He hated newspapers because “the influence of writers who have had no other qualification to judge of art matters than the possession of more or less literary facility, has been deterrent and ever fatal to a steady advance of taste.”
There are two aspects. Art “presents the form of a nation’s spirit, exactly as the sounding atoms on a vibrating plane make a constant and distinct pattern to the sound of a given note.” Likewise, “All art from the beginning served for the higher development of men’s minds. It has ever been valued as good to sustain strength for noble resolves.”
Determined to serve his generation, not as a playfellow, not as a tyrant, but as a master, he followed singly and faithfully that conviction which had led him from childhood to think of the Bible as the great factor in human existence. To the interpretation of the Life of Christ he gave the best years of his manhood. In order to understand it more thoroughly he broke away from comfort, he risked success at the moment when first she smiled on him, he left the friend whom he loved. It was not enough to paint “The Light of the World,” to set before the eyes of his countrymen the eternal King, the eternal Priest, knocking at the door of the human heart, barred darkly in behind the weeds of selfishness. He would go to the country where the King dwelt. He would show:
(1) The coming of God to earth, as it was seen by the dim eyes of tradition, of mortal learnedness, when there was found within the precincts of the Temple, among the Rabbis, a Child who had forgotten to return to his parents.
(2) The oneness of Creation in the form of the suffering creature dying by the Dead Sea shore—the Goat, the type of the Lamb.
(3) The sacredness of labour, in the form of the Son of Man resting from toil in that low workshop where the Virgin Mother hoarded the gifts of regal wisdom.
(4) The young immortal beauty ever to be seen by the Child of God, by the spirit of maiden purity, turning the torrent of death into the river of life, making the darkness as the noon-day.
To the Bible, Holman Hunt gave his manhood—to Shakespeare, his youth! No one who desires to add to the store of England’s thought but must, at one time or another, plunge deep into the mind of her greatest thinker. It is a sign of the unthinking nature of English art that, before this time, there were no illustrations of Shakespeare worth the name. It is characteristic of the pre-eminently thoughtful nature of this artist that he should have chosen two subjects that are often misunderstood, from two plays that are hardly ever acted—the subject of Forgiveness from the “Two Gentlemen of Verona;” the subject Death-to-be-preferred-before-slavery from “Measure for Measure.”
The duty of the Forgiveness of Sins—which has been well defined in the one word, Affection—a duty canvassed and discussed everywhere—is, in Shakespeare, deprived of the very aspect of a duty. It seems to have appeared to him not only natural but inevitable that anybody should forgive anybody anything. The most astounding of all his reconciliations is that of the “Two Gentlemen.” Valentine has to forgive Proteus; Sylvia has to forgive Proteus and Valentine into the bargain; Julia has to forgive Proteus; and Proteus has to forgive himself. Upon the stage we have seen an actress, in despair at the difficulty of the thing, turn her back to the audience and lean against a tree while the discussion was going on; but in the picture Sylvia kneels, her hand left trustingly in that of Valentine, and we have no sooner looked at it than we believe and understand. It is the same with that difficult moment of “Measure for Measure,” when the two sides of life speak in the brother and sister: