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Leader (1850-1860), 24th July 1852, Edition Town of 2, Page 713, Untitled Article

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      companions . Let him be assaulted , and the fire of his nature would turn ao-aiust the assailant , with limbs well able to cope in vigour and agility even against strength of more manly years . So completely formed a throat , mouth , and nose , indicate a fine voice . From such perfect action as his whole form displays , from the firm brow to the gently curved fingers , and the hips beautifully poised on that vigorous leg , it is quite clear that the brain must be in perfect order . He is given to no unhealthy appetites . No gourmand could have so compact a frame . His digestive apparatus must be in most perfect order . His palate must enjoy the food he eats , but as soon as nature is satisfied his appetite must close . He is the type and product of human nature in its most perfect condition ; the child of affection , of beauty , and of vigour , himself possessing all .

      You may take him as the standard of perfect art . There is no superfluity in his forms ; there is individuality sufficient to stamp him as a real human being , and not an abstraction j but to attain the perfect expression in every part , each part is complete in itself , neither stunted nor overgrown . The feelings and the thoughts of such a being as he must be symmetrical and beautiful ; but to express them by means of art , he must have this symmetrical and beautiful exterior . For its own purposes , art cannot be satisfied with less than he is ; but in setting this perfect standard

      before us , you will observe , art appeals to the -Standard of natural feeling within ourselves . You cannot abstract from any one of his attributes without abstracting from this type ;—you cannot withdraw from it , for example , the fire and promptitude of manly courage in action , without abating from the force and impressiveness of the type , without destroying part of that which art requires . You cannot have this sharply defined form , —those muscles swelling with force and energy to their full proportion , and confined to true symmetry , by the same force of organization , —without the action that calls them forth ; that is , you cannot have it without the

      prompt , the energetic , sharp , ardent action which accompanies contestthe contest of the race , of the wrestling , if not contest of a more hazardous kind . You cannot have it , because you cannot press the muscles to their full action without there be a spontaneous and urgent impulse of the mind . Again , you cannot have a human being so perfect in his physical condition , so free in his outward action , with a corresponding force and freedom in his feelings and in his affections . The sweet enjoyment of his mouth , the force of his brow , the physical energy of his whole frame , indicate the

      highest capacity of enjoyment—a capacity accompanied by its co-ordinate impulse . You cannot abate from that capacity without abating proportionately from the fire and force of the type which is before us , making it so far tamer , less impressive , less intensely human . You must have complete and healthy humanity to form the type . The type itself suggests to the mind the functions of complete and healthy humanity , and , so to speak , not only familiarizes and reconciles the mind with these functions , but by sympathy calls them forth , in the mind of the spectator .

      I do not mean of course that , in contemplating the Lizard-catcher , the ideas of murder , or of unrestrained enjoyment , are in any degree suggested to the mind . Quite the reverse . The action of the youth is so complete in itself , that at the time of contemplation , unless by dint of some critical reflection , the mind is fully occupied with the present action . You get no further than the beauty of the form , and that gentle interest in the occupation of catching the lizard , which the sculptor has intended to raise in the mind : for , in this design , the aspect of the figure was the primary object ; the action is slight and secondary . It inevitably happens that in contemplating a figure of this sort , and especially in contemplating many

      iigures of this sort—such as the Genius of the Vatican , the young Apollo , the Sl eep accompanying Death—each one repeating the idea of the rest in a new and varied form , the mind is attuned to sympathy with the nature of that which it contemplates ; is trained to feel as the youth would feel in life . To form the type of perfect art , you must have all the resources and forces of nature with corresponding impulses and capacities ; and then , (¦ converso , the type of art becomes a monument , recalling to us the primary emotions and impulses of nature in its purest and most inartificial state . Thus , when we have become perfectly trained to that which we may call , with philological as well as acsthetical propriety , our most artificial condition , we are sent back to recal the most natural condition from which

      we started . Perfect art rccals us to simplest nature . It is the same through all the arts : the most perfect and complete forms , those which by their power and beauty command the most absolute and enduring allegiance of the most cultivated audiences , are those also which most powerfully recal the aboriginal feelings . The greater poets , whose works continue to last as familiar books without any reference to the duration of time after their own life , are those which rest for their dramatic force on the simplest exhibition of the most natural feelings . I do not mean to say that the dramatical expression of these feelings may not be 1 U llie VlM'tr llMrlwut fl / Mrf / wk silllf iiruf * wl . i « i < l jk . rjk « i s . / lrek * tl is »< i 4 rtjl Wli < ftl / - « wkfifll 1 « r » m the hihest degree cultivated and even licatedShakspeare

      very g comp . , 'or example , if you are to take the dramu as a mere representative or imitative art , must be justly said to have overlaid the expression of feeling in his characters with reflective thought auul commentary ; but it is a very literal and impotent notion of art which treats thia running commentary sis an objection . When Raphael portrays the liar Ananias , stricken down by the Divine wrath through the instrumentality of Peter , he not merely K » ves you the fatal denunciation of the apostle , and the writhing form of Hie stricken man , but the apostle near Peter , ' absorbed in u silent reference l <) heaven , the astonished and horror-stricken by-standers starting back

      from the moral convulsion , are circumstances that fill up , with an explanation and commentary , the full sense to the spectator of that which has happened , more forcibly than the same completion could occur to any ordinary mind . Jn like manner , when Hotspur says , " Oh , who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus , " be says more , perhaps , than would occur to the man himself , when told to treat a disaster hy imagining it different . He brings illustrations to bear which the absorbed and angry mind would not stop to recal ; he performs , so to speak , for the moment , the part both of the actor and spectator . But the illustration is so strictly pertinent to the truth of the feeling which is in action , —although drawn from an idea apart , it so completely sends the mind of the auditory back , with a strong sense of that main feeling , that instead of diverting

      the mind , and turning it away from the main idea , it , on the contrary , forces it back with redoubled sense of that main idea . Instead of breaking the unity , it renders the unity more intense ; it drives it further in the mind of him who contemplates it . And you will observe , that with all this abundance , or even , as it has been called , ocer-abundance of art , the sole thing that is now before your mind , is one of the simplest feelings that can take possession of the heart , and one of the commonest—the sense that a great injury cannot be neutralized by imagining that it is not so . It is not necessary to recal the wrongs and angers of Achilles—the vicissitudes of Ulysses—the stories of love and arms amongst the Italians—the stories of conflict and vicissitude amongst the romantic Latin poets—the subjects of our own Spenser , our Chaucer : you can illustrate the idea faster than I can myself , with the recollections of your own mind .

      In the midst of the most artificial community in the world ; on a spot of ground heaped round and round , for miles on miles , with buildings the most alien from nature ; in the midst of trade and law , police , and social customs the most removed from a state of nature that was ever witnessed ; in the midst of the royal parish of St . James ' s , has stood for many years a large building , in itself one of the most artificial products found in the globe . It is very spacious , and planned on the most artful manner , to collect together a great crowd , and so to dispose it that each person should

      see and hear most completely all that is passing before it . In that house , three nights in the week , for some months during the year , is collected a multitude of people in the most artificial state , drawn from an aristocracy whose whole habit of life is an artifice , and filled up with professional people or wealthy traders whose very means of existence depend upon the complication of unnatural necessities . In that building , that concourse is collected to witness a kind of work which is commonly considered in its form the most artificial that art has attained to . The dialogue passes in

      music ; the vicissitudes of society are arranged in the drama of that stage so as to fall in with exigencies of display and the musical arrangement ; the kings and potentates of that stage hold an allegiance to the artificial concourse before them—there is a holy alliance to keep the face towards the foot-lights ; the most revolutionary mob arranges itself in a semicircle , with the due proportion of basses , tenors , and trebles ; amidst the crash of empires the rod of the conductor keeps everything in order the most exact , so that not a single string shall vibrate wrong , nor the most insensate demagogue depart from his order in the chord . Yet , what is the object of that assemblage and that complicated exertion ? What is it from which his It

      the most masterly composer for that scen ^ derives power ? is uniformly from the very simplest feelings of which human nature is capable—love in its directest form , anger , ambition , glory . The love of a happy or unhappy couple ; the tyranny of the tyrant ; the ambition and courage of the soldier ; the exulting admiration of the mob ; the rage of the roused populace ; the destructive fury of the demagogue ; the superstition of the priest—such , and such only , constitute the subject-matter of that which artificial concourse on the stage is to lay before the artificial concourse in the body of the house . The artists on that stage , too , must

      be of a nature well endowed physically with the power of setting forth those feelings of ambition , love , anger , exultation ; they must not only have energy sufficient for those functions , power of voice sufficient to utter , but they must have within themselves the aboriginal impulse so strong that they can throw the very soul of the feeling into the expression , and well knowing what that impulse is , set it forth with such force , such vibrating energy , and such genuine quality of the thing , that it shall be recognised immediately in the breasts of the numbers that hear , rouse the feeling within them , and make them acknowledge it .

      Thus you see how trained bands of aboriginal savages arc brought into the midst of the most artificial society in existence , precisely to recal the original impulses of our nature—to remind us at least of what they have been , so that we may not forget them . But I say to you that you cannot have that expression unless you have the spirit embodied in those artists , in that composer , in that painter , in that poet , —unless you have in them the first instincts of human nature , with the power of utterance full ami strong .

      On the other hand , the most cultivated form of art , desired by the most artificial state of society , tested by the judgment of the most complicated education , demands that aboriginal form of instinct , and will not be satisfied without it . Simplest nature , and perfect art , reciprocally produce and require each other . 1 have now explained to you what I hold to lie the relation of art and nature : it remains only to explain the method by which art exercises its discipline . Your Thornton Hunt .

      Untitled Article

      JFI , y 24 , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . 713

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), July 24, 1852, page 713, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1944/page/21/