art, of the joy or grief of noble persons, for right causes. And
accurately in proportion to the rightness of the cause, and purity of
the emotion, is the possibility of the fine art. A maiden may sing of
her lost love, but a miser cannot sing of his lost money. And with
absolute precision, from highest to lowest, _the fineness of the
possible art is an index of the moral purity and majesty of the emotion
it expresses_. You may test it practically at any instant. Question with
yourselves respecting any feeling that has taken strong possession of
your mind, "Could this be sung by a master, and sung nobly, with a true
melody and art?" Then it is a right feeling. Could it not be sung at
all, or only sung ludicrously? It is a base one. And that is so in all
the arts; so that with mathematical precision, subject to no error or
exception, the art of a nation, so far as it exists, is an exponent of
its ethical state.
68. An exponent, observe, and exalting influence; but not the root or
cause. You cannot paint or sing yourselves into being good men; you must
be good men before you can either paint or sing, and then the colour and
sound will complete in you all that is best.
And this it was that I called upon you to hear, saying, "listen to me at
least now," in the first lecture, namely, that no art-teaching could be
of use to you, but would rather be harmful, unless it was grafted on
something deeper than all art. For indeed not only with this, of which
it is my function to show you the laws, but much more with the art of
all men, which you came here chiefly to learn, that of language, the
chief vices of education have arisen from the one great fallacy of
supposing that noble language is a communicable trick of grammar and
accent, instead of simply the careful expression of right thought. All
the virtues of language are, in their roots, moral; it becomes accurate
if the speaker desires to be true; clear, if he speaks with sympathy and
a desire to be intelligible; powerful, if he has earnestness; pleasant,
if he has sense of rhythm and order. There are no other virtues of
language producible by art than these: but let me mark more deeply for
an instant the significance of one of them. Language, I said, is only
clear when it is sympathetic. You can, in truth, understand a man's word
only by understanding his temper. Your own word is also as of an unknown
tongue to him unless he understands yours. And it is this which makes
the art of language, if any one is to be chosen separately from the
rest, that which is fittest for the instrument of a gentleman's
education. To teach the meaning of a word thoroughly, is to teach the
nature of the spirit that coined it; the secret of language is the
secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.
And thus the principles of beautiful speech have all been fixed by
sincere and kindly speech. On the laws which have been determined by
sincerity, false speech, apparently beautiful, may afterwards be
constructed; but all such utterance, whether in oration or poetry, is
not only without permanent power, but it is destructive of the
principles it has usurped. So long as no words are uttered but in
faithfulness, so long the art of language goes on exalting itself; but
the moment it is shaped and chiselled on external principles, it falls
into frivolity, and perishes. And this truth would have been long ago
manifest, had it not been that in periods of advanced academical science
there is always a tendency to deny the sincerity of the first masters of
language. Once learn to write gracefully in the manner of an ancient
author, and we are apt to think that he also wrote in the manner of some
one else. But no noble nor right style was ever yet founded but out of a
sincere heart.
No man is worth reading to form your style, who does not mean what he
says; nor was any great style ever invented but by some man who meant
what he said. Find out the beginner of a great manner of writing, and
you have also found the declarer of some true facts or sincere passions:
and your whole method of reading will thus be quickened, for, being sure
that your author really meant what he said, you will be much more
careful to ascertain what it is that he means.
69. And of yet greater importance is it deeply to know that every beauty
possessed by the language of a nation is significant of the innermost
laws of its being. Keep the temper of the people stern and manly; make
their associations grave, courteous, and for worthy objects; occupy them
in just deeds; and their tongue must needs be a grand one. Nor is it
possible, therefore--observe the necessary reflected action--that any
tongue should be a noble one, of which the words are not so many
trumpet-calls to action. All great languages invariably utter great
things, and command them; they cannot be mimicked but by obedience; the
breath of them is inspiration because it is not only vocal, but vital;
and you can only learn to speak as these men spoke, by becoming what
these men were.
70. Now for direct confirmation of this, I want you to think over the
relation of expression to character in two great masters of the absolute
art of language, Virgil and Pope. You are perhaps surprised at the last
name; and indeed you have in English much higher grasp and melody of
language from more passionate minds, but you have nothing else, in its
range, so perfect. I name, therefore, these two men, because they are
the two most accomplished _Artists_, merely as such, whom I know in
literature; and because I think you will be afterwards interested in
investigating how the infinite grace in the words of the one, and the
severity in those of the other, and the precision in those of both,
arise wholly out of the moral elements of their minds:--out of the deep
tenderness in Virgil which enabled him to write the stories of Nisus and
Lausus; and the serene and just benevolence which placed Pope, in his
theology, two centuries in advance of his time, and enabled him to sum
the law of noble life in two lines which, so far as I know, are the most
complete, the most concise, and the most lofty expression of moral
temper existing in English words:--
_"Never elated, while one man's oppress'd;_
_Never dejected, while another's bless'd."_
I wish you also to remember these lines of Pope, and to make yourselves
entirely masters of his system of ethics; because, putting Shakespeare
aside as rather the world's than ours, I hold Pope to be the most
perfect representative we have, since Chaucer, of the true English mind;
and I think the Dunciad is the most absolutely chiselled and monumental
work "exacted" in our country. You will find, as you study Pope, that
he has expressed for you, in the strictest language and within the
briefest limits, every law of art, of criticism, of economy, of policy,
and, finally, of a benevolence, humble, rational, and resigned,
contented with its allotted share of life, and trusting the problem of
its salvation to Him in whose hand lies that of the universe.
71. And now I pass to the arts with which I have special concern, in
which, though the facts are exactly the same, I shall have more
difficulty in proving my assertion, because very few of us are as
cognizant of the merit of painting as we are of that of language; and I
can only show you whence that merit springs, after having thoroughly
shown you in what it consists. But, in the meantime, I have simply to
tell you, that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical
state, as other modes of expression; first, with absolute precision, of
that of the workman; and then with precision, disguised by many
distorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs.
And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of the workman: but,
being so, remember, if the mind be great or complex, the art is not an
easy book to read; for we must ourselves possess all the mental
characters of which we are to read the signs. No man can read the
evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know
what the work cost: nor can he read the evidence of true passion if he
is not passionate; nor of gentleness if he is not gentle: and the most
subtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge by
having had the same faults to fight with. I myself, for instance, know
impatient work, and tired work, better than most critics, because I am
myself always impatient, and often tired:--so also, the patient and
indefatigable touch of a mighty master becomes more wonderful to me than
to others. Yet, wonderful in no mean measure it will be to you all, when
I make it manifest,--and as soon as we begin our real work, and you have
learned what it is to draw a true line, I shall be able to make manifest
to you,--and indisputably so,--that the day's work of a man like
Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, uninterrupted
succession of movements of the hand more precise than those of the
finest fencer: the pencil leaving one point and arriving at another, not
only with unerring precision at the extremity of the line, but with an
unerring and yet varied course--sometimes over spaces a foot or more in
extent--yet a course so determined everywhere, that either of these men
could, and Veronese often does, draw a finished profile, or any other
portion of the contour of the face, with one line, not afterwards
changed. Try, first, to realise to yourselves the muscular precision of
that action, and the intellectual strain of it; for the movement of a
fencer is perfect in practised monotony; but the movement of the hand of
a great painter is at every instant governed by a direct and new
intention. Then imagine that muscular firmness and subtlety, and the
instantaneously selective and ordinant energy of the brain, sustained
all day long, not only without fatigue, but with a visible joy in the
exertion, like that which an eagle seems to take in the wave of his
wings; and this all life long, and through long life, not only without
failure of power, but with visible increase of it, until the actually
organic changes of old age. And then consider, so far as you know
anything of physiology, what sort of an ethical state of body and mind
that means! ethic through ages past! what fineness of race there must be
to get it, what exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And
then, finally, determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is
consistent with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any
gnawing lust, any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of
rebellion against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious
violation of even the least law to which obedience is essential for the
glory of life and the pleasing of its Giver.
72. It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters had deep
faults of character, but their faults always show in their work. It is
true that some could not govern their passions; if so, they died young,
or they painted ill when old. But the greater part of our
misapprehension in the whole matter is from our not having well known
who the great painters were, and taking delight in the petty skill that
was bred in the fumes of the taverns of the North, instead of theirs who
breathed empyreal air, sons of the morning, under the woods of Assisi
and the crags of Cadore.
73. It is true however also, as I have pointed out long ago, that the
strong masters fall into two great divisions, one leading simple and
natural lives, the other restrained in a Puritanism of the worship of
beauty; and these two manners of life you may recognise in a moment by
their work. Generally the naturalists are the strongest; but there are
two of the Puritans, whose work if I can succeed in making clearly
understandable to you during my three years here, it is all I need care
to do. But of these two Puritans one I cannot name to you, and the other
I at present will not. One I cannot, for no one knows his name, except
the baptismal one, Bernard, or "dear little Bernard"--Bernardino, called
from his birthplace, (Luino, on the Lago Maggiore,) Bernard of Luino.
The other is a Venetian, of whom many of you probably have never heard,
and of whom, through me, you shall not hear, until I have tried to get
some picture by him over to England.
74. Observe then, this Puritanism in the worship of beauty, though
sometimes weak, is always honourable and amiable, and the exact reverse
of the false Puritanism, which consists in the dread or disdain of
beauty. And in order to treat my subject rightly, I ought to proceed
from the skill of art to the choice of its subject, and show you how the
moral temper of the workman is shown by his seeking lovely forms and
thoughts to express, as well as by the force of his hand in expression.
But I need not now urge this part of the proof on you, because you are
already, I believe, sufficiently conscious of the truth in this matter,
and also I have already said enough of it in my writings; whereas I have
not at all said enough of the infallibleness of fine technical work as a
proof of every other good power. And indeed it was long before I myself
understood the true meaning of the pride of the greatest men in their
mere execution, shown for a permanent lesson to us, in the stories
which, whether true or not, indicate with absolute accuracy the general
conviction of great artists;--the stories of the contest of Apelles and
Protogenes in a line only, (of which I can promise you, you shall know
the meaning to some purpose in a little while),--the story of the circle
of Giotto, and especially, which you may perhaps not have observed, the
expression of Dürer in his inscription on the drawings sent him by
Raphael. These figures, he says, "Raphael drew and sent to Albert Dürer
in Nürnberg, to show him"--What? Not his invention, nor his beauty of
expression, but "sein Hand zu weisen," "To show him his _hand_." And you
will find, as you examine farther, that all inferior artists are
continually trying to escape from the necessity of sound work, and
either indulging themselves in their delights in subject, or pluming
themselves on their noble motives for attempting what they cannot
perform; (and observe, by the way, that a great deal of what is mistaken
for conscientious motive is nothing but a very pestilent, because very
subtle, condition of vanity); whereas the great men always understand at
once that the first morality of a painter, as of everybody else, is to
know his business; and so earnest are they in this, that many, whose
lives you would think, by the results of their work, had been passed in
strong emotion, have in reality subdued themselves, though capable of
the very strongest passions, into a calm as absolute as that of a deeply
sheltered mountain lake, which reflects every agitation of the clouds in
the sky, and every change of the shadows on the hills, but is itself
motionless.
75. Finally, you must remember that great obscurity has been brought
upon the truth in this matter by the want of integrity and simplicity in
our modern life. I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness.
Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habits
and thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you not
only cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether
he is, at all!--whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or only
with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now, between the
work of artists of merit and their personal characters, as those which
you find continually disappointing expectation in the lives of men of
modern literary power; the same conditions of society having obscured or
misdirected the best qualities of the imagination, both in our
literature and art. Thus there is no serious question with any of us as
to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, of Shakespeare and
Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt to analyse the moral laws
of the art skill in recent poets, novelists, and painters.
76. Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you
enable yourselves to distinguish, by the truth of your own lives, what
is true in those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good
has its origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either
literature or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their
mistaken aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and
that, if there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come
of a sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled
by conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange
than those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they are
part of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond our
judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light. And it is
sufficient warning against what some might dread as the probable effect
of such a conviction on your own minds, namely, that you might permit
yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be allied to genius,
when they took the form of personal temptations;--it is surely, I say,
sufficient warning against so mean a folly, to discern, as you may with
little pains, that, of all human existences, the lives of men of that
distorted and tainted nobility of intellect are probably the most
miserable.
77. I pass to the second, and for us the more practically important
question, What is the effect of noble art upon other men; what has it
done for national morality in time past: and what effect is the extended
knowledge or possession of it likely to have upon us now? And here we
are at once met by the facts, which are as gloomy as indisputable, that,
while many peasant populations, among whom scarcely the rudest practice
of art has ever been attempted, have lived in comparative innocence,
honour and happiness, the worst foulness and cruelty of savage tribes
have been frequently associated with fine ingenuities of decorative
design; also, that no people has ever attained the higher stages of art
skill, except at a period of its civilisation which was sullied by
frequent, violent and even monstrous crime; and, lastly, that the
attaining of perfection in art power has been hitherto, in every nation,
the accurate signal of the beginning of its ruin.
78. Respecting which phenomena, observe first, that although good never
springs out of evil, it is developed to its highest by contention with
evil. There are some groups of peasantry, in far-away nooks of Christian
countries, who are nearly as innocent as lambs; but the morality which
gives power to art is the morality of men, not of cattle.
Secondly, the virtues of the inhabitants of many country districts are
apparent, not real; their lives are indeed artless, but not innocent;
and it is only the monotony of circumstances, and the absence of
temptation, which prevent the exhibition of evil passions not less real
because often dormant, nor less foul because shown only in petty faults,
or inactive malignities.
79. But you will observe also that _absolute_ artlessness, to men in any
kind of moral health, is impossible; they have always, at least, the art
by which they live--agriculture or seamanship; and in these industries,
skilfully practised, you will find the law of their moral training;
while, whatever the adversity of circumstances, every rightly-minded
peasantry, such as that of Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, or Switzerland, has
associated with its needful industry a quite studied school of
pleasurable art in dress; and generally also in song, and simple
domestic architecture.
80. Again, I need not repeat to you here what I endeavoured to explain
in the first lecture in the book I called "The Two Paths," respecting
the arts of savage races: but I may now note briefly that such arts are
the result of an intellectual activity which has found no room to
expand, and which the tyranny of nature or of man has condemned to
disease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, nor any
other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animal energy
of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions of evil, and
the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art are precisely
indicative of their distorted moral nature.
81. But the truly great nations nearly always begin from a race
possessing this imaginative power; and for some time their progress is
very slow, and their state not one of innocence, but of feverish and
faultful animal energy. This is gradually subdued and exalted into
bright human life; the art instinct purifying itself with the rest of
the nature, until social perfectness is nearly reached; and then comes
the period when conscience and intellect are so highly developed, that
new forms of error begin in the inability to fulfil the demands of the
one, or to answer the doubts of the other. Then the wholeness of the
people is lost; all kinds of hypocrisies and oppositions of science
develop themselves; their faith is questioned on one side, and
compromised with on the other; wealth commonly increases at the same
period to a destructive extent; luxury follows; and the ruin of the
nation is then certain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I
said at first, the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no
more control it in its political career than the gleam of the firefly
guides its oscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are
usually obtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to the
precipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by which
it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract in the hues of its
iris. It is true that the colossal vices belonging to periods of great
national wealth (for wealth, you will find, is the real root of all
evil) can turn every good gift and skill of nature or of man to evil
purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have been misused, how much
more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral to Caliban, is that
Miranda's fault?
82. And I could easily go on to trace for you what at the moment I
speak, is signified, in our own national character, by the forms of art,
and unhappily also by the forms of what is not art, but [Greek:
atechnia], that exist among us. But the more important question is, What
_will_ be signified by them; what is there in us now of worth and
strength, which under our new and partly accidental impulse towards
formative labour, may be by that expressed, and by that fortified?
Would it not be well to know this? Nay, irrespective of all future work,
is it not the first thing we should want to know, what stuff we are made
of--how far we are +agathoi+ or +kakoi+--good, or good for
nothing? We may all know that, each of ourselves, easily enough, if we
like to put one grave question well home.
83. Supposing it were told any of you by a physician whose word you
could not but trust, that you had not more than seven days to live. And
suppose also that, by the manner of your education it had happened to
you, as it has happened to many, never to have heard of any future
state, or not to have credited what you heard; and therefore that you
had to face this fact of the approach of death in its simplicity:
fearing no punishment for any sin that you might have before committed,
or in the coming days might determine to commit; and having similarly no
hope of reward for past, or yet possible, virtue; nor even of any
consciousness whatever to be left to you, after the seventh day had
ended, either of the results of your acts to those whom you loved, or of
the feelings of any survivors towards you. Then the manner in which you
would spend the seven days is an exact measure of the morality of your
nature.