§ 8. The action of contemplative imagination is not to be expressed by art.... 190 § 9. Except under narrow limits.-1st. Abstract rendering of form without § 19. Exaggeration. Its laws and limits.-First, in scale of representation... 197 § 20. Secondly. Of things capable of variety of scale....... 4. Supernatural character may be impressed on these either by phenomena inconsistent with their common nature, (Compare Chap. 4. § 16.) MODERN PAINTERS. PART III. OF IDEAS OF BEAUTY. SECTION I. OF THE THEORETIC FACULTY. CHAPTER I. OF THE RANK AND RELATIONS OF THE THEORETIC FACULTY. ALTHOUGH the hasty execution and controversial tone of the former § 1. With what care the subject portions of this essay have been subjects of frequent regret to the writer, a to be ap yet the one was in some measure excusable in a work referred to a tem- proached. porary end, and the other unavoidable, in one directed against particular opinions. Nor is either of any necessary detriment to its availableness as a foundation for more careful and extended survey, in so far as its province was confined to the assertion of obvious and visible facts, the verification of which could in no degree be dependent either on the care with which they might be classed, or the temper in which they were regarded. Not so with respect to the investigation now before us, which, being not of things outward, and sensibly demonstrable, but of the value and meaning of mental impressions, must be entered upon with a modesty and cautiousness proportioned to the difficulty of determining the likeness, or community, of such impressions, as they are received by different men, and with seriousness proportioned to the importance of rightly regarding those faculties over which we have moral power, and therefore in relation to which we assuredly incur a moral responsibility. There is not the thing left to the choice of man to do or not to do, but there is some sort or degree of duty involved § 2. And of what ed. import in his determination; and by how much the more, therefore, our subject becomes embarrassed by the cross influences of variously admitted passion, administered discipline, or encouraged affection, upon the minds of men, by so much the more it becomes matter of weight and import to observe by what laws we should be guided, and of what responsibilities regardful, in all that we admit, administer or encourage. Nor indeed have I ever, even in the preceding sections, spoken with ance consider levity, though sometimes perhaps with rashness. I have never treated the subject as other than demanding heedful and serious examination, and taking high place among those which justify, as they reward, our utmost ardour and earnestness of pursuit. That it justifies them must be my present task to prove; that it demands them has never been doubted. Art, properly so called, is no recreation; it cannot be learned at spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do. It is no handiwork for drawing-room tables; no relief of the ennui of boudoirs; it must be understood and undertaken seriously or not at all. To advance it men's lives must be given, and to receive it their hearts. "Le peintre Rubens s'amuse à être ambassadeur," said one with whom, but for his own words, we might have thought that effort had been absorbed in power, and the labour of his art in its felicity.-"E faticoso lo studio della pittura, et sempre si fa il mare maggiore," said he, who of all men was least likely to have left us discouraging report of anything that majesty of intellect could grasp, or continuity of labour overcome. But that this labour, the necessity of which in all ages has been most frankly admitted by the greatest men, is justifiable in a moral point of view, that it is not a vain devotion of the lives of men, that it has functions of usefulness addressed to the weightiest of human interests, and that the objects of it have calls upon us which it is inconsistent alike with our human dignity and our heavenward duty to disobey has never been boldly asserted nor fairly admitted; least of all is it likely to be so in these days of despatch and display, where vanity, on the one side, supplies the place of that love of art which is the only effective patronage, and on the other, of the incorruptible and earnest pride which no applause, no reprobation, can blind to its shortcomings, nor beguile of its hope. And yet it is in the expectation of obtaining at least a partial 'Tintoret. (Ridolfi. Vita.) acknowledgment of this, as a truth decisive both of aim and conduct, that I enter upon the second division of my subject. The time I have already devoted to the task I should have considered too great, and that which I fear may be yet required for its completion would have been cause to me of utter discouragement, but that the object I propose to myself is of no partial nor accidental importance. It is not now to distinguish between disputed degrees of ability in individuals, or agreeableness in canvasses; it is not now to expose the ignorance or defend the principles of party or person. It is to summon the moral energies of the nation to a forgotten duty, to display the use, force, and function of a great body of neglected sympathies and desires, and to elevate to its healthy and beneficial operation that art which, being altogether addressed to them, rises or falls with their variableness of vigour, —now leading them with Tyrtaan fire, now singing them to sleep with baby murmurings. ful force of the Only that I fear that with many of us the recommendation of our § 3. The doubtown favourite pursuits is rooted more in conceit of ourselves, than affec- term "utility." tion towards others, so that sometimes in our very pointing of the way, we had rather that the intricacy of it should be admired than unfolded; whence a natural distrust of such recommendation may well have place in the minds of those who have not yet perceived any value in the thing praised and because also, men in the present century understand the word Useful in a strange way, or at least (for the word has been often so accepted from the beginning of time) since in these days, they act its more limited meaning farther out, and give to it more practical weight and authority, it will be well in the outset, that I define exactly what kind of Utility I mean to attribute to art, and especially to that branch of it which is concerned with those impressions of external Beauty whose nature it is our present object to discover. " That is to everything created, pre-eminently useful, which enables it § 4. Its proper rightly and fully to perform the functions appointed to it by its Creator. sense. Therefore, that we may determine what is chiefly useful to man, it is necessary first to determine the use of Man himself. Man's use and function (and let him who will not grant me this follow me no farther, for this I purpose always to assume) is to be the witness of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness. § 5. How falsely applied in these times. § 6. The evil consequences of Whatever enables us to fulfil this function is, in the pure and first sense of the word, Useful to us. Pre-eminently therefore, whatever sets the glory of God more brightly before us. But things that only help us to exist, are in a secondary and mean sense, useful, or rather, if they be looked for alone, they are useless, and worse, for it would be better that we should not exist, than that we should guiltily disappoint the purposes of existence. And yet people speak in this working age, when they speak from their hearts, as if houses, and lands, and food, and raiment, were alone useful, and as if Sight, Thought, and Admiration,' were all profitless, so that men insolently call themselves Utilitarians, who would turn, if they had their way, themselves and their race into vegetables; men who think, as far as such can be said to think, that the meat is more than the life, and the raiment than the body, who look to the earth as a stable, and to its fruit as fodder; vinedressers and husbandmen, who love the corn they grind, and the grapes they crush, better than the gardens of the Angels upon the slopes of Eden; hewers of wood and drawers of water, who think that it is to give them wood to hew and water to draw, that the pine-forests cover the mountains like the shadow of God, and the great rivers move like his eternity. And so comes upon us that Woe of the preacher, that though God "hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” This Nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends men to grass like oxen, seems to such interpre- follow but too closely on the excess or continuance of national power tation. How and connected with peace. In the perplexities of nations, in their struggles for existence, national power. in their infancy, their impotence, or even their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler passions. Out of the suffering comes the serious mind; out of the salvation, the grateful heart; out of endurance, fortitude; out of deliverance, faith ; but when they have learned to live under providence of laws, and with decency and justice of regard for each other; and when they have done away with violent and external sources of suffering, worse evils seem to arise out of their rest, evils that vex less and mortify more, that suck the blood though 1 We live by admiration, hope, and love. (Excursion, Book IV.) |