OF THE TRUE IDEAL:--SECONDLY, NATURALIST.
Sec. 1. We now enter on the consideration of that central and highest
branch of ideal art which concerns itself simply with things as they
ARE, and accepts, in all of them, alike the evil and the good. The
question is, therefore, how the art which represents things simply as
they are, can be called ideal at all. How does it meet that
requirement stated in Chap. III. Sec. 4, as imperative on all great art,
that it shall be inventive, and a product of the imagination? It meets
it preeminently by that power of arrangement which I have endeavored,
at great length and with great pains, to define accurately in the
chapter on Imagination associative in the second volume. That is to
say, accepting the weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things
that it sees, it so places and harmonizes them that they form a noble
whole, in which the imperfection of each several part is not only
harmless, but absolutely essential, and yet in which whatever is good
in each several part shall be completely displayed.
Sec. 2. This operation of true idealism holds, from the least things to
the greatest. For instance, in the arrangement of the smallest masses
of color, the false idealist, or even the purist, depends upon
perfecting each separate hue, and raises them all, as far as he can,
into costly brilliancy; but the naturalist takes the coarsest and
feeblest colors of the things around him, and so interweaves and
opposes them that they become more lovely than if they had all been
bright. So in the treatment of the human form. The naturalist will
take it as he finds it; but, with such examples as his picture may
rationally admit of more or less exalted beauty, he will associate
inferior forms, so as not only to set off those which are most
beautiful, but to bring out clearly what good there is in the inferior
forms themselves; finally using such measure of absolute evil as
there is commonly in nature, both for teaching and for contrast.
In Tintoret's Adoration of the Magi, the Madonna is not an enthroned
queen, but a fair girl, full of simplicity and almost childish
sweetness. To her are opposed (as Magi) two of the noblest and most
thoughtful of the Venetian senators in extreme old age,--the utmost
manly dignity, in its decline, being set beside the utmost feminine
simplicity, in its dawn. The steep foreheads and refined features of
the nobles are, again, opposed to the head of a negro servant, and
of an Indian, both, however, noble of their kind. On the other side
of the picture, the delicacy of the Madonna is farther enhanced by
contrast with a largely made farm-servant, leaning on a basket. All
these figures are in repose: outside, the troop of the attendants of
the Magi is seen coming up at the gallop.
Sec. 3. I bring forward this picture, observe, not as an example of the
ideal in conception of religious subject, but of the general ideal
treatment of the human form; in which the peculiarity is, that the
beauty of each figure is displayed to the utmost, while yet, taken
separately the Madonna is an unaltered portrait of a Venetian girl,
the Magi are unaltered Venetian Senators, and the figure with the
basket, an unaltered market-woman of Mestre.
And the greater the master of the ideal, the more perfectly true in
_portraiture_ will his individual figures be always found, the more
subtle and bold his arts of harmony and contrast. This is a universal
principle, common to all great art. Consider, in Shakspere, how Prince
Henry is opposed to Falstaff, Falstaff to Shallow, Titania to Bottom,
Cordelia to Regan, Imogen to Cloten, and so on; while all the meaner
idealists disdain the naturalism, and are shocked at the contrasts.
The fact is, a man who can see truth at all, sees it wholly, and
neither desires nor dares to mutilate it.
Sec. 4. It is evident that _within_ this faithful idealism, and as one
branch of it only, will arrange itself the representation of the
human form and mind in perfection, when this perfection is
rationally to be supposed or introduced,--that is to say, in the
highest personages of the story. The careless habit of confining the
term "ideal" to such representations, and not understanding the
imperfect ones to be _equally_ ideal in their place, has greatly
added to the embarrassment and multiplied the errors of artists.[24]
Thersites is just as ideal as Achilles, and Alecto as Helen; and,
what is more, all the nobleness of the beautiful ideal depends upon
its being just as probable and natural as the ugly one, and having
in itself, occasionally or partially, both faults and familiarities.
If the next painter who desires to illustrate the character of
Homer's Achilles, would represent him cutting pork chops for
Ulysses,[25] he would enable the public to understand the Homeric
ideal better than they have done for several centuries. For it is to
be kept in mind that the _naturalist ideal_ has always in it, to the
full, the power expressed by those two words. It is naturalist,
because studied from nature, and ideal, because it is mentally
arranged in a certain manner. Achilles must be represented cutting
pork chops, because that was one of the things which the nature of
Achilles involved his doing: he could not be shown wholly as
Achilles, if he were not shown doing that. But he shall do it at
such time and place as Homer chooses.
Sec. 5. Now, therefore, observe the main conclusions which follow from
these two conditions, attached always to art of this kind. First, it
is to be taken straight from nature; it is to be the plain narration
of something the painter or writer saw. Herein is the chief practical
difference between the higher and lower artists; a difference which I
feel more and more every day that I give to the study of art. All the
great men see what they paint before they paint it,--see it in a
perfectly passive manner,--cannot help seeing it if they would;
whether in their mind's eye, or in bodily fact, does not matter; very
often the mental vision is, I believe, in men of imagination, clearer
than the bodily one; but vision it is, of one kind or another,--the
whole scene, character, or incident passing before them as in second
sight, whether they will or no, and requiring them to paint it as they
see it; they not daring, under the might of its presence, to
alter[26] one jot or tittle of it as they write it down or paint it
down; it being to them in its own kind and degree always a true vision
or Apocalypse, and invariably accompanied in their hearts by a feeling
correspondent to the words,--"Write the things _which thou hast seen_,
and the things which _are_."
And the whole power, whether of painter or poet, to describe rightly
what we call an ideal thing, depends upon its being thus, to him, not
an ideal, but a _real_ thing. No man ever did or ever will work well,
but either from actual sight or sight of faith; and all that we call
ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and
visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent. The heroes of
Phidias are simply representations of such noble human persons as he
every day saw, and the gods of Phidias simply representations of such
noble divine persons as he thoroughly believed to exist, and did in
mental vision truly behold. Hence I said in the second preface to the
Seven Lamps of Architecture: "All great art represents something that
it sees or believes in; nothing unseen or uncredited."
Sec. 6. And just because it is always something that it sees or
believes in, there is the peculiar character above noted, almost
unmistakable, in all high and true ideals, of having been as it were
studied from the life, and involving pieces of sudden familiarity,
and close _specific_ painting which never would have been admitted
or even thought of, had not the painter drawn either from the bodily
life or from the life of faith. For instance, Dante's centaur,
Chiron, dividing his beard with his arrow before he can speak, is a
thing that no mortal would ever have thought of, if he had not
actually seen the centaur do it. They might have composed handsome
bodies of men and horses in all possible ways, through a whole life
of pseudo-idealism, and yet never dreamed of any such thing. But the
real living centaur actually trotted across Dante's brain, and he
saw him do it.
Sec. 7. And on account of this reality it is, that the great idealists
venture into all kinds of what, to the pseudo-idealists, are
"vulgarities." Nay, _venturing_ is the wrong word; the great men
have no choice in the matter; they do not know or care whether the
things they describe are vulgarities or not. They _saw_ them: they
are the facts of the case. If they had merely composed what they
describe, they would have had it at their will to refuse this
circumstance or add that. But they did not compose it. It came to
them ready fashioned; they were too much impressed by it to think
what was vulgar or not vulgar in it. It might be a very wrong thing
in a centaur to have so much beard; but so it was. And, therefore,
among the various ready tests of true greatness there is not any
more certain than this daring reference to, or use of, mean and
little things--mean and little, that is, to mean and little minds;
but, when used by the great men, evidently part of the noble whole
which is authoritatively present before them. Thus, in the highest
poetry, as partly above noted in the first chapter, there is no word
so familiar but a great man will bring good out of it, or rather, it
will bring good to him, and answer some end for which no other word
would have done equally well.
Sec. 8. A common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to apply
the word "whelp" to any one with a view of flattering him. There is a
certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it
agreeableness; but it seems difficult, at first hearing, to use it
complimentarily. If the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty
seems increased; and when, farther, he is at one and the same moment
to be called a "whelp" and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a
common idealist might well be brought to a pause. But hear Shakspere
do it:--
"Invoke his warlike spirit,
And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy,
Making defeat on the full power of France,
While his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility."
So a common idealist would have been rather alarmed at the thought
of introducing the name of a street in Paris--Straw Street--Rue de
Fouarre--into the midst of a description of the highest heavens. Not
so Dante,--
"Beyond, thou mayst the flaming lustre scan
Of Isidore, of Bede, and that Richart
Who was in contemplation more than man.
And he, from whom thy looks returning are
To me, a spirit was, that in austere
Deep musings often thought death kept too far.
That is the light eternal of Sigier,
Who while in Rue de Fouarre his days he wore,
Has argued hateful truths in haughtiest ear." CAYLEY.
What did it matter to Dante, up in heaven there, whether the mob
below thought him vulgar or not! Sigier _had_ read in Straw Street;
that was the fact, and he had to say so, and there an end.
Sec. 9. There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and _real_
vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want of power to
understand the universality of the ideal truth; the absence of
sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in
them so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, and nothing
large; but with equal and unoffended vision they take in the sum of
the world,--Straw Street and the seventh heavens,--in the same
instant. A certain portion of this divine spirit is visible even in
the lower examples of all the true men; it is, indeed, perhaps, the
clearest test of their belonging to the true and great group, that
they are continually touching what to the multitude appear
vulgarities. The higher a man stands, the more the word "vulgar"
becomes unintelligible to him. Vulgar? what, that poor farmer's girl
of William Hunt's, bred in the stable, putting on her Sunday gown,
and pinning her best cap out of the green and red pin-cushion! Not
so; she may be straight on the road to those high heavens, and may
shine hereafter as one of the stars in the firmament for ever. Nay,
even that lady in the satin bodice with her arm laid over a
balustrade to show it, and her eyes turned up to heaven to show
them; and the sportsman waving his rifle for the terror of beasts,
and displaying his perfect dress for the delight of men, are kept,
by the very misery and vanity of them, in the thoughts of a great
painter, at a sorrowful level, somewhat above vulgarity. It is only
when the minor painter takes them on his easel, that they become
things for the universe to be ashamed of.
We may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in plain and few words, at
least as far as regards art. There is never vulgarity in a _whole_
truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It
cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in
affectation.
Sec. 10. "Well, but," (at this point the reader asks doubtfully,) "if
then your great central idealist is to show all truth, low as well
as lovely, receiving it in this passive way, what becomes of all
your principles of selection, and of setting in the right place,
which you were talking about up to the end of your fourth paragraph?
How is Homer to enforce upon Achilles the cutting of the pork chops
'only at such time as Homer chooses,' if Homer is to have _no_
choice, but merely to see the thing done, and sing it as he sees
it?" Why, the choice, as well as the vision, is _manifested_ to
Homer. The vision comes to him in its chosen order. Chosen _for_
him, not _by_ him, but yet full of visible and exquisite choice,
just as a sweet and perfect dream will come to a sweet and perfect
person, so that, in some sense, they may be said to have chosen
their dream, or composed it; and yet they could not help dreaming it
so, and in no other wise. Thus, exactly thus, in all results of true
inventive power, the whole harmony of the thing done seems as if it
had been wrought by the most exquisite rules. But to him who did it,
it presented itself so, and his will, and knowledge, and
personality, for the moment went for nothing; he became simply a
scribe, and wrote what he heard and saw.
And all efforts to do things of a similar kind by rule or by
thought, and all efforts to mend or rearrange the first order of the
vision, are not inventive; on the contrary, they ignore and deny
invention. If any man, seeing certain forms laid on the canvas, does
by his reasoning power determine that certain changes wrought in
them would mend or enforce them, that is not only uninventive, but
contrary to invention, which must be the involuntary occurrence of
certain forms or fancies to the mind in the order they are to be
portrayed. Thus the knowing of rules and the exertion of judgment
have a tendency to check and confuse the fancy in its flow; so that
it will follow, that, in exact proportion as a master knows anything
about rules of right and wrong, he is likely to be uninventive; and
in exact proportion as he holds higher rank and has nobler
inventive power, he will know less of rules; not despising them, but
simply feeling that between him and them there is nothing in
common,--that dreams cannot be ruled--that as they come, so they
must be caught, and they cannot be caught in any other shape than
that they come in; and that he might as well attempt to rule a
rainbow into rectitude, or cut notches in a moth's wings to hold it
by, as in any wise attempt to modify, by rule, the forms of the
involuntary vision.
Sec. 11. And this, which by reason we have thus anticipated, is in
reality universally so. There is no exception. The great men never
know how or why they do things. They have no rules; cannot
comprehend the nature of rules;--do not, usually, even know, in what
they do, what is best or what is worst: to them it is all the same;
something they cannot help saying or doing,--one piece of it as good
as another, and none of it (it seems to _them_) worth much. The
moment any man begins to talk about rules, in whatsoever art, you
may know him for a second-rate man; and, if he talks about them
_much_, he is a third-rate, or not an artist at all. To _this_ rule
there is no exception in any art; but it is perhaps better to be
illustrated in the art of music than in that of painting. I fell by
chance the other day upon a work of De Stendhal's, "Vies de Haydn,
de Mozart, et de Metastase," fuller of common sense than any book I
ever read on the arts; though I see, by the slight references made
occasionally to painting, that the author's knowledge therein is
warped and limited by the elements of general teaching in the
schools around him; and I have not yet, therefore, looked at what he
has separately written on painting. But one or two passages out of
this book on music are closely to our present purpose.
"Counterpoint is related to mathematics: a fool, with patience,
becomes a respectable savant in that; but for the part of genius,
melody, it has no rules. No art is so utterly deprived of precepts
for the production of the beautiful. So much the better for it and
for us. Cimarosa, when first at Prague his air was executed, Pria
che spunti in ciel l'Aurora, never heard the pedants say to him,
'Your air is fine, because you have followed such and such a rule
established by Pergolese in such an one of his airs; but it would
be finer still if you had conformed yourself to such another rule
from which Galluppi never deviated.'"
Yes: "so much the better for it, and for us;" but I trust the time
will soon come when melody in painting will be understood, no less
than in music, and when people will find that, there also, the great
melodists have no rules, and cannot have any, and that there are in
this, as in sound, "no precepts for the production of the beautiful."
Sec. 12. Again. "Behold, my friend, an example of that simple way of
answering which embarrasses much. One asked him (Haydn) the _reason_
for a harmony--for a passage's being assigned to one instrument
rather than another; but all he ever answered was, 'I have done it,
because it does well.'" Farther on, De Stendhal relates an anecdote
of Haydn; I believe one well known, but so much to our purpose that
I repeat it. Haydn had agreed to give some lessons in counterpoint
to an English nobleman. "'For our first lesson,' said the pupil,
already learned in the art--drawing at the same time a quatuor of
Haydn's from his pocket, 'for our first lesson may we examine this
quatuor; and will you tell me the reasons of certain modulations,
which I cannot entirely approve because they are contrary to the
principles?' Haydn, a little surprised, declared himself ready to
answer. The nobleman began; and at the very first measures found
matter for objection. Haydn, _who invented habitually_, and who was
the contrary of a pedant, found himself much embarrassed, and
answered always, 'I have done that because it has a good effect. I
have put that passage there because it does well.' The Englishman,
who judged that these answers proved nothing, recommenced his
proofs, and demonstrated to him, by very good reasons, that his
quatuor was good for nothing. 'But, my lord, arrange this quatuor
then to your fancy,--play it so, and you will see which of the two
ways is the best.' 'But why is yours the best which is contrary to
the rules?' 'Because it is the pleasantest.' The nobleman replied.
Haydn at last lost patience, and said, 'I see, my lord, it is you
who have the goodness to give lessons to me, and truly I am forced
to confess to you that I do not deserve the honor.' The partizan of
the rules departed, still astonished that in following the rules to
the letter one cannot infallibly produce a 'Matrimonio Segreto.'"
This anecdote, whether in all points true or not, is in its tendency
most instructive, except only in that it makes _one_ false inference
or admission, namely, that a good composition can be _contrary_ to
the rules. It may be contrary to certain principles, supposed in
ignorance to be general; but every great composition is in perfect
harmony with all true rules, and involves thousands too delicate for
ear, or eye, or thought, to trace; still it is possible to reason,
with infinite pleasure and profit, about these principles, when the
thing is once done; only, all our reasoning will not enable any one
to do another thing like it, because all reasoning falls infinitely
short of the divine instinct. Thus we may reason wisely over the way
a bee builds its comb, and be profited by finding out certain things
about the angles of it. But the bee knows nothing about those
matters. It builds its comb in a far more inevitable way. And, from
a bee to Paul Veronese, all master-workers work with this awful,
this inspired unconsciousness.
Sec. 13. I said just now that there was no exception to _this_ law,
that the great men never knew how or why they did things. It is, of
course, only with caution that such a broad statement should be
made; but I have seen much of different kinds of artists, and I have
always found the knowledge of, and attention to, rules so
_accurately_ in the inverse ratio to the power of the painter, that
I have myself no doubt that the law is constant, and that men's
smallness may be trigonometrically estimated by the attention which,
in their work, they pay to principles, especially principles of
composition. The general way in which the great men speak is of
"_trying_ to do" this or that, just as a child would tell of
something he had seen and could not utter. Thus, in speaking of the
drawing of which I have given an etching farther on (a scene on the
St. Gothard[27]), Turner asked if I had been to see "that litter of
stones which I _endeavored_ to represent;" and William Hunt, when I
asked him one day as he was painting, why he put on such and such a
color, answered, "I don't know; I am just _aiming_ at it;" and
Turner, and he, and all the other men I have known who could paint,
always spoke and speak in the same way; not in any selfish restraint
of their knowledge, but in pure simplicity. While all the men whom I
know, who _cannot_ paint, are ready with admirable reasons for
everything they have done; and can show, in the most conclusive way,
that Turner is wrong, and how he might be improved.
Sec. 14. And this is the reason for the somewhat singular, but very
palpable truth that the Chinese, and Indians, and other semi-civilized
nations, can color better than we do, and that an Indian shawl or
Chinese vase are still, in invention of color, inimitable by us. It is
their glorious ignorance of all rules that does it; the pure and true
instincts have play, and do their work,--instincts so subtle, that the
least warping or compression breaks or blunts them; and the moment we
begin teaching people any rules about color, and make them do this or
that, we crush the instinct generally for ever. Hence, hitherto, it has
been an actual necessity, in order to obtain power of coloring, that a
nation should be half-savage: everybody could color in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries; but we were ruled and legalized into grey in the
fifteenth;--only a little salt simplicity of their sea natures at
Venice still keeping their precious, shellfishy purpleness and power;
and now that is gone; and nobody can color anywhere, except the Hindoos
and Chinese; but that need not be so, and will not be so long; for, in
a little while, people will find out their mistake, and give up talking
about rules of color, and then everybody will color again, as easily as
they now talk.
Sec. 15. Such, then, being the generally passive or instinctive character
of right invention, it may be asked how these unmanageable instincts
are to be rendered practically serviceable in historical or poetical
painting,--especially historical, in which given facts are to be
represented. Simply by the sense and self-control of the whole man;
not by control of the particular fancy or vision. 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. Thus if, in reading
history for the purpose of painting from it, the painter severely
seeks for the accurate circumstances of every event; as, for instance,
determining the exact spot of ground on which his hero fell, the way
he must have been looking at the moment, the height the sun was at (by
the hour of the day), and the way in which the light must have fallen
upon his face, the actual number and individuality of the persons by
him at the moment, and such other veritable details, ascertaining and
dwelling upon them without the slightest care for any desirableness or
poetic propriety in them, but for their own truth's sake; then these
truths will afterwards rise up and form the body of his imaginative
vision, perfected and united as his inspiration may teach. But if, in
reading the history, he does not regard these facts, but thinks only
how it might all most prettily, and properly, and impressively have
happened, then there is nothing but prettiness and propriety to form
the body of his future imagination, and his whole ideal becomes false.
So, in the higher or expressive part of the work, the whole virtue of
it depends on his being able to quit his own personality, and enter
successively into the hearts and thoughts of each person; and in all
this he is still passive: in gathering the truth he is passive, not
determining what the truth to be gathered shall be; and in the after
vision he is passive, not determining, but as his dreams will have it,
what the truth to be represented shall be; only according to his own
nobleness is his power of entering into the hearts of noble persons,
and the general character of his dream of them.[28]
Sec. 16. It follows from all this, evidently, that 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, and putting the
world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming himself
on his doings as supreme in all ways.
Sec. 17. There is still the question open, What are the principal
directions in which this ideal faculty is to exercise itself most
usefully for mankind?
This question, however, is not to the purpose of our present work,
which respects landscape-painting only; it must be one of those left
open to the reader's thoughts, and for future inquiry in another
place. One or two essential points I briefly notice.
In Chap. IV. Sec. 5. it was said, that one of the first functions of
imagination was traversing the scenes of history, and forcing the
facts to become again visible. But there is so little of such force
in written history, that it is no marvel there should be none
hitherto in painting. There does not exist, as far as I know, in the
world a single example of a good historical picture (that is to say,
of one which, allowing for necessary dimness in art as compared with
nature, yet answers nearly the same ends in our minds as the sight
of the real event would have answered); the reason being, the
universal endeavor to get _effects_ instead of facts, already shown
as the root of false idealism. True historical ideal, founded on
sense, correctness of knowledge, and purpose of usefulness, does not
yet exist; the production of it is a task which the closing
nineteenth century may propose to itself.
Sec. 18. Another point is to be observed. I do not, as the reader may
have lately perceived, insist on the distinction between historical
and poetical painting, because, as noted in the 22nd paragraph of
the third chapter, all great painting must be both.
Nevertheless, a certain distinction must generally exist between men
who, like Horace Vernet, David, or Domenico Tintoret, would employ
themselves in painting, more or less graphically, the outward
verities of passing events--battles, councils, &c.--of their day
(who, supposing them to work worthily of their mission, would
become, properly so called, historical or narrative painters); and
men who sought, in scenes of perhaps less outward importance, "noble
grounds for noble emotion;"--who would be, in a certain separate
sense, _poetical_ painters, some of them taking for subjects events
which had actually happened, and others themes from the poets; or,
better still, becoming poets themselves in the entire sense, and
inventing the story as they painted it. Painting seems to me only
just to be beginning, in this sense also, to take its proper
position beside literature, and the pictures of the "Awakening
Conscience," "Huguenot," and such others, to be the first fruits of
its new effort.
Sec. 19. Finally, as far as I can observe, it is a constant law that
the greatest men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in
their own age, and that the greatest fruits of their work are
gathered out of their own age. Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth
century; Chaucer, England in the fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in
the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in the sixteenth;--all of them
utterly regardless of anachronism and minor error of every kind, but
getting always vital truth out of the vital present.
Sec. 20. If it be said that Shakspere wrote perfect historical plays on
subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer, that they
_are_ perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries in
them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all
time; and this it is, not because Shakspere sought to give universal
truth, but because, painting honestly and completely from the men
about him, he painted that human nature which is, indeed, constant
enough,--a rogue in the fifteenth century being, _at heart_, what a
rogue is in the nineteenth and was in the twelfth; and an honest or
a knightly man being, in like manner, very similar to other such at
any other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore,
always universal; not because it is _not portrait_, but because it
is _complete_ portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all
ages: and the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not
because it is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait,--of the
outside, the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret
and Shakspere paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English
nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it does
for _all_ time; but as for any care to cast themselves into the
particular ways and tones of thought, or custom, of past time in
their historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in
any other perfectly great man that I know of.
Sec. 21. If there had been no vital truth in their present, it is hard to
say what these men could have done. I suppose, primarily, they would
not have existed; that they, and the matter they have to treat of, are
given together, and that the strength of the nation and its historians
correlatively rise and fall--Herodotus springing out of the dust of
Marathon. It is also hard to say how far our better general
acquaintance with minor details of past history may make us able to
turn the shadow on the imaginative dial backwards, and naturally to
live, and even live strongly if we choose, in past periods; but this
main truth will always be unshaken, that the only historical painting
deserving the name is portraiture of our own living men and our own
passing times,[29] and that all efforts to summon up the events of
bygone periods, though often useful and touching, must come under an
inferior class of poetical painting; nor will it, I believe, ever be
much followed as their main work by the strongest men, but only by the
weaker and comparatively sentimental (rather than imaginative) groups.
This marvellous first half of the nineteenth century has in this
matter, as in nearly all others, been making a double blunder. It has,
under the name of improvement, done all it could to EFFACE THE RECORDS
which departed ages have left of themselves, while it has declared the
FORGERY OF FALSE RECORDS of these same ages to be the great work of
its historical painters! I trust that in a few years more we shall
come somewhat to our senses in the matter, and begin to perceive that
our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and
to say for ourselves also what shall be true for the future. Let us
strive, with just veneration for that future, first to do what is
worthy to be spoken, and then to speak it faithfully; and, with
veneration for the past, recognize that it is indeed in the power of
love to preserve the monument, but not of incantation to raise the
dead.
[24] The word "ideal" is used in this limited sense in the chapter
on Generic Beauty in the second volume, but under protest.
See Sec. 4 in that chapter.
[25] II. ix. 209.
[26] "And yet you have just said it shall be at such time and
place as Homer chooses. Is not this _altering_?" No; wait a
little, and read on.
[27] See Plate XXI. in Chap. III. Vol. IV.
[28] The reader should, of course, refer for further details on
this subject to the chapters on Imagination in Vol. II., of
which I am only glancing now at the practical results.
[29] See Edinburgh Lectures, p. 217.