§ 24. Two years ago, when I was first beginning to work out the subject, and chatting with one of my keenest-minded friends (Mr. Brett, the painter of the Val d’Aosta in the Exhibition of 1859), I casually asked him, “What is vulgarity?” merely to see what he would say, not supposing it possible to get a sudden answer. He thought for about a minute, then answered quietly, “It is merely one of the forms of Death.” I did not see the meaning of the reply at the time; but on testing it, found that it met every phase of the difficulties connected with the inquiry, and summed the true conclusion. Yet, in order to be complete, it ought to be made a distinctive as well as conclusive definition; showing what form of death vulgarity is; for death itself is not vulgar, but only death mingled with life. I cannot, however, construct a short-worded definition which will include all the minor conditions of bodily degeneracy; but the term “deathful selfishness” will embrace all the most fatal and essential forms of mental vulgarity.
[1] We ought always in pure English to use the term “good breeding” literally; and to say “good nurture” for what we usually mean by good breeding. Given the race and make of the animal, you may turn it to good or bad account; you may spoil your good dog or colt, and make him as vicious as you choose, or break his back at once by ill-usage; and you may, on the other hand, make something serviceable and respectable out of your poor cur or colt if you educate them carefully; but ill bred they will both of them be to their lives’ end; and the best you will ever be able to say of them is, that they are useful, and decently behaved ill-bred creatures. An error, which is associated with the truth, and which makes it always look weak and disputable, is the confusion of race with name; and the supposition that the blood of a family must still be good, if its genealogy be unbroken and its name not lost, though sire and son have been indulging age after age in habits involving perpetual degeneracy of race. Of course it is equally an error to suppose that, because a man’s name is common, his blood must be base; since his family may have been ennobling it by pureness of moral habit for many generations, and yet may not have got any title, or other sign of nobleness attached to their names. Nevertheless, the probability is always in favor of the race which has had acknowledged supremacy, and in which every motive leads to the endeavor to preserve their true nobility.
[2] Among the reckless losses of the right service of intellectual power with which this century must be charged, very few are, to my mind, more to be regretted than that which is involved in its having turned to no higher purpose than the illustration of the career of Jack Sheppard, and of the Irish Rebellion, the great, grave (I use the words deliberately and with large meaning), and singular genius of Cruikshank.
[3] There is this farther reason also: “Letters are always ugly things”—(Seven Lamps, chap. iv. s. 9). Titian often wanted a certain quantity of ugliness to oppose his beauty with, as a certain quantity of black to oppose his color. He could regulate the size and quantity of inscription as he liked; and, therefore, made it as neat—that is, as effectively ugly—as possible. But the Greek sculptor could not regulate either size or quantity of inscription. Legible it must be, to common eyes, and contain an assigned group of words. He had more ugliness than he wanted, or could endure. There was nothing for it but to make the letters themselves rugged and picturesque; to give them—that is, a certain quantity of organic variety.
I do not wonder at people sometimes thinking I contradict myself when they come suddenly on any of the scattered passages, in which I am forced to insist on the opposite practical applications of subtle principles of this kind. It may amuse the reader, and be finally serviceable to him in showing him how necessary it is to the right handling of any subject, that these contrary statements should be made, if I assemble here the principal ones I remember having brought forward, bearing on this difficult point of precision in execution.
It would be well if you would first glance over the chapter on Finish in the third volume; and if, coming to the fourth paragraph, about gentlemen’s carriages, you have time to turn to Sydney Smith’s Memoirs and read his account of the construction of the “Immortal,” it will furnish you with an interesting illustration.
The general conclusion reached in that chapter being that finish, for the sake of added truth, or utility, or beauty, is noble; but finish, for the sake of workmanship, neatness, or polish, ignoble,—turn to the fourth chapter of the Seven Lamps, where you will find the Campanile of Giotto given as the model and mirror of perfect architecture, just on account of its exquisite completion. Also, in the next chapter, I expressly limit the delightfulness of rough and imperfect work to developing and unformed schools (pp. 142-3, 1st edition); then turn to the 170th page of the Stones of Venice, Vol. III., and you will find this directly contrary statement:—
“No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of the misunderstanding of the end of art.” ... “The first cause of the fall of the arts in Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection” (p. 172). By reading the intermediate text, you will be put in possession of many good reasons for this opinion; and, comparing it with that just cited about the Campanile of Giotto, will be brought, I hope, into a wholesome state of not knowing what to think.
Then turn to p. 167, where the great law of finish is again maintained as strongly as ever: “Perfect finish (finish, that is to say, up to the point possible) is always desirable from the greatest masters, and is always given by them.”—§ 19.