XVIII
INEPT CRITICISM
Directly the river Wey is crossed, either in leaving or entering Guildford, the road begins to rise steeply. Going towards Godalming, it brings the traveller in a mile’s walk to the ruined chapel of St. Catherine, standing on a sandstone hill beside the highway, whose red sides are burrowed by rabbits and sand-martins. The chapel has been ruined time out of mind, and is to-day but a motive for a sketch. One of Turner’s best plates in his “Liber Studiorum” has St. Catherine’s Chapel for its subject, and to the criticism of Turner’s work comes the Rev. Mr. Stopford Brooke, in this wise:—“It is no picturesque place. Turner painted English life as it was; and the struggle of the poor is uppermost in his mind in all these rustic subjects ... pathetic feeling is given them by Turner’s anxious kindness.”
No picturesque place! Where, then, do you find picturesqueness if not here? And as for Turner, the man who dares to say that he “painted English life as it was,” dares much. It is the chiefest glory of Turner that he painted or drew or etched things, not as they were, but as they might, could, should, or would be under an artist’s direction. He was, in short, an idealist, and cared nothing for “actuality,” and perhaps even less for the “struggle of the poor.” It is possible to read anything you please into Turner’s work, for it is chiefly of the frankest impressionism; but to say that he felt and did all these things is criticism of the most inept Penny Reading order. Turner was an artist of the rarest and most generous equipment, and he had to do what he did, and never reasoned why he did it. Ruskin surprised him with what he read into his work; how much more, then, would he have been astonished at Mr. Stopford Brooke’s “Notes on the Liber Studiorum,” had he lived to read them! But angels and ministers of grace defend us from ministers of religion who essay art criticism!
And now, having descanted upon the wisdom of the cobbler sticking to his last, or of the clergyman adhering rigorously to his spiritual functions, let us proceed to Godalming on foot.
“Everybody that has been from Godalming to Guildford knows,” says Cobbett, “that there is hardly another such a pretty four miles in all England. The road is good; the soil is good; the houses are neat; the people are neat; the hills, the woods, the meadows, all are beautiful. Nothing wild and bold, to be sure, but exceedingly pretty; and it is almost impossible to ride along these four miles without feelings of pleasure, though you have rain for your companion, as it happened to be with me.”