Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
FRONDES AGRESTES.
READINGS IN 'MODERN PAINTERS.'
CHOSEN AT HER PLEASURE,
BY THE AUTHOR'S FRIEND,
THE YOUNGER LADY OF THE THWAITE,
CONISTON.
'Spargit agrestes tibi silva frondes.'
Thirty-Eighth Thousand.
London: George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road. 1902.
Printed By Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
PREFACE.
I have been often asked to republish the first book of mine which the
public noticed, and which, hitherto, remains their favourite, in a
more easily attainable form than that of its existing editions. I am,
however, resolved never to republish the book as a whole; some parts
of it being, by the established fame of Turner, rendered unnecessary;
and others having been always useless, in their praise of excellence
which the public will never give the labour necessary to discern. But,
finding lately that one of my dearest friends, who, in advanced age,
retains the cheerfulness and easily delighted temper of bright youth,
had written out, for her own pleasure, a large number of passages from
'Modern Painters,' it seemed to me certain that what such a person
felt to be useful to herself, could not but be useful also to a class
of readers whom I much desired to please, and who would sometimes
enjoy, in my early writings, what I never should myself have offered
them. I asked my friend, therefore, to add to her own already chosen
series, any other passages she thought likely to be of permanent
interest to general readers; and I have printed her selections in
absolute submission to her judgment, merely arranging the pieces she
sent me in the order which seemed most convenient for the reciprocal
bearing of their fragmentary meanings, and adding here and there an
explanatory note; or, it may be, a deprecatory one, in cases where my
mind had changed. That she did me the grace to write every word with
her own hands, adds, in my eyes, and will, I trust, in the readers'
also, to the possible claims of the little book on their sympathy; and
although I hope to publish some of the scientific and technical
portions of the original volumes in my own large editions, the
selections here made by my friend under her quiet woods at
Coniston--the Unter-Walden of England--will, I doubt not, bring within
better reach of many readers, for whom I am not now able myself to
judge or choose, such service as the book was ever capable of
rendering, in the illustration of the powers of nature, and
intercession for her now too often despised and broken peace.
Herne Hill,
5th December, 1874.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE V
SECTION I. PRINCIPLES OF ART 1
II. POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION 10
III. ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY 35
IV. " STREAMS AND SEA 64
V. " MOUNTAINS 74
VI. " STONES 107
VII. " PLANTS AND FLOWERS 115
VIII. EDUCATION 140
IX. MORALITIES 151
FRONDES AGRESTES.
SECTION I.
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
1. Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible
pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral
nature in its purity and perfection; but why we receive pleasure from
some forms and colours, and not from others, is no more to be asked or
answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood.
2. The temper by which right taste is formed is characteristically
patient. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample
upon it,--lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks. It
is good ground, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of
unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too,
and drinks all the dew that falls on it. It is an honest and good
heart, that shows no too ready springing before the sun be up, but
fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready
to believe and to try all things; and yet so trustful of itself, that
it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without
trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and
good, is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks
of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its
conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its
delights are too penetrating,--too living,--for any whitewashed object
or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it
loves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow.
3. It is the common consent of men that whatever branch of any pursuit
ministers to the bodily comforts, and regards material uses, is
ignoble, and whatever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble;
and that geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing
lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron;
astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven, than in
teaching navigation; botany better in displaying structure than in
expressing juices; surgery better in investigating organization than
in setting limbs.--Only it is ordained that, for our encouragement,
every step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something
also to its practical applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of
nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us
partly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the glory of Him
in whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences
and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all
inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire
as the imperfection of their nature may admit; that the strong
torrents, which, in their own gladness, fill the hills with hollow
thunder, and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden
charge of field to feed, and barge to bear; that the fierce flames to
which the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for
us the metal vein, and warm the quickening spring; and that for our
incitement, I say, not our reward,--for knowledge is its own
reward,--herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and
stars their times.
4. Had it been ordained by the Almighty[1] that the highest pleasures
of sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to
arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces,
tower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated
lakes, there would never have been a direct contradiction between the
unselfish duties and the inherent desires of every individual. But no
such contradiction exists in the system of Divine Providence; which,
leaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse
this sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and
thoughtless vanities, as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until
the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety,
incapable of pleasure unless, Caligula like, it concentrates the
labour of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour,--leaves it
also open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves
susceptible of deep delight, which shall not separate us from our
fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but
which shall bind us closer to men and to God, and be with us always,
harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging
and eternal.
[1] The reader must observe, that having been thoroughly disciplined in
the Evangelical schools, I supposed myself, at four-and-twenty, to know
all about the ordinances of the Almighty. Nevertheless, the practical
contents of the sentence are good; if only they are intelligible, which
I doubt.
5. A great Idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of his power
depends upon his losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and
becoming a mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of
visions,--always passive in sight, passive in utterance, lamenting
continually that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he
has seen,--not by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the
man who has no invention is always setting things in order,[2] and
putting the world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming
himself on his doings, as supreme in all ways.
[2] I am now a comic illustration of this sentence, myself. I have not a
ray of invention in all my brains; but am intensely rational and
orderly, and have resolutely begun to set the world to rights.
6. So far as education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate,
and the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased
with quiet instead of gaudy colour, and with graceful instead of
coarse form; and by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern
quickly what is fine from what is common--so far acquired taste is an
honourable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say it is "in
good taste." But,[3] so far as this higher education has a tendency to
narrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest
of all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can
hardly please, and what is brightest hardly entertain,--so far as it
fosters pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in
anything, not on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in
which it indicates some greatness of their own, (as people build
marble porticoes, and inlay marble floors, not so much because they
like the colours of marble, or find it pleasant to the foot, as
because such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all human
eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber);--so far as it leads
people to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and aspect, to value
of substance and heart, liking a well-_said_ thing better than a true
thing, and a well-trained manner better than a sincere one, and a
delicately-formed face better than a good-natured one,--and in all
other ways and things setting custom and semblance above everlasting
truth;--so far, finally, as it induces a sense of inherent distinction
between class and class, and causes everything to be more or less
despised which has no social rank, so that the affection, pleasure,
and grief of a clown are looked upon as of no interest compared with
the affection and grief of a well-bred man;--just so far, in all these
several ways, the feeling induced by what is called "a liberal
education" is utterly adverse to the understanding of noble art.
[3] Nobody need begin this second volume sentence unless they are
breathed like the Graeme:--
"Right up Ben Ledi could he press, And not a sob his toil confess."
7. He who habituates himself in his daily life to seek for the stern
facts in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts again
brought before him by the involuntary imaginative power, in their
noblest associations; and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies,
will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him in his
dreams.[4]
[4] Very good. Few people have any idea how much more important the
government of the mind is, than the force of its exertion. Nearly all
the world flog their horses, without ever looking where they are going.
8. All the histories of the Bible are yet waiting to be painted. Moses
has never been painted; Elijah never; David never (except as a mere
ruddy stripling); Deborah never; Gideon never; Isaiah never.[5] What
single example does the reader remember of painting which suggested so
much as the faintest shadow of their deeds? Strong men in armour, or
aged men with flowing beards, he _may_ remember, who, when he looked
at his Louvre or Uffizi catalogue, he found were intended to stand for
David, or Moses. But does he suppose that, if these pictures had
suggested to him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he
would have passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,
representing, doubtless, Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or
a gambling quarrel in a pothouse--with no sense of pain or surprise?
Let him meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that
what I say is true, and that religious art at once complete and
sincere never yet has existed.
[5] I knew nothing, when I wrote this passage, of Luini, Filippo Lippi,
or Sandro Botticelli; and had not capacity to enter into the deeper
feelings, even of the men whom I was chiefly studying,--Tintoret and Fra
Angelico. But the British public is at present as little acquainted with
the greater Florentines as I was then, and the passage, for _them_,
remains true.