Mr. Havelock Ellis has made (Contemporary Review, May) an interesting
study of the color terms used by imaginative writers, which is a real
contribution to scientific æsthetics. The fact that the Greeks did not
name green and blue does not, of course, indicate (as Mr. Gladstone
and others have alleged) that they could not see the more refrangible
rays of the spectrum, but it does show a lack of interest in these
colors. Mr. Ellis' statistics are given in the annexed table, the
number of times each of the colors is used by the author in selected
passages being reduced to percentages.
------------------+------+-------+----+------+-----+------+--------------------+
|White.|Yellow.|Red.|Green.|Blue.|Black.| PREDOMINANT |
------------------+------+-------+----+------+-----+------+--------------------+
Mountain of Chant | 28 | 13 | 3 | ... | 19 | 37 |Black, white. |
Wooing of Emer | 34 | 3 | 48 | ... | ... | 14 |Red, white. |
Volsunga Saga | 14 | ... | 71 | ... | 14 | ... |Red. |
Isaiah, Job, | | | | | | | |
Song of Songs | 18 | 4 | 29 | 33 | ... | 15 |Green, red. |
Homer | 21 | 21 | 7 | 2 | ... | 49 |Black, white-yellow.|
Catullus | 40 | 21 | 17 | 9 | 4 | 8 |White, yellow. |
Chaucer | 34 | 10 | 28 | 14 | 1 | 13 |White, red. |
Marlowe | 19 | 21 | 19 | 6 | 6 | 28 |Black, yellow. |
Shakespeare | 22 | 17 | 30 | 7 | 4 | 20 |Red, white. |
Thomson | 9 | ... | 18 | 27 | 9 | 36 |Black, green. |
Blake | 17 | 17 | 13 | 16 | 7 | 29 |Black, white-yellow.|
Coleridge | 21 | 7 | 17 | 25 | 14 | 16 |Green, white. |
Shelley | 17 | 19 | 11 | 21 | 21 | 11 |Green-blue. |
Keats | 14 | 23 | 24 | 29 | 8 | 1 |Green, red. |
Wordsworth | 14 | 18 | 10 | 35 | 11 | 12 |Green, yellow. |
Poe | 8 | 32 | 20 | 12 | 4 | 24 |Yellow, black. |
Baudelaire | 11 | 9 | 19 | 10 | 16 | 34 |Black, red. |
Tennyson | 22 | 15 | 27 | 15 | 10 | 11 |Red, white. |
Rossetti | 30 | 22 | 22 | 9 | 7 | 10 |White, yellow. |
Swinburne | 28 | 18 | 28 | 16 | 6 | 4 |Red, white. |
Whitman | 25 | 10 | 26 | 14 | 8 | 16 |Red, white. |
Pater | 43 | 19 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 7 |White, yellow. |
Verlaine | 20 | 15 | 24 | 9 | 14 | 18 |Red, white. |
Olive Schreiner | 38 | 12 | 25 | 3 | 19 | 2 |White, red. |
D'Annunzio | 15 | 11 | 46 | 7 | 14 | 6 |Red, white. |
------------------+------+-------+----+------+-----+------+--------------------+
Mr. Ellis makes a number of acute psychological and literary
suggestions and concludes that a numerical study of color vision
"possesses at least two uses in the precise study of literature. It
is, first, an instrument for investigating a writer's personal
psychology, by defining the nature of his æsthetic color vision. When
we have ascertained a writer's color formula and his colors of
prediction we can tell at a glance, simply and reliably, something
about his view of the world which pages of description could only tell
us with uncertainty. In the second place, it enables us to take a
definite step in the attainment of a scientific æsthetic, by
furnishing a means of comparative study. By its help we can trace the
colors of the world as mirrored in literature from age to age, from
country to country, and in finer shades among the writers of a single
group. At least one broad and unexpected conclusion may be gathered
from the tables here presented. Many foolish things have been written
about the 'degeneration' of latter-day art. It is easier to dogmatize
when you think that you are safe from the evidence of precise tests.
But here is a reasonably precise test. And the evidence of this test,
at all events, by no means furnishes support for the theory of
decadence. On the contrary, it shows that the decadence, if anywhere,
was at the end of the last century, and that our own vision of the
world is fairly one with that of classic times, with Chaucer's and
with Shakespeare's. At the end of the nineteenth century we can say
this for the first time since Shakespeare died."--Science.
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