Do you know what slavery means? Suppose a gentleman taken by a Barbary corsair—set to field-work; chained and flogged to it from dawn to eve. Need he be a slave therefore? By no means; he is but a hardly-treated prisoner. There is some work which the Barbary corsair will not be able to make him do; such work as a Christian gentleman may not do, that he will not, though he die for it. Bound and scourged he may be, but he has heard of a Person's being bound and scourged before now, who was not therefore a slave. He is not a whit more slave for that. But suppose he take the pirate's pay, and stretch his back at piratical oars, for due salary, how then? Suppose for fitting price he betray his fellow prisoners, and take up the scourge instead of enduring it—become the smiter instead of the smitten, at the African's bidding—how then? Of all the sheepish notions in our English public "mind," I think the simplest is that slavery is neutralized when you are well paid for it! Whereas it is precisely that fact of its being paid for which makes it complete. A man who has been sold by another, may be but half a slave or none; but the man who has sold himself! He is the accurately Finished Bondsman.
72. And gravely I say that I know no captivity so sorrowful as that of an artist doing, consciously, bad work for pay. It is the serfdom of the finest gifts—of all that should lead and master men, offering itself to be spit upon, and that for a bribe. There is much serfdom, in Europe, of speakers and writers, but they only sell words; and their talk, even honestly uttered, might not have been worth much; it will not be thought of ten years hence; still less a hundred years hence. No one will buy our parliamentary speeches to keep in portfolios this time next century; and if people are weak enough now to pay for any special and flattering cadence of syllable, it is little matter. But you, with your painfully acquired power, your unwearied patience, your admirable and manifold gifts, your eloquence in black and white, which people will buy, if it is good (and has a broad margin), for fifty guineas a copy—in the year 2000; to sell it all, ás Ananias his land, "yea, for so much," and hold yourselves at every fool's beck, with your ready points, polished and sharp, hasting to scratch what he wills! To bite permanent mischief in with acid; to spread an inked infection of evil all your days, and pass away at last from a life of the skillfulest industry—having done whatsoever your hand found (remuneratively) to do, with your might, and a great might, but with cause to thank God only for this—that the end of it all has at last come, and that "there is no device nor work in the Grave." One would get quit of this servitude, I think, though we reached the place of Rest a little sooner, and reached it fasting.
73. My English fellow-workmen, you have the name of liberty often on your lips; get the fact of it oftener into your business! talk of it less, and try to understand it better. You have given students many copy-books of free-hand outlines—give them a few of free heart outlines.
It appears, however, that you do not intend to help me with any utterance respecting these same outlines.[70] Be it so: I must make out what I can by myself. And under the influence of the Solstitial sign of June I will go backwards, or askance, to the practical part of the business, where I left it three months ago, and take up that question first, touching Liberty, and the relation of the loose swift line to the resolute slow one and of the etched line to the engraved one. It is a worthy question, for the open field afforded by illustrated works is tempting even to our best painters, and many an earnest hour and active fancy spend and speak themselves in the black line, vigorously enough, and dramatically, at all events: if wisely, may be considered. The French also are throwing great passion into their eaux fortes—working with a vivid haste and dark, brilliant freedom, which looked as if they etched with very energetic waters indeed—quite waters of life (it does not look so well, written in French). So we will take, with the reader's permission, for text next month, "Rembrandt, and strong waters."
Chapter V.[71]
74. The work I have to do in this paper ought, rightly, to have been thrown into the form of an appendix to the last chapter; for it is no link of the cestus of Aglaia we have to examine, but one of the crests of canine passion in the cestus of Scylla. Nevertheless, the girdle of the Grace cannot be discerned in the full brightness of it, but by comparing it with the dark torment of that other; and (in what place or form matters little) the work has to be done.
"Rembrandt Van Rhyn"—it is said, in the last edition of a very valuable work[72] (for which, nevertheless, I could wish that greater lightness in the hand should be obtained by the publication of its information in one volume, and its criticism in another)—was "the most attractive and original of painters." It may be so; but there are attractions, and attractions. The sun attracts the planets—and a candle, night-moths; the one with perhaps somewhat of benefit to the planets;—but with what benefit the other to the moths, one would be glad to learn from those desert flies, of whom, one company having extinguished Mr. Kinglake's candle with their bodies, the remainder, "who had failed in obtaining this martyrdom, became suddenly serious, and clung despondingly to the canvas."
75. Also, there are originalities, and originalities. To invent a new thing, which is also a precious thing; to be struck by a divinely-guided Rod, and become a sudden fountain of life to thirsty multitudes—this is enviable. But to be distinct of men in an original Sin; elect for the initial letter of a Lie; the first apparent spot of an unknown plague; a Root of bitterness, and the first-born worm of a company, studying an original De-Composition,—this is perhaps not so enviable. And if we think of it, most human originality is apt to be of that kind. Goodness is one, and immortal; it may be received and communicated—not originated: but Evil is various and recurrent, and may be misbegotten in endlessly surprising ways.
76. But, that we may know better in what this originality consists, we find that our author, after expatiating on the vast area of the Pantheon, "illuminated solely by the small circular opening in the dome above," and on other similar conditions of luminous contraction, tells us that "to Rembrandt belongs the glory of having first embodied in Art, and perpetuated, these rare and beautiful effects of nature." Such effects are indeed rare in nature; but they are not rare, absolutely. The sky, with the sun in it, does not usually give the impression of being dimly lighted through a circular hole; but you may observe a very similar effect any day in your coal-cellar. The light is not Rembrandtesque on the current, or banks, of a river; but it is on those of a drain. Color is not Rembrandtesque, usually, in a clean house; but is presently obtainable of that quality in a dirty one. And without denying the pleasantness of the mode of progression which Mr. Hazlitt, perhaps too enthusiastically, describes as attainable in a background of Rembrandt's—"You stagger from one abyss of obscurity to another"—I cannot feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness, and the dullness of his light. Glorious, or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. It is the aim of the best painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. It was the aim of Rembrandt to paint the foulest things he could see—by rushlight.