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    PASSAGES FUOM A HOY'S EPIC BACCIIU8. Eno...

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    The Discipline Of Akt Letteb I.—To A A. ...

    mate and instinctive nature , that it cannot be drawn forth analytically . Tha it is so , we know ; and we may conjecture the reason to be , that a rhythmical form assimilates the medium of art to our organic nature , appealing to the aboriginal force within us , which makes our pulse beat rhythmically , and bends the forms of our bodies inexorably to a law of symmetry . The rhythmical form also enables us to insist upon the points which most should rivet attention , and ta isolate the objects which we desire to contemplate in a shape for more _oRy review .

    Phrenologists , by a classification adopted even among those who do not accept phrenology as a complete science , divide our faculties into the intellectual powers , the moral feelings , and the propensities or instinctive forces subservient to animal life . The terms are bad—think of " morals , " or things relating to manners and customs as a term for aboriginal faculties !—but the nature of the classification is generally comprehended : now what Science is to the intellectual faculties , what the Useful Arts are to the lifecherishing faculties , Art is to the moral feelings . Each division of our nature has a bearing on the rest , from which it cannot he separated ; hut Art originates in the feelings , and works through them .

    Even Architecture does so : its power , as I have elsewhere said , is derived from its rhythmical adaptation of the laws of inorganic life— -gravitation , cohesion , and balance . This is the reason why we always crave to see the supports which sustain a weight , and require that they look sufficient . A well poised structure presents , in a form rhythmically concentrated and assimilated to our perception , a living example of the laws of inorganic life—those laws which—so far as we suppose ourselves to understand the code—sustain the Universe . Hence the feeling properly called sublime which great works of Architecture excite .

    One word as to the use of " the Ideal" in Art . I have already explained what that is , in the essay which I wrote for the Leader on the Pree-Raphaelite School—that promising school , whose best students are just arriving at the age of puberty in Art!—but for the completeness of my subject I must briefly repeat it here . And if I seem too " dry" in my analysis , I must still beseech your - earnest attention , since I am thus dry because I am careful to establish a clear and solid basis . The common notion is , that the Ideal in Art—best understood by the use of the term in painting , though it is essential also in poetry and music—is attained by an eclectic process , which picks out the beauties of the different living examples , puts them

    together , and thus forms an imaginary type . But this notion is refuted by a closer reasoning , a priori , by the history of Art , and by the practice of masters . It is attained thus : —by constantly copying the best living examples , but rejecting the accidental aberrations which in the individual mar perfect symmetry , the artist acquires a knowledge of the essential eliminated from the trivial ; and by the guide of that knowledge , he is able to trace the type through all its individual varieties . It will be perceived that the Ideal thus attained is not an exceptional but a general thing—it is the all purged of the exceptional—it is not factitious but natural—not imaginary but real .

    _4 t is not optional , but essentially necessary to Art . In real life , the accidental is constantly explained by tho essential ; but Art , which brings its subject into one view , has neither the power nor the duty of explaining . For instance , to express the emotions of the soul through the surface , with which Painting deals , Art needs for its purpose a countenance so far conforming to the type as to be instantly and generally understood . A countenance which departs from the type—a " plain face "—may express the emotions clearly enough to those who bave grown familiar with it ; but to strangers , the peculiar form of the countenance distorts the meaning of

    the emotion , and docs not convey it—the language is not intelligible . So likewise the position of an ill-shaped limb in unintelligible until we have seen that limb in several different postures , and therefore an ill-shaped limb is unfit for the purpose of Art . To carry the illustration further ; in nature a tree-trunk may look like a piece of * bank , but you can correct the misconception by altering your point of view ; which you cannot if the painter tantalize , your insight by rendering the tree-trunk equivocal . Add to these considerations , that obscurities and equivocations in Art divert the mind from the main theme to trivialities .

    Art , then , originates with the feelings , reacts upon them , works by a rhythmical medium , and embodies itself in the forms of the Ideal . Originating with the feelings , re-acting upon them , Art is a powerful instrument of social discipline . Of course it must lose its power so soon as any attempt is made to divert it from its province . You can as little make Art didactic as you can paint with n violin , sing with a palette , compress a bale , of cotton with the power of a telescope , or woo your bride with the help of Euclid . Art is an instrument to discipline the feelings , and the nature of which they are a part , through themselves .

    You will observe that moralists in our day treat those same feelings with capricious cruelty . Morality is the Louis Napoleon of philosophy , ami tries to coerce its subjects by a coup d ' etat . Our other faculties are mostly trained by developement—the feelings are mostly trained by suppression . Now they exist , however they may be . ignored , aud they arc too powerful for suppression ; so that they simply break through the false discipline , and thus far stultify it . It is the special province of Art to cultivate the feelings in the legitimate way—by dovelopernerit . ff it tries to ignore the feelings , or suppress them , it ignores its own resource * , and destroys itself . If if \ n powerful , it is powerful by the power of the feelings as _Vhey exist . It cannot work by figmentary or factitious feelings ; it has

    The Discipline Of Akt Letteb I.—To A A. ...

    no power through pedantiy . Such feelings as we have—anger , fear , hope , love , exultation—those are at once the resources and the opportunity of Art , and it cannot act apart from them . It cannot convert them into " proper" manufactured counterfeits , warranted safe ; but must be content to take them as they are . As they are in their most , perfect expression and embodiment—in the Ideal . Here is the essential limitation of Art , its essential direction towards its true end of discipline . Art exercises its greatest power through the Ideal ; it expresses the emotions in their ideal form ; its most powerful influence is to excite the emotions in their ideal form—to impart the ideal form to them where they exist .

    Human beings are born with passions ; you will not discipline those passions by ignoring them ; try to do so by suppressing them , and _ijaffure avenges herself by retorting upon the false moralist some depravity / as the result of his handiwork . Let him try to extinguish the love of victory in action , and he will produce either hypocrites or cowards ; let him try to make ascetics monks , and he will make either morbid fanatics or more morbid debauchees . You discipline the passions effectually when you do it in the usual way for training the faculties— -by cultivating them . Chivalry teaches " destructiveness" to be the powerful handmaid of nobleness and order . Poetry teaches " young love" to come out of its unhallowed retreats and to be beautiful in sentiment , hating the obscene and the

    brutish . By its exercise through the Ideal , true Art is rendered to a considerable extent impersonal—it thus inspires the higher emotion connected with the passion to which it relates , without the grosser or baser incidents . It is folly to suppose that the " freest" of poets or painters can teach more than instinct or " life" inevitably teaches ; except that he will teach a higher form for passion than it would otherwise possess . Art , indeed , may pander to baser feelings , but only when it departs from the Ideal . Raphael can depict the sweet repose of conjugal delight , as in the Abraham and Sarah of the Loggie , without raising a thought but of tenderness , sweetness , clinging affection , and happiness the most " refined ;"

    while a Greuze , tracing the niceties of a shoulder or the minute disorders of a sleeve , will suggest ideas the most " improper , " though the subject be only the head and shoulders of a girl ten or eleven years of age ; but then Greuze violates Art , by elaborating trivialities , and still more by a meretricious expression which is artificial , not natural , and most egregiously by putting that expression in the face of an infant . In the sweet countenance of Margaret in the summer-house , Retzsch teaches that the lover shall find his most exquisite victory where grace and refinement give him his bride . In the wildest verses of a Burns or an Alexander Smith—how those vehement echoes of southern ardour burst forth amid the ice of puritan Scotland!—the wild are taught to sow their wild oats in ground

    healthier than the back streets of cities . Yes , in their verse , passion stands forth in the sun of nature , fit to be sunned ; but what hideous mockeries of passion , what death of nature and corruption of life , go on under that same dreary ice of Scotch morals ; for of all savage chaos , ugly and unredeemed , deathful and sinful , commend us to that underlying chaotic volcano which rages under the icy feet of Scottish Purity , Gentle , enslaved Purity walks to the kirk , never knowing of what she treads over , excepting through the terrible adumbrated denunciations of the minister ; while the minister himself , not ignorant of the devil he denounces , keeps it a devil , down , down in its reeking cellar beneath the ice . We know something of this south of the Tweed ; but your true " hell upon earth" never keeps so well as under ice .

    I can discuss this qnestion of discipline by development , however , more conveniently in treating of another passion , that of destruction — of " murder ; " but I will reserve that for another letter . I only repeat now , that the function of Art is , to reflect human energies , to ennoble them by the Ideal , to submit them to the discipline of the symmetrical . I have already shown in part the method by which the operation is effected ; I will explain it more exactly next time . The law for the true chivalry iu Art , as in every other form of faith , if thoroughly enforced and interpreted by the plain dictate of nature , is" Honi soil qui mat y _jmise . "—Your ever faithful Thornton Hunt .

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    Passages Fuom A Hoy's Epic Bacciiu8. Eno...

    PASSAGES FUOM A HOY'S EPIC BACCIIU 8 . Enoinctuhki" _) by four hills that boldly face The four great , winds , and touch the journeying stars , A forest , blooming with a lovelier life , So charms the traveller , that he half awaits ' The noiseless opening of those magic trees , To see , in some green depth of lonely shade , High presences , that sit at festal boards , And lift gold cups amid a marble calm . Nor dreams he wholly , but , with wondering eyes , Sees Gods and Godlike shapes ; while here the Fawns , And here blithe Satyr * chase the mocking Nymphs That fly , and as they fly , their yellow hair Eloats round them like a gorgeous summer cloud . Cooling the breeze thut murmurs round tho hilh .,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), July 3, 1852, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03071852/page/20/