[46] People of any sense, however, confined themselves to wonder. I think it was only in the Art Journal of September 1st, 1854, that any writer had the meanness to charge me with insincerity. "The pictures of Turner and the works of the Pre-Raphaelites are the very antipodes of each other; it is, therefore, impossible that one and the same individual can with any show of sincerity [Note, by the way, the Art-Union has no idea that real sincerity is a thing existent or possible at all. All that it expects or hopes of human nature is, that it should have show of sincerity,] stand forth as the thick and thin [I perceive the writer intends to teach me English, as well as honesty,] eulogist of both. With a certain knowledge of art, such as may be possessed by the author of English Painters, [Note, farther, that the eminent critic does not so much as know the title of the book he is criticising,] it is not difficult to praise any bad or mediocre picture that may be qualified with extravagance or mysticism. This author owes the public a heavy debt of explanation, which a lifetime spent in ingenious reconciliations would not suffice to discharge. A fervent admiration of certain pictures by Turner, and, at the same time, of some of the severest productions of the Pre-Raphaelites, presents an insuperable problem to persons whose taste in art is regulated by definite principles."
[47] Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. § 46.
[48] Part II. Sec. IV. Chap. IV. § 23., and Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. § 9. The whole of the Preface to the Second Edition is written to maintain this one point of specific detail against the advocates of generalization.
[49] Vol. II. Chapter on Penetrative Imagination.
[50] Several other points connected with this subject have already been noticed in the last chapter of the Stones of Venice, § 21. &c.
[51] "Though my pictures should have nothing else, they shall have Chiaroscuro."—Constable (in Leslie's Life of him). It is singular to reflect what that fatal Chiaroscuro has done in art, in the full extent of its influence. It has been not only shadow, but shadow of Death: passing over the face of the ancient art, as death itself might over a fair human countenance; whispering, as it reduced it to the white projections and lightless orbits of the skull, "Thy face shall have nothing else, but it shall have Chiaroscuro."
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE.
§ 1. Having now obtained, I trust, clear ideas, up to a certain point, of what is generally right and wrong in all art, both in conception and in workmanship, we have to apply these laws of right to the particular branch of art which is the subject of our present inquiry, namely, landscape-painting. Respecting which, after the various meditations into which we have been led on the high duties and ideals of art, it may not improbably occur to us first to ask,—whether it be worth inquiring about at all.