LECTURE X.
THE HERALDIC ORDINARIES.
March 9th, 1872.
207. In my last lecture, I endeavoured to illustrate to you the use of art to the science of physiology. I am to-day to introduce to you its elementary forms as an exponent of the science of history. Which, speaking with perfect accuracy, we ought to call, also, “physiology,” or natural history of man; for it ought to be in truth the history of his Nature; and not merely of the accidents which have befallen him. Do we not too much confuse the important part of the science with the unimportant?
In giving the natural history of the lion, you do not care materially where such and such a lion was trapped, or how many sheep it had eaten. You want to know what sort of a minded and shaped creature it is, or ought to be. But in all our books of human history we only care to tell what has happened to men, and how many of each other they have, in a manner, eaten, when they are, what Homer calls δημοβόροι, people-eaters; and we scarcely understand, even to this day, how they are truly minded. Nay, I am not sure that even this art of heraldry, which has for its main object the telling and proclamation of our chief minds and characters to each other, and keeping record of descent by race, as far as it is possible, (or, under the present aspect of Darwinism, pleasant,) to trace it;—I am not sure that even heraldry has always understood clearly what it had to tell. But I am very sure it has not been understood in the telling.
208. Some of you have, I hope, looked at this book[I] of Arthur Helps, on ‘War and Culture,’ about which I cannot now say what I would, because he has done me the grace of dedicating it to me; but you will find in it, directly bearing on our present subject, this story about heraldry:
“A friend of mine, a physician, became entangled in the crowd at Kennington on that memorable evening when a great Chartist row was expected, and when Louis Napoleon armed himself with a constable’s staff to support the cause of order. My friend observed a young man of pleasant appearance, who was very busy in the crowd, and appeared to be a leader amongst them. Gradually, by the pressure of the crowd, the two were brought near together, and the good doctor had some talk with this fiery partisan. They exchanged confidences; and to his astonishment, the doctor found that this furious young Chartist gained his livelihood, and a very good livelihood too, by heraldic painting—by painting the coats-of-arms upon carriages. Now, if you can imagine this young man’s darling enterprise to have been successful, if Chartism had prevailed, what would have become of the painting of arms upon carriage-panels? I believe that my good doctor insinuated this suggestion to the young man, and that it was received with disdain. I must own, therefore, that the utile, even when brought home to a man’s self, has much less to do with people’s political opinions and desires, than might at first be supposed. Indeed, I would venture to maintain, that no great change has ever been produced in the world by motives of self-interest. Sentiment, that thing which many wise people affect to despise, is the commanding thing as regards popular impulses and popular action.”
209. This last sentence would have been wholly true, had Mr. Helps written ‘no great living change.’ The changes of Dissolution are continually produced by self-interest,—for instance, a great number of the changes in your methods of life in England just now, and many of those in your moral temper, are produced by the percentage on the sale of iron. And I should have otherwise interpreted the heroism of the young Chartist, and said that he was moved on the 10th of April, by a deep under-current of self-interest; that by overthrowing Lordship, he expected to get much more for himself than his salary as an heraldic painter; and that he had not, in painting his carriage-panels, sentiment enough, or even sentiment at all.
“Paint me my arms,—” said Giotto, as the youth threw him his white shield with that order—“he speaks as if he were one of the Bardi!” Our English panel-painter had lost the consciousness that there yet remained above him, so much as one, of the Bardi.
May not that be somewhat the Bardi’s fault? in that they have not taught their Giottos, lately, the function of heraldry, or of any other higher historical painting.
We have, especially, to-day, to consider what that function is.