delight in absence of measures, or in false ones. It is true that there
are liberties and liberties. Yonder torrent, crystal-clear, and
arrow-swift, with its spray leaping into the air like white troops of
fawns, is free enough. Lost, presently, amidst bankless, boundless marsh
--soaking in slow shallowness, as it will, hither and thither, listless
among the poisonous reeds and unresisting slime--it is free also. We may
choose which liberty we like,--the restraint of voiceful rock, or the
dumb and edgeless shore of darkened sand. Of that evil liberty which men
are now glorifying and proclaiming as essence of gospel to all the earth,
and will presently, I suppose, proclaim also to the stars, with
invitation to them out of their courses,--and of its opposite continence,
which is the clasp and 'chrusee perone' of Aglaia's cestus, we must try
to find out something true. For no quality of Art has been more powerful
in its influence on public mind; none is more frequently the subject of
popular praise, or the end of vulgar effort, than what we call "Freedom."
It is necessary to determine the justice or injustice of this popular
praise.
144. I said, a little while ago, that the practical teaching of the
masters of Art was summed by the O of Giotto. "You may judge my
masterhood of craft," Giotto tells us, "by seeing that I can draw a
circle unerringly." And we may safely believe him, understanding him to
mean that, though more may be necessary to an artist than such a power,
at least this power is necessary. The qualities of hand and eye needful
to do this are the first conditions of artistic craft.
145. Try to draw a circle yourself with the "free" hand, and with a
single line. You cannot do it if your hand trembles, nor if it is in the
common sense of the word "free." So far from being free, it must be as
if it were fastened to an inflexible bar of steel. And yet it must move,
under this necessary control, with perfect, untormented serenity of ease.
146. That is the condition of all good work whatsoever. All freedom is
error. Every line you lay down is either right or wrong; it may be
timidly and awkwardly wrong, or fearlessly and impudently wrong. The
aspect of the impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons, and is
what they commonly call "free" execution; the timid, tottering,
hesitating wrongness is rarely so attractive; yet sometimes, if
accompanied with good qualities, and right aims in other directions, it
becomes in a manner charming, like the inarticulateness of a child; but,
whatever the charm or manner of the error, there is but one question
ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or
wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an
intensely continent, restrained, and considered line; and the action of
the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free," as the
hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision. A great operator
told me that his hand could check itself within about the two-hundredth
of an inch, in penetrating a membrane; and this, of course, without the
help of sight, by sensation only. With help of sight, and in action on a
substance which does not quiver or yield, a fine artist's line is
measurable in its proposed direction to considerably less than the
thousandth of an inch.
A wide freedom, truly!
147. The conditions of popular art which most foster the common ideas
about freedom, are merely results of irregularly energetic effort by men
imperfectly educated; these conditions being variously mingled with
cruder mannerisms resulting from timidity, or actual imperfection of
body. Northern hands and eyes are, of course, never so subtle as
Southern; and in very cold countries, artistic execution is palsied. The
effort to break through this timidity, or to refine the bluntness, may
lead to a licentious impetuosity, or an ostentatious minuteness. Every
man's manner has this kind of relation to some defect in his physical
powers or modes of thought; so that in the greatest work there is no
manner visible. It is at first uninteresting from its quietness; the
majesty of restrained power only dawns gradually upon us, as we walk
towards its horizon.
There is, indeed, often great delightfulness in the innocent manners of
artists who have real power and honesty, and draw in this way or that, as
best they can, under such and such untoward circumstances of life. But
the greater part of the looseness, flimsiness, or audacity of modern work
is the expression of an inner spirit of license in mind and heart,
connected, as I said, with the peculiar folly of this age, its hope of,
and trust in, "liberty," of which we must reason a little in more general
terms.
148. I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly free
creature than in the common house-fly. Nor free only, but brave; and
irreverent to a degree which I think no human republican could by any
philosophy exalt himself to. There is no courtesy in him; he does not
care whether it is king or clown whom he teases; and in every step of his
swift mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation,
there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect
independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world's having
been made for flies. Strike at him with your hand, and to him, the
mechanical fact and external aspect of the matter is, what to you it
would be if an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the
ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for a second,
and came crashing down with an aim. That is the external aspect of it;
the inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and
unimportant occurrence--one of the momentary conditions of his active
life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the back of
it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor
convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all matters; not an
unwise one, usually, for his own ends; and will ask no advice of yours.
He has no work to do--no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earthworm has
his digging; the bee her gathering and building; the spider her cunning
network; the ant her treasury and accounts. All these are comparatively
slaves, or people of vulgar business. But your fly, free in the air,
free in the chamber--a black incarnation of caprice, wandering,
investigating, flitting, flirting, feasting at his will, with rich
variety of choice in feast, from the heaped sweets in the grocer's window
to those of the butcher's back-yard, and from the galled place on your
cab-horse's back, to the brown spot in the road, from which, as the hoof
disturbs him, he rises with angry republican buzz--what freedom is like
his?
149. For captivity, again, perhaps your poor watch-dog is as sorrowful
a type as you will easily find. Mine certainly is. The day is lovely,
but I must write this, and cannot go out with him. He is chained in the
yard because I do not like dogs in rooms, and the gardener does not like
dogs in gardens. He has no books,--nothing but his own weary thoughts
for company, and a group of those free flies, whom he snaps at, with
sullen ill success. Such dim hope as he may have that I may take him out
with me, will be, hour by hour, wearily disappointed; or, worse, darkened
at once into a leaden despair by an authoritative "No"--too well
understood. His fidelity only seals his fate; if he would not watch for
me, he would be sent away, and go hunting with some happier master: but
he watches, and is wise, and faithful, and miserable; and his high animal
intellect only gives him the wistful powers of wonder, and sorrow, and
desire, and affection, which embitter his captivity. Yet of the two,
would we rather be watch-dog or fly?
150. Indeed, the first point we have all to determine is not how free
we are, but what kind of creatures we are. It is of small importance to
any of us whether we get liberty; but of the greatest that we deserve it.
Whether we can win it, fate must determine; but that we will be worthy of
it we may ourselves determine; and the sorrowfullest fate of all that we
can suffer is to have it without deserving it.
151. I have hardly patience to hold my pen and go on writing, as I
remember (I would that it were possible for a few consecutive instants to
forget) the infinite follies of modern thought in this matter, centred in
the notion that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he
is likely to make of it. Folly unfathomable! unspeakable! unendurable to
look in the full face of, as the laugh of a cretin. You will send your
child, will you, into a room where the table is loaded with sweet wine
and fruit--some poisoned, some not?--you will say to him, "Choose freely,
my little child! It is so good for you to have freedom of choice; it
forms your character--your individuality! If you take the wrong cup or
the wrong berry, you will die before the day is over, but you will have
acquired the dignity of a Free child?"
152. You think that puts the case too sharply? I tell you, lover of
liberty, there is no choice offered to you, but it is similarly between
life and death. There is no act, nor option of act, possible, but the
wrong deed or option has poison in it which will stay in your veins
thereafter forever. Never more to all eternity can you be as you might
have been had you not done that--chosen that. You have "formed your
character," forsooth! No; if you have chosen ill, you have De-formed
it, and that for ever! In some choices it had been better for you that
a red-hot iron bar struck you aside, scarred and helpless, than that you
had so chosen. "You will know better next time!" No. Next time will
never come. Next time the choice will be in quite another aspect--
between quite different things,--you, weaker than you were by the evil
into which you have fallen; it, more doubtful than it was, by the
increased dimness of your sight. No one ever gets wiser by doing wrong,
nor stronger. You will get wiser and stronger only by doing right,
whether forced or not; the prime, the one need is to do that, under
whatever compulsion, until you can do it without compulsion. And then
you are a Man.
153. "What!" a wayward youth might perhaps answer, incredulously, "no
one ever gets wiser by doing wrong? Shall I not know the world best by
trying the wrong of it, and repenting? Have I not, even as it is,
learned much by many of my errors?" Indeed, the effort by which
partially you recovered yourself was precious; that part of your thought
by which you discerned the error was precious. What wisdom and strength
you kept, and rightly used, are rewarded; and in the pain and the
repentance, and in the acquaintance with the aspects of folly and sin,
you have learned something; how much less than you would have learned in
right paths can never be told, but that it is less is certain. Your
liberty of choice has simply destroyed for you so much life and strength
never regainable. It is true, you now know the habits of swine, and the
taste of husks; do you think your father could not have taught you to
know better habits and pleasanter tastes, if you had stayed in his house;
and that the knowledge you have lost would not have been more, as well as
sweeter, than that you have gained? But "it so forms my individuality
to be free!" Your individuality was given you by God, and in your race,
and if you have any to speak of, you will want no liberty. You will want
a den to work in, and peace, and light--no more,--in absolute need; if
more, in anywise, it will still not be liberty, but direction,
instruction, reproof, and sympathy. But if you have no individuality, if
there is no true character nor true desire in you, then you will indeed
want to be free. You will begin early, and, as a boy, desire to be a
man; and, as a man, think yourself as good as every other. You will
choose freely to eat, freely to drink, freely to stagger and fall,
freely, at last, to curse yourself and die. Death is the only real
freedom possible to us; and that is consummate freedom, permission for
every particle in the rotting body to leave its neighbor particle, and
shift for itself. You call it "corruption" in the flesh; but before it
comes to that, all liberty is an equal corruption in mind. You ask for
freedom of thought; but if you have not sufficient grounds for thought,
you have no business to think; and if you have sufficient grounds, you
have no business to think wrong. Only one thought is possible to you if
you are wise--your liberty is geometrically proportionate to your folly.
154. "But all this glory and activity of our age; what are they owing
to, but to freedom of thought?" In a measure, they are owing--what good
is in them--to the discovery of many lies, and the escape from the power
of evil. Not to liberty, but to the deliverance from evil or cruel
masters. Brave men have dared to examine lies which had long been
taught, not because they were free-thinkers, but because they were such
stern and close thinkers that the lie could no longer escape them. Of
course the restriction of thought, or of its expression, by persecution,
is merely a form of violence, justifiable or not, as other violence is,
according to the character of the persons against whom it is exercised,
and the divine and eternal laws which it vindicates or violates. We must
not burn a man alive for saying that the Athanasian creed is
ungrammatical, nor stop a bishop's salary because we are getting the
worst of an argument with him; neither must we let drunken men howl in
the public streets at night. There is much that is true in the part of
Mr. Mill's essay on Liberty which treats of freedom of thought; some
important truths are there beautifully expressed, but many, quite vital,
are omitted; and the balance, therefore, is wrongly struck. The liberty
of expression, with a great nation, would become like that in a
well-educated company, in which there is indeed freedom of speech, but
not of clamor; or like that in an orderly senate, in which men who
deserve to be heard, are heard in due time, and under determined
restrictions. The degree of liberty you can rightly grant to a number
of men is in the inverse ratio of their desire for it; and a general
hush, or call to order, would be often very desirable in this England of
ours. For the rest, of any good or evil extent, it is impossible to say
what measure is owing to restraint, and what to license where the right
is balanced between them. I was not a little provoked one day, a summer
or two since, in Scotland, because the Duke of Athol hindered me from
examining the gneiss and slate junctions in Glen Tilt, at the hour
convenient to me; but I saw them at last, and in quietness; and to the
very restriction that annoyed me, owed, probably, the fact of their being
in existence, instead of being blasted away by a mob-company; while the
"free" paths and inlets of Loch Katrine and the Lake of Geneva are
forever trampled down and destroyed, not by one duke, but by tens of
thousands of ignorant tyrants.
155. So, a Dean and Chapter may, perhaps, unjustifiably charge me
twopence for seeing a cathedral; but your free mob pulls spire and all
down about my ears, and I can see it no more forever. And even if I
cannot get up to the granite junctions in the glen, the stream comes down
from them pure to the Garry; but in Beddington Park I am stopped by the
newly-erected fence of a building speculator; and the bright Wandel,
divine of waters as Castaly, is filled by the free public with old shoes,
obscene crockery, and ashes.
156. In fine, the arguments for liberty may in general be summed in a
few very simple forms, as follows:
Misguiding is mischievous: therefore guiding is.
If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch: therefore, nobody
should lead anybody.
Lambs and fawns should be left free in the fields; much more bears and
wolves.
If a man's gun and shot are his own, he may fire in any direction he
pleases.
A fence across a road is inconvenient; much more one at the side of it.
Babes should not be swaddled with their hands bound down to their sides:
therefore they should be thrown out to roll in the kennels naked.
None of these arguments are good, and the practical issues of them are
worse. For there are certain eternal laws for human conduct which are
quite clearly discernible by human reason. So far as these are
discovered and obeyed, by whatever machinery or authority the obedience
is procured, there follow life and strength. So far as they are
disobeyed, by whatever good intention the disobedience is brought about,
there follow ruin and sorrow. And the first duty of every man in the
world is to find his true master, and, for his own good, submit to him;
and to find his true inferior, and, for that inferior's good, conquer
him. The punishment is sure, if we either refuse the reverence, or are
too cowardly and indolent to enforce the compulsion. A base nation
crucifies or poisons its wise men, and lets its fools rave and rot in the
streets. A wise nation obeys the one, restrains the other, and cherishes
all.
157. The best examples of the results of wise normal evidence in Art
will be found in whatever evidence remains respecting the lives of great
Italian painters, though, unhappily, in eras of progress, but just in
proportion to the admirableness and efficiency of the life, will be
usually the scantiness of its history. The individualities and liberties
which are causes of destruction may be recorded; but the loyal conditions
of daily breath are never told. Because Leonardo made models of
machines, dug canals, built fortifications, and dissipated half his
art-power in capricious ingenuities, we have many anecdotes of him;--but
no picture of importance on canvas, and only a few withered stains of one
upon a wall. But because his pupil, or reputed pupil, Luini, labored in
constant and successful simplicity, we have no anecdotes of him;--only
hundreds of noble works. Luini is, perhaps, the best central type of the
highly-trained Italian painter. He is the only man who entirely united
the religious temper which was the spirit-life of art, with the physical
power which was its bodily life. He joins the purity and passion of
Angelico to the strength of Veronese: the two elements, poised in perfect
balance, are so calmed and restrained, each by the other, that most of us
lose the sense of both. The artist does not see the strength, by reason
of the chastened spirit in which it is used: and the religious visionary
does not recognize the passion, by reason of the frank human truth with
which it is rendered. He is a man ten times greater than Leonardo;--a
mighty colorist, while Leonardo was only a fine draughtsman in black,
staining the chiaroscuro drawing, like a colored print: he perceived and
rendered the delicatest types of human beauty that have been painted
since the days of the Greeks, while Leonardo depraved his finer instincts
by caricature, and remained to the end of his days the slave of an
archaic smile: and he is a designer as frank, instinctive, and
exhaustless as Tintoret, while Leonardo's design is only an agony of
science, admired chiefly because it is painful, and capable of analysis
in its best accomplishment. Luini has left nothing behind him that is
not lovely; but of his life I believe hardly anything is known beyond
remnants of tradition which murmur about Lugano and Saronno, and which
remain ungleaned. This only is certain, that he was born in the
loveliest district of North Italy, where hills, and streams, and air
meet in softest harmonies. Child of the Alps, and of their divinest
lake, he is taught, without doubt or dismay, a lofty religious creed, and
a sufficient law of life, and of its mechanical arts. Whether lessoned
by Leonardo himself, or merely one of many disciplined in the system of
the Milanese school, he learns unerringly to draw, unerringly and
enduringly to paint. His tasks are set him without question day by day,
by men who are justly satisfied with his work, and who accept it without
any harmful praise, or senseless blame. Place, scale, and subject are
determined for him on the cloister wall or the church dome; as he is
required, and for sufficient daily bread, and little more, he paints what
he has been taught to design wisely, and has passion to realize
gloriously: every touch he lays is eternal, every thought he conceives is
beautiful and pure: his hand moves always in radiance of blessing; from
day to day his life enlarges in power and peace; it passes away
cloudlessly, the starry twilight remaining arched far against the night.
158. Oppose to such a life as this that of a great painter amidst the
elements of modern English liberty. Take the life of Turner, in whom the
artistic energy and inherent love of beauty were at least as strong as in
Luini: but, amidst the disorder and ghastliness of the lower streets of
London, his instincts in early infancy were warped into toleration of
evil, or even into delight in it. He gathers what he can of instruction
by questioning and prying among half-informed masters; spells out some
knowledge of classical fable; educates himself, by an admirable force, to
the production of wildly majestic or pathetically tender and pure
pictures, by which he cannot live. There is no one to judge them, or to
command him: only some of the English upper classes hire him to paint
their houses and parks, and destroy the drawings afterwards by the most
wanton neglect. Tired of laboring carefully, without either reward or
praise, he dashes out into various experimental and popular works--makes
himself the servant of the lower public, and is dragged hither and
thither at their will; while yet, helpless and guideless, he indulges his
idiosyncrasies till they change into insanities; the strength of his soul
increasing its sufferings, and giving force to its errors; all the
purpose of life degenerating into instinct; and the web of his work
wrought, at last, of beauties too subtle to be understood, his liberty,
with vices too singular to be forgiven--all useless, because magnificent
idiosyncrasy had become solitude, or contention, in the midst of a
reckless populace, instead of submitting itself in loyal harmony to the
Art-laws of an understanding nation. And the life passed away in
darkness; and its final work, in all the best beauty of it, has already
perished, only enough remaining to teach us what we have lost.
159. These are the opposite effects of Law and of Liberty on men of the
highest powers. In the case of inferiors the contrast is still more
fatal: under strict law, they become the subordinate workers in great
schools, healthily aiding, echoing, or supplying, with multitudinous
force of hand, the mind of the leading masters: they are the nameless
carvers of great architecture--stainers of glass--hammerers of iron--
helpful scholars, whose work ranks round, if not with, their master's,
and never disgraces it. But the inferiors under a system of license
for the most part perish in miserable effort;* a few struggle into
pernicious eminence--harmful alike to themselves and to all who admire
them; many die of starvation; many insane, either in weakness of insolent
egotism, like Haydon, or in a conscientious agony of beautiful purpose
and warped power, like Blake. There is no probability of the persistence
of a licentious school in any good accidentally discovered by them; there
is an approximate certainty of their gathering, with acclaim, round any
shadow of evil, and following it to whatever quarter of destruction it
may lead.
* As I correct this sheet for press, my "Pall Mall Gazette" of last
Saturday, April 17, is lying on the table by me. I print a few lines out
of it:
"AN ARTIST'S DEATH.--A sad story was told at an inquest held in St.
Pancras last night by Dr. Lankester on the body of . . ., aged
fifty-nine, a French artist who was found dead in his bed at his rooms in
. . . Street. M. . . ., also an artist, said he had known the deceased
for fifteen years. He once held a high position, and being anxious to
make a name in the world, he five years ago commenced a large picture,
which he hoped, when completed, to have in the gallery at Versailles; and
with that view he sent a photograph of it to the French Emperor. He also
had an idea of sending it to the English Royal Academy. He labored on
this picture, neglecting other work which would have paid him well, and
gradually sank lower and lower into poverty. His friends assisted him,
but being absorbed in his great work, he did not heed their advice, and
they left him. He was, however, assisted by the French Ambassador, and
last Saturday, he (the witness) saw deceased, who was much depressed in
spirits, as he expected the brokers to be put in possession for rent. He
said his troubles were so great that he feared his brain would give way.
The witness gave him a shilling for which he appeared very thankful. On
Monday the witness called upon him, but received no answer to his knock.
He went again on Tuesday, and entered the deceased's bedroom and found
him dead. Dr. George Ross said that when called into the deceased he had
been dead at least two days. The room was in a filthy, dirty condition,
and the picture referred to--certainly a very fine one--was in that room.
The post-mortem examination showed that the cause of death was fatty
degeneration of the heart, the latter probably having ceased its action
through the mental excitement of the deceased."
160. Thus far the notes of Freedom. Now, lastly, here is some talk
which I tried at the time to make intelligible; and with which I close
this volume, because it will serve sufficiently to express the practical
relation in which I think the art and imagination of the Greeks stand to
our own; and will show the reader that my view of that relation is
unchanged, from the first day on which I began to write, until now.
***