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    vious writers ? Whatever gifts the boy had , would much be likely to come of them so treated ? unless , indeed , they were so great as to break through all such snares of falsehood and vanity , and build their own foundation in spite of us ; whereas if , as In cases numbering millions against units , the natural gifts were too weak to do this , could anything c me of such training but utter inanity and spuriou-sness of the whole man ? But if we had sense , should we not rather restrain and bridle the first flame of invention in early youth , heaping material on it as one would on the first sparks and tongues of a fire which we desired to feed into greatness ? Should we not

    educate the whole intellect into general strength , and all the affections into warmth and honesty , and look to Heaven for the rest ? This , I say , we should have sense enough to do , in order to produce a poet in words : but , it being required to produce a poet on canvas , what is our way of setting to work ? "We begin , in all probability , by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteen , that Nature is full of faults , and that he is to improve her ; but that Raphael is perfection , and that the more he copies Raphael the better ; that after much copying of Raphael , he is to try what he can do himself in a Raphaelesque , but yet original , manner : that is to say , he is to try to do something very clever , all out of his own head , but yet this clever something is to be properly subjected to

    Raphaelesque rules , is to have a principal light occupying one-seventh of its space , and a principal shadow occupying one-third of the same ; that no two people ' s heads in the picture are to be turned the same way [ not a rule to Raphael ] , and that all the personages represented are to possess ideal beauty of the highest order , which ideal beauty consists partly in a Greek outline of nose , partly in proportions expressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin ; but partly also in that degree of improvemtnt which the youth of sixteen is to bestow upon God ' s work in general . This I say is the kind of teaching which through various channels , Royal Academy lecturings , press criticisms , public enthusiasm , and not least by solid weight of gold , we give to our young men . And we wonder we have no painters . "

    The P . R . B . ' s may be accepted as the energetic exponents of reaction against such a system : — " Consider , farther , that the particular system to be overthrown was , in the present case , one of which the main characteristic was the pursuit of beauty at the expense of manliness and truth ; and it will seem likely , a priori , that the men intended successfully to resist the influence of such a system should be endowed with little natural sense of beauty , and thus

    rendered dead to the temptation it presented . Summing up these conditions , there is surely little cause for surprise that pictures painted , in a temper of resistance , by exceedingly young men , ot stubborn instincts and positive self-trust , and with little natural perception of beauty , should not be calculated , at the first glance , to win us from works enriched by plagiarism , polished by convention , invested with all the attractiveness of artificial grace , and recommended to our respect by established authority . "

    Jiut Mr . Kuskin , while thundering against Royal Academy twaddle ( and it is great ) avoids the delicate and difficult question which meets every student at the vestibule ol Art , viz ., Are the great masters to be wholly rejected , and their experience disregarded , so that each painter must begin de novo , as it painting had never been ; or are they to be accepted under certain restrictions ; and what are those restrictions ? The student ought to be told whether , it he reject Raphael , lie may accept (« lotto or Fra Hartoloinineo ; and if ho , why so ? Mr . Kuskin evades the question altogether . Rules of Art , i . e ., the conclusions which the best painters have come to as the result of their experience—he treats with implied scorn . To look at Nature , and copy her is the : whole process . Read this vivid description of

    —TWO I'AINTKKH . " Suppose , for instance , two men , equall y honest , equally industrious , equally impressed with a humble desire to render some part of what they saw in nature faithfully ; and , otherwise , trained in convictions Hiich as I have above endeavoured to induce . But one of them is quiet in temperament , has a feeble memory , no invention , and excessively keen flight . The other is impatient , in temperament , has a memory which nothing escapes , an invention which never jre « tH , and is comparatively near-sighted 11 Set , them both free in the same Held in a

    mountain villey . One sees every tiling , small and large , with almost the same ; clearness ; mountaina and grasshoppers ' alike ; the leaves on the branches , the veins in the pebbles , the bubbles in the stream ; but he citn remember nothing , and invent nothing . Patiently lie nets hiinseH to liiw mighty task ; abandoning at . once all thoughts of seizing transient effects , or giving general impressions of that which his eyes present , to him in microscopical dissection , be chooses some small portion out . of the infinite scene , and ealeulnt . es with courugo the number of weeks which must , ellipse

    before he can do justice to the intensity of his perceptions , or the fulness o f matter in his subject . " Meantime , the other has been watching the change of the clouds , and the march of the lignt along the mountain sides ; he beholds the entire scene in broad , soft masses of true gradation , and the very feebleness of his sig ht is in some sort an advantage to him , in making him more sensible of the aerial mystery of distance , and hiding from him the multitudes of circumstances which it would have been impossible for him to represent . But there is not one change in the casting of the jagged shadows along the hollows of the hills , but it is fixed in his mind for

    ever ; not a flake of spray has broken from the sea of cloud about their bases , " but he has watched it as it melts away , and could recall it to its lost place in heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts . Not only so , but thousands and thousands of such images of older scenes remain congregated in his mind , each mingling in new associations with those now visibly passing before him , and these again confused with other images of his own ceaseless , sleepless imagina * tion , flashing by in sudden troops . Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols and blots , and undecipherable shorthand : as for his sitting down to « draw from Nature , ' there was not one of the

    things which he wished to represent , that stayed for so much as five seconds together ; but none of them escaped for all that ; they are sealed up in that strange storehouse of his ; hy may take one of them out perhaps , this day twenty years , and paint it in his dark room , far away . Now , observe , you may tell both of these men , when they are young , that they are to be honest , that they have an important function , and that they are not to care what Raphael did . This you may wholesomely impress on them both . But fancy the exquisite absurdity of expecting either of them to possess any of the qualities of the other .

    " I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last , and of invention in the first painter , that the contrast between them might be more striking ; but , with very slight modification , both the characters are real . Grant to the first considerable inventive power , "with exquisite sense of colour ; and give to the second , in addition to all his other faculties , the eye of an eagle ; and the first is John Everett Millais , the second Joseph Mallard William Turner . "

    But , we repeat , this pamphlet is little more than the jottings down of a critic ; interesting enough as the rambling observations of one who does observe , but carrying forward no " high argument . " He is led incidentally to speak of Turner , and straightway fills half the pamphlet with a review ol Turner ' s different styles . For Turner you must know , is as much a P . R . J 3 . as Milluis or Hunt ! According to Mr . Rtiskin , every man is a P . R . 13 . who really succeeds in painting nature ; an extension of the school which renders criticism somewhat

    vague . Therefore we argue not with Mr . Kuskin ; we content ourselves with two brief passages , one as a specimen of his pictorial style , the other as the iteration of a principle we are incessantl y applying to poets and novcllists : —

    JOHN LHW 1 S 8 ANIMALS . " Reubens , liembrandt , Snyders , Tintorct , and Titian , have all , in various ways , drawn wild beasts magnificently ; hut they have in some sort , humanized or deinoni / . ed them , making them either ravenous fiends , or educated beasts , that would draw ears , and had respect for hermits . The sullen isolation of the brutal nature ; the dignity and quietness of the mighty limbs ; the shaggy mountainous power , mingled with grace as of a flowing stream ; the stealthy restraint of strength and wrath in every soundless motion of the gigantic frame ; all this seems never to have been seen , much less drawn , until Jiewis drew and himself engraved a series of animal subjects , now many years ago . "

    TKUT 11 IN A 111 ' . " I wish it to be understood how every great man paints what he sees or did see , Jus greatness being indeed little else than his intense sense of fact . And thus I'rc-ltaphaclilism imdRaphaelitism , and Turnerism , are all one and the same , so far as education can inlluence them . They are different in their choice , different in ilirir faculties , but all the same in this , that Raphael himself , so far as he was great , and all who preceded or followed him who ever were great , became ho b y painting the truths around them as ' they appeared to each man ' s own mind , not as he had been tau ght , to see , them , except by thediod who made both him and them . "

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    TUOIINIIUHy ' H I . AVK AND I . I'HiKNIKS . Lays and Legends or JSalladu of the . Netv h ' urld . lly O \ V ' 1 IkmiiIm . iv . HiniudcB iiuil OUtty " . To any ambitious friend resolved on rushing into print , we . should urge this final counsel : at any rate publish your verses without , a Preface I Authors eoinplainof the nil bless criticism which Uieii poems elicit ,, nnd little do they suspect how much of if , is owing to the prejudicial effect of some pompous or

    flippant preface . Bad as most volumes of verse unblushmgly are , they are often rendered worse by the uneasy flippancy in which criticism \ Za WOTSG i Dy or defied ; and as the prefaoe stiSTAT we could never underJnd uponife ^ l ^ t writers so commonly assume a facetious tori a suchl facetiousnessTye Gods , such facetiousnessT The ordinary preface runs somewhat thus hL is a volume of poetry thrown off by me in careless moments of leisure . I can do immensely cleverer

    things if I try—but I haven't the time . Neverthe less , though hastily written you are requested to observe that they are by no means crude or incorrectfor the rest I scorn the opinion of those who do not admire them , and rely on the impartial justice of those who do admire them . There are a number of wretched scribblers—wasps who make no honev —always ready to decry genius . But I never read what they say , and I am perfectly calm and indifferent to what they may think of me .

    Word that flippantly or arrogantly and you have the two species of preface usually found introducing a volume of poems ; and so rare is it to find a sensible straightforward word of introduction , that we feel justified in interdicting to poets the use of prefaces altogether . Mr , G . W . Thornbury , though certainl y not below the average mediocrity , ha , s very much disfigured his volume of Lays and Legends by a preface of dreary facetiousness . What opinion does he think the reader can form of his tact , sense , and judgment after such a display ? If Mr . Thornbury wished to address electors from the hustings , ha would not endeavour to enhance the effect of his

    eloquence by previously standing on his head , or balancing a chair upon his chin ; then why attempt to captivate a reader by such feeble pranks as those of his preface ? The idea of his volume is good ; but he is greatly mistaken in supposing he is the first to have opened " the new mine" of New "World Legends . Columbus , Cortez , and Pizarro have been too obviously poetical not to have been frequently chosen . There is moreover a disadvantage in such subjects , greater even than their advantages . The very facility is an obstacle . Their fertility seduces the Writer into a careless

    contentment with the first image and the first suggestion which may arise in his mind , while at the same time this suggestiveness of the subject acts upon the reader ' s mind , and enables him to form pictures for himself . It is thus difficult to treat Columbus adequately , from the very reason that it is easy to treat it with a certain degree of animation . Mr . Thornbury has proved himself no poet by the mediocrity of his treatment of poetic subjects ; on the other hand the interest in his subjects has made his Legends readable , and that caused us to say that the idea of writing poems on Columbus , Cortez , and Pizarro , was a good one inasmuch as it

    secured a certain amount of interest . There is nothing in the Legends which tcinpjs us to quote it ; hut that some specimen of his style may be given we select the following translation oi Freiligrath ' s spirited poem—the reader will see at a glance what are the pretensions of Mr . Ih ornbury to be considered a poet : — " THE LION'S JOURNEY . " ( From the German of Freili grath . ) " The desert king , the lion , his empire winders through , . i } .:., [ lie lies in the marsh , where the g iant rushes Juuc j

    from the view ; ( . () ucrH Where gazelles and giraffes are drinking , Jic t- » in his reedy bed , ' verinC And the loaves of the forest sycamore are qum o ' er hia head . , ' At eve in the Hottentot ' s poor village , when g ° the ruddy fires , - rll ( ll When on the broad wide table land , blaze : up no ^ h When the savage Caffre wanders alone throng still earoo , ., , When the antelope is sleeping beside tjic « g" < - J . ilic irU ' i' 1 "' " ? See , majestic through the desert coine . s im- b

    stately , hIow , . 1 h Unit To dip his red and burning tongue m tin- I ' turbid flow ; . r j - 1- tho ? Stretching forth with joy to taste it , panU' » K pleasure , , f ) ,, liq uid Reaching with his long neck o'er to much i " treasure . . , i-ccd )' " Sudden , rising from his ambush , from t i <> jungle creeping , ir ,, i , rhtly ^ ' M '' Spring" ibe lion on Jiis charger , liko a . kmt , " * man leaping , . .. iniirino 11 Never in a prince ' s stable was there ric . li c 1 |^ ^ - ^ Half so fair aa skin of charger that the ae » it ) on .

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    804 WM »*« . *** ~_ [ Satpro 4 T ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 23, 1851, page 804, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1897/page/16/