The several forms of Art, as Painting, Sculpture, Music, Architecture,
the Poem, the Drama, all have a common root, and proceed upon certain
common principles. The faculties which produce them, the laws that
govern them, and the end they are meant to serve, in short their
source, method, and motive, are at bottom one and the same. Art,
therefore, is properly and essentially _one_: accordingly I take care
to use the phrase _several forms of Art_, and not _several arts_. This
identity of life and law is perhaps most apparent in the well-known
fact that the several forms of Art, wherever they have existed at all,
and in any character of originality, have all had a religious origin;
have sprung up and taken their growth in and for the service of
religion. The earliest poems everywhere were sacred hymns and songs,
conceived and executed in recognition and honour of the Deity. Grecian
sculpture, in all its primitive and progressive stages, was for the
sole purpose of making statues of the gods; and when it forsook this
purpose, and sophisticated itself into a preference of other ends, it
went into a decline. The Greek architecture, also, had its force,
motive, and law in the work of building religious temples and shrines.
That the Greek Drama took its origin from the same cause, is familiar
to all students in dramatic history. And I have already shown that the
Gothic Drama in England, in its upspring and through its earlier
stages, was entirely the work of the Christian Church, and was purely
religious in its purpose, matter, and use. That the same holds in
regard to our modern music, is too evident to need insisting on: it
all sprang and grew in the service of religion; religious thought and
emotion were the shaping and informing spirit of it. I have often
thought that the right use of music, and perhaps that which drew it
into being, could not be better illustrated than in "the sweet Singer
of Israel," who, when the evil spirit got into King Saul, took harp
and voice, and with his minstrelsy charmed it out. Probably, if David
had undertaken to argue the evil spirit out, he would have just
strengthened the possession; for the Devil was then, as now, an expert
logician, but could not stand a divine song.
Thus the several forms of Art have had their source and principle deep
in man's religious nature: all have come into being as so many
projections or outgrowths of man's religious life. And it may well be
questioned whether, without the motives and inspirations of religion,
the human soul ever was, or ever can be, strong and free enough to
produce any shape of art. In, other words, it is only as the mind
stands dressed in and for religion that the Creative Faculty of Art
gets warmed and quickened into operation. So that religion is most
truly the vivifying power of Art in all its forms; and all works of
art that do not proceed from a religious life in the mind are but
imitations, and can never be any thing more. Moreover the forms of Art
have varied in mode, style, and character, according to the particular
genius and spirit of the religion under which they grew. There is a
most intimate correspondence between the two. This is manifestly true
of the old Egyptian and Grecian art. And it is equally true of
Christian art, save as this has been more or less modified by
imitation of those earlier works, and in so far as this imitative
process has got the better of original inspiration, the result has
always been a falling from the right virtue of Art. For the Christian
mind can never overtake the Greek mind in that style of Art which was
original and proper to the latter. Nothing but the peculiar genius of
the Greek mythology could ever freely and spontaneously organize or
incarnate itself in a body of that shape. The genius of Christianity
requires and naturally prompts a different body. Nor can the soul of
the latter ever be made to take on the body of the former, but under
the pressure of other than the innate and organic law of the thing.
For every true original artist is much more possessed by the genius of
his work than possessing it. Unless, indeed, a man be inspired by a
power stronger than his individual understanding or any conscious
purpose, his hand can never reach the cunning of any process truly
creative. And so in all cases the temper and idiom of a people's
religious culture will give soul and expression to their art; or, they
have no religious culture, then there will not be soul-power enough in
them to produce any art at all.[6]
[6] On this subject Schlegel has some of the wisest and happiest
sayings that I have met with. For example: "All truly creative
poetry must proceed from the inward life of a people, and from
religion, the root of that life." And again: "Were it possible
for man to renounce all religion, including that which is
unconscious, or independent of the will, he would become a mere
surface without any internal substance. When this centre is
disturbed, the whole system of the mental faculties and feelings
takes a new shape." Once more, speaking of the Greeks: "Their
religion was the deification of the powers of Nature and of
earthly life; but this worship, which, among other nations,
clouded the imagination with hideous shapes, and hardened the
heart to cruelty, assumed among the Greeks a mild, a grand, and
a dignified form. Superstition, too often the tyrant of the
human faculties, here seems to have contributed to their freest
development. It cherished the arts by which itself was adorned,
and its idols became the models of beauty. But, however highly
the Greeks may have succeeded in the Beautiful and even in the
Moral, we cannot concede any higher character to their
civilization than that of a refined and ennobling sensuality. Of
course this must be understood generally. The conjectures of a
few philosophers, and the irradiations of poetical inspiration,
constitute an occasional exception. Man can never altogether
turn aside his thoughts from infinity, and some obscure
recollections will always remind him of the home he has lost."
As I am on the subject of Art considered as the offspring of Religion
or the religious Imagination, I am moved to add a brief episode in
that direction. And I the rather do so, forasmuch as Artistic Beauty
is commonly recognized as among the greatest educational forces now in
operation in the Christian world. On this point a decided reaction has
taken place within my remembrance. The agonistic or argumentative
modes, which were for a long time in the ascendant, and which
proceeded by a logical and theological presentation of Christian
thought, seem to have spent themselves, insomuch as to be giving way
to what may be called the poetical and imaginative forms of
expression. It is not my purpose to discuss whether the change be
right or for the better, but merely to note it as a fact; for such I
think it clearly is. I presume it will be granted, also, that as a
general thing we need to have our places of worship and our religious
services made far more beautiful than they are; and that indeed we
cannot have too much of beauty in them, so that beauty be duly steeped
in the grace and truth of Christian inspiration. But Art has its
dangers here as well as its uses: especially it is apt to degenerate
from a discipline of religious virtue into a mere relaxation, losing
the severity that elevates and purifies, in what is merely pretty or
voluptuous or pleasing. It is therefore of the utmost consequence what
style of beauty we cultivate, and how the tastes of people are set in
this matter.
Now Christianity is indeed a great "beauty-making power"; but the
Beauty which it makes and owns is a presence to worship in, not a
bauble to play with, or a show for unbaptized entertainment and
pastime. It cannot be too austerely discriminated from mere ornament,
and from every thing approaching a striking and sensational character.
Its right power is a power to chasten and subdue. And it is never good
for us, especially in our religious hours, to be charmed without being
at the same time chastened. Accordingly the highest Art always has
something of the terrible in it, so that it awes you while it
attracts. The sweetness that wins is tempered with the severity that
humbles; the smile of love, with the sternness of reproof. And it is
all the more beautiful in proportion as it knows how to bow the mind
by the austere and hushing eloquence of its forms. And when I speak of
Art, or the creation of the Beautiful, as the highest and strongest
expression of man's intellectual soul, I must be understood to mean
this order of the Beautiful: for indeed the beauty (if it be not a sin
to call it such) that sacrifices or postpones truth to pleasure is not
good;
"And that which is not good is not delicious
To a well-govern'd and wise appetite."
In all our use of Art, therefore, it stands us much in hand to know
that true Beauty is indeed an awful as well as a pleasant thing; and
that men are not in a good way when they have ceased to feel that it
is so. Nor can I deem our case a very hopeful one when we surrender
ourselves to that style of beauty which pleases without chastening the
soul. For it is but too certain that when Art takes to gratifying such
an unreligious taste, and so works its forces for the pleasing of men
without touching them with awe, it becomes no better than a discipline
of moral enervation. Perhaps this same law would silence much of the
voluble rhetoric with which a certain school of writers are wont to
discourse of the great Miracle of Beauty which has been given to men
in the life and character of the blessed Saviour. For I must needs
think that, if they duly felt the awfulness of that Beauty, their
fluency would be somewhat repressed; and that their eloquence would be
better if they feared more and flourished less.
But the point which these remarks are chiefly meant to enforce is,
that there is no true beauty of Art but what takes its life from the
inspirations of religious awe; and that even in our highest
intellectual culture the intellect itself will needs be demoralized,
unless it be toned to order by a supreme reference to the Divine will.
There is no true school of mental health and vigour and beauty, but
what works under the presidency of the same chastening and subduing
power. Our faculties of thought and knowledge must be held
firmly together with a strong girdle of modesty, else they cannot
possibly thrive; and to have the intellect "undevoutly free," loosened
from the bands of reverence, is a sure pledge and forecast of
intellectual shallowness and deformity.[7]
[7] Since this was written, I have met with some capital
remarks, closely bordering upon the topic, in Mr. J.C. Shairp's
_Studies in Poetry and Philosophy_, a book which I cannot but
regard as one of the choicest contributions to the literature of
our time. The passage is in his essay on _The Moral Dynamic_,
near the end:
"There are things which, because they are ultimate ends in
themselves, refuse to be employed as means, and, if attempted to
be so employed, lose their essential character. Religion is one,
and the foremost of these things. Obedience, conformity of the
finite and the imperfect will of man to the infinite and perfect
will of God, this, which is the essence of religion, is an end
in itself, the highest end which we can conceive. It cannot be
sought as a means to an ulterior end without being at once
destroyed. This is an end, or rather the end in itself, which
culture and all other ends by right subserve. And here in
culture, as in pleasure, the great ethic law will be found to
hold, that the abandoning of it as an end, in obedience to a
higher, more supreme aim, is the very condition of securing it.
Stretch the idea of culture, and of the perfection it aims at,
wide as you will, you cannot, while you make it your last end,
rise clear of the original self-reference that lies at its root;
this you cannot get rid of, unless you go out of culture, and
beyond it, abandoning it as an end, and sinking it into what it
really is,--a means, though perhaps the highest means, towards
full and perfect duty. _No one ever really became beautiful by
aiming at beauty. Beauty comes, we scarce know how, as an
emanation from sources deeper than itself_. If culture, or
rather the ends of culture, are to be healthy and natural
growths, they must come unconsciously, as results of conformity
to the will of God, sought not for any end but itself."--"It
cannot indeed be denied that these two, culture or the love of
beauty, religion or the love of godliness, appear in
individuals, in races, in ages, as rival, often as conflicting,
forces. The votary of beauty shrinks from religion as something
stern and ungenial, the devout Puritan discards beauty as a
snare; and even those who have hearts susceptible of both find
that a practical crisis will come when a choice must be made
whether of the two they will serve. The consciousness of this
disunion has of late years been felt deeply, and by the most
gifted minds. Painful often has the conflict been, when the
natural love of beauty was leading one way, loyalty to that
which is higher than beauty called another, and no practical
escape was possible, except by the sacrifice of feelings which
in themselves were innocent and beautiful. Only in recent times
have we begun to feel strongly that both are good, that each
without the other is so far imperfect, and that some
reconciliation, if it were possible, is a thing to be desired.
Violent has been the reaction which this new consciousness has
created. In the recoil from what they call Puritanism, or
religion without culture, many have given themselves up to
culture without religion, or, at best, with a very diluted form
of religion. They have set up for worship the golden calf of
art, and danced round it to the pipe which the great Goethe
played. They have promulgated what they call the gospel of
art,--as Carlyle says, the windiest gospel ever yet preached,
which never has saved and never will save any man from moral
corruption."
It were something beside my purpose to unfold and illustrate in detail
the common principles of Art: I shall but endeavour to do this so far
as may be needful for a due understanding of those principles as we
have them embodied in the Shakespearian Drama.
The first of those principles, as I am to view them, is what I know
not better how to designate than by the term _Solidarity_. By which I
mean that the several parts of a given work must all stand in mutual
sympathy and intelligence; or that the details must not only have each
a force and meaning of their own, but must also be helpful, directly
or remotely, to the force and meaning of the others; all being drawn
together and made to coalesce in unity of effect by some one governing
thought or paramount idea. This gives us what the philosophers of Art
generally agree in calling an _organic structure_; that is, a
structure in which an inward vital law shapes and determines the
outward form; all the parts being, moreover, assimilated and bound
each to each by the life that builds the organization, and so
rendered mutually aidant, and at the same time conducive to the
well-being of the whole. In a word, they must all have a purpose and a
truth in common as well as each a truth and purpose of its own.
To illustrate this in a small instance, and perhaps the more
intelligible for being small.--Critics had been wont to speak lightly,
not to say sneeringly, of the Sonnet, as being but an elaborate trifle
that cost more than it came to. Wordsworth undertook to vindicate the
thing from this unjust reproach, as he considered it; and to that end
he wrote the following:
"Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frown'd,
Mindless of its just honours: with this key
Shakespeare unlock'd his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens sooth'd an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glitter'd a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crown'd
His visionary brow; a glow-worm lamp,
It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains,--alas, too few!"
Now, here we have a place for every thing, and every thing in its
place. There is nothing irrelevant, nothing ajar. The parts are not
only each true and good and beautiful in themselves, but each is
helpful to the others, and all to the author's purpose: every
allusion, every image, every word, tells in furtherance of his aim.
There need nothing be added, there must nothing be taken away. The
argument at every step is clear and strong. The thing begins,
proceeds, and ends, just as it ought; you cannot change a word in it
without injuring it: the understanding, the imagination, the ear, are
all satisfied with the result. And the specimen is itself a full
triumph of the Sonnet, from the intellectual truth and beauty and
sweetness which are here put into it. So that, what with the
argument, and what with the example, the vindication of the Sonnet is
perfect. Accordingly, I believe no one has spoken lightly of the thing
since that specimen was given to the public.
Many have written poetry, and good poetry too, who, notwithstanding,
have not written, and could not write, a Poem. But this sonnet is, in
its measure, a genuine poem; and as such I am willing to bear the
responsibility of pronouncing it faultless. Wordsworth could do the
Sonnet completely, and did it so in many instances: and he could do
more than this; in several of his longer pieces the workmanship is
perhaps equally faultless; as, for instance, in _Laodamia_, and the
_Ode to Duty_, which, to my sense, are perfect poems in their kind.
But to do thus through so complex and multitudinous a work as our
higher specimens of the Gothic Drama, is a very different matter,--a
thing far beyond the power of a Wordsworth. To combine and carry on
together various distinct lines of thought, and various individual
members of character, so that each shall constantly remember and
respect the others, and this through a manifold, diversified, and
intricate course of action; to keep all the parts true to the terms
and relations of organic unity, each coming in and stopping just where
it ought, each doing its share, and no more than its share, in the
common plan, so as not to hinder the life or interfere with the rights
of the others; to knit them all together in a consistent and
harmonious whole, with nothing of redundancy or of deficiency, nothing
"overdone or come tardy off,"--the members, moreover, all mutually
interacting, all modifying and tempering one another;--this is a task
which it is given to few to achieve. For the difficulty of the work
increases in a sort of geometrical ratio with the number and greatness
of the parts; and when we come to such a work as _Hamlet_ or
_Cymbeline_ or _King Lear_, few of us have heads long enough and
strong enough to measure the difficulty of it.
Such, then, in my reckoning, is the first principle, I will not say
of artistic perfection, but of all true excellence in Art. And the
same law, which thus requires that in a given work each earlier part
shall prepare for what comes after, and each later part shall finish
what went before, holds with equal force in all the forms of Art; for
whether the parts be rendered or delivered in space, as in Painting
and Architecture, or in time, as in Music, a Poem, or a Drama, makes
no difference in this respect.
The second principle of Art which I am to consider is _Originality_.
And by this I do not mean novelty or singularity, either in the
general structure or in the particular materials, but something that
has reference to the method and process of the work. The construction
must proceed from the heart outwards, not the other way, and proceed
in virtue of the inward life, not by any surface aggregation of parts,
or by any outward pressure or rule. In organic nature, every plant,
and every animal, however cast in the mould of the species, and so
kept from novelty or singularity, has an individual life of its own,
which life is and must be original. It is a development from a germ;
and the process of development is vital, and works by selection and
assimilation of matter in accordance with the inward nature of the
thing. And so in Art, a work, to be original, must grow from what the
workman has inside of him, and what he sees of Nature and natural fact
around him, and not by imitation of what others have done before him.
So growing, the work will, to be sure, take the specific form and
character; nevertheless it will have the essence of originality in the
right sense of the term, because it will have originated from the
author's mind, just as the offspring originates from the parent. And
the result will be, not a showy, emphatic, superficial virtue, which
is indeed a vice, but a solid, genuine, substantive virtue; that is,
the thing will be just what it seems, and will mean just what it says.
Moreover the greatness of the work, if it have any, will be more or
less hidden in the order and temperance and harmony of the parts; so
that the work will keep growing larger and richer to you as you
become familiar with it: whereas in case of a thing made in the
unoriginal way, at a distance it will seem larger than it is, and will
keep shrinking and dwarfing as you draw nearer to it; and perhaps, when
you get fairly into it, it will prove to be no substance at all, but
only a mass of shining vapour; or, if you undertake to grasp it, your
hand will just close through it, as it would through a shadow.[8]
[8] This law of originality I have never seen better stated than
by Coleridge, in a passage justifying the form of Shakespeare's
dramas against a mode of criticism which has now, happily, gone
out of use. "The true ground," says he, "of the mistake lies in
the confounding mechanical regularity with organic form. The
form is mechanic, when on any given material we impress a
predetermined form, not necessarily arising out of the
properties of the material; as when to a mass of wet clay we
give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The
organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it
develops, itself from within, and the fulness of its development
is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form.
Such as the life is, such is the form. Nature, the prime genial
artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, is equally
inexhaustible in forms: each exterior is the physiognomy of the
being within,--its true image reflected and thrown out from the
concave mirror."--With this may well be coupled Schlegel's
remarks on the same point: "Form is mechanical when it is
impressed upon any piece of matter by an outward operation, as
an accidental addition without regard to the nature of the
thing; as, for example, when we give any form at pleasure to a
soft mass, to be retained after induration. Organic form on the
contrary, is innate; it unfolds, itself from within, and attains
its determinate character along with the full development of the
germ. Such forms are found in Nature universally, wherever
living powers are in action. And in Art, as well as in Nature,
the supreme artist, all genuine forms are organic, that is, are
determined by the quality of the work. In short, the form is no
other than a significant exterior, the physiognomy of a
thing,--when not defaced by disturbing accidents, the _speaking_
physiognomy,--which bears true witness of its hidden essence."
All this, however, is nowise to be understood as inferring that a
great original artist must be an independent or isolated growth,
without parents and brethren, and the natural aids and inspirations of
society. This never was and never can be. Art-life must be had in
common, or not at all. In this, as in other things, many minds must
grow up together, else none can grow up. And no form of Art ever grew
to perfection, or any thing near it, but that it was and long had been
matter of strong national passion, or of a free and vigorous public
spirit. Men are not kindled to such a height without many convergent
rays of fellowship. In other words, before excellence of Art in any
kind can come, there has to be a large and long preparation, and this
not only in the spiritual culture and development of the people, but
also in the formal order and method of the thing. Accordingly great
artists, so far as the history of the matter is known, have always
lived and worked in successions and clusters, each adding something,
till at length a master mind arose, and gathered the finer efficacies
of them all into one result. This is notoriously true of Greek,
Venetian, Florentine, and Gothic Art: Phidias, Sophocles, Titian, and
Raphael had each many precursors and companions. The fact indeed is
apt to be lost sight of, because the earlier and inferior essays
perish, and only the finished specimens survive; so that we see them
more or less isolated; whereas in truth their origin and growth were
social, the fruit of a large intellectual partnership and
co-operation.--It is on the same principle that nothing truly
excellent either in the minds or the characters of men is reached
without much of "ennobling impulse from the Past"; and that they who
live too much in the present miss the right food of human elevation,
contented to be, perhaps proud of being the vulgar things they are,
because ignorant of what has been before them. It is not that the
present age is worse than former ages; it may even be better as a
whole: but what is bad or worthless in an age dies with the age; so
that only the great and good of the Past touches us; while of the
present we are most touched by that which is little and mean.
The third principle of Art, as I am taking them, is _Completeness_. A
work of art must have within itself all that is needful for the due
understanding of it, as _Art_; so that the beholder will not have to
go outside or beyond the work itself to learn what it means; that is,
provided he have the corresponding faculties alive within him, so as
to be capable of its proper force. For, if the work speaks through
form and colour, there must be, in answering measure, a natural or an
instructed eye; if sound is its organ, there must be a natural or an
instructed ear; if its speech is verbal, there must be, besides a
natural or an instructed taste, a sufficient knowledge also of the
language in which it is written. All this of course. But, apart from
this, the work must be complete in and of itself, so as to be
intelligible without a commentary. And any work which requires a sign
or a showman to tell the beholder what it is, or to enable him to take
the sense and virtue of it, is most certainly a failure.
In all this, however, I am speaking of the work simply as art, and not
as it is or may be something else. For works of art, in many cases,
are or have a good deal besides that. And in connection with such a
work there may arise various questions,--of antiquity, philology,
local custom and allusion; in what place and at what time it was done;
whence, how, and why it came to be as it is; where the author got any
hints or materials for it, and what of antecedent or contemporary
history may be gathered from it. All this is legitimate and right in
its place, but has nothing to do with the character and meaning of the
thing as a work of art, in which respect it must know its cue without
a prompter, and be able to tell its own tale. That which holds the
mirror up to nature must not need another mirror to discover or
interpret its reflection to us. For instance, a building, as a
building, looks to certain practical ends and uses; and, before we can
rightly understand the order and reason of it, we must know from other
sources the ends and uses for which it was designed: but in so far as
it is architecture, in so far as it is truly imaginative, and embodies
the author's intellectual soul, it must be able to express its own
meaning, so that we can understand and feel it without any thing but
what comes directly from the work itself. But perhaps the point may be
better illustrated in the case of an historical drama, which may be
viewed either as history or as art: and, to determine its merit as
history, we must go to other sources; but, for ascertaining its merit
as art, the work must itself give us all the knowledge we need: so
that the question of its historic truth is distinct and separate from
the question of its artistic truth: it may be true as history, yet
false as art; or it may be historically wrong, yet artistically right;
true to nature, though not true to past fact; and, however we may have
to travel abroad in the historical inquiry, the virtue of the work as
art must be ascertainable directly from the thing itself. This, then,
is what I mean by artistic completeness; that quality in virtue of
which a work justifies itself, without foreign help, by its own
fulness and clearness of expression.
The fourth and last principle that I am to consider is
_Disinterestedness_. This is partly an intellectual, but more a moral
quality. Now one great reason why men fail so much in their mental
work is because they are not willing to see and to show things as they
are, but must still be making them as they would have them to be. Thus
from self-love or wilfulness or vanity they work their own humours and
crotchets and fancies into the matter, or overlay it with some
self-pleasing quirks of peculiarity. Instead of this, the artist must
lose himself, his personal aims, interests, passions, and preferences,
in the enthusiasm and inspiration of his work, in the strength,
vividness, and beauty of his ideas and perceptions, and must give his
whole mind and soul to the task of working these out into expression.
To this end, his mind must live in constant loving sympathy and
intercourse with Nature; he must work close to her life and order;
must study to seize and reproduce the truth of Nature just precisely
as it is, and must not think to improve her or get ahead of her;
though, to be sure, out of the materials she offers, the selection and
arrangement must be his own; and all the strength he can put forth
this way will never enable him to come up to her stern, honest, solid
facts. So, for instance, the highest virtue of good writing stands in
saying a plain thing in a plain way. And in all art-work the first
requisite is, that a man have, in the collective sense and reason of
mankind, a firm foothold for withstanding the shifting currents and
fashions and popularities of the day. The artist is indeed to work in
free concert with the imaginative soul of his age: but the trouble is,
that men are ever mistaking some transient specialty of mode for the
abiding soul; thus tickling the folly of the time, but leaving its
wisdom untouched.
If, therefore, a man goes to admiring his own skill, or airing his own
powers, or imitating the choice touches of others, or heeding the
breath of conventional applause; if he yields to any strain of
self-complacency, or turns to practising smiles, or to taking pleasure
in his self-begotten graces and beauties and fancies;--in this giddy
and vertiginous state he will be sure to fall into intellectual and
artistic sin. The man, in such a case, is no more smitten with a
genuine love of Art than Malvolio was with a genuine love of Virtue:
like that hero of conceit, he is merely "sick of self-love, and tastes
with a distempered appetite." And his giddiness of self-love will take
from him the power of seeing things as they are; and because he sees
them as they are not, therefore he will think he sees them better than
they are. A man cannot find Nature by gazing in a looking-glass; and
it is vanity or some undisinterested force, and not any inspiration of
truth or genius, that puts a man upon doing so. And, in the condition
supposed, the mind becomes a prism to sophisticate and falsify the
light of truth into striking and brilliant colours, instead of being a
clear and perfect lens to concentrate that light in its natural
whiteness and purity. For, assuredly, the proper worth, health,
strength, virtue, joy, and life of Art is to be the interpreter and
discoverer of Truth, to "feel the soul of Nature, and see things as
they are"; and when, instead of this, it turns to glorifying its own
powers and achievements, or sets up any end apart from such discovery
and interpretation, it becomes sickly, feeble, foolish, frivolous,
vicious, joyless, and moribund; and meanness, cruelty, sensuality,
impiety, and irreligion are the companions of it.
It is indeed true that an artist may find one of the main spurs to
his art-work in the needs, duties, and affections of his earthly
being. The support of himself, of his wife, or her whom he wishes to
be his wife, of his children, his parents, or remoter kin; the desire
of being independent, of having the respect of society, or of doing
the charities of a Christian; an honest, manly yearning after fame, an
ambition to achieve something that "the world will not willingly let
die,"--all these, and yet others, may justly be among the determining
motives of his pursuit, and the thought of them may add fresh life and
vigour to his efforts: nevertheless he will not succeed, nor deserve
to succeed, in his art, except he have such an earnest and
disinterested love for it, and such a passion for artistic truth, as
will find the work its own exceeding great reward. In a word, his
heart and soul must be in it _as an end_, and not merely or chiefly as
a means. However prudence may suggest and shape his plans, love must
preside over the execution; and here, as elsewhere,
"Love's not love
When it is mingled with respects that stand
Aloof from the entire point."
These four, then, are, in my account, essential principles of Art, and
the only ones which it lies within my purpose to consider; namely,
Solidarity, Originality, Completeness, and Disinterestedness. And to
the attaining of these there needs, especially, three things in the
way of faculty,--high intellectual power, great force of will, and a
very tender heart;--a strong head to perceive and grasp the truth of
things, a strong will to select and order the materials for expressing
it, and a strong heart, which is tenderness, to give the work a soul
of beauty and sweetness and amiability. As a man combines all these
strengths, and as, moreover, through the unifying power of
imagination, he pours the united life and virtue of them all into his
work; so will his worth and honour stand as an artist. For whence
should the noblest fruitage of human thought and culture grow, but
from the noblest parts and attributes of manhood, moving together in
perfect concert and reciprocity?