OF THE TEACHERS OF TURNER.
Sec. 1. The first step to the understanding either the mind or position
of a great man ought, I think, to be an inquiry into the elements of
his early instruction, and the mode in which he was affected by the
circumstances of surrounding life. In making this inquiry, with
respect to Turner, we shall be necessarily led to take note of the
causes which had brought landscape-painting into the state in which
he found it; and, therefore, of those transitions of style which, it
will be remembered, we overleaped (hoping for a future opportunity
of examining them) at the close of the fifteenth chapter.
Sec. 2. And first, I said, it will be remembered, some way back, that
the relations between Scott and Turner would probably be found to
differ very curiously from those between Dante and Giotto. They
differ primarily in this,--that Dante and Giotto, living in a
consistent age, were subjected to one and the same influence, and
maybe reasoned about almost in similar terms. But Scott and Turner,
living in an inconsistent age, became subjected to inconsistent
influences; and are at once distinguished by notable contrarieties,
requiring separate examination in each.
Sec. 3. Of these, the chief was that Scott, having had the blessing of
a totally neglected education, was able early to follow most of his
noble instincts; but Turner, having suffered under the instruction
of the Royal Academy, had to pass nearly thirty years of his life in
recovering from its consequences;[97] this permanent result
following for both,--that Scott never was led into any fault
foreign to his nature, but spoke what was in him, in rugged or idle
simplicity; erring only where it was natural to err, and failing
only where it was impossible to succeed. But Turner, from the
beginning, was led into constrained and unnatural error; diligently
debarred from every ordinary help to success. The one thing which
the Academy _ought_ to have taught him (namely, the simple and safe
use of oil color), it never taught him; but it carefully repressed
his perceptions of truth, his capacities of invention, and his
tendencies of choice. For him it was impossible to do right but in
the spirit of defiance; and the first condition of his progress in
learning, was the power to forget.
Sec. 4. One most important distinction in their feelings throughout
life was necessitated by this difference in early training. Scott
gathered what little knowledge of architecture he possessed, in
wanderings among the rocky walls of Crichtoun, Lochleven, and
Linlithgow, and among the delicate pillars of Holyrood, Roslin, and
Melrose. Turner acquired his knowledge of architecture at the desk,
from academical elevations of the Parthenon and St. Paul's; and
spent a large portion of his early years in taking views of
gentlemen's seats, temples of the Muses, and other productions of
modern taste and imagination; being at the same time directed
exclusively to classical sources for information as to the proper
subjects of art. Hence, while Scott was at once directed to the
history of his native land, and to the Gothic fields of imagination;
and his mind was fed in a consistent, natural, and felicitous way
from his youth up, poor Turner for a long time knew no inspiration
but that of Twickenham; no sublimity but that of Virginia Water. All
the history and poetry presented to him at the age when the mind
receives its dearest associations, were those of the gods and
nations of long ago; and his models of sentiment and style were the
worst and last wrecks of the Renaissance affectations.
Sec. 5. Therefore (though utterly free from affectation), his early
works are full of an _enforced_ artificialness, and of things
ill-done and ill-conceived, because foreign to his own instincts;
and, throughout life, whatever he did, because he thought he _ought_
to do it, was wrong; all that he planned on any principle, or in
supposed obedience to canons of taste, was false and abortive: he
only did right when he ceased to reflect; was powerful only when he
made no effort, and successful only when he had taken no aim.
Sec. 6. And it is one of the most interesting things connected with the
study of his art, to watch the way in which his own strength of
English instinct breaks gradually through fetter and formalism; how
from Egerian wells he steals away to Yorkshire streamlets; how from
Homeric rocks, with laurels at the top and caves in the bottom, he
climbs, at last, to Alpine precipices fringed with pine, and fortified
with the slopes of their own ruins; and how from Temples of Jupiter
and Gardens of the Hesperides, a spirit in his feet guides him, at
last, to the lonely arches of Whitby, and bleak sands of Holy Isle.
Sec. 7. As, however, is the case with almost all inevitable evil, in
its effect on great minds, a certain good rose even out of this
warped education; namely, his power of more completely expressing
all the tendencies of his epoch, and sympathizing with many feelings
and many scenes which must otherwise have been entirely profitless
to him. Scott's mind was just as large and full of sympathy as
Turner's; but having been permitted always to take his own choice
among sources of enjoyment, Scott was entirely incapable of entering
into the spirit of any classical scene. He was strictly a Goth and a
Scot, and his sphere of sensation may be almost exactly limited by
the growth of heather. But Turner had been forced to pay early
attention to whatever of good and right there was even in things
naturally distasteful to him. The charm of early association had
been cast around much that to other men would have been tame: while
making drawings of flower-gardens and Palladian mansions, he had
been taught sympathy with whatever grace or refinement the garden or
mansion could display, and to the close of life could enjoy the
delicacy of trellis and parterre, as well as the wildness of the
wood and the moorland; and watch the staying of the silver fountain
at its appointed height in the sky, with an interest as earnest, if
not as intense, as that with which he followed the crash of the
Alpine cataract into its clouds of wayward rage.
Sec. 8. The distinct losses to be weighed against this gain are, first,
the waste of time during youth in painting subjects of no interest
whatsoever,--parks, villas, and ugly architecture in general:
secondly, the devotion of its utmost strength in later years to
meaningless classical compositions, such as the Fall and Rise of
Carthage, Bay of Baiae, Daphne and Leucippus, and such others, which,
with infinite accumulation of material, are yet utterly heartless and
emotionless, dead to the very root of thought, and incapable of
producing wholesome or useful effect on any human mind, except only as
exhibitions of technical skill and graceful arrangement: and, lastly,
his incapacity, to the close of life, of entering heartily into the
spirit of any elevated architecture; for those Palladian and classical
buildings which he had been taught that it was right to admire, being
wholly devoid of interest, and in their own formality and barrenness
quite unmanageable, he was obliged to make them manageable in his
pictures by disguising them, and to use all kinds of playing shadows
and glittering lights to obscure their ugly details; and as in their
best state such buildings are white and colorless, he associated the
idea of whiteness with perfect architecture generally, and was
confused and puzzled when he found it grey. Hence he never got
thoroughly into the feeling of Gothic; its darkness and complexity
embarrassed him; he was very apt to whiten by way of idealizing it,
and to cast aside its details in order to get breadth of delicate
light. In Venice, and the towns of Italy generally, he fastened on the
wrong buildings, and used those which he chose merely as kind of white
clouds, to set off his brilliant groups of boats, or burning spaces of
lagoon. In various other minor ways, which we shall trace in their
proper place, his classical education hindered or hurt him; but I feel
it very difficult to say how far the loss was balanced by the general
grasp it gave his mind; nor am I able to conceive what would have been
the result, if his aims had been made at once narrower and more
natural, and he had been led in his youth to delight in Gothic legends
instead of classical mythology; and, instead of the porticos of the
Parthenon, had studied in the aisles of Notre Dame.
Sec. 9. It is still more difficult to conjecture whether he gathered
most good or evil from the pictorial art which surrounded him in his
youth. What that art was, and how the European schools had arrived
at it, it now becomes necessary briefly to inquire.
It will be remembered that, in the 14th chapter, we left our
mediaeval landscape (Sec. 18.) in a state of severe formality, and
perfect subordination to the interest of figure subject. I will now
rapidly trace the mode and progress of its emancipation.
Sec. 10. The formalized conception of scenery remained little altered
until the time of Raphael, being only better executed as the
knowledge of art advanced; that is to say, though the trees were
still stiff, and often set one on each side of the principal
figures, their color and relief on the sky were exquisitely
imitated, and all groups of near leaves and flowers drawn with the
most tender care, and studious botanical accuracy. The better the
subjects were painted, however, the more logically absurd they
became: a background wrought in Chinese confusion of towers and
rivers, was in early times passed over carelessly, and forgiven for
the sake of its pleasant color; but it appealed somewhat too far to
imaginative indulgence when Ghirlandajo drew an exquisite
perspective view of Venice and her lagoons behind an Adoration of
the Magi;[98] and the impossibly small boats which might be pardoned
in a mere illumination, representing the miraculous draught of
fishes, became, whatever may be said to the contrary, inexcusably
absurd in Raphael's fully realized landscape; so as at once to
destroy the credibility of every circumstance of the event.
Sec. 11. A certain charm, however, attached itself to many forms of
this landscape, owing to their very unnaturalness, as I have
endeavored to explain already in the last chapter of the second
volume, Sec.Sec. 9. to 12.; noting, however, there, that it was in no wise
to be made a subject of imitation; a conclusion which I have since
seen more and more ground for holding finally. The longer I think
over the subject, the more I perceive that the pleasure we take in
such unnatural landscapes is intimately connected with our habit of
regarding the New Testament as a beautiful poem, instead of a
statement of plain facts. He who believes thoroughly that the events
are true will expect, and ought to expect, real olive copse behind
real Madonna, and no sentimental absurdities in either.
[Illustration: 11. Latest Purism.]
Sec. 12. Nor am I at all sure how far the delight which we take (when I
say _we_, I mean, in general, lovers of old sacred art) in such
quaint landscape, arises from its peculiar _falsehood_, and how far
from its peculiar _truth_. For as it falls into certain errors more
boldly, so, also, what truth it states, it states more firmly than
subsequent work. No engravings, that I know, render the backgrounds
of sacred pictures with sufficient care to enable the reader to
judge of this matter unless before the works themselves. I have,
therefore, engraved, on the opposite page, a bit of the background
of Raphael's Holy Family, in the Tribune of the Uffizii, at
Florence. I copied the trees leaf for leaf, and the rest of the work
with the best care I could; the engraver, Mr. Armytage, has
admirably rendered the delicate atmosphere which partly veils the
distance. Now I do not know how far it is necessary to such pleasure
as we receive from this landscape, that the trees should be both so
straight and formal in stem, and should have branches no thicker
than threads; or that the outlines of the distant hills should
approximate so closely to those on any ordinary Wedgewood's china
pattern. I know that, on the contrary, a great part of the pleasure
arises from the sweet expression of air and sunshine; from the
traceable resemblance of the city and tower to Florence and Fesole;
from the fact that, though the boughs are too thin, the lines of
ramification are true and beautiful; and from the expression of
continually varied form in the clusters of leafage. And although all
lovers of sacred art would shrink in horror from the idea of
substituting for such a landscape a bit of Cuyp or Rubens, I do not
think that the horror they feel is because Cuyp and Rubens's
landscape is _truer_, but because it is _coarser_ and more vulgar in
associated idea than Raphael's; and I think it possible that the
true forms of hills, and true thicknesses of boughs, might be
tenderly stolen into this background of Raphael's without giving
offence to any one.
Sec. 13. Take a somewhat more definite instance. The rock in Fig. 5.,
at the side, is one put by Ghirlandajo into the background of his
Baptism of Christ. I have no doubt Ghirlandajo's own rocks and trees
are better, in several respects, than those here represented, since
I have copied them from one of Lasinio's execrable engravings;
still, the harsh outline, and generally stiff and uninventful
blankness of the design are true enough, and characteristic of all
rock-painting of the period. In the plate below I have etched[99]
the outline of a fragment of one of Turner's cliffs, out of his
drawing of Bolton Abbey; and it does not seem to me that, supposing
them properly introduced in the composition, the substitution of the
soft natural lines for the hard unnatural ones would make
Ghirlandajo's background one whit less sacred.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
Sec. 14. But be this as it may, the fact is, as ill luck would have it,
that profanity of feeling, and skill in art, increased together; so
that we do not find the backgrounds rightly painted till the figures
become irreligious and feelingless; and hence we associate
necessarily the perfect landscape with want of feeling. The first
great innovator was either Masaccio or Filippino Lippi: their works
are so confused together in the Chapel of the Carmine, that I know
not to whom I may attribute,--or whether, without being immediately
quarrelled with, and contradicted, I may attribute to anybody,--the
landscape background of the fresco of the Tribute Money. But that
background, with one or two other fragments in the same
chapel, is far in advance of all other work I have seen of the
period, in expression of the rounded contours and large slopes of
hills, and the association of their summits with the clouds. The
opposite engraving will give some better idea of its character than
can be gained from the outlines commonly published; though the dark
spaces, which in the original are deep blue, come necessarily
somewhat too harshly on the eye when translated into light and
shade. I shall have occasion to speak with greater speciality of
this background in examining the forms of hills; meantime, it is
only as an isolated work that it can be named in the history of
pictorial progress, for Masaccio died too young to carry out his
purposes; and the men around him were too ignorant of landscape to
understand or take advantage of the little he had done. Raphael,
though he borrowed from him in the human figure, never seems to have
been influenced by his landscape, and retains either, as in Plate
11., the upright formalities of Perugino; or, by way of being
natural, expands his distances into flattish flakes of hill, nearly
formless, as in the backgrounds of the Charge to Peter and Draught
of Fishes; and thenceforward the Tuscan and Roman schools grew more
and more artificial, and lost themselves finally under round-headed
niches and Corinthian porticos.
[Illustration: 12. The Shores of Wharfe.]
[Illustration: 13. First Mountain Naturalism.]
[Illustration: 14. The Lombard Apennine.]
[Illustration: 15. St. George of the Seaweed.]
Sec. 15. It needed, therefore, the air of the northern mountains and of
the sea to brace the hearts of men to the development of the true
landscape schools. I sketched by chance one evening the line of the
Apennines from the ramparts of Parma, and I have put the rough note
of it, and the sky that was over it, in Plate 14., and next to this
(Plate 15.) a moment of sunset, behind the Euganean hills at Venice.
I shall have occasion to refer to both hereafter; but they have some
interest here as types of the kind of scenes which were daily set
before the eyes of Correggio and Titian, and of the sweet free
spaces of sky through which rose and fell, to them, the colored rays
of the morning and evening.
Sec. 16. And they are connected, also, with the forms of landscape
adopted by the Lombardic masters, in a very curious way. We noticed
that the Flemings, educated entirely in flat land, seemed to be
always contented with the scenery it supplied; and we should
naturally have expected that Titian and Correggio, living in the
midst of the levels of the lagoons, and of the plain of Lombardy,
would also have expressed, in their backgrounds, some pleasure in
such level scenery, associated, of course, with the sublimity of the
far-away Apennine, Euganean, or Alp. But not a whit. The plains of
mulberry and maize, of sea and shoal, by which they were surrounded,
never occur in their backgrounds but in cases of necessity; and both
of them, in all their important landscapes, bury themselves in wild
wood; Correggio delighting to relieve with green darkness of oak and
ivy the golden hair and snowy flesh of his figures; and Titian,
whenever the choice of a scene was in his power, retiring to the
narrow glens and forests of Cadore.
Sec. 17. Of the vegetation introduced by both, I shall have to speak at
length in the course of the chapters on Foliage; meantime, I give in
Plate 16. one of Titian's slightest bits of background, from one of
the frescoes in the little chapel behind St. Antonio, at Padua,
which may be compared more conveniently than any of his more
elaborate landscapes with the purist work from Raphael. For in both
these examples the trees are equally slender and delicate, only the
formality of mediaeval art is, by Titian, entirely abandoned, and the
old conception of the aspen grove and meadow done away with for
ever. We are now far from cities: the painter takes true delight in
the desert; the trees grow wild and free; the sky also has lost its
peace, and is writhed into folds of motion, closely impendent upon
earth, and somewhat threatening, through its solemn light.
Sec. 18. Although, however, this example is characteristic of Titian in
its wildness, it is not so in its _looseness_. It is only in the
distant backgrounds of the slightest work, or when he is in a hurry,
that Titian is vague: in all his near and studied work he completes
every detail with scrupulous care. The next Plate, 17., a background
of Tintoret's, from his picture of the Entombment at Parma, is more
entirely characteristic of the Venetians. Some mistakes made in the
reduction of my drawing during the course of engraving have cramped
the curves of the boughs and leaves, of which I will give the true
outline farther on; meantime the subject, which is that described in
Sec. 16. of the chapter on Penetrative Imagination, Vol. II., will just
as well answer the purpose of exemplifying the Venetian love of
gloom and wildness, united with perfect definition of detail. Every
leaf and separate blade of grass is drawn; but observe how the
blades of grass are broken, how completely the aim at expression of
faultlessness and felicity has been withdrawn, as contrary to the
laws of the existent world.
[Illustration: 16. Early Naturalism.]
[Illustration: 17. Advanced Naturalism.]
Sec. 19. From this great Venetian school of landscape Turner received
much important teaching,--almost the only healthy teaching which he
owed to preceding art. The designs of the Liber Studiorum are founded
first on nature, but in many cases modified by _forced_ imitation of
Claude, and _fond_ imitation of Titian. All the worst and feeblest
studies in the book--as the pastoral with the nymph playing the
tambourine, that with the long bridge seen through trees, and with the
flock of goats on the walled road--owe the principal part of their
imbecilities to Claude; another group (Solway Moss, Peat Bog,
Lauffenbourg, &c.) is taken with hardly any modification by pictorial
influence, straight from nature; and the finest works in the book--the
Grande Chartreuse, Rizpah, Jason, Cephalus, and one or two more--are
strongly under the influence of Titian.
Sec. 20. The Venetian school of landscape expired with Tintoret, in the
year 1594; and the sixteenth century closed, like a grave, over the
great art of the world. There is _no_ entirely sincere or great art
in the seventeenth century. Rubens and Rembrandt are its two
greatest men, both deeply stained by the errors and affectations of
their age. The influence of the Venetians hardly extended to them;
the tower of the Titianesque art fell southwards; and on the dust of
its ruins grew various art-weeds, such as Domenichino and the
Carraccis. Their landscape, which may in few words be accurately
defined as "Scum of Titian," possesses no single merit, nor any
ground for the forgiveness of demerit; they are to be named only as
a link through which the Venetian influence came dimly down to
Claude and Salvator.
Sec. 21. Salvator possessed real genius, but was crushed by misery in his
youth, and by fashionable society in his age. He had vigorous animal
life, and considerable invention, but no depth either of thought or
perception. He took some hints directly from nature, and expressed
some conditions of the grotesque of terror with original power; but
his baseness of thought, and bluntness of sight, were unconquerable;
and his works possess no value whatsoever for any person versed in the
walks of noble art. They had little, if any, influence on Turner; if
any, it was in blinding him for some time to the grace of tree trunks,
and making him tear them too much into splinters.
Sec. 22. Not so Claude, who may be considered as Turner's principal
master. Claude's capacities were of the most limited kind; but he
had tenderness of perception, and sincerity of purpose, and he
effected a revolution in art. This revolution consisted mainly in
setting the sun in heaven.[100] Till Claude's time no one had
seriously thought of painting the sun but conventionally; that is to
say, as a red or yellow star, (often) with a face in it, under which
type it was constantly represented in illumination; else it was kept
out of the picture, or introduced in fragmentary distances, breaking
through clouds with almost definite rays. Perhaps the honor of
having first tried to represent the real effect of the sun in
landscape belongs to Bonifazio, in his pictures of the camps of
Israel.[101] Rubens followed in a kind of bravado, sometimes making
the rays issue from anything but the orb of the sun;--here, for
instance, Fig. 6., is an outline of the position of the sun (at _s_)
with respect to his own rays, in a sunset behind a tournament in the
Louvre: and various interesting effects of sunlight issuing from the
conventional face-filled orb occur in contemporary missal-painting;
for instance, very richly in the Harleian MS. Brit. Mus. 3469. But
all this was merely indicative of the tendency to transition which
may always be traced in any age before the man comes who is to
_accomplish_ the transition. Claude took up the new idea seriously,
made the sun his subject, and painted the effects of misty shadows
cast by his rays over the landscape, and other delicate aerial
transitions, as no one had ever done before, and, in some respects,
as no one has done in oil color since.
Sec. 23. "But, how, if this were so, could his capacities be of the
meanest order?" Because doing _one_ thing well, or better than others
have done it, does not necessarily imply large capacity. Capacity
means breadth of glance, understanding of the relations of things, and
invention, and these are rare and precious; but there are very few men
who have not done _something_, in the course of their lives, better
than other people. I could point out many engravers, draughtsmen, and
artists, who have each a particular merit in their manner, or
particular field of perception, that nobody else has, or ever had. But
this does not make them great men, it only indicates a small special
capacity of some kind: and all the smaller if the gift be very
peculiar and single; for a great man never so limits himself to one
thing, as that we shall be able to say, "That's all he can do." If
Claude had been a great man he would not have been so steadfastly set
on painting effects of sun; he would have looked at all nature, and at
all art, and would have painted sun effects somewhat worse, and nature
universally much better.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
Sec. 24. Such as he was, however, his discovery of the way to make
pictures look warm was very delightful to the shallow connoisseurs
of the age. Not that they cared for sunshine; but they liked seeing
jugglery. They could not feel Titian's noble color, nor Veronese's
noble composition; but they thought it highly amusing to see the sun
brought into a picture: and Claude's works were bought and
delighted in by vulgar people then, for their real-looking suns, as
pictures are now by vulgar people for having real timepieces in
their church towers.
Sec. 25. But when Turner arose, with an earnest desire to paint the
whole of nature, he found that the existence of the sun was an
important fact, and by no means an easily manageable one. _He_ loved
sunshine for its own sake; but he could not at first paint it. Most
things else, he would more or less manage without much technical
difficulty; but the burning orb and the golden haze could not,
somehow, be got out of the oil paint. Naturally he went to Claude,
who really had got them out of oil paint; approached him with great
reverence, as having done that which seemed to Turner most difficult
of all technical matters, and he became his faithful disciple. How
much he learned from him of manipulation, I cannot tell; but one
thing is certain, that he never quite equalled him in that
particular forte of his. I imagine that Claude's way of laying on
oil color was so methodical that it could not possibly be imitated
by a man whose mechanism was interfered with by hundreds of thoughts
and aims totally different from Claude's; and, besides, I suppose
that certain useful principles in the management of paint, of which
our schools are now wholly ignorant, had come down as far as Claude,
from the Venetians. Turner at last gave up the attempt, and adopted
a manipulation of his own, which indeed effected certain objects
attainable in no other way, but which still was in many respects
unsatisfactory, dangerous, and deeply to be regretted.
Sec. 26. But meantime his mind had been strongly warped by Claude's
futilities of conception. It was impossible to dwell on such works for
any length of time without being grievously harmed by them; and the
style of Turner's compositions was for ever afterwards weakened or
corrupted. For, truly, it is almost beyond belief into what depth of
absurdity Claude plunges continually in his most admired designs. For
instance; undertaking to paint Moses at the Burning Bush, he
represents a graceful landscape with a city, a river, and a bridge,
and plenty of tall trees, and the sea, and numbers of people going
about their business and pleasure in every direction; and the bush
burning quietly upon a bank in the corner; rather in the dark, and
not to be seen without close inspection. It would take some pages of
close writing to point out, one by one, the inanities of heart, soul,
and brain which such a conception involves; the ineffable ignorance of
the nature of the event, and of the scene of it; the incapacity of
conceiving anything even _in_ ignorance, which should be impressive;
the dim, stupid, serene, leguminous enjoyment of his sunny
afternoon--burn the bushes as much as they liked--these I leave the
reader to think over at his leisure, either before the picture in Lord
Ellesmere's gallery, or the sketch of it in the Liber Veritatis. But
all these kinds of fallacy sprung more or less out of the vices of the
time in which Claude lived; his own peculiar character reaches beyond
these, to an incapacity of understanding the _main point_ in anything
he had to represent, down to the minutest detail, which is quite
unequalled, as far as I know, in human nugatoriness. For instance;
here, in Fig. 7., is the head, with half the body, of Eneas drawing
his Bow, from No. 180. of the Liber Veritatis. Observe, the string is
too long by half; for if the bow were unbent, it would be two feet
longer than the whole bow. Then the arrow is too long by half, has too
heavy a head by half; and finally, it actually is _under_ the
bow-hand, instead of above it. Of the ideal and heroic refinement of
the head and drapery I will say nothing; but look only at the wretched
archery, and consider if it would be possible for any child to draw
the thing with less understanding, or to make more mistakes in the
given compass.[102]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
Sec. 27. And yet, exquisite as is Claude's instinct for blunder, he has
not strength of mind enough to blunder in a wholly original manner,
but he must needs falter out of his way to pick up other people's
puerilities, and be absurd at second-hand. I have been obliged to
laugh a little--though I hope reverently--at Ghirlandajo's
landscapes, which yet we saw had a certain charm of quaintness in
them when contrasted with his grand figures; but could any one have
believed that Claude, with all the noble landscapes of Titian set
before him, and all nature round about him, should yet go back to
Ghirlandajo for types of form. Yet such is the case. I said that the
Venetian influence came dimly down to Claude; but the old Florentine
influence came clearly. The Claudesque landscape is not, as so
commonly supposed, an idealized abstract of the nature about Rome.
It is an ultimate condition of the Florentine conventional
landscape, more or less softened by reference to nature. Fig. 8.,
from No. 145. of the Liber Veritatis, is sufficiently characteristic
of Claude's rock-drawing; and compared with Fig. 5. (p. 314), will
show exactly the kind of modification he made on old and received
types. We shall see other instances of it hereafter.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
Imagine this kind of reproduction of whatever other people had done
worst, and this kind of misunderstanding of all that he saw himself
in nature, carried out in Claude's trees, rocks, ships--in
everything that he touched,--and then consider what kind of school
this work was for a young and reverent disciple. As I said, Turner
never recovered the effects of it; his compositions were always
mannered, lifeless, and even foolish; and he only did noble things
when the immediate presence of nature had overpowered the
reminiscences of his master.
Sec. 28. Of the influence of Gaspar and Nicolo Poussin on Turner, there
is hardly anything to be said, nor much respecting that which they
had on landscape generally. Nicolo Poussin had noble powers of
design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he been
trained in Venice; but his Roman education kept him tame; his
trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies of the age, and
had few imitators compared to the dashing of Salvator, and the mist
of Claude. Those few imitators adopted his manner without possessing
either his science or invention; and the Italian school of landscape
soon expired. Reminiscences of him occur sometimes in Turner's
compositions of sculptured stones for foreground; and the beautiful
Triumph of Flora, in the Louvre, probably first showed Turner the
use of definite flower, or blossom-painting, in landscape. I doubt
if he took anything from Gaspar; whatever he might have learned from
him respecting masses of foliage and golden distances, could have
been learned better, and, I believe, _was_ learned, from Titian.
Sec. 29. Meantime, a lower, but more living school had developed itself
in the north; Cuyp had painted sunshine as truly as Claude, gilding
with it a more homely, but far more honestly conceived landscape; and
the effects of light of De Hooghe and Rembrandt presented examples of
treatment to which southern art could show no parallel. Turner
evidently studied these with the greatest care, and with great benefit
in every way; especially this, that they neutralized the idealisms of
Claude, and showed the young painter what power might be in plain
truth, even of the most familiar kind. He painted several pictures in
imitation of these masters; and those in which he tried to rival Cuyp
are healthy and noble works, being, in fact, just what most of Cuyp's
own pictures are--faithful studies of Dutch boats in calm weather, on
smooth water. De Hooghe was too precise, and Rembrandt too dark, to be
successfully or affectionately followed by him; but he evidently
learned much from both.
Sec. 30. Finally, he painted many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde
(who was the accepted authority of his time in sea painting), and
received much injury from him. To the close of his life, Turner
always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of
his early study of Vandevelde. He never seemed to perceive color so
truly in the sea as he saw it elsewhere. But he soon discovered the
poorness of Vandevelde's forms of waves, and raised their meanly
divided surfaces into massive surge, effecting rapidly other
changes, of which more in another place.
Such was the art to which Turner, in early years, devoted his most
earnest thoughts. More or less respectful contemplation of Reynolds,
Loutherbourg, Wilson, Gainsborough, Morland, and Wilkie, was
incidentally mingled with his graver study; and he maintained a
questioning watchfulness of even the smallest successes of his
brother artists of the modern landscape school. It remains for us
only to note the position of that living school when Turner, helped
or misled, as the case may be, by the study of the older artists,
began to consider what remained for him to do, or design.
Sec. 31. The dead schools of landscape, composed of the works we have
just been examining, were broadly divisible into northern and
southern: the Dutch schools, more or less natural, but vulgar; the
Italian, more or less elevated, but absurd. There was a certain
foolish elegance in Claude, and a dull dignity in Gaspar; but then
their work resembled nothing that ever existed in the world. On the
contrary, a canal or cattle piece of Cuyp's had many veracities
about it; but they were, at best, truths of the ditch and dairy. The
grace of nature, or her gloom, her tender and sacred seclusions, or
her reach of power and wrath, had never been painted; nor had
_anything_ been painted yet in true _love_ of it; for both Dutch and
Italians agreed in this, that they always painted for the
_picture's_ sake, to show how well they could imitate sunshine,
arrange masses, or articulate straws,--never because they loved the
scene, or wanted to carry away some memory of it.
And thus, all that landscape of the old masters is to be considered
merely as a struggle of expiring skill to discover some new
direction in which to display itself. There was no love of nature in
the age; only a desire for something new. Therefore those schools
expired at last, leaving the chasm of nearly utter emptiness between
them and the true moderns, out of which chasm the new school rises,
not engrafted on that old one, but, from the very base of all
things, beginning with mere washes of Indian ink, touched upon with
yellow and brown; and gradually feeling its way to color.
But this infant school differed inherently from that ancienter one,
in that its motive was love. However feeble its efforts might be,
they were _for the sake of the nature_, not of the picture, and
therefore, having this germ of true life, it grew and throve. Robson
did not paint purple hills because he wanted to show how he could
lay on purple; but because he truly loved their dark peaks. Fielding
did not paint downs to show how dexterously he could sponge out
mists; but because he loved downs.
This modern school, therefore, became the only true school of
landscape which had yet existed; the artificial Claude and Gaspar
work may be cast aside out of our way,--as I have said in my
Edinburgh lectures, under the general title of "pastoralism,"--and
from the last landscape of Tintoret, if we look for _life_, we must
pass at once to the first of Turner.
Sec. 32. What help Turner received from this or that companion of his
youth is of no importance to any one now. Of course every great man is
always being helped by everybody,[103] for his gift is to get good out
of all things and all persons; and also there were two men associated
with him in early study, who showed high promise in the same field,
Cousen and Girtin (especially the former), and there is no saying what
these men might have done had they lived; there might, perhaps, have
been a struggle between one or other of them and Turner, as between
Giorgione and Titian. But they lived not; and Turner is the only great
man whom the school has yet produced,--quite great enough, as we shall
see, for all that needed to be done. To him, therefore, we now finally
turn, as the sole object of our inquiry. I shall first reinforce, with
such additions as they need, those statements of his general
principles which I made in the first volume, but could not then
demonstrate fully, for want of time to prepare pictorial illustration;
and then proceed to examine, piece by piece, his representations of
the facts of nature, comparing them, as it may seem expedient, with
what had been accomplished by others.
* * * * *
I cannot close this volume without alluding briefly to a subject of
different interest from any that have occupied us in its pages. For
it may, perhaps, seem to a general reader heartless and vain to
enter zealously into questions about our arts and pleasures in a
time of so great public anxiety as this.
But he will find, if he looks back to the sixth paragraph of the
opening chapter of the last volume, some statement of feelings,
which, as they made me despondent in a time of apparent national
prosperity, now cheer me in one which, though of stern trial, I will
not be so much a coward as to call one of adversity. And I derive
this encouragement first from the belief that the War itself, with
all its bitterness, is, in the present state of the European
nations, productive of more good than evil; and, secondly, because I
have more confidence than others generally entertain, in the justice
of its cause.
I say, first, because I believe the war is at present productive of
good more than of evil. I will not argue this hardly and coldly, as
I might, by tracing in past history some of the abundant evidence
that nations have always reached their highest virtue, and wrought
their most accomplished works, in times of straitening and battle;
as, on the other hand, no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and
triumphant peace without receiving in its own bosom ineradicable
seeds of future decline. I will not so argue this matter; but I will
appeal at once to the testimony of those whom the war has cost the
dearest. I know what would be told me, by those who have suffered
nothing; whose domestic happiness has been unbroken; whose daily
comfort undisturbed; whose experience of calamity consists, at its
utmost, in the incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a
luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune which they
could meet fourfold without inconvenience. From these, I can well
believe, be they prudent economists, or careless pleasure-seekers,
the cry for peace will rise alike vociferously, whether in street or
senate. But I ask _their_ witness, to whom the war has changed the
aspect of the earth, and imagery of heaven, whose hopes it has cut
off like a spider's web, whose treasure it has placed, in a moment,
under the seals of clay. Those who can never more see sunrise, nor
watch the climbing light gild the Eastern clouds, without thinking
what graves it has gilded, first, far down behind the dark
earth-line,--who never more shall see the crocus bloom in spring,
without thinking what dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of
Balaclava. Ask _their_ witness, and see if they will not reply that
it is well with them, and with theirs; that they would have it no
otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of
love and life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of the
cross on the breastplate of England. Ask them: and though they
should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon
their lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry--"Set on."
And this not for pride--not because the names of their lost ones
will be recorded to all time, as of those who held the breach and
kept the gate of Europe against the North, as the Spartans did
against the East; and lay down in the place they had to guard, with
the like home message, "Oh, stranger, go and tell the English that
we are lying here, having obeyed their words;"--not for this, but
because, also, they have felt that the spirit which has discerned
them for eminence in sorrow--the helmed and sworded skeleton that
rakes with its white fingers the sands of the Black Sea beach into
grave-heap after grave-heap, washed by everlasting surf of
tears--has been to them an angel of other things than agony; that
they have learned, with those hollow, undeceivable eyes of his, to
see all the earth by the sunlight of deathbeds;--no inch-high stage
for foolish griefs and feigned pleasures; no dream, neither, as its
dull moralists told them;--_Any_thing but that: a place of true,
marvellous, inextricable sorrow and power; a question-chamber of
trial by rack and fire, irrevocable decision recording continually;
and no sleep, nor folding of hands, among the demon-questioners;
none among the angel-watchers, none among the men who stand or fall
beside those hosts of God. They know now the strength of sacrifice,
and that its flames can illumine as well as consume; they are bound
by new fidelities to all that they have saved,--by new love to all
for whom they have suffered; every affection which seemed to sink
with those dim life-stains into the dust, has been delegated, by
those who need it no more, to the cause for which they have expired;
and every mouldering arm, which will never more embrace the beloved
ones, has bequeathed to them its strength and its faithfulness.
For the cause of this quarrel is no dim, half-avoidable involution
of mean interests and errors, as some would have us believe. There
never was a great war caused by such things. There never can be. The
historian may trace it, with ingenious trifling, to a courtier's
jest or a woman's glance; but he does not ask--(and it is the sum of
questions)--how the warring nations had come to found their
destinies on the course of the sneer, or the smile. If they have so
based them, it is time for them to learn, through suffering, how to
build on other foundations--for great, accumulated, and most
righteous cause, their foot slides in due time; and against the
torpor, or the turpitude, of their myriads, there is loosed the
haste of the devouring sword and the thirsty arrow. But if they have
set their fortunes on other than such ground, then the war must be
owing to some deep conviction or passion in their own hearts,--a
conviction which, in resistless flow, or reckless ebb, or consistent
stay, is the ultimate arbiter of battle, disgrace, or conquest.
Wherever there is war, there _must_ be injustice on one side or the
other, or on both. There have been wars which were little more than
trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which the
injustice was not to each other, but to the God who gave them life.
But in a malignant war of these present ages there is injustice of
ignobler kind, at once to God and man, which _must_ be stemmed for
both their sakes. It may, indeed, be so involved with national
prejudices, or ignorances, that neither of the contending nations
can conceive it as attaching to their cause; nay, the constitution
of their governments, and the clumsy crookedness of their political
dealings with each other, may be such as to prevent either of them
from knowing the actual cause for which they have gone to war.
Assuredly this is, in a great degree, the state of things with _us_;
for I noticed that there never came news by telegraph of the
explosion of a powder-barrel, or of the loss of thirty men by a
sortie, but the Parliament lost confidence immediately in the
justice of the war; reopened the question whether we ever should
have engaged in it, and remained in a doubtful and repentant state
of mind until one of the enemy's powder-barrels blew up also; upon
which they were immediately satisfied again that the war was a wise
and necessary one. How far, therefore, the calamity may have been
brought upon us by men whose political principles shoot annually
like the leaves, and change color at every autumn frost:--how loudly
the blood that has been poured out round the walls of that city, up
to the horse-bridles, may now be crying from the ground against men
who did not know, when they first bade shed it, exactly what war
was, or what blood was, or what life was, or truth, or what anything
else was upon the earth; and whose tone of opinions touching the
destinies of mankind depended entirely upon whether they were
sitting on the right or left side of the House of Commons;--this, I
repeat, I know not, nor (in all solemnity I say it) do I care to
know. For if it be so, and the English nation could at the present
period of its history be betrayed into a war such as this by the
slipping of a wrong word into a protocol, or bewitched into
unexpected battle under the budding hallucinations of its sapling
senators, truly it is time for us to bear the penalty of our
baseness, and learn, as the sleepless steel glares close upon us,
how to choose our governors more wisely, and our ways more warily.
For that which brings swift punishment in war, must have brought
slow ruin in peace; and those who have now laid down their lives for
England, have doubly saved her; they have humbled at once her
enemies and herself; and have done less for her, in the conquest
they achieve, than in the sorrow that they claim.
But it is not altogether thus: we have not been cast into this war
by mere political misapprehensions, or popular ignorances. It is
quite possible that neither we nor our rulers may clearly understand
the nature of the conflict; and that we may be dealing blows in the
dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly awakened from slumber by
an unknown adversary. But I believe the struggle was inevitable, and
that the sooner it came, the more easily it was to be met, and the
more nobly concluded. France and England are both of them, from
shore to shore, in a state of intense progression, change, and
experimental life. They are each of them beginning to examine, more
distinctly than ever nations did yet in the history of the world,
the dangerous question respecting the rights of governed, and the
responsibilities of governing, bodies; not, as heretofore; foaming
over them in red frenzy, with intervals of fetter and straw crown,
but in health, quietness, and daylight, with the help of a good
Queen and a great Emperor; and to determine them in a way which, by
just so much as it is more effective and rational, is likely to
produce more permanent results than ever before on the policy of
neighboring States, and to force, gradually, the discussion of
similar questions into their places of silence. To force it,--for
true liberty, like true religion, is always aggressive or
persecuted; but the attack is _generally_ made upon it by the nation
which is to be crushed,--by Persian on Athenian, Tuscan on Roman,
Austrian on Swiss; or, as now, by Russia upon us and our allies: her
attack appointed, it seems to me, for confirmation of all our
greatness, trial of our strength, purging and punishment of our
futilities, and establishment for ever, in our hands, of the
leadership in the political progress of the world.
Whether this its providential purpose be accomplished, must depend
on its enabling France and England to love one another, and teaching
these, the two noblest foes that ever stood breast to breast among
the nations, first to decipher the law of international charities;
first to discern that races, like individuals, can only reach their
true strength, dignity, or joy, in seeking each the welfare, and
exulting each in the glory, of the other. It is strange how far we
still seem from fully perceiving this. We know that two men, cast on
a desert island, could not thrive in dispeace; we can understand
that four, or twelve, might still find their account in unity; but
that a multitude should thrive otherwise than by the contentions of
its classes, or _two_ multitudes hold themselves in anywise bound by
brotherly law to serve, support, rebuke, rejoice in one another,
this seems still as far beyond our conception, as the clearest of
commandments, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's
wealth," is beyond our habitual practice. Yet, if once we comprehend
that precept in its breadth, and feel that what we now call jealousy
for our country's honor, is, so far as it tends to other countries'
_dis_honor, merely one of the worst, because most complacent and
self-gratulatory, forms of irreligion,--a newly breathed strength
will, with the newly interpreted patriotism, animate and sanctify
the efforts of men. Learning, unchecked by envy, will be accepted
more frankly, throned more firmly, guided more swiftly; charity,
unchilled by fear, will dispose the laws of each State without
reluctance to advantage its neighbor by justice to itself; and
admiration, unwarped by prejudice, possess itself continually of new
treasure in the arts and the thoughts of the stranger.
If France and England fail of this, if again petty jealousies or
selfish interests prevail to unknit their hands from the armored
grasp, then, indeed, their faithful children will have fallen in
vain; there will be a sound as of renewed lamentation along those
Euxine waves, and a shaking among the bones that bleach by the
mounds of Sebastopol. But if they fail not of this,--if we, in our
love of our queens and kings, remember how France gave to the cause
of early civilization, first the greatest, then the holiest, of
monarchs;[104] and France, in her love of liberty, remembers how
_we_ first raised the standard of Commonwealth, trusted to the grasp
of one good and strong hand, witnessed for by victory; and so join
in perpetual compact of our different strengths, to contend for
justice, mercy, and truth throughout the world,--who dares say that
one soldier has died in vain? The scarlet of the blood that has
sealed this covenant will be poured along the clouds of a new
aurora, glorious in that Eastern heaven; for every sob of wreck-fed
breaker round those Pontic precipices, the floods shall clap their
hands between the guarded mounts of the Prince-Angel; and the
spirits of those lost multitudes, crowned with the olive and rose
among the laurel, shall haunt, satisfied, the willowy brooks and
peaceful vales of England, and glide, triumphant, by the poplar
groves and sunned coteaux of Seine.
[97] The education here spoken of is, of course, that bearing on
the main work of life. In other respects, Turner's education
was more neglected than Scott's, and that not beneficently.
See the close of the third of my Edinburgh Lectures.
[98] The picture is in the Uffizii of Florence.
[99] This etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the next
volume; it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in
the water, than I should have made it, if intended to be
complete as it is.
[100] Compare Vol. I. Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. I repeat here
some things that were then said; but it is necessary now to
review them in connection with Turner's education, as well
as for the sake of enforcing them by illustration.
[101] Now in the old library of Venice.
[102] My old friend Blackwood complains bitterly, in his last
number, of my having given this illustration at one of my
late lectures, saying, that I "have a disagreeable knack of
finding out the joints in my opponent's armor," and that "I
never fight for love." I never do. I fight for truth,
earnestly, and in no wise for jest; and against all lies,
earnestly, and in no wise for love. They complain that "a
noble adversary is not in Mr. Ruskin's way." No; a noble
adversary never was, never will be. With all that is noble
I have been, and shall be, in perpetual peace, with all that
is ignoble and false everlastingly at war. And as for these
Scotch _bourgeois gentilshommes_ with their "Tu n'as pas la
patience que je pare," let them look to their fence. But
truly, if they will tell me where Claude's strong points
are, I will strike there, and be thankful.
[103] His first drawing master was, I believe, that Mr. Lowe,
whose daughters, now aged and poor, have, it seems to me,
some claim on public regard, being connected distantly with
the memory of Johnson, and closely with that of Turner.
[104] Charlemagne and St. Louis.
APPENDIX.
I. CLAUDE'S TREE-DRAWING.
The reader may not improbably hear it said, by persons who are
incapable of maintaining an honest argument, and therefore incapable
of understanding or believing the honesty of an adversary, that I
have caricatured, or unfairly chosen, the examples I give of the
masters I depreciate. It is evident, in the first place, that I
could not, if I were even cunningly disposed, adopt a worse policy
than in so doing; for the discovery of caricature or falsity in my
representations, would not only invalidate the immediate statement,
but the whole book; and invalidate it in the most fatal way, by
showing that all I had ever said about "truth" was hypocrisy, and
that in my own affairs I expected to prevail by help of lies.
Nevertheless it necessarily happens, that in endeavors to facsimile
any work whatsoever, bad or good, some changes are induced from the
exact aspect of the original. These changes are, of course,
sometimes harmful, sometimes advantageous; the bad thing generally
gains; the good thing _always_ loses: so that I am continually
tormented by finding, in my plates of contrasts, the virtue and vice
I exactly wanted to talk about, eliminated from _both_ examples. In
some cases, however, the bad thing will lose also, and then I must
either cancel the plate, or increase the cost of the work by
preparing another (at a similar risk), or run the chance of
incurring the charge of dishonest representation. I desire,
therefore, very earnestly, and once for all, to have it understood
that whatever I say in the text, bearing on questions of comparison,
refers _always_ to the _original_ works; and that, if the reader has
it in his power, I would far rather he should look at those works
than at my plates of them; I only give the plates for his immediate
help and convenience: and I mention this, with respect to my plate
of Claude's ramification, because, if I have such a thing as a
prejudice at all, (and, although I do not myself think I have,
people certainly say so,) it is against Claude; and I might,
therefore, be sooner suspected of some malice in this plate than in
others. But I simply gave the original engravings from the Liber
Veritatis to Mr. Le Keux, earnestly requesting that the portions
selected might be faithfully copied; and I think he is much to be
thanked for so carefully and successfully accomplishing the task.
The figures are from the following plates:--
No. 1. Part of the central tree in No. 134. of the Liber Veritatis.
2. From the largest tree " 158.
3. Bushes at root of tree " 134.
4. Tree on the left " 183.
5. Tree on the left " 95.
6. Tree on the left " 72.
7. Principal tree " 92.
8. Tree on the right " 32.
If, in fact, any change be effected in the examples in this plate, it
is for the better; for, thus detached, they all look like small
boughs, in which the faults are of little consequence; in the original
works they are seen to be intended for large trunks of trees, and the
errors are therefore pronounced on a much larger scale.
The plate of mediaeval rocks (10.) has been executed with much less
attention in transcript, because the points there to be illustrated
were quite indisputable, and the instances were needed merely to show
the _kind_ of _thing_ spoken of, not the skill of particular masters.
The example from Leonardo was, however, somewhat carefully treated.
Mr. Cuff copied it accurately from the only engraving of the picture
which I believe exists, and with which, therefore, I suppose the world
is generally content. That engraving, however, in no respect seems to
me to give the look of the light behind Leonardo's rocks; so I
afterwards darkened the rocks, and put some light into the sky and
lily; and the effect is certainly more like that of the picture than
it is in the same portion of the old engraving.
Of the other masters represented in the plates of this volume, the
noblest, Tintoret, has assuredly suffered the most (Plate 17.);
first, in my too hasty drawing from the original, picture; and,
secondly, through some accidental errors of outline which occurred
in the reduction to the size of the page; lastly, and chiefly, in
the withdrawal of the heads of the four figures underneath, in the
shadow, on which the composition entirely depends. This last evil is
unavoidable. It is quite impossible to make _extracts_ from the
great masters without partly spoiling every separated feature; the
very essence of a noble composition being, that none should bear
separation from the rest.
The plate from Raphael (11) is, I think, on the whole, satisfactory.
It cost me much pains, as I had to facsimile the irregular form of
every leaf; each being, in the original picture, executed with a
somewhat wayward pencil-stroke of vivid brown on the clear sky.
Of the other plates it would be tedious to speak in detail.
Generally, it will be found that I have taken most pains to do
justice to the masters of whom I have to speak depreciatingly; and
that, if there be calumny at all, it is always of Turner, rather
than of Claude.
The reader might, however, perhaps suspect me of ill-will towards
Constable, owing to my continually introducing him for depreciatory
comparison. So far from this being the case, I had, as will be seen
in various passages of the first volume, considerable respect for
the feeling with which he worked; but I was compelled to do harsh
justice upon him now, because Mr. Leslie, in his unadvised and
unfortunate _rechauffe_ of the fallacious art-maxims of the last
century, has suffered his personal regard for Constable so far to
prevail over his judgment as to bring him forward as a great artist,
comparable in some kind with Turner. As Constable's reputation was,
even before this, most mischievous, in giving countenance to the
blotting and blundering of Modernism, I saw myself obliged, though
unwillingly, to carry the suggested comparison thoroughly out.
II. GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
The reader must have noticed that I never speak of German art, or
German philosophy, but in depreciation. This, however, is not
because I cannot feel, or would not acknowledge, the value and
power, within certain limits, of both; but because I also feel that
the immediate tendency of the English mind is to rate them too
highly; and, therefore, it becomes a necessary task, at present, to
mark what evil and weakness there are in them, rather than what
good. I also am brought continually into collision with certain
extravagances of the German mind, by my own steady pursuit of
Naturalism as opposed to Idealism; and, therefore, I become
unfortunately cognizant of the evil, rather than of the good; which
evil, so far as I feel it, I am bound to declare. And it is not to
the point to protest, as the Chevalier Bunsen and other German
writers have done, against the expression of opinions respecting
their philosophy by persons who have not profoundly or carefully
studied it; for the very resolution to study any system of
metaphysics profoundly, must be based, in any prudent man's mind, on
some preconceived opinion of its worthiness to be studied; which
opinion of German metaphysics the naturalistic English cannot be led
to form. This is not to be murmured against,--it is in the simple
necessity of things. Men who have other business on their hands must
be content to choose what philosophy they have occasion for, by the
sample; and when, glancing into the second volume of "Hippolytus,"
we find the Chevalier Bunsen himself talking of a "finite
realization of the infinite" (a phrase considerably less rational
than "a black realization of white"), and of a triad composed of
God, Man, and Humanity[105] (which is a parallel thing to talking of
a triad composed of man, dog, and canineness), knowing those
expressions to be pure, definite, and highly finished nonsense, we
do not in general trouble ourselves to look any farther. Some one
will perhaps answer that if one always judged thus by the
sample,--as, for instance, if one judged of Turner's pictures by the
head of a figure cut out of one of them,--very precious things might
often be despised. Not, I think, often. If any one went to Turner,
expecting to learn figure-drawing from him, the sample of his
figure-drawing would accurately and justly inform him that he had
come to the wrong master. But if he came to be taught landscape, the
smallest fragment of Turner's work would justly exemplify his power.
It may sometimes unluckily happen that, in such short trial, we
strike upon an accidentally failing part of the thing to be tried,
and then we may be unjust; but there is, nevertheless, in multitudes
of cases, no other way of judging or acting; and the necessity of
occasionally being unjust is a law of life,--like that of sometimes
stumbling, or being sick. It will not do to walk at snail's pace all
our lives for fear of stumbling, nor to spend years in the
investigation of everything which, by specimen, we must condemn. He
who seizes all that he plainly discerns to be valuable, and never is
unjust but when he honestly cannot help it, will soon be enviable in
his possessions, and venerable in his equity.
Nor can I think that the risk of loss is great in the matter under
discussion. I have often been told that any one who will read Kant,
Strauss, and the rest of the German metaphysicians and divines,
resolutely through, and give his whole strength to the study of them,
will, after ten or twelve years' labor, discover that there is very
little harm in them; and this I can well believe; but I believe also
that the ten or twelve years may be better spent; and that any man who
honestly wants philosophy not for show, but for _use_, and knowing the
Proverbs of Solomon, can, by way of Commentary, afford to buy, in
convenient editions, Plato, Bacon, Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Helps,
will find that he has got as much as will be sufficient for him and
his household during life, and of as good quality as need be.
It is also often declared necessary to study the German
controversialists, because the grounds of religion "must be inquired
into." I am sorry to hear they have not been inquired into yet; but
if it be so, there are two ways of pursuing that inquiry: one for
scholarly men, who have leisure on their hands, by reading all that
they have time to read, for and against, and arming themselves at
all points for controversy with all persons; the other,--a shorter
and simpler way,--for busy and practical men, who want merely to
find out how to live and die. Now for the learned and leisurely men
I am not writing; they know what and how to read better than I can
tell them. For simple and busy men, concerned much with art, which
is eminently a practical matter, and fatigues the eyes, so as to
render much reading inexpedient, I _am_ writing; and such men I do,
to the utmost of my power, dissuade from meddling with German books;
not because I fear inquiry into the grounds of religion, but because
the only inquiry which is _possible_ to them must be conducted in a
totally different way. They have been brought up as Christians, and
doubt if they should remain Christians. They cannot ascertain, by
investigation, if the Bible be true; but _if it be_, and Christ ever
existed, and was God, then, certainly, the Sermon which He has
permitted for 1800 years to stand recorded as first of all His own
teaching in the New Testament, must be true. Let them take that
Sermon and give it fair practical trial: act out every verse of it,
with no quibbling or explaining away, except the reduction of such
_evidently_ metaphorical expressions as "cut off thy foot," "pluck
the beam out of thine eye," to their effectively practical sense.
Let them act out, or obey, every verse literally for a whole year,
so far as they can,--a year being little enough time to give to an
inquiry into religion; and if, at the end of the year, they are not
satisfied, and still need to prosecute the inquiry, let them try the
German system if they choose.
III. PLAGIARISM.
Some time after I had written the concluding chapter of this work,
the interesting and powerful poems of Emerson were brought under my
notice by one of the members of my class at the Working Men's
College. There is much in some of these poems so like parts of the
chapter in question, even in turn of expression, that though I do
not usually care to justify myself from the charge of plagiarism, I
felt that a few words were necessary in this instance.
I do not, as aforesaid, justify myself, in general, because I know
there is internal evidence in my work of its originality, if people
care to examine it; and if they do not, or have not skill enough to
know genuine from borrowed work, my simple assertion would not
convince them, especially as the charge of plagiarism is hardly ever
made but by plagiarists, and persons of the unhappy class who do not
believe in honesty but on evidence. Nevertheless, as my work is so
much out of doors, and among pictures, that I have time to read few
modern books, and am therefore in more danger than most people of
repeating, as if it were new, what others have said, it may be well
to note, once for all, that any such apparent plagiarism results in
fact from my writings being more original than I wish them to be,
from my having worked out my whole subject in unavoidable, but to
myself hurtful, ignorance of the labors of others. On the other
hand, I should be very sorry if I had _not_ been continually taught
and influenced by the writers whom I love; and am quite unable to
say to what extent my thoughts have been guided by Wordsworth,
Carlyle, and Helps; to whom (with Dante and George Herbert, in olden
time) I owe more than to any other writers;--most of all, perhaps,
to Carlyle, whom I read so constantly, that, without wilfully
setting myself to imitate him, I find myself perpetually falling
into his modes of expression, and saying many things in a "quite
other," and, I hope, stronger, way, than I should have adopted some
years ago; as also there are things which I hope are said more
clearly and simply than before, owing to the influence upon me of
the beautiful _quiet_ English of Helps. It would be both foolish and
wrong to struggle to cast off influences of this kind; for they
consist mainly in a real and healthy help;--the master, in writing
as in painting, showing certain methods of language which it would
be ridiculous, and even affected, not to employ, when once shown;
just as it would have been ridiculous in Bonifacio to refuse to
employ Titian's way of laying on color, if he felt it the best,
because he had not himself discovered it. There is all the
difference in the world between this receiving of guidance, or
allowing of influence, and wilful imitation, much more, plagiarism;
nay, the guidance may even innocently reach into local tones of
thought, and must do so to some extent; so that I find Carlyle's
stronger thinking coloring mine continually; and should be very
sorry if I did not; otherwise I should have read him to little
purpose. But what I have of my own is still all there, and, I
believe, better brought out, by far, than it would have been
otherwise. Thus, if we glance over the wit and satire of the popular
writers of the day, we shall find that the _manner_ of it, so far as
it is distinctive, is always owing to Dickens; and that out of his
first exquisite ironies branched innumerable other forms of wit,
varying with the disposition of the writers; original in the matter
and substance of them, yet never to have been expressed as they now
are, but for Dickens.
Many people will suppose that for several ideas in the chapters on
Landscape I was indebted to Humboldt's Kosmos, and Howitt's Rural
Scenery. I am indebted to Mr. Howitt's book for much pleasure, but
for no suggestion, as it was not put into my hands till the chapters
in question were in type. I wish it had been; as I should have been
glad to have taken farther note on the landscape of Theocritus, on
which Mr. Howitt dwells with just delight. Other parts of the book
will be found very suggestive and helpful to the reader who cares to
pursue the subject. Of Humboldt's Kosmos I heard much talk when it
first came out, and looked through it cursorily; but thinking it
contained no material (connected with my subject)[106] which I had
not already possessed myself of, I have never since referred to the
work. I may be mistaken in my estimate of it, but certainly owe it
absolutely nothing.
It is also often said that I borrow from Pugin. I glanced at Pugin's
Contrasts once, in the Oxford architectural reading-room, during an
idle forenoon. His "Remarks on Articles in the Rambler" were brought
under my notice by some of the reviews. I never read a word of any
other of his works, not feeling, from the style of his architecture,
the smallest interest in his opinions.
I have so often spoken, in the preceding pages, of Holman Hunt's
picture of the Light of the World, that I may as well, in this
place, glance at the envious charge against it, of being plagiarized
from a German print.
It is indeed true that there was a painting of the subject before;
and there were, of course, no paintings of the Nativity before
Raphael's time, nor of the Last Supper before Leonardo's, else those
masters could have laid no claim to originality. But what was still
more singular (the verse to be illustrated being, "Behold, I stand
at the door and knock"), the principal figure in the antecedent
picture was knocking at a door, knocked with its right hand, and had
its face turned to the spectator! Nay, it was even robed in a long
robe, down to its feet. All these circumstances were the same in Mr.
Hunt's picture; and as the chances evidently were a hundred to one
that if he had not been helped to the ideas by the German artist, he
would have represented the figure as _not_ knocking at any door, as
turning its back to the spectator, and as dressed in a short robe,
the plagiarism was considered as demonstrated. Of course no defence
is possible in such a case. All I can say is, that I shall be
sincerely grateful to any unconscientious persons who will adapt a
few more German prints in the same manner.
Finally, touching plagiarism in general, it is to be remembered that
all men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped:
they are taught by every person whom they meet, and enriched by
everything that falls in their way. The greatest is he who has been
oftenest aided; and, if the attainments of all human minds could be
traced to their real sources, it would be found that the world had
been laid most under contribution by the men of most original power,
and that every day of their existence deepened their debt to their
race, while it enlarged their gifts to it. The labor devoted to
trace the origin of any thought, or any invention, will usually
issue in the blank conclusion that there is nothing new under the
sun; yet nothing that is truly great can ever be altogether
borrowed; and he is commonly the wisest, and is always the happiest,
who receives simply, and without envious question, whatever good is
offered him, with thanks to its immediate giver.
[105] I am truly sorry to have introduced such words in an
apparently irreverent way. But it would be a guilty
reverence which prevented us from exposing fallacy,
precisely where fallacy was most dangerous, and shrank from
unveiling an error, just because that error existed in
parlance respecting the most solemn subjects to which it
could possibly be attached.
[106] See the Fourth Volume.
* * * * * * * *
Transcriber's Notes (continued from top of text):
Typographical changes to the original work are as follows:
Minor punctuation changes have been made without annotation.
pg 242 paus/pause: Matilda pause where ...
pg 277 charater/character: the character of this ...
pg 330 cloads/clouds: clouds of rage ...
End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Painters Vol. III., by John Ruskin