DAWN—LUTHER IN THE CONVENT LIBRARY AT ERFURT.
This is, we think, Mr. Paton's best work. We do not say his greatest, for that may be held to include quantity of genius as well as quality. He has done other things as full of imagination, and more full of fancy; but there is a seriousness and depth, a moral and spiritual meaning and worth about this which he has never before shown, and which fully deserve the word best.
The picture requires no explanation. It is Luther, the young monk of four-and-twenty, in the Library of the Convent of Erfurt. He is at his desk, leaning almost wildly forward, one knee on the seat—its foot has dropped the rude and worn sandal—the other foot on the floor, as it were pressing him forward. He is gazing into the open pages of a huge Vulgate—we see it is the early chapters of the Romans. A bit of broken chain indicates that the Bible was once chained—to be read, but not possessed—it is now free, and his own. His right hand is eagerly, passionately drawing the volume close to him. His face is emaciated to painfulness; you see the traces of a sleepless night—the mind sleepless, and worse, seeking rest, and as yet finding none, but about to find it—and this takes away from what might otherwise be a plus of pain. Next moment he will come upon—or it on him—the light from heaven, shining out from the words, "Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God and in intimation of this, His dawn, the sweet, pearly light of morning, shining in at the now open lattice, is reflected from the page upon his keen anxious face—faint yet pursuing." If you look steadily into that face, you will see that the bones of the mighty Reformer's face, so well known to us, are all there, and need but good food and sleep, and the open air, and peace of mind, and the joy of victorious faith and work, to fill it up and make it plump, giving it that look of energy in repose, of enough and to spare, of masculine power, which that broad, massive, but soft and kindly visage, wears written all over it; and the slightly upturned head, the clear, open, deep eyes, and that rich chin and neck, "dewlapped like a Thessalian bull."
And we know that all this misery, and examination, and wasting are true. We know that when his friend Alexis was struck down dead by lightning at his side as they walked together, he also was struck down in his mind; and in the words of Principal Tulloch in his admirable sketch, he carried out his resolve in a way curiously and entirely his own—"One evening he invites some of his fellow-students to supper, gives them of his best cheer, music and jest enliven the company, and the entertainment closes with a burst of merriment. The same night there is a solitary knock at the door of the Augustinian Convent, and two volumes alone of all his books in his hand—Plautus and Virgil—Luther passes under its portal." Three long, dreary years he has been there; doing all sorts of servile work—sweeping the floors, begging in the streets with his wallet—"Saccum per nackum"—for food and dainties to his lazy brethren. Sometimes four days without meat or drink—hiding himself for a week with his books in his cell, where, when broken in upon, he is found lying cold and senseless on the floor; and all this bodily wretchedness, struggle, and unrest but a material type of the mental agony within trying to work out his own salvation with all sorts of "fear and trembling." And now the natural dawn has found him still at his book, and is pouring its "innocent brightness" everywhere, and its fresh airs are stirring the white blossoms of the convolvulus outside, and making them flutter and look in like doves—the dew of their youth and of the morning glistering, if looked for. And this time it has found him with his morn beginning too—the clear shining after the rain, the night far past, the day at hand; he has "cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light." The Sun of Righteousness is about to arise upon him. Henceforth you know well what he is to become and do—a child of the light, he walks abroad like one, and at liberty he goes forth upon his work, rejoicing like a strong man to run his race. That great human spirit finds rest and a resting-place—has got that fulcrum on which, with his strong heart and his lever, he is to move a world. That warm, urgent, tender, impetuous human heart is to be satisfied with the fellowship of his kind, and with the love of his Catherine—"his heart-loved housewife and sow-marketress, and whatever more she may be"—and to run over in babble (as who ever else did?) to his "Johnny," his "Philip and his Joe," or overflow with tears as he looks on his "darling Lena" in her coffin, saving, "How strange it is to know so surely that she is at peace and happy, and yet for me to be so sad."
And now that this dominant, central idea—which is the heart and soul, the motive power of the piece—is taken in and moves you, examine the rest—the great Vulgate and St. Augustine De Civitate Dei, and Thomas Aquinas, and the other old fellows, old and strong, lying all about, as if taken up and thrown down in restless search, how wonderfully they are painted! or rather, how wonderfully you never think of them as painted! and yet they are not merely imitated—you don't mistake them for actual books, they are the realized ideas of books. And that sacred, unspeakable scene, dim, yet unmistakable, looking out upon you from the back of his desk—the Agony of the Garden—carved and partly coloured and gilt; look at it—that is religious painting. Our Saviour on his knees "praying more earnestly"—the sleepers lying around—the mystic, heavy, sombre olive-trees, shutting out the light of heaven, and letting the lanterns of those "with swords and staves" gleam among their stems; him who was a thief, crouching, stealing on with his bag and his crew, and the curse heavy upon him—all this is in it, and all subordinate, and yet done to the quick, as if a young Albert Durer or Van Eyck had had his knife in the wood, and his soul at his knife. Then, on the plastered wall behind the young monk is an oval portrait of Alexander the Sixth, the tremendous Borgia, that prodigy of crime and power—his face, what a contrast to the wasted boy's beneath! he is fat and flourishing, rosy and full of blood and of the pride of life, insolent and at his ease; Luther like a young branch all but withered in the leaves of his spring—the Vicar of God spreading like a green bay tree. He is holding up his two first fingers in the Apostolic benediction, with a something between a scowl and a leer—all this rendered, and yet nothing overdone. This portrait hangs on a rude drawing of the Crucifixion, as if by a young and adoring hand, full of feeling and with a touching uncertainty in the lines, as if the hand that traced it was unaccustomed and trembling; it conceals our Saviour's face. As we have said, the lattice has been opened, and the breath of the morning is flowing into the dark, stifling room. The night lamp has gone out, paling its ineffectual fires, and its reek is curling up and down, and away. This, as a piece of handiwork, is wonderful. When you look narrowly into the picture, you see a chrysalis in the gloom, just opening its case, ready when struck by the light and heat to expand and fly. The sunlight throws across towards Borgia the rich blooms of the stained glass, the light made gloriously false in passing through its disturbing medium; while the pure, white light of heaven passes straight down upon the Word of God, and shines up into the face of the young reader.
Such is a mere notion of this excellent picture; it is painted throughout with amazing precision, delicacy, sweetness, and strength, in perfect diapason from first to last, everything subordinate to the one master note. Every one will be surprised, and some may be shocked, at the face, and hands, and look of Luther, but let them remember where he is, and what he has been and is doing and suffering. This amount of pain gives a strange and true relish, if it is taken up and overpowered and transfigured into its opposite by our knowledge that it was to be "but for a moment," and then the "fat-more exceeding" victory and joy.