Orpheus with his lute,—Jubal with his harp and horn,—Harmonia, bride of the warrior seed-sower,—Musica herself, lady of all timely thought and sweetly ordered things,—Cantatrice and Incantatrice to all but the museless adder; these the Amphion of Fésole saw, as he shaped the marble of his tower; these, Memmi of Siena, fair-figured on the shadows of his vault;—but for us, here is the only manifestation granted to our best practical painter—a vagrant with harmonium—and yonder blackbirds and iridescent jackasses, to be harmonized thereby.
244. Our best painter (among the living) I say;—no question has ever been of that. Since Van Eyck and Dürer there has nothing been seen so well done in laying of clear oil-color within definite line. And what he might have painted for us, if we had only known what we would have of him! Heaven only knows. But we none of us knew,—nor he neither; and on the whole the perfectest of his works, and the representative picture of that generation—was no Annunciate Maria bowing herself; but only a Newsless Mariana stretching herself: which is indeed the best symbol of the mud-moated Nineteenth century; in its Grange, Stable—Sty, or whatever name of dwelling may best befit the things it calls Houses and Cities: imprisoned therein by the unassailablest of walls, and blackest of ditches—by the pride of Babel, and the filthiness of Aholah and Aholibamah; and their worse younger sister;—craving for any manner of News from any world—and getting none trustworthy even of its own.
245. I said that in this second paper I would try to give some brief history of the rise, and the issue, of that Pre-Raphaelite school: but, as I look over two of the essays[47] that were printed with mine in that last number of the Nineteenth Century—the first—in laud of the Science which accepts for practical spirits, inside of men, only Avarice and Indolence; and the other,—in laud of the Science which "rejects the Worker" outside of Men, I am less and less confident in offering to the readers of the Nineteenth Century any History relating to such despised things as unavaricious industry,—or incorporeal vision. I will be as brief as I can.
246. The central branch of the school, represented by the central picture above described:—"The Blind Girl"—was essentially and vitally an uneducated one. It was headed, in literary power, by Wordsworth; but the first pure example of its mind and manner of Art, as opposed to the erudite and artificial schools, will be found, so far as I know, in Molière's song: j'aime mieux ma mie.
Its mental power consisted in discerning what was lovely in present nature, and in pure moral emotion concerning it.
Its physical power, in an intense veracity of direct realization to the eye.
So far as Mr. Millais saw what was beautiful in vagrants, or commons, or crows, or donkeys, or the straw under children's feet in the Ark (Noah's or anybody else's does not matter),—in the Huguenot and his mistress, or the ivy behind them,—in the face of Ophelia, or in the flowers floating over it as it sank;—much more, so far as he saw what instantly comprehensible nobleness of passion might be in the binding of a handkerchief,—in the utterance of two words, "Trust me" or the like: he prevailed, and rightly prevailed, over all prejudice and opposition; to that extent he will in what he has done, or may yet do, take, as a standard-bearer, an honorable place among the reformers of our day.
So far as he could not see what was beautiful, but what was essentially and forever common (in that God had not cleansed it), and so far as he did not see truly what he thought he saw; (as for instance, in this picture, under immediate consideration, when he paints the spark of light in a crow's eye a hundred yards off, as if he were only painting a miniature of a crow close by,)—he failed of his purpose and hope; but how far I have neither the power nor the disposition to consider.
247. The school represented by Mr. Rossetti's picture and adopted for his own by Mr. Holman Hunt, professed, necessarily, to be a learned one; and to represent things which had happened long ago, in a manner credible to any moderns who were interested in them. The value to us of such a school necessarily depends on the things it chooses to represent, out of the infinite history of mankind. For instance, David, of the first Republican Academe, was a true master of this school; and, painting the Horatii receiving their swords, foretold the triumph of that Republican Power. Gérôme, of the latest Republican Academe, paints the dying Polichinelle, and the morituri gladiators: foretelling, in like manner, the shame and virtual ruin of modern Republicanism. What our own painters have done for us in this kind has been too unworthy of their real powers, for Mr. Rossetti threw more than half his strength into literature, and, in that precise measure, left himself unequal to his appointed task in painting; while Mr. Hunt, not knowing the necessity of masters any more than the rest of our painters, and attaching too great importance to the externals of the life of Christ, separated himself for long years from all discipline by the recognized laws of his art; and fell into errors which wofully shortened his hand and discredited his cause—into which again I hold it no part of my duty to enter. But such works as either of these painters have done, without antagonism or ostentation, and in their own true instincts; as all Rossetti's drawing from the life of Christ, more especially that of the Madonna gathering the bitter herbs for the Passover when He was twelve years old; and that of the Magdalen leaving her companions to come to Him; these, together with all the mythic scenes which he painted from the Vita Nuova and Paradiso of Dante, are of quite imperishable power and value: as also many of the poems to which he gave up part of his painter's strength. Of Holman Hunt's "Light of the World," and "Awakening Conscience," I have publicly spoken and written, now for many years, as standard in their kind: the study of sunset on the Egean, lately placed by me in the schools of Oxford, is not less authoritative in landscape, so far as its aim extends.
248. But the School represented by the third painting, "The Bridal," is that into which the greatest masters of all ages are gathered, and in which they are walled round as in Elysian fields, unapproachable but by the reverent and loving souls, in some sort already among the Dead.