You must always carefully distinguish that conception from the base strength of the resultless passions which distort and confuse it. Infinitely weaker, the ideal is eternal and creative; the clamorous rages pass away,—ruinous it may be, prosperous it may be, for their time;—but insignificant for ever. You find kings and priests alike, always inventing expedients to get money; you find kings and priests alike, always inventing pretexts to gain power. If you want to write a practical history of the Middle Ages, and to trace the real reasons of the things that actually happened, investigate first the history of the money; and then of the quarrels for office and territory. But the things that actually happened were of small consequence—the thoughts that were developed are of infinite consequence.
217. As I was walking back from Hincksey last evening, somewhat discomfited by the look of bad weather, and more in myself, as I thought over this closing lecture, wondering how far you thought I had been talking idly to you, instead of teaching you to draw, through this term, I stopped before Messrs. Wyatt’s window; caught—as it was intended every one should be—by this display of wonderful things. And I was very unhappy as I looked, for it seemed to me you could not but think the little I could show you how to do quite valueless; while here were produced, by mysteries of craft which you might expect me at once to explain, brilliant water-colours in purple and gold, and photographs of sea-waves, and chromolithotints of beautiful young ladies, and exquisitely finished engravings of all sorts of interesting scenes, and sublime personages: patriots, saints, martyrs, penitents, and who not! and what not! all depicted with a dexterity which it has cost the workmen their life’s best energy to learn, and requires great cleverness thus to apply. While, in your room for study, there are only ugly photographs of Dürers and Holbeins, and my rude outlines from leaves, and you scarcely ever hear me say anything in praise of that delightful and elaborate modern art at all.
218. So I bought this Madonna,[J] which was the prettiest thing I saw: and it will enable me to tell you why this modern art is, indeed, so little to be studied, even at its best. I think you will all like the plate, and you ought to like it; but observe in what its beauty consists. First, in very exquisite line engraving: against that I have nothing to say, feeling the greatest respect for the industry and skill it requires. Next, in a grace and severity of action which we all are ready to praise; but this is not the painter’s own bestowing; the trick of it is learned from Memling and Van Eyck, and other men of the northern religious school. The covering of the robe with jewels is pleasing to you; but that is learned from Angelico and John Bellini; and if you will compare the jewel-painting in the John Bellini (Standard No. 5), you will find this false and formal in comparison. Then the face is much dignified by having a crown set on it—which is copied from the ordinary thirteenth century form, and ill done. The face itself is studied from a young German mother’s, and is only by the painter’s want of skill made conventional in expression, and formal in feature. It would have been wiser and more difficult to have painted her as Raphael or Reynolds would, with true personal resemblance, perfected in expression.
219. Nevertheless, in its derivative way, this is very lovely. But I wish you to observe that it is derivative in all things. The dress is derivative; the action, derivative: above all, the conception is derivative altogether, from that great age of Christian chivalry, which, in art and thought alike, surpassed the Greek chivalry, because it added to their enthusiasm of patriotism the enthusiasm of imaginative love, sanctified by this ruling vision of the Madonna, as at once perfect maid and perfect mother.
And your study of the art of the middle ages must begin in your understanding how the men of them looked on Love as the source of all honour, as of life; and how, from the least thing to the greatest, the honouring of father and mother, the noble esteem of children, and the sincere respect for race, and for the courtesies and prides that graced and crowned its purity, were the sources of all their virtue, and all their joy.
220. From the least things, I say, to the greatest. I am to speak to-day of one of, apparently, the least things; which is, indeed, one of the greatest. How much of the dignity of this Madonna, do you suppose, depends on the manner she bears her dress, her crown, her jewels, and her sceptre?
In peasant and prince alike, you will find that, ultimately, character is truly heralded in dress; and that splendour in dress is as necessary to man as colour to birds and flowers, but splendour with more meaning. Splendour observe, however, in the true Latin sense of the word; brightness of colour; not gaudiness: what I have been telling you of colour in pictures will apply equally to colour in dress: vulgarity consists in the insolence and discord of it, not in brightness.
221. For peasant and prince alike, in healthy national order, brightness of dress and beautiful arrangement of it are needful. No indication of moral decline is more sure than the squalor of dress among the lower orders, and the fear or shame of the higher classes to bear their proper insignia.
Such fear and shame are singularly expressed, here in Oxford, at this hour. The nobleman ceases to wear the golden tassel in his cap, so accepting, and publicly heralding his acceptance of, the popular opinion of him that he has ceased to be a nobleman, or noteworthy person.[K] And the members of the University, generally, shrink from wearing their academical dress, so accepting, and publicly heralding their acceptance of, the popular opinion that everybody else may be as good scholars as they. On the other hand, I see continually in the streets young men in bright costumes of blue and white; in such evidently proud heraldry proclaiming their conviction that the chief object of residence in Oxford is learning to row; the rowing itself being, I imagine, not for real boat service, but for purposes of display.
222. All dress is thus heraldic; a soldier’s dress only more definitely so, in proclaiming the thing he means to die as well as to live for; but all is heraldic, from the beggar’s rag to the king’s diadem; it may be involuntarily, it may be, insolently; but when the characters of men are determined, and wise, their dress becomes heraldic reverently, and in order. “Togam e tugurio proferre uxorem Raciliam jubet;” and Edie Ochiltree’s blue gown is as honourably heraldic as a knight’s ermine.