(1) A poor woman at Plymouth who did not like the formality, or could
not afford the expense of a will, thought to leave what little property
she had in wearing apparel and household moveables to her friends and
relations, _viva voce_, and before Death stopped her breath. She gave
and willed away (of her proper authority) her chair and table to one,
her bed to another, an old cloak to a third, a night-cap and petticoat
to a fourth, and so on. The old crones sat weeping round, and soon
after carried off all they could lay their hands upon, and left their
benefactress to her fate. They were no sooner gone than she unexpectedly
recovered, and sent to have her things back again; but not one of them
could she get, and she was left without a rag to her back, or a friend
to condole with her.
(2) The law of primogeniture has its origin in the principle here
stated, the desire of perpetuating some one palpable and prominent proof
of wealth and power.
(3) It is as follows:
'The Will of a Virtuoso.
I, Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound Health of Mind, but in great
Weakness of Body, do by this my Last Will and Testament bequeath my
worldly Goods and Chattels in Manner following:--
Imprimis, To my dear Wife, One Box of Butterflies, One Drawer of Shells,
A Female Skeleton, A Dried Cockatrice.
Item, To my Daughter Elizabeth, My Receipt for preserving dead
Caterpillars, As also my Preparations of Winter May-Dew, and Embrio
Pickle.
Item, to my little Daughter Fanny, Three Crocodiles' Eggs.
And upon the Birth of her first Child, if she marries with her Mother's
Consent, The Nest of a Humming Bird.
Item, To my eldest Brother, as an acknowledgment for the Lands he
has vested in my Son Charles, I bequeath My last Year's Collection of
Grasshoppers.
Item, To his Daughter Susanna, being his only Child, I bequeath my
English Weeds pasted on Royal Paper, With my large Folio of Indian
Cabbage.
Having fully provided for my Nephew Isaac, by making over to him some
years since A horned Searaboeus, The Skin of a Rattle-Snake, and The
Mummy of an Egyptian King, I make no further Provision for him in this
my Will.
I My eldest Son John having spoken disrespectfully of his little Sister,
whom I keep by me in Spirits of Wine, and in many other Instances
behaved himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, and wholly cut
off from any Part of this my Personal Estate, by giving him a single
Cockle-Shell.
To my Second Son Charles, I give and bequeath all my Flowers, Plants,
Minerals, Mosses, Shells, Pebbles, Fossils, Beetles, Butterflies,
Caterpillars, Grasshoppers, and Vermin, not above specified: As also
my Monsters, both wet and dry, making the said Charles whole and sole
Executor of this my Last Will and Testament, he paying or causing to
be paid the aforesaid Legacies within the Space of Six Months after
my Decease. And I do hereby revoke all other Wills whatsoever by me
formerly made.'--_Tatler,_ vol. iv. No. 216.
(4) Kellerman lately left his heart to be buried in the field of Valmy,
where the first great battle was fought in the year 1792, in which the
Allies were repulsed. Oh! might that heart prove the root from which the
tree of Liberty may spring up and flourish once more, as the basil tree
grew and grew from the cherished head of Isabella's lover!
ESSAY XIII. ON CERTAIN INCONSISTENCIES IN SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S
DISCOURSES
The two chief points which Sir Joshua aims at in his _Discourses_ are to
show that excellence in the Fine Arts is the result of pains and study
rather than of genius, and that all beauty, grace, and grandeur are to
be found, not in actual nature, but in an idea existing in the mind.
On both these points he appears to have fallen into considerable
inconsistencies or very great latitude of expression, so as to make it
difficult to know what conclusion to draw from his various reasonings.
I shall attempt little more in this Essay than to bring together several
passages that, from their contradictory import, seem to imply some
radical defect in Sir Joshua's theory, and a doubt as to the possibility
of placing an implicit reliance on his authority.
To begin with the first of these subjects, the question of original
genius. In the Second Discourse, 'On the Method of Study,' Sir Joshua
observes towards the end:
'There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by the
vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid that I shall repeat it
too often. You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have
great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate
abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to
well-directed labour; nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to enter
into metaphysical discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I
will venture to assert that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a
disposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will
produce effects similar to those which some call the result of _natural
powers.'_
The only tendency of the maxim here laid down seems to be to lure
those students on with the hopes of excellence who have no chance of
succeeding, and to deter those who have from relying on the only prop
and source of real excellence--the strong bent and impulse of their
natural powers. Industry alone can only produce mediocrity; but
mediocrity in art is not worth the trouble of industry. Genius, great
natural powers, will give industry and ardour in the pursuit of their
proper object, but not if you divert them from that object into
the trammels of common-place mechanical labour. By this method you
neutralise all distinction of character--make a pedant of the blockhead
and a drudge of the man of genius. What, for instance, would have been
the effect of persuading Hogarth or Rembrandt to place no dependence on
their own genius, and to apply themselves to the general study of the
different branches of the art and of every sort of excellence, with a
confidence of success proportioned to their misguided efforts, but to
destroy both those great artists? 'You take my house when you do take
the prop that doth sustain my house!' You undermine the superstructure
of art when you strike at its main pillar and support, confidence and
faith in nature. We might as well advise a person who had discovered a
silver or a lead mine on his estate to close it up, or the common farmer
to plough up every acre he rents in the hope of discovering hidden
treasure, as advise the man of original genius to neglect his particular
vein for the study of rules and the imitation of others, or try to
persuade the man of no strong natural powers that he can supply their
deficiency by laborious application. Sir Joshua soon after, in the Third
Discourse, alluding to the terms, _inspiration, genius, gusto,_ applied
by critics and orators to painting, proceeds:
'Such is the warmth with which both the Ancients and Moderns speak of
this divine principle of the art; but, as I have formerly observed,
enthusiastic admiration seldom promotes knowledge. Though a student
by such praise may have his attention roused and a desire excited of
running in this great career, yet it is possible that what has been said
to excite may only serve to deter him. He examines his own mind, and
perceives there nothing of that divine inspiration with which, he is
told, so many others have been favoured. He never travelled to heaven
to gather new ideas; and he finds himself possessed of no other
qualifications than what mere common observation and a plain
understanding can confer. Thus he becomes gloomy amidst the splendour of
figurative declamation, and thinks it hopeless to pursue an object which
he supposes out of the reach of human industry.'
Yet presently after he adds:
'It is not easy to define in what this great style consists; nor to
describe by words the proper means of acquiring it, _if the mind of the
student should be at all capable of such an acquisition._ Could we teach
taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.'
Here, then, Sir Joshua admits that it is a question whether the student
is likely _to be at all capable of such an acquisition_ as the higher
excellencies of art, though he had said in the passage just quoted above
that it is within the reach of constant assiduity and of a disposition
eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit to effect all that is
usually considered as the result of natural powers. Is the theory
which our author means to inculcate a mere delusion, a mere arbitrary
assumption? At one moment Sir Joshua attributes the hopelessness of the
student to attain perfection to the discouraging influence of certain
figurative and overstrained expressions, and in the next doubts his
capacity for such an acquisition under any circumstances. Would he have
him hope against hope, then? If he 'examines his own mind and finds
nothing there of that divine inspiration with which he is told so many
others have been favoured,' but which he has never felt himself; if
'he finds himself possessed of no other qualifications' for the highest
efforts of genius and imagination 'than what mere common observation and
a plain understanding can confer,' he may as well desist at once from
'ascending the brightest heaven of invention':--if the very idea of the
divinity of art deters instead of animating him, if the enthusiasm
with which others speak of it damps the flame in his own breast, he had
better not enter into a competition where he wants the first principle
of success, the daring to aspire and the hope to excel. He may be
assured he is not the man. Sir Joshua himself was not struck at first
by the sight of the masterpieces of the great style of art, and he seems
unconsciously to have adopted this theory to show that he might still
have succeeded in it but for want of due application. His hypothesis
goes to this--to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do
all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe
he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic
industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua
sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.
In speaking of Carlo Maratti, he confesses the inefficiency of this
doctrine in a very remarkable manner:--
'Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those I have first named, and I
think owes his superiority to the extension of his views: besides his
master Andrea Sacchi, he imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Caraccis.
It is true, there is nothing very captivating in Carlo Maratti; but this
proceeded from a want which cannot be completely supplied; that is, want
of strength of parts. _In this certainly men are not equal;_ and a man
can bring home wares only in proportion with the capital with which he
goes to market. Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he had;
but there was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which extended itself
uniformly to his invention, expression, his drawing, colouring, and the
general effect of his pictures. The truth is, he never equalled any of
his patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his own.'
Here, then, Reynolds, we see, fairly gives up the argument. Carlo, after
all, was a heavy hand; nor could all his diligence and his making
the most of what he had make up for the want of 'natural powers.' Sir
Joshua's good sense pointed out to him the truth in the individual
instance, though he might be led astray by a vague general theory. Such,
however, is the effect of a false principle that there is an evident
bias in the artist's mind to make genius lean upon others for support,
instead of trusting to itself and developing its own incommunicable
resources. So in treating in the Twelfth Discourse of the way in which
great artists are formed, Sir Joshua reverts very nearly to his first
position:
'The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an Artist is found in the
great works of his predecessors. There is no other way for him to become
great himself. _Serpens, nigi serpentem comederit, non fit draco._
Raffaelle, as appears from what has been said, had carefully studied the
works of Masaccio, and indeed there was no other, if we except Michael
Angelo (whom he likewise imitated),(1) so worthy of his attention; and
though his manner was dry and hard, his compositions formal, and not
enough diversified, according to the custom of Painters in that early
period, yet his works possess that grandeur and simplicity which
accompany, and even sometimes proceed from, regularity and hardness
of manner. We must consider the barbarous state of the arts before his
time, when skill in drawing was so little understood, that the best
of the painters could not even foreshorten the foot, but every figure
appeared to stand upon his toes, and what served for drapery had, from
the hardness and smallness of the folds, too much the appearance of
cords clinging round the body. He first introduced large drapery,
flowing in an easy and natural manner; indeed, he appears to be the
first who discovered the path that leads to every excellence to which
the art afterwards arrived, and may therefore be justly considered as
one of the Great Fathers of Modern Art.
'Though I have been led on to a longer digression respecting this
great painter than I intended, yet I cannot avoid mentioning another
excellence which he possessed in a very eminent degree: he was as much
distinguished among his contemporaries for his diligence and industry
_as he was for the natural faculties of his mind._ We are told that
his whole attention was absorbed in the pursuit of his art, and that he
acquired the name of Masaccio from his total disregard to his dress,
his person, and all the common concerns of life. He is indeed _a signal
instance of what well-directed diligence_ will do in a short time: he
lived but twenty-seven years, yet in that short space carried the art so
far beyond what it had before reached, that he appears to stand alone
as a model for his successors. Vasari gives a long catalogue of painters
and sculptors who formed their taste and learned their art by studying
his works; among those, he names Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci,
Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle, Bartholomeo, Andrea del Sarto, Il Rosso, and
Pierino del Vaga.'
Sir Joshua here again halts between two opinions. He tells us the names
of the painters who formed themselves upon Masaccio's style: he does not
tell us on whom he formed himself. At one time the natural faculties of
his mind were as remarkable as his industry; at another he was only a
signal instance of what well-directed diligence will do in a short t
that leads to every excellence to which the Art afterwards arrived,'
though he is introduced in an argument to show that 'the daily food and
nourishment of the mind of the Artist must be found in the works of
his predecessors.' There is something surely very wavering and
unsatisfactory in all this.
Sir Joshua, in another part of his work, endeavours to reconcile and
prop up these contradictions by a paradoxical sophism which I think
turns upon himself. He says: 'I am on the contrary persuaded, that by
imitation only' (by which he has just explained himself to mean the
study of other masters), 'variety, and even originality of invention is
produced. I will go further: even genius, at least, what is so called,
is the child of imitation. But as this appears to be contrary to the
general opinion, I must explain my position before I enforce it.
'Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellencies which are
out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can
teach, and which no industry can acquire.
'This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those beauties which
stamp the work with the character of genius, supposes that it is
something more fixed than in reality it is, and that we always do and
ever did agree in opinion with respect to what should be considered as
the characteristic of genius. But the truth is, that the _degree_ of
excellence which proclaims _Genius_ is different in different times and
different places; and what shows it to be so is, that mankind have often
changed their opinion upon this matter.
'When the Arts were in their infancy, the power of merely drawing the
likeness of any object was considered as one of its greatest efforts.
The common people, ignorant of the principles of art, talk the same
language even to this day. But when it was found that every man could
be taught to do this, and a great deal more, merely by the observance of
certain precepts, the name of Genius then shifted its application, and
was given only to him who added the peculiar character of the object he
represented--to him who had invention, expression, grace, or dignity;
in short, those qualities or excellencies, the power of producing which
could not _then_ be taught by any known and promulgated rules.
'We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of the
passions, the art of composition, even the power of giving a general
air of grandeur to a work, is at present very much under the dominion
of rules. These excellencies were heretofore considered merely as the
effects of genius; and justly, if genius is not taken for inspiration,
but as the effect of close observation and experience.'
Sir Joshua began with undertaking to show that 'genius was the child
of the imitation of others, and now it turns out not to be inspiration
indeed, but the effect of close observation and experience.' The
whole drift of this argument appears to be contrary to what the writer
intended, for the obvious inference is that the essence of genius
consists entirely, both in kind and degree, in the single circumstance
of originality. The very same things are or are not genius, according as
they proceed from invention or from mere imitation. In so far as a
thing is original, as it has never been done before, it acquires and it
deserves the appellation of genius: in so far as it is not original,
and is borrowed from others or taught by rule, it is not, neither is it
called, genius. This does not make much for the supposition that genius
is a traditional and second-hand quality. Because, for example, a man
without much genius can copy a picture of Michael Angelo's, does it
follow that there was no genius in the original design, or that the
inventor and copyist are equal? If indeed, as Sir Joshua labours to
prove, mere imitation of existing models and attention to established
rules could produce results exactly similar to those of natural powers,
if the progress of art as a learned profession were a gradual but
continual accumulation of individual excellence, instead of being a
sudden and almost miraculous start to the highest beauty and grandeur
nearly at first, and a regular declension to mediocrity ever after,
then indeed the distinction between genius and imitation would be little
worth contending for; the causes might be different, the effects would
be the same, or rather skill to avail ourselves of external advantages
would be of more importance and efficacy than the most powerful internal
resources. But as the case stands, all the great works of art have been
the offspring of individual genius, either projecting itself before the
general advances of society or striking out a separate path for itself;
all the rest is but labour in vain. For every purpose of emulation
or instruction we go back to the original inventors, not to those who
imitated, and, as it is falsely pretended, improved upon their models:
or if those who followed have at any time attained as high a rank
or surpassed their predecessors, it was not from borrowing their
excellencies, but by unfolding new and exquisite powers of their own,
of which the moving principle lay in the individual mind, and not in
the stimulus afforded by previous example and general knowledge. Great
faults, it is true, may be avoided, but great excellencies can never
be attained in this way. If Sir Joshua's hypothesis of progressive
refinement in art was anything more than a verbal fallacy, why does he
go back to Michael Angelo as the God of his idolatry? Why does he find
fault with Carlo Maratti for being heavy? Or why does he declare as
explicitly as truly, that 'the judgment, after it has been long
passive, by degrees loses its power of becoming active when exertion
is necessary'?--Once more to point out the fluctuation in Sir Joshua's
notions on this subject of the advantages of natural genius and
artificial study, he says, when recommending the proper objects of
ambition to the young artist:
'My advice in a word is this: keep your principal attention fixed upon
the higher excellencies. If you compass them, and compass nothing more,
you are still in the first class. We may regret the innumerable beauties
which you may want; you may be very imperfect, but still you are an
imperfect artist of the highest order.'
This is the Fifth Discourse. In the Seventh our artist seems to waver,
and flings a doubt on his former decision, whereby 'it loses some
colour.'
'Indeed perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably preferred to
mediocrity in the highest walks of art. A landscape of Claude Lorraine
_may_(2) be preferred to a history by Luca Giordano: but hence appears
the necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists the
excellency of each class, in order to judge how near it approaches to
perfection.'
As he advances, however, he grows bolder, and altogether discards his
theory of judging of the artist by the class to which he belongs--'But
we have the sanction of all mankind,' he says, 'in preferring genius in
a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the highest.' This
is in speaking of Gainsborough. The whole passage is excellent, and, I
should think, conclusive against the general and factitious style of art
on which he insists so much at other times.
'On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to prophesy, that two of
the last distinguished painters of that country, I mean Pompeio Battoni
and Rafaelle Mengs, however great their names may at present sound in
our ears,(3) will very soon fall into the rank of Imperiale, Sebastian
Concha, Placido Constanza, Musaccio, and the rest of their immediate
predecessors; whose names, though equally renowned in their lifetime,
are now fallen into what is little short of total oblivion. I do not say
that those painters were not superior to the artist I allude to,(4) and
whose loss we lament, in a certain routine of practice, which, to the
eyes of common observers, has the air of a learned composition, and
bears a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the great men
who went before them. I know this perfectly well; but I know likewise,
that a man looking for real and lasting reputation must unlearn much of
the common-place method so observable in the works of the artists whom
I have named. For my own part, I confess, I take more interest in and
am more captivated with the powerful impression of nature, which
Gainsborough exhibited in his portraits and in his landscapes, and
the interesting simplicity and elegance of his little ordinary
beggar-children, than with any of the works of that school, since the
time of Andrea Sacchi, or perhaps we may say Carlo Maratti: two painters
who may truly be said to be ULTIMI ROMANORUM.
'I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the censure and ridicule
of the academical professors of other nations in preferring the humble
attempts of Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates in
the great historical style. _But we have the sanction of all mankind in
preferring genius in a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in
the highest.'_
Yet this excellent artist and critic had said but a few pages before
when working upon his theory--'For this reason I shall beg leave to lay
before you a few thoughts on the subject; to throw out some hints that
may lead your minds to an opinion (which I take to be the true one) that
Painting is not only not to be considered as an imitation operating by
deception, but that it is, and ought to be, in many points of view and
strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature. Perhaps it
ought to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation as the
refined, civilised state in which we live is removed from a gross state
of nature; and those who have not cultivated their imaginations, which
the majority of mankind certainly have not, may be said, in regard to
arts, to continue in this state of nature. Such men will always prefer
imitation' (the imitation of nature) 'to that excellence which is
addressed to another faculty that they do not possess; but these are
not the persons to whom a painter is to look, any more than a judge
of morals and manners ought to refer controverted points upon those
subjects to the opinions of people taken from the banks of the Ohio or
from New Holland.'
In opposition to the sentiment here expressed that 'Painting is and
ought to be, in many points of view and strictly speaking, no imitation
at all of external nature,' it is emphatically said in another place:
'Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible, and
from which all excellences must originally flow.'
I cannot undertake to reconcile so many contradictions, nor do I think
it an easy task for the student to derive any simple or intelligible
clue from these conflicting authorities and broken hints in the
prosecution of his art. Sir Joshua appears to have imbibed from others
(Burke or Johnson) a spurious metaphysical notion that art was to be
preferred to nature, and learning to genius, with which his own good
sense and practical observation were continually at war, but from which
he only emancipates himself for a moment to relapse into the same error
again shortly after.(5) The conclusion of the Twelfth Discourse is, I
think, however, a triumphant and unanswerable denunciation of his own
favourite paradox on the objects and study of art.
'Those artists' (he says with a strain of eloquent truth) 'who have
quitted the service of nature (whose service, when well understood, is
perfect freedom) and have put themselves under the direction of I know
not what capricious fantastical mistress, who fascinates and overpowers
their whole mind, and from whose dominion there are no hopes of their
being ever reclaimed (since they appear perfectly satisfied, and not
at all conscious of their forlorn situation), like the transformed
followers of Comus,
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement;
But boast themselves more comely than before.
'Methinks such men who have found out so short a path have no reason to
complain of the shortness of life and the extent of art; since life
is so much longer than is wanted for their improvement, or is indeed
necessary for the accomplishment of their idea of perfection.(6) On
the contrary, he who recurs to nature, at every recurrence renews his
strength. The rules of art he is never likely to forget; they are few
and simple: but Nature is refined, subtle, and infinitely various,
beyond the power and retention of memory; it is necessary therefore to
have continual recourse to her. In this intercourse there is no end of
his improvement: the longer he lives, the nearer he approaches to the
true and perfect idea of Art.'