OF MODERN LANDSCAPE.
Sec. 1. We turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as quickly as may
be, from these serene fields and skies of mediaeval art, to the most
characteristic examples of modern landscape. And, I believe, the
first thing that will strike us, or that ought to strike us, is
their _cloudiness_.
Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find ourselves on a
sudden brought under sombre skies, and into drifting wind; and, with
fickle sunbeams flashing in our face, or utterly drenched with sweep
of rain, we are reduced to track the changes of the shadows on the
grass, or watch the rents of twilight through angry cloud. And we
find that whereas all the pleasure of the mediaeval was in
_stability_, _definiteness_, and _luminousness_, we are expected to
rejoice in darkness, and triumph in mutability; to lay the
foundation of happiness in things which momentarily change or fade;
and to expect the utmost satisfaction and instruction from what is
impossible to arrest, and difficult to comprehend.
Sec. 2. We find, however, together with this general delight in breeze
and darkness, much attention to the real form of clouds, and careful
drawing of effects of mist: so that the appearance of objects, as
seen through it, becomes a subject of science with us: and the
faithful representation of that appearance is made of primal
importance, under the name of aerial perspective. The aspects of
sunset and sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena of cloud and
mist, are watchfully delineated; and in ordinary daylight landscape,
the sky is considered of so much importance, that a principal mass
of foliage, or a whole foreground, is unhesitatingly thrown into
shade merely to bring out the form of a white cloud. So that, if a
general and characteristic name were needed for modern landscape
art, none better could be invented than "the service of clouds."
Sec. 3. And this name would, unfortunately, be characteristic of our
art in more ways than one. In the last chapter, I said that all the
Greeks spoke kindly about the clouds, except Aristophanes; and he, I
am sorry to say (since his report is so unfavorable), is the only
Greek who had studied them attentively. He tells us, first, that
they are "great goddesses to idle men;" then, that they are
"mistresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy
chattering;" declares that whoso believes in their divinity must
first disbelieve in Jupiter, and place supreme power in the hands of
an unknown god "Whirlwind;" and, finally, he displays their
influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in his sudden
desire "to speak ingeniously concerning smoke."
There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristophanic judgment
applied to our modern cloud-worship. Assuredly, much of the love of
mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our
metaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by
the great Greek, "speaking ingeniously concerning smoke." And much
of the instinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now
seen throughout every mode of exertion of mind,--the easily
encouraged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and
delight in the changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old
quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith,--is again
deeply defined in those few words, the "dethroning of Jupiter," the
"coronation of the whirlwind."
Sec. 4. Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or ignorance
respecting all stable facts. That darkening of the foreground to
bring out the white cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the
subjection of all plain and positive fact, to what is uncertain and
unintelligible. And as we examine farther into the matter, we shall
be struck by another great difference between the old and modern
landscape, namely, that in the old no one ever thought of drawing
anything but as well _as he could_. That might not be _well_, as we
have seen in the case of rocks; but it was as well as he _could_,
and always distinctly. Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was
equally drawn with care and clearness, and its essential characters
shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint
pebble, its veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were
drawn; if a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn--to
the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be
got into the space, far off or near. But now our ingenuity is all
"concerning smoke." Nothing is truly drawn but that; all else is
vague, slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible. You
examine your closest foreground, and find no leaves; your largest
oak, and find no acorns; your human figure, and find a spot of red
paint instead of a face; and in all this, again and again, the
Aristophanic words come true, and the clouds seem to be "great
goddesses to idle men."
Sec. 5. The next thing that will strike us, after this love of clouds, is
the love of liberty. Whereas the mediaeval was always shutting himself
into castles, and behind fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly, and
beds of flowers primly, our painters delight in getting to the open
fields and moors; abhor all hedges and moats; never paint anything but
free-growing trees, and rivers gliding "at their own sweet will;"
eschew formality down to the smallest detail; break and displace the
brickwork which the mediaeval would have carefully cemented; leave
unpruned the thickets he would have delicately trimmed; and, carrying
the love of liberty even to license, and the love of wildness even to
ruin, take pleasure at last in every aspect of age and desolation
which emancipates the objects of nature from the government of
men;--on the castle wall displacing its tapestry with ivy, and
spreading, through the garden, the bramble for the rose.
Sec. 6. Connected with this love of liberty we find a singular
manifestation of love of mountains, and see our painters traversing
the wildest places of the globe in order to obtain subjects with
craggy foregrounds and purple distances. Some few of them remain
content with pollards and flat land; but these are always men of
third-rate order; and the leading masters, while they do not reject
the beauty of the low grounds, reserve their highest powers to paint
Alpine peaks or Italian promontories. And it is eminently
noticeable, also, that this pleasure in the mountains is never
mingled with fear, or tempered by a spirit of meditation, as with
the mediaeval; but it is always free and fearless, brightly
exhilarating, and wholly unreflective; so that the painter feels
that his mountain foreground may be more consistently animated by a
sportsman than a hermit; and our modern society in general goes to
the mountains, not to fast, but to feast, and leaves their glaciers
covered with chicken-bones and egg-shells.
Sec. 7. Connected with this want of any sense of solemnity in mountain
scenery, is a general profanity of temper in regarding all the rest
of nature; that is to say, a total absence of faith in the presence
of any deity therein. Whereas the mediaeval never painted a cloud,
but with the purpose of placing an angel in it; and a Greek never
entered a wood without expecting to meet a god in it; _we_ should
think the appearance of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, and
should be seriously surprised by meeting a god anywhere. Our chief
ideas about the wood are connected with poaching. We have no belief
that the clouds contain more than so many inches of rain or hail,
and from our ponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks
and watercresses.
Sec. 8. Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong
tendency to deny the sacred element of color, and make our boast in
blackness. For though occasionally glaring, or violent, modern color
is on the whole eminently sombre, tending continually to grey or
brown, and by many of our best painters consistently falsified, with
a confessed pride in what they call chaste or subdued tints; so
that, whereas a mediaeval paints his sky bright blue, and his
foreground bright green, gilds the towers of his castles, and
clothes his figures with purple and white, we paint our sky grey,
our foreground black, and our foliage brown, and think that enough
is sacrificed to the sun in admitting the dangerous brightness of a
scarlet cloak or a blue jacket.
Sec. 9. These, I believe, are the principal points which would strike
us instantly, if we were to be brought suddenly into an exhibition
of modern landscapes out of a room filled with mediaeval work. It is
evident that there are both evil and good in this change; but how
much evil, or how much good, we can only estimate by considering, as
in the former divisions of our inquiry, what are the real roots of
the habits of mind which have caused them.
[Sidenote: Distinctive characters of the modern mind:]
And first, it is evident that the title "Dark Ages," given to the
mediaeval centuries, is, respecting art, wholly inapplicable. They
were, on the contrary, the bright ages; ours are the dark ones. I do
not mean metaphysically, but literally. They were the ages of gold:
ours are the ages of umber.
[Sidenote: 1. Despondency arising from faithlessness.]
This is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown brick walls, and
wear brown coats, because we have been blunderingly taught to do so,
and go on doing so mechanically. There is, however, also some cause
for the change in our own tempers. On the whole, these are much
_sadder_ ages than the early ones; not sadder in a noble and deep way,
but in a dim, wearied way,--the way of ennui, and jaded intellect, and
uncomfortableness of soul and body. The Middle Ages had their wars and
agonies, but also intense delights. Their gold was dashed with blood;
but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was interwoven with white
and purple; ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are
without apparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced,
mistaken, embittered, incomplete--not of the heart. How wonderfully,
since Shakspere's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad
jests! The very finish of our wit belies our gaiety.
Sec. 10. The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe,
our want of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage or
civilized) who, taken as a body, so wofully fulfilled the words,
"having no hope, and without God in the world," as the present
civilized European race. A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has more
sense of a Divine existence round him, or government over him, than
the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians; and those among us
who may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost without
exception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puritan; who, but for
the interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, either
of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the
Romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning
of their separation, and the Puritan at this time holding himself in
complacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire.
Such division as this between persons nominally of one religion, that
is to say, believing in the same God, and the same Revelation, cannot
but become a stumbling-block of the gravest kind to all thoughtful and
far-sighted men,--a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under
the most favorable circumstances of early education. Hence, nearly all
our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of
them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the
plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what
practical work lies ready to their hands. Most of our scientific men
are in this last class; our popular authors either set themselves
definitely against all religious form, pleading for simple truth and
benevolence (Thackeray, Dickens), or give themselves up to bitter and
fruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or surface-painting (Scott),
or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest
poets, and deepest thinkers, are doubtful and indignant (Tennyson,
Carlyle); one or two, anchored, indeed, but anxious, or weeping
(Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning); and of these two, the first is not so
sure of his anchor, but that now and then it drags with him, even to
make him cry out,--
"Great God, I had rather be
A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn:
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn."
In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or
affectation. Over German religious pictures the inscription, "See
how Pious I am," can be read at a glance by any clear-sighted
person. Over French and English religious pictures, the inscription,
"See how Impious I am," is equally legible. All sincere and modest
art is, among us, profane.[84]
[Sidenote: Sec. 11. 2. Levity from the same cause.]
This faithlessness operates among us according to our tempers,
producing either sadness or levity, and being the ultimate root
alike of our discontents and of our wantonnesses. It is marvellous
how full of contradiction it makes us; we are first dull, and seek
for wild and lonely places because we have no heart for the garden;
presently we recover our spirits, and build an assembly room among
the mountains, because we have no reverence for the desert. I do not
know if there be game on Sinai, but I am always expecting to hear of
some one's shooting over it.
Sec. 12. There is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our
delight in wild scenery.
[Sidenote: 3. Reactionary love of inanimate beauty.]
All the Renaissance principles of art tended, as I have before often
explained, to the setting Beauty above Truth, and seeking for it
always at the expense of truth. And the proper punishment of such
pursuit--the punishment which all the laws of the universe rendered
inevitable--was, that those who thus pursued beauty should wholly lose
sight of beauty. All the thinkers of the age, as we saw previously,
declared that it did not exist. The age seconded their efforts, and
banished beauty, so far as human effort could succeed in doing so,
from the face of the earth, and the form of man. To powder the hair,
to patch the cheek, to hoop the body, to buckle the foot, were all
part and parcel of the same system which reduced streets to brick
walls, and pictures to brown stains. One desert of Ugliness was
extended before the eyes of mankind; and their pursuit of the
beautiful, so recklessly continued, received unexpected consummation
in high-heeled shoes and periwigs,--Gower Street, and Gaspar Poussin.
Sec. 13. Reaction from this state was inevitable, if any true life was
left in the races of mankind; and, accordingly, though still forced,
by rule and fashion, to the producing and wearing all that is ugly,
men steal out, half-ashamed of themselves for doing so, to the
fields and mountains; and, finding among these the color, and
liberty, and variety, and power, which are for ever grateful to
them, delight in these to an extent never before known; rejoice in
all the wildest shattering of the mountain side, as an opposition to
Gower Street; gaze in a rapt manner at sunsets and sunrises, to see
there the blue, and gold, and purple, which glow for them no longer
on knight's armor or temple porch; and gather with care out of the
fields, into their blotted herbaria, the flowers which the five
orders of architecture have banished from their doors and casements.
[Sidenote: Sec. 14. 4. Disdain of beauty in man.]
The absence of care for personal beauty, which is another great
characteristic of the age, adds to this feeling in a twofold way:
first, by turning all reverent thoughts away from human nature; and
making us think of men as ridiculous or ugly creatures, getting
through the world as well as they can, and spoiling it in doing so;
not ruling it in a kingly way and crowning all its loveliness. In
the Middle Ages hardly anything but vice could be caricatured,
because virtue was always visibly and personally noble; now virtue
itself is apt to inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of
it is invulnerable to jest; and for all fairness we have to seek to
the flowers, for all sublimity, to the hills.
The same want of care operates, in another way, by lowering the
standard of health, increasing the susceptibility to nervous or
sentimental impressions, and thus adding to the other powers of
nature over us whatever charm may be felt in her fostering the
melancholy fancies of brooding idleness.
[Sidenote: Sec. 15. 5. Romantic imagination of the past.]
It is not, however, only to existing inanimate nature that our want
of beauty in person and dress has driven us. The imagination of it,
as it was seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually; and while we
yield to the present fashions, or act in accordance with the dullest
modern principles of economy and utility, we look fondly back to the
manners of the ages of chivalry, and delight in painting, to the
fancy, the fashions we pretend to despise, and the splendors we
think it wise to abandon. The furniture and personages of our
romance are sought, when the writer desires to please most easily,
in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed in everything;
the art which takes us into the present times is considered as both
daring and degraded; and while the weakest words please us, and are
regarded as poetry, which recall the manners of our forefathers, or
of strangers, it is only as familiar and vulgar that we accept the
description of our own.
In this we are wholly different from all the races that preceded us.
All other nations have regarded their ancestors with reverence as
saints or heroes; but have nevertheless thought their own deeds and
ways of life the fitting subjects for their arts of painting or of
verse. We, on the contrary, regard our ancestors as foolish and
wicked, but yet find our chief artistic pleasures in descriptions of
their ways of life.
The Greeks and mediaevals honored, but did not imitate, their
forefathers; we imitate, but do not honor.
[Sidenote: Sec. 16. 6. Interest in science.]
[Sidenote: 7. Fear of war.]
With this romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history, and in
external nature, the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary life,
we mingle a more rational passion, the due and just result of newly
awakened powers of attention. Whatever may first lead us to the
scrutiny of natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its
reward. Unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us with
both reverence and delight; and every hour we give to them renders
their beauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing.
Natural science--which can hardly be considered to have existed
before modern times--rendering our knowledge fruitful in
accumulation and exquisite in accuracy, has acted for good or evil,
according to the temper of the mind which received it; and though it
has hardened the faithlessness of the dull and proud, has shown new
grounds for reverence to hearts which were thoughtful and humble.
The neglect of the art of war, while it has somewhat weakened and
deformed the body,[85] has given us leisure and opportunity for
studies to which, before, time and space were equally wanting; lives
which once were early wasted on the battle field are now passed
usefully in the study; nations which exhausted themselves in annual
warfare now dispute with each other the discovery of new planets;
and the serene philosopher dissects the plants, and analyzes the
dust, of lands which were of old only traversed by the knight in
hasty march, or by the borderer in heedless rapine.
Sec. 17. The elements of progress and decline being thus strangely
mingled in the modern mind, we might beforehand anticipate that one
of the notable characters of our art would be its inconsistency;
that efforts would be made in every direction, and arrested by every
conceivable cause and manner of failure; that in all we did, it
would become next to impossible to distinguish accurately the
grounds for praise or for regret; that all previous canons of
practice and methods of thought would be gradually overthrown, and
criticism continually defied by successes which no one had expected,
and sentiments which no one could define.
Sec. 18. Accordingly, while, in our inquiries into Greek and mediaeval
art, I was able to describe, in general terms, what all men did or
felt, I find now many characters in many men; some, it seems to me,
founded on the inferior and evanescent principles of modernism, on
its recklessness, impatience, or faithlessness; others founded on
its science, its new affection for nature, its love of openness and
liberty. And among all these characters, good or evil, I see that
some, remaining to us from old or transitional periods, do not
properly belong to us, and will soon fade away; and others, though
not yet distinctly developed, are yet properly our own, and likely
to grow forward into greater strength.
For instance: our reprobation of bright color is, I think, for the
most part, mere affectation, and must soon be done away with.
Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always express
themselves through art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt,
Caravaggio, and Salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or
impious; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so
in any wise. Our greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight,
like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The coloring of
Scott and Byron is full and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich
even to excess. Our practical failures in coloring are merely the
necessary consequences of our prolonged want of practice during the
periods of Renaissance affectation and ignorance; and the only
durable difference between old and modern coloring, is the
acceptance of certain hues, by the modern, which please him by
expressing that melancholy peculiar to his more reflective or
sentimental character, and the greater variety of them necessary to
express his greater science.
Sec. 19. Again: if we ever become wise enough to dress consistently and
gracefully, to make health a principal object in education, and to
render our streets beautiful with art, the external charm of past
history will in great measure disappear. There is no essential
reason, because we live after the fatal seventeenth century, that we
should never again be able to confess interest in sculpture, or see
brightness in embroidery; nor, because now we choose to make the
night deadly with our pleasures, and the day with our labors,
prolonging the dance till dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we
should never again learn how rightly to employ the sacred trusts of
strength, beauty, and time. Whatever external charm attaches itself
to the past, would then be seen in proper subordination to the
brightness of present life; and the elements of romance would exist,
in the earlier ages, only in the attraction which must generally
belong to whatever is unfamiliar; in the reverence which a noble
nation always pays to its ancestors; and in the enchanted light
which races, like individuals, must perceive in looking back to the
days of their childhood.
Sec. 20. Again: the peculiar levity with which natural scenery is
regarded by a large number of modern minds cannot be considered as
entirely characteristic of the age, inasmuch as it never can belong
to its greatest intellects. Men of any high mental power must be
serious, whether in ancient or modern days: a certain degree of
reverence for fair scenery is found in all our great writers without
exception,--even the one who has made us laugh oftenest, taking us
to the valley of Chamouni, and to the sea beach, there to give peace
after suffering, and change revenge into pity.[86] It is only the
dull, the uneducated, or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on
the hill sides; and levity, as a ruling character, cannot be
ascribed to the whole nation, but only to its holiday-making
apprentices, and its House of Commons.
Sec. 21. We need not, therefore, expect to find any single poet or
painter representing the entire group of powers, weaknesses, and
inconsistent instincts which govern or confuse our modern life. But
we may expect that in the man who seems to be given by Providence as
the type of the age (as Homer and Dante were given, as the types of
classical and mediaeval mind), we shall find whatever is fruitful and
substantial to be completely present, together with those of our
weaknesses, which are indeed nationally characteristic, and
compatible with general greatness of mind; just as the weak love of
fences, and dislike of mountains, were found compatible with Dante's
greatness in other respects.
Sec. 22. Farther: as the admiration of mankind is found, in our times,
to have in great part passed from men to mountains, and from human
emotion to natural phenomena, we may anticipate that the great
strength of art will also be warped in this direction; with this
notable result for us, that whereas the greatest painters or painter
of classical and mediaeval periods, being wholly devoted to the
representation of humanity, furnished us with but little to examine
in landscape, the greatest painters or painter of modern times will
in all probability be devoted to landscape principally; and farther,
because in representing human emotion words surpass painting, but in
representing natural scenery painting surpasses words, we may
anticipate also that the painter and poet (for convenience' sake I
here use the words in opposition) will somewhat change their
relations of rank in illustrating the mind of the age; that the
painter will become of more importance, the poet of less; and that
the relations between the men who are the types and firstfruits of
the age in word and work,--namely, Scott and Turner,--will be, in
many curious respects, different from those between Homer and
Phidias, or Dante and Giotto.
It is this relation which we have now to examine.
Sec. 23. And, first, I think it probable that many readers may be
surprised at my calling Scott the great representative of the mind
of the age in literature. Those who can perceive the intense
penetrative depth of Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and
melodious power of Tennyson, may be offended at my placing in higher
rank that poetry of careless glance, and reckless rhyme, in which
Scott poured out the fancies of his youth; and those who are
familiar with the subtle analysis of the French novelists, or who
have in any wise submitted themselves to the influence of German
philosophy, may be equally indignant at my ascribing a principality
to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in an age which has
produced De Balzac and Goethe.
So also in painting, those who are acquainted with the sentimental
efforts made at present by the German religious and historical
schools, and with the disciplined power and learning of the French,
will think it beyond all explanation absurd to call a painter of
light water-color landscapes, eighteen inches by twelve, the first
representative of the arts of the age. I can only crave the reader's
patience, and his due consideration of the following reasons for my
doing so, together with those advanced in the farther course of the
work.
Sec. 24. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.
I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation in
speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation
between what _he_ can do and say, and the rest of the world's
sayings and doings. All great men not only know their business, but
usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main
opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them; only,
they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows
he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to
one who had found fault with his work, "It cannot be better done;"
Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that
would have puzzled anybody else;--only they do not expect their
fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a
curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is
not _in_ them, but _through_ them; that they could not do or be
anything else than God-made them. And they see something divine and
God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly,
incredibly merciful.
Sec. 25. Now, I find among the men of the present age, as far as I know
them, this character in Scott and Turner preeminently; I am not
sure if it is not in them alone. I do not find Scott talking about
the dignity of literature, nor Turner about the dignity of painting.
They do their work, feeling that they cannot well help it; the story
must be told, and the effect put down; and if people like it, well
and good; and if not, the world will not be much the worse.
I believe a very different impression of their estimate of
themselves and their doings will be received by any one who reads
the conversations of Wordsworth or Goethe. The _slightest_
manifestation of jealousy or self-complacency is enough to mark a
second-rate character of the intellect; and I fear that especially
in Goethe, such manifestations are neither few nor slight.
Sec. 26. Connected with this general humility is the total absence of
affectation in these men,--that is to say, of any assumption of
manner or behavior in their work, in order to attract attention. Not
but that they are mannerists both. Scott's verse is strongly
mannered, and Turner's oil painting; but the manner of it is
necessitated by the feelings of the men, entirely natural to both,
never exaggerated for the sake of show. I hardly know any other
literary or pictorial work of the day which is not in some degree
affected. I am afraid Wordsworth was often affected in his
simplicity, and De Balzac in his finish. Many fine French writers
are affected in their reserve, and full of stage tricks in placing
of sentences. It is lucky if in German writers we ever find so much
as a sentence without affectation. I know no painters without it,
except one or two Pre-Raphaelites (chiefly Holman Hunt), and some
simple water-color painters, as William Hunt, William Turner of
Oxford, and the late George Robson; but these last have no
invention, and therefore by our fourth canon, Chap. III. sec. 21.,
are excluded from the first rank of artists; and of the
Pre-Raphaelites there is here no question, as they in no wise
represent the modern school.
Sec. 27. Again: another very important, though not infallible, test of
greatness is, as we have often said, the appearance of Ease with
which the thing is done. It may be that, as with Dante and Leonardo,
the finish given to the work effaces the evidence of ease; but where
the ease is manifest, as in Scott, Turner, and Tintoret; and the
thing done is very noble, it is a strong reason for placing the men
above those who confessedly work with great pains. Scott writing his
chapter or two before breakfast--not retouching, Turner finishing a
whole drawing in a forenoon before he goes out to shoot (providing
always the chapter and drawing be good), are instantly to be set
above men who confessedly have spent the day over the work, and
think the hours well spent if it has been a little mended between
sunrise and sunset. Indeed, it is no use for men to think to appear
great by working fast, dashing, and scrawling; the thing they do
must be good and great, cost what time it may; but if it _be_ so,
and they have honestly and unaffectedly done it with _no effort_, it
is probably a greater and better thing than the result of the
hardest efforts of others.
Sec. 28. Then, as touching the kind of work done by these two men, the
more I think of it I find this conclusion more impressed upon
me,--that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is
to _see_ something, and tell what it _saw_ in a plain way. Hundreds
of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think
for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and
religion,--all in one.
Therefore, finding the world of Literature more or less divided into
Thinkers and Seers, I believe we shall find also that the Seers are
wholly the greater race of the two. A true Thinker, who has practical
purpose in his thinking, and is sincere, as Plato, or Carlyle, or
Helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and must be always of infinite use
in his generation; but an affected Thinker, who supposes his thinking
of any other importance than as it tends to work, is about the vainest
kind of person that can be found in the occupied classes. Nay, I
believe that metaphysicians and philosophers are, on the whole, the
greatest troubles the world has got to deal with; and that while a
tyrant or bad man is of some use in teaching people submission or
indignation, and a thoroughly idle man is only harmful in setting an
idle example, and communicating to other lazy people his own lazy
misunderstandings, busy metaphysicians are always entangling _good_
and _active_ people, and weaving cobwebs among the finest wheels of
the world's business; and are as much as possible, by all prudent
persons, to be brushed out of their way, like spiders, and the meshed
weed that has got into the Cambridgeshire canals, and other such
impediments to barges and business. And if we thus clear the
metaphysical element out of modern literature, we shall find its bulk
amazingly diminished, and the claims of the remaining writers, or of
those whom we have thinned by this abstraction of their straw
stuffing, much more easily adjusted.[87]
Sec. 29. Again: the mass of sentimental literature, concerned with the
analysis and description of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron,
is altogether of lower rank than the literature which merely
describes what it saw. The true Seer always feels as intensely as
any one else; but he does not much describe his feelings. He tells
you whom he met, and what they said; leaves you to make out, from
that, what they feel, and what he feels, but goes into little
detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing and careful
explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this plain
recording of what people said or did, or with the right invention of
what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that to invent
a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is
necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in
it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens;
which to do requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a
separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel
it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or
that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the
feelings of somebody sitting on the other side of the table. Even,
therefore, when this sentimental literature is first rate, as in
passages of Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be ranked so
high as the Creative; and though perfection, even in narrow fields,
is perhaps as rare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we
have another In Memoriam as another Guy Mannering, I unhesitatingly
receive as a greater manifestation of power the right invention of a
few sentences spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their
supper-table, than the most tender and passionate melodies of the
self-examining verse.
Sec. 30. Having, therefore, cast metaphysical writers out of our way,
and sentimental writers into the second rank, I do not think Scott's
supremacy among those who remain will any more be doubtful; nor
would it, perhaps, have been doubtful before, had it not been
encumbered by innumerable faults and weaknesses. But it is
preeminently in these faults and weaknesses that Scott is
representative of the mind of his age: and because he is the
greatest man born amongst us, and intended for the enduring type of
us, all our principal faults must be laid on his shoulders, and he
must bear down the dark marks to the latest ages; while the smaller
men, who have some special work to do, perhaps not so much belonging
to this age as leading out of it to the next, are often kept
providentially quit of the encumbrances which they had not strength
to sustain, and are much smoother and pleasanter to look at, in
their way; only that is a smaller way.
Sec. 31. Thus, the most startling fault of the age being its
faithlessness, it is necessary that its greatest man should be
faithless. Nothing is more notable or sorrowful in Scott's mind than
its incapacity of steady belief in anything. He cannot even resolve
hardily to believe in a ghost, or a water-spirit; always explains
them away in an apologetic manner, not believing, all the while,
even his own explanation. He never can clearly ascertain whether
there is anything behind the arras but rats; never draws sword, and
thrusts at it for life or death; but goes on looking at it timidly,
and saying, "it must be the wind." He is educated a Presbyterian,
and remains one, because it is the most sensible thing he can do if
he is to live in Edinburgh; but he thinks Romanism more picturesque,
and profaneness more gentlemanly: does not see that anything affects
human life but love, courage, and destiny; which are, indeed, not
matters of faith at all, but of sight. Any gods but those are very
misty in outline to him; and when the love is laid ghastly in poor
Charlotte's coffin; and the courage is no more of use,--the pen
having fallen from between the fingers; and destiny is sealing the
scroll,--the God-light is dim in the tears that fall on it.
He is in all this the epitome of his epoch.
Sec. 32. Again: as another notable weakness of the age is its habit of
looking back, in a romantic and passionate idleness, to the past ages,
not understanding them all the while, nor really desiring to
understand them, so Scott gives up nearly the half of his intellectual
power to a fond, yet purposeless, dreaming over the past, and spends
half his literary labors in endeavors to revive it, not in reality,
but on the stage of fiction; endeavors which were the best of the
kind that modernism made, but still successful only so far as Scott
put, under the old armor, the everlasting human nature which he knew;
and totally unsuccessful, so far as concerned the painting of the
armor itself, which he knew _not_. The excellence of Scott's work is
precisely in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from
present nature. His familiar life is inimitable; his quiet scenes of
introductory conversation, as the beginning of Rob Roy and
Redgauntlet, and all his living Scotch characters, mean or noble, from
Andrew Fairservice to Jeanie Deans, are simply right, and can never be
bettered. But his romance and antiquarianism, his knighthood and
monkery, are all false, and he knows them to be false; does not care
to make them earnest; enjoys them for their strangeness, but laughs at
his own antiquarianism, all through his own third novel,--with
exquisite modesty indeed, but with total misunderstanding of the
function of an Antiquary. He does not see how anything is to be got
out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawingroom chairs, and
serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne.
Sec. 33. Again: more than any age that had preceded it, ours had been
ignorant of the meaning of the word "Art." It had not a single fixed
principle, and what unfixed principles it worked upon were all wrong.
It was necessary that Scott should know nothing of art. He neither
cared for painting nor sculpture, and was totally incapable of forming
a judgment about them. He had some confused love of Gothic
architecture, because it was dark, picturesque, old, and like nature;
but could not tell the worst from the best, and built for himself
perhaps the most incongruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly modernism
ever designed; marking, in the most curious and subtle way, that
mingling of reverence with irreverence which is so striking in the
age; he reverences Melrose, yet casts one of its piscinas, puts a
modern steel grate into it, and makes it his fireplace. Like all pure
moderns, he supposes the Gothic barbarous, notwithstanding his love of
it; admires, in an equally ignorant way, totally opposite styles; is
delighted with the new town of Edinburgh; mistakes its dulness for
purity of taste, and actually compares it, in its deathful formality
of street, as contrasted with the rudeness of the old town, to
Britomart taking off her armor.
Sec. 34. Again: as in reverence and irreverence, so in levity and
melancholy, we saw that the spirit of the age was strangely
interwoven. Therefore, also, it is necessary that Scott should be
light, careless, unearnest, and yet eminently sorrowful. Throughout
all his work there is no evidence of any purpose but to while away
the hour. His life had no other object than the pleasure of the
instant, and the establishing of a family name. All his thoughts
were, in their outcome and end, less than nothing, and vanity. And
yet, of all poetry that I know, none is so sorrowful as Scott's.
Other great masters are pathetic in a resolute and predetermined
way, when they choose; but, in their own minds, are evidently stern,
or hopeful, or serene; never really melancholy. Even Byron is rather
sulky and desperate than melancholy; Keats is sad because he is
sickly; Shelley because he is impious; but Scott is inherently and
consistently sad. Around all his power, and brightness, and
enjoyment of eye and heart, the far-away AEolian knell is for ever
sounding; there is not one of those loving or laughing glances of
his but it is brighter for the film of tears; his mind is like one
of his own hill rivers,--it is white, and flashes in the sun fairly,
careless, as it seems, and hasty in its going, but
"Far beneath, where slow they creep
From pool to eddy, dark and deep,
Where alders moist, and willows weep,
You hear her streams repine."
Life begins to pass from him very early; and while Homer sings
cheerfully in his blindness, and Dante retains his courage, and
rejoices in hope of Paradise, through all his exile, Scott, yet
hardly past his youth, lies pensive in the sweet sunshine and among
the harvest of his native hills.
"Blackford, on whose uncultured breast,
Among the broom, and thorn, and whin,
A truant boy, I sought the nest,
Or listed as I lay at rest,
While rose on breezes thin
The murmur of the city crowd,
And, from his steeple jangling loud,
St. Giles's mingling din!
Now, from the summit to the plain,
Waves all the hill with yellow grain;
And on the landscape as I look,
Nought do I see unchanged remain,
Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook;
To me they make a heavy moan
Of early friendships past and gone."
Sec. 35. Such, then, being the weaknesses which it was necessary that
Scott should share with his age, in order that he might sufficiently
represent it, and such the grounds for supposing him, in spite of
all these weaknesses, the greatest literary man whom that age
produced, let us glance at the principal points in which his view of
landscape differs from that of the mediaevals.
I shall not endeavor now, as I did with Homer and Dante, to give a
complete analysis of all the feelings which appear to be traceable
in Scott's allusions to landscape scenery,--for this would require a
volume,--but only to indicate the main points of differing character
between his temper and Dante's. Then we will examine in detail, not
the landscape of literature, but that of painting, which must, of
course, be equally, or even in a higher degree, characteristic of
the age.
Sec. 36. And, first, observe Scott's habit of looking at nature neither
as dead, or merely material, in the way that Homer regards it, nor
as altered by his own feelings, in the way that Keats and Tennyson
regard it, but as having an animation and pathos of _its own_,
wholly irrespective of human presence or passion,--an animation
which Scott loves and sympathizes with, as he would with a fellow
creature, forgetting himself altogether, and subduing his own
humanity before what seems to him the power of the landscape.
"Yon lonely thorn,--would he could tell
The changes of his parent dell,
Since he, so grey and stubborn now,
Waved in each breeze a sapling bough!
Would he could tell, how deep the shade
A thousand mingled branches made,
How broad the shadows of the oak,
How clung the rowan to the rock,
And through the foliage showed his head,
With narrow leaves and berries red!"
Scott does not dwell on the grey stubbornness of the thorn, because he
himself is at that moment disposed to be dull, or stubborn; neither on
the cheerful peeping forth of the rowan, because he himself is that
moment cheerful or curious: but he perceives them both with the kind
of interest that he would take in an old man, or a climbing boy;
forgetting himself, in sympathy with either age or youth.
"And from the grassy slope he sees
The Greta flow to meet the Tees,
Where issuing from her darksome bed,
She caught the morning's eastern red,
And through the softening vale below
Rolled her bright waves in rosy glow,
All blushing to her bridal bed,
Like some shy maid, in convent bred;
While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay
Sing forth her nuptial roundelay."
Is Scott, or are the persons of his story, gay at this moment? Far
from it. Neither Scott nor Risingham are happy, but the Greta is;
and all Scott's sympathy is ready for the Greta, on the instant.
Sec. 37. Observe, therefore, this is not _pathetic_ fallacy; for there
is no passion in _Scott_ which alters nature. It is not the lover's
passion, making him think the larkspurs are listening for his lady's
foot; it is not the miser's passion, making him think that dead
leaves are falling coins; but it is an inherent and continual habit
of thought, which Scott shares with the moderns in general, being,
in fact, nothing else than the instinctive sense which men must have
of the Divine presence, not formed into distinct belief. In the
Greek it created, as we saw, the faithfully believed gods of the
elements: in Dante and the mediaevals, it formed the faithfully
believed angelic presence; in the modern, it creates no perfect
form, does not apprehend distinctly any Divine being or operation;
but only a dim, slightly credited animation in the natural object,
accompanied with great interest and affection for it. This feeling
is quite universal with us, only varying in depth according to the
greatness of the heart that holds it; and in Scott, being more than
usually intense, and accompanied with infinite affection and
quickness of sympathy, it enables him to conquer all tendencies to
the pathetic fallacy, and, instead of making Nature anywise
subordinate to himself, he makes himself subordinate to
_her_--follows her lead simply--does not venture to bring his own
cares and thoughts into her pure and quiet presence--paints her in
her simple and universal truth, adding no result of momentary
passion or fancy, and appears, therefore, at first shallower than
other poets, being in reality wider and healthier. "What am I?" he
says continually, "that I should trouble this sincere nature with my
thoughts. I happen to be feverish and depressed, and I could see a
great many sad and strange things in those waves and flowers; but I
have no business to see such things. Gay Greta! sweet harebells!
_you_ are not sad nor strange to most people; you are but bright
water and blue blossoms; you shall not be anything else to me,
except that I cannot help thinking you are a little alive,--no one
can help thinking that." And thus, as Nature is bright, serene, or
gloomy, Scott takes her temper, and paints her as she is; nothing of
himself being ever intruded, except that far-away Eolian tone, of
which he is unconscious; and sometimes a stray syllable or two, like
that about Blackford Hill, distinctly stating personal feeling, but
all the more modestly for that distinctness and for the clear
consciousness that it is not the chiming brook, nor the cornfields,
that are sad, but only the boy that rests by them; so returning on
the instant to reflect, in all honesty, the image of Nature as she
is meant by all to be received; nor that in fine words, but in the
first that come; nor with comment of far-fetched thoughts, but with
easy thoughts, such as all sensible men ought to have in such
places, only spoken sweetly; and evidently also with an undercurrent
of more profound reflection, which here and there murmurs for a
moment, and which I think, if we choose, we may continually pierce
down to, and drink deeply from, but which Scott leaves us to seek,
or shun, at our pleasure.
Sec. 38. And in consequence of this unselfishness and humility, Scott's
enjoyment of Nature is incomparably greater than that of any other
poet I know. All the rest carry their cares to her, and begin
maundering in her ears about their own affairs. Tennyson goes out on
a furzy common, and sees it is calm autumn sunshine, but it gives
him no pleasure. He only remembers that it is
"Dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep."
He sees a thundercloud in the evening, and _would_ have "doted and
pored" on it, but cannot, for fear it should bring the ship bad
weather. Keats drinks the beauty of Nature violently; but has no more
real sympathy with her than he has with a bottle of claret. His palate
is fine; but he "bursts joy's grape against it," gets nothing but
misery, and a bitter taste of dregs out of his desperate draught.
Byron and Shelley are nearly the same, only with less truth of
perception, and even more troublesome selfishness. Wordsworth is more
like Scott, and understands how to be happy, but yet cannot altogether
rid himself of the sense that he is a philosopher, and ought always to
be saying something wise. He has also a vague notion that Nature would
not be able to get on well without Wordsworth; and finds a
considerable part of his pleasure in looking at himself as well as at
her. But with Scott the love is entirely humble and unselfish. "I,
Scott, am nothing, and less than nothing; but these crags, and heaths,
and clouds, how great they are, how lovely, how for ever to be
beloved, only for their own silent, thoughtless sake!"
Sec. 39. This pure passion for nature in its abstract being, is still
increased in its intensity by the two elements above taken notice
of,--the love of antiquity, and the love of color and beautiful form,
mortified in our streets, and seeking for food in the wilderness and
the ruin: both feelings, observe, instinctive in Scott from his
childhood, as everything that makes a man great is always.
"And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wallflower grew,
And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the long crag and ruined wall.
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all its round surveyed."
Not that these could have been instinctive in a child in the Middle
Ages. The sentiments of a people increase or diminish in intensity
from generation to generation,--every disposition of the parents
affecting the frame of the mind in their offspring: the soldier's
child is born to be yet more a soldier, and the politician's to be
still more a politician; even the slightest colors of sentiment and
affection are transmitted to the heirs of life; and the crowning
expression of the mind of a people is given when some infant of
highest capacity, and sealed with the impress of this national
character, is born where providential circumstances permit the full
development of the powers it has received straight from Heaven, and
the passions which it has inherited from its fathers.
Sec. 40. This love of ancientness, and that of natural beauty,
associate themselves also in Scott with the love of liberty, which
was indeed at the root even of all his Jacobite tendencies in
politics. For, putting aside certain predilections about landed
property, and family name, and "gentlemanliness" in the club sense
of the word,--respecting which I do not now inquire whether they
were weak or wise,--the main element which makes Scott like
Cavaliers better than Puritans is, that he thinks the former _free_
and _masterful_ as well as loyal; and the latter _formal_ and
_slavish_. He is loyal, not so much in respect for law, as in
unselfish love for the king; and his sympathy is quite as ready for
any active borderer who breaks the law, or fights the king, in what
Scott thinks a generous way, as for the king himself. Rebellion of a
rough, free, and bold kind he is always delighted by; he only
objects to rebellion on principle and in form: bare-headed and
open-throated treason he will abet to any extent, but shrinks from
it in a peaked hat and starched collar: nay, politically, he only
delights in kingship itself, because he looks upon it as the head
and centre of liberty; and thinks that, keeping hold of a king's
hand, one may get rid of the cramps and fences of law; and that the
people may be governed by the whistle, as a Highland clan on the
open hill-side, instead of being shut up into hurdled folds or
hedged fields, as sheep or cattle left masterless.
Sec. 41. And thus nature becomes dear to Scott in a threefold way: dear
to him, first, as containing those remains or memories of the past,
which he cannot find in cities, and giving hope of Praetorian mound
or knight's grave, in every green slope and shade of its desolate
places;--dear, secondly, in its moorland liberty, which has for him
just as high a charm as the fenced garden had for the mediaeval:
"For I was wayward, bold, and wild,
A self-willed imp--a grandame's child;
But, half a plague, and half a jest,
Was still endured, beloved, caressed.
For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask
The classic poet's well-conned task?
Nay, Erskine, nay. On the wild hill
Let the wild heathbell flourish still;
Cherish the tulip, prune the vine;
But freely let the woodbine twine,
And leave untrimmed the eglantine;"
--and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty, denied alike in
cities and in men, for which every modern heart had begun at last to
thirst, and Scott's, in its freshness and power, of all men's, most
earnestly.
Sec. 42. And in this love of beauty, observe, that (as I said we might
except) the love of _color_ is a leading element, his healthy mind
being incapable of losing, under any modern false teaching, its joy
in brilliancy of hue. Though not so subtle a colorist as Dante,
which, under the circumstances of the age, he could not be, he
depends quite as much upon color for his power or pleasure. And, in
general, if he does not mean to say much about things, the _one_
character which he will give is color, using it with the most
perfect mastery and faithfulness, up to the point of possible modern
perception. For instance, if he has a sea-storm to paint in a single
line, he does not, as a feebler poet would probably have done, use
any expression about the temper or form of the waves; does not call
them angry or mountainous. He is content to strike them out with two
dashes of Tintoret's favorite colors:
"_The blackening wave edged with white_;
To inch and rock the seamews fly."
There is no form in this. Nay, the main virtue of it is, that it
gets rid of all form. The dark raging of the sea--what form has
that? But out of the cloud of its darkness those lightning flashes
of the foam, coming at their terrible intervals--you need no more.
Again: where he has to describe tents mingled among oaks, he says
nothing about the form of either tent or tree, but only gives the
two strokes of color:
"Thousand pavilions, _white as snow_,
_Chequered_ the borough moor below,
Oft giving way, where still there stood
Some relics of the old oak wood,
That darkly huge did intervene,
_And tamed the glaring white with green_."
Again: of tents at Flodden:
"Next morn the Baron climbed the tower,
To view, afar, the Scottish power,
Encamped on Flodden edge.
The white pavilions made a show,
Like remnants of the winter snow,
Along the dusky ridge."
Again: of trees mingled with dark rocks:
"Until, where Teith's young waters roll
Betwixt him and a wooded knoll,
That graced the _sable_ strath with _green_,
The chapel of St. Bride was seen."
Again: there is hardly any form, only smoke and color, in his
celebrated description of Edinburgh:
"The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow
With gloomy splendor red;
For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,
The morning beams were shed,
And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thundercloud.
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town!
But northward far with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
And as each heathy top they kissed,
It gleamed a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law:
And, broad between them rolled,
The gallant Frith the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float,
Like emeralds chased in gold."
I do not like to spoil a fine passage by italicizing it; but
observe, the only hints at form, given throughout, are in the
somewhat vague words, "ridgy," "massy," "close," and "high;" the
whole being still more obscured by modern mystery, in its most
tangible form of smoke. But the _colors_ are all definite; note the
rainbow band of them--gloomy or dusky red, sable (pure black),
amethyst (pure purple), green, and gold--a noble chord throughout;
and then, moved doubtless less by the smoky than the amethystine
part of the group,
"Fitz Eustace' heart felt closely pent,
The spur he to his charger lent,
And raised his bridle hand.
And making demivolte in air,
Cried, 'Where's the coward would not dare
To fight for such a laud?'"
I need not multiply examples: the reader can easily trace for
himself, through verse familiar to us all, the force of these color
instincts. I will therefore add only two passages, not so completely
known by heart as most of the poems in which they occur.
"'Twas silence all. He laid him down
Where purple heath profusely strown,
And throatwort, with its azure bell,
And moss and thyme his cushion swell.
There, spent with toil, he listless eyed
The course of Greta's playful tide;
Beneath her banks, now eddying dun,
Now brightly gleaming to the sun,
As, dancing over rock and stone,
In yellow light her currents shone,
Matching in hue the favorite gem
Of Albin's mountain diadem.
Then tired to watch the current play,
He turned his weary eyes away
To where the bank opposing showed
Its huge square cliffs through shaggy wood.
One, prominent above the rest,
Reared to the sun its pale grey breast;
Around its broken summit grew
The hazel rude, and sable yew;
A thousand varied lichens dyed
Its waste and weather-beaten side;
And round its rugged basis lay,
By time or thunder rent away,
Fragments, that, from its frontlet torn,
Were mantled now by verdant thorn."
Sec. 43. Note, first, what an exquisite chord of color is given in the
succession of this passage. It begins with purple and blue; then
passes to gold, or cairngorm color (topaz color); then to _pale
grey_, through which the yellow passes into black; and the black,
through broken dyes of lichen, into green. Note, secondly,--what is
indeed so manifest throughout Scott's landscape as hardly to need
pointing out,--the love of rocks, and true understanding of their
colors and characters, opposed as it is in every conceivable way to
Dante's hatred and misunderstanding of them.
I have already traced, in various places, most of the causes of this
great difference: namely, first, the ruggedness of northern temper
(compare Sec. 8. of the chapter on the Nature of Gothic in the Stones
of Venice); then the really greater beauty of the northern rocks, as
noted when we were speaking of the Apennine limestone; then the need
of finding beauty among them, if it were to be found anywhere,--no
well-arranged colors being any more to be seen in dress, but only in
rock lichens; and, finally, the love of irregularity, liberty, and
power, springing up in glorious opposition to laws of prosody,
fashion, and the five orders.
Sec. 44. The other passage I have to quote is still more interesting;
because it has _no form_ in it _at all_ except in one word
(chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of color, or of
that delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so
important an element in modern landscape.
"The summer dawn's reflected hue
_To purple changed Loch Katrine blue_;
Mildly and soft the western breeze
Just kissed the lake; just stirred the trees;
_And the pleased lake, like maiden coy_,
_Trembled, but dimpled not, for joy_;
The mountain-shadows on her breast
Were neither broken nor at rest;
In bright uncertainty they lie,
Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
The water-lily to the light
Her chalice reared of silver bright:
The doe awoke, and to the lawn,
Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn;
The grey mist left the mountain side;
The torrent showed its glistening pride;
Invisible in flecked sky,
The lark sent down her revelry;
The blackbird and the speckled thrush
Good-morrow gave from brake and bush;
In answer cooed the cushat dove
Her notes of peace, and rest, and love."
Two more considerations are, however, suggested by the above
passage. The first, that the love of natural history, excited by the
continual attention now given to all wild landscape, heightens
reciprocally the interest of that landscape, and becomes an
important element in Scott's description, leading him to finish,
down to the minutest speckling of breast, and slightest shade of
attributed emotion, the portraiture of birds and animals; in strange
opposition to Homer's slightly named "sea-crows, who have care of
the works of the sea," and Dante's singing-birds, of undefined
species. Compare carefully a passage, too long to be quoted,--the
2nd and 3rd stanzas of canto VI. of Rokeby.
Sec. 45. The second, and the last point I have to note, is Scott's
habit of drawing a slight _moral_ from every scene, just enough to
excuse to his conscience his want of definite religious feeling; and
that this slight moral is almost always melancholy. Here he has
stopped short without entirely expressing it--
"The mountain shadows ...
... lie
Like future joys to Fancy's eye."
His completed thought would be, that those future joys, like the
mountain shadows, were never to be attained. It occurs fully uttered
in many other places. He seems to have been constantly rebuking his
own worldly pride and vanity, but never purposefully:
"The foam-globes on her eddies ride,
Thick as the schemes of human pride
That down life's current drive amain,
As frail, as frothy, and as vain."
"Foxglove, and nightshade, side by side,
Emblems of punishment and pride."
"Her dark eye flashed; she paused and sighed;--
'Ah, what have I to do with pride!'"
And hear the thought he gathers from the sunset (noting first the
Turnerian color,--as usual, its principal element):
"The sultry summer day is done.
The western hills have hid the sun,
But mountain peak and village spire
Retain reflection of his fire.
Old Barnard's towers are purple still,
To those that gaze from Toller Hill;
Distant and high the tower of Bowes
Like steel upon the anvil glows;
And Stanmore's ridge, behind that lay,
Rich with the spoils of parting day,
In crimson and in gold arrayed,
Streaks yet awhile the closing shade;
Then slow resigns to darkening heaven
The tints which brighter hours had given
Thus, aged men, full loth and slow,
The vanities of life forego,
And count their youthful follies o'er
Till Memory lends her light no more."
That is, as far as I remember, one of the most finished pieces of
sunset he has given; and it has a woful moral; yet one which, with
Scott, is inseparable from the scene.
Hark, again:
"'Twere sweet to mark the setting day
On Bourhope's lonely top decay;
And, as it faint and feeble died
On the broad lake and mountain's side,
To say, 'Thus pleasures fade away;
Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay,
And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey.'"
And again, hear Bertram:
"Mine be the eve of tropic sun:
With disk like battle target red,
He rushes to his burning bed,
Dyes the wide wave with bloody light,
Then sinks at once; and all is night."
In all places of this kind, where a passing thought is suggested by
some external scene, that thought is at once a slight and sad one.
Scott's deeper moral sense is marked in the _conduct_ of his
stories, and in casual reflections or exclamations arising out of
their plot, and therefore sincerely uttered; as that of Marmion:
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!"
But the reflections which are founded, not on events, but on scenes,
are, for the most part, shallow, partly insincere, and, as far as
sincere, sorrowful. This habit of ineffective dreaming and moralizing
over passing scenes, of which the earliest type I know is given in
Jaques, is, as aforesaid, usually the satisfaction made to our modern
consciences for the want of a sincere acknowledgment of God in nature:
and Shakspere has marked it as the characteristic of a mind "compact
of jars" (Act II. Sc. VII., As You Like It). That description attaches
but too accurately to all the moods which we have traced in the
moderns generally, and in Scott as the first representative of them;
and the question now is, what this love of landscape, so composed, is
likely to lead us to, and what use can be made of it.
We began our investigation, it will be remembered, in order to
determine whether landscape-painting was worth studying or not. We
have now reviewed the three principal phases of temper in the
civilized human race, and we find that landscape has been mostly
disregarded by great men, or cast into a second place, until now;
and that now it seems dear to us, partly in consequence of our
faults, and partly owing to accidental circumstances, soon, in all
likelihood, to pass away: and there seems great room for question
still, whether our love of it is a permanent and healthy feeling, or
only a healthy crisis in a generally diseased state of mind. If the
former, society will for ever hereafter be affected by its results;
and Turner, the first great landscape painter, must take a place in
the history of nations corresponding in art accurately to that of
Bacon in philosophy;--Bacon having first opened the study of the
laws of material nature, when, formerly, men had thought only of the
laws of human mind; and Turner having first opened the study of the
aspect of material nature, when, before, men had thought only of the
aspect of the human form. Whether, therefore, the love of landscape
be trivial and transient, or important and permanent, it now becomes
necessary to consider. We have, I think, data enough before us for
the solution of the question, and we will enter upon it,
accordingly, in the following chapter.
[84] Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase
of art, in no wise considered in this chapter. Blake was
sincere, but full of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in
brain.
[85] Of course this is only meant of the modern citizen or country
gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old
Florence. I leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of
the _art_ of war" may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense,
be predicated of the English nation. War, _without_ art, we
seem, with God's help, able still to wage nobly.
[86] See David Copperfield, chap. lv. and lviii.
[87] Observe, I do not speak thus of metaphysics because I have no
pleasure in them. When I speak contemptuously of philology,
it may be answered me, that I am a bad scholar; but I cannot
be so answered touching metaphysics, for every one conversant
with such subjects may see that I have strong inclination
that way, which would, indeed, have led me far astray long
ago, if I had not learned also some use of my hands, eyes,
and feet.