And what a killing look over at the girl in the corner, in check gingham, with blue bows in her hair, as I read (always on the old school-benches),—
"I have heard her with sweetness unfold
How that pity was due to—a dove:
That it ever attended the bold;
And she called it the sister of love.
But her words such a pleasure convey,
So much I her accents adore,
Let her speak, and whatever she say,
Methinks I should love her the more."
There is a rhythmic prettiness in this; but it is the prettiness of a lover in his teens, and not the kind we look for from a man who stood five feet eleven in his stockings, and wore his own gray hair. Strangely enough, Shenstone had the physique of a ploughman or a prize-fighter, and with it the fine, sensitive brain of a woman; a Greek in his refinements, and a Greek in indolence. I hope he gets on better in the other world than he ever did in this.
ON THE RELATION OF ART TO NATURE.
IN TWO PARTS.
PART II.
The repulsive ugliness of the early Christian paintings was not the consequence of any break in the tradition. There was no reason why the graceful drawing of the human figure should not have been transmitted, as well as the technical procedures and the pigments. Nor was effort wanting: these pictures were often very elaborate and splendid in execution. But it is clear that grace and resemblance to anything existing, so far from being aimed at, were intentionally avoided. Even as late as the thirteenth century we find figures with blue legs and red bodies,—the horses in a procession blue, red, and yellow. Any whim of association, or fanciful color-pattern, was preferred to beauty or correctness. Likeness to actual things seemed to be regarded, indeed, as an unavoidable evil, to be restricted as far as possible. The problem was, to show God's omnipresence in the world, especially His appearance on the earth as man, and His abiding presence in holy men and women as an inspiration obliterating their humanity. But so long as the divine and the human are looked upon as essentially opposed, their union can be by miracle only, and the first thought must be to keep prominent this miraculousness, and guard against confusion of this angelic existence with every-day reality. The result is this realm of ghosts, at home neither in heaven nor on earth, neither presuming to be spirit nor condescending to be body, but hovering intermediate. But the more strongly the antithesis is felt, the nearer the thought to end this remaining tenderness for the gross and unspiritual,—to drop this ballast of earth, and rise into the region of heavenly realities. Upon a window of Canterbury Cathedral, beneath a representation of the miracle of Cana, is the legend,—"Lympha dat historiam, vinum notat allegoriam." But if the earthly is there only for the sake of this heavenly transmutation,—if the miracle, and the miracle alone, shows God's purpose accomplished,—then all things must be miraculous, for all else may be safely ignored. Henceforth, nothing is of itself profane, for the profane is only that wherein the higher and truer sense has not yet been recognized. What is demanded is not an exceptional transmutation, but a translation,—that all Nature should be interpreted of the spirit.
The result is, on the one hand, a greater license in dealing with actual forms, since Art sees all things on one level of dignity,—respects one no more than another, but only its own purpose,—is careless of material qualities, and of moral qualities, too, as far as they are bound to particular shapes. Why dwell tediously upon one particle, when the value of it consists not in its particularity, but in its harmony with the rest of the universe? Giotto seems to make short work with the human form divine by wrapping all his figures from head to foot in flowing draperies. But these figures have more humanity in them, stand closer to us, because the meaning is no longer petrified in the shape, but speaks to us freely and directly, in a look, a gesture, a sweep of the garment. The Greek said,—"With these superhuman lineaments you are to conceive the presence of Jove; these are the appropriate forms of the immortals." Giotto said,—"See what divine meanings in every-day faces and actions; with these eyes you are to look upon the people in the street." The one is a remote and incredible perfection,—the other, the intimate reality of the actual and present. It is, in truth, therefore, a closer approach to Nature than was before possible. The artist no longer shuns full actuality for his conception, for he fears no confusion with the actual. For instance, from the earliest times the celestial nature of angels had been naïvely intimated by appending wings to them. There was no attempt to carry out the suggestion, or to show the mechanical possibility of it, for that would be only to make winged men. The painters of the sixteenth century, on the other hand, from a nervous dread lest wings should prove insufficient, establish a sure basis of clouds for their angels, with more and more emphasis of buoyancy and extent, until at last, no longer trusting their own statement, they settle the question by showing them from below, already risen, and so choke off the doubt whether they can rise. But Orcagna's angels float without assistance or effort, by their own inherent lightness, as naturally as we walk. They are not out of their element, but bring their element with them. These are not men caught up into the skies, and do not need to be sustained there. The world they inhabit is not earth in heaven, but heaven on earth,—the earth seen in accordance with the purpose of its existence.
Giotto's fellow-citizens were struck with the new interest which the language of attitude and gesture and all the familiar details of life acquired in his representation of them. Looking around them, they saw what they had been taught to see, and concluded it was only an unexampled closeness of copying. No doubt Giotto thought so, too,—but had that been all, we should not have heard of it. It is this new interest that has to be accounted for. The charm did not lie in the fact, nor in the reproduction of it in the picture, but in a sudden sense of its value as expression, resting on a still obscurer feeling that herein lay its whole value,—that the actual is not what it seems, still less a pure delusion, but that it is pure seeming, so that its phenomenal character is no reproach, but the bond that connects it with reality. Just because it is only "the outward show," and does not pretend to be anything more, what it shows is not "the things that only seem," but the things that are. The attractiveness of beauty is due to the sense of higher affinities in the object; it is finality felt, but not comprehended, so that the form shines with the splendor of a purpose that belongs not to it, but to the whole whereof it is a part. Aristotle makes wonder the forerunner of science. So our admiration of beauty is a tribute paid in advance to the fresh insight it promises. Whether it be called miracle or inspiration, the artist must see his theme as something excellent and singular. This is perhaps that "strangeness" which Lord Bacon requires in all "excellent beauty," the new significance coming direct, and not through reflection, and therefore ineffable and incomparable. That Giotto and his successors went on for two hundred years painting saints and miracles was not because the Church so ordained, nor from any extraordinary devoutness of the artists, but because they still needed an outward assurance that what they did was not the petty triviality it seemed. There must always remain the sense of an ulterior, undeveloped meaning; when that is laid bare, Art has become superfluous, and makes haste to withdraw into obscure regions. For it is only as language that the picture or the statue avails anything, and this circumstantiality of expression is tolerable only so long as it is the only expression. Beauty is an honor to matter; but spirit, the source of beauty, is impatient of such measure of it as Art can give. As, in the legend, Eurydice, the dawn, sinks back into night at the look of the arisen sun, so this lovely flush of the dawning intelligence wanes before the eye of the intellect. The picture is a help so long as it transcends previous conception; but when the mind comes up with these sallies, and the picture is compared with the idea, it sinks back into a thing. Thenceforth it takes rank with Nature, and falls victim to the natural laws. It is only an aspect and an instant,—not eternal, but a petty persistence,—not God, but an idol,—not the saint, but his flesh and integuments.