arises from the redundance of their imaginative power. Not only can all
the members of the school compose a thousand times better than the men
who pretend to look down upon them, but I question whether even the
greatest men of old times possessed more exhaustless invention than
either Millais or Rossetti; and it is partly the very ease with which
they invent which leads them to despise invention. Men who have no
imagination, but have learned merely to produce a spurious resemblance
of its results by the recipes of composition, are apt to value
themselves mightily on their concoctive science; but the man whose mind
a thousand living imaginations haunt, every hour, is apt to care too
little for them; and to long for the perfect truth which he finds is not
to be come at so easily. And though I may perhaps hesitatingly admit
that it is possible to love this truth of reality too intensely, yet I
have no hesitation in declaring that there is _no hope_ for those who
despise it, and that the painter, whoever he be, who despises the
pictures already produced by the Pre-Raphaelites, has himself no
capacity of becoming a great painter of any kind. Paul Veronese and
Tintoret themselves, without desiring to imitate the Pre-Raphaelite
work, would have looked upon it with deep respect, as John Bellini
looked on that of Albert Duerer; none but the ignorant could be
unconscious of its truth, and none but the insincere regardless of it.
140. How far it is possible for men educated on the severest
Pre-Raphaelite principles to advance from their present style into that
of the great schools of composition, I do not care to inquire, for at
this period such an advance is certainly not desirable. Of great
compositions we have enough, and more than enough, and it would be well
for the world if it were willing to take some care of those it has. Of
pure and manly truth, of stern statement of the things done and seen
around us daily, we have hitherto had nothing. And in art, as in all
other things, besides the literature of which it speaks, that sentence
of Carlyle is inevitably and irreversibly true:--"Day after day, looking
at the high destinies which yet await literature, which literature will
ere long address herself with more decisiveness than ever to fulfill, it
grows clearer to us that the proper task of literature lies in the
domain of BELIEF, within which, poetic fiction, as it is charitably
named, will have to take a quite new figure, if allowed a settlement
there. Whereby were it not reasonable to prophesy that this exceeding
great multitude of novel writers and such like, must, in a new
generation, gradually do one of two things, either retire into
nurseries, and work for children, minors, and semifatuous persons of
both sexes, or else, what were far better, sweep their novel fabric into
the dust cart, and betake them, with such faculty as they have, _to
understand and record what is true_, of which surely there is and
forever will be a whole infinitude unknown to us, of infinite importance
to us? Poetry will more and more come to be understood as nothing but
higher knowledge, and the only genuine Romance for grown persons,
Reality."
141. As I was copying this sentence, a pamphlet was put into my hand,
written by a clergyman, denouncing "Woe, woe, woe! to exceedingly young
men of stubborn instincts, calling themselves Pre-Raphaelites."[40]
[Footnote 40: Art, its Constitution and Capacities, etc. By the Rev.
Edward Young, M.A. The phrase "exceedingly young men of stubborn
instincts," being twice quoted (carefully excluding the context) from my
pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism.]
I thank God that the Pre-Raphaelites _are_ young, and that strength is
still with them, and life, with all the war of it, still in front of
them. Yet Everett Millais is this year of the exact age at which
Raphael painted the "Disputa," his greatest work; Rossetti and Hunt are
both of them older still--nor is there one member of the body so young
as Giotto, when he was chosen from among the painters of Italy to
decorate the Vatican. But Italy, in her great period, knew her great
men, and did not "despise their youth." It is reserved for England to
insult the strength of her noblest children--to wither their warm
enthusiasm early into the bitterness of patient battle, and leave to
those whom she should have cherished and aided, no hope but in
resolution, no refuge but in disdain.
142. Indeed it is woful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the
wisdom, of the aged; and among the many dark signs of these times, the
disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest. But with whom
is the fault? Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had not lost
its honor; nor did childhood ever refuse its reverence, except where age
had forgotten correction. The cry, "Go up, thou bald head," will never
be heard in the land which remembers the precept, "See that ye despise
not one of these little ones;" and although indeed youth _may_ become
despicable, when its eager hope is changed into presumption, and its
progressive power into arrested pride, there is something more
despicable still, in the old age which has learned neither judgment nor
gentleness, which is weak without charity, and cold without discretion.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
While obvious printer's errors have been corrected, inconsistencies and
unusual spelling were preserved as in the original.