The Crown of Wild Olive

93

[(Past and Present. Chap. IX. of Third Section.) To think that for these twenty—now twenty-six—years, this one voice of Carlyle's has been the only faithful and useful utterance in all England, and has sounded through all these years in vain! See Fors Clavigera, Letter X.]

94

[We don't want to produce more fuel just now, but much less; and to use what we get for cooking and warming ourselves, instead of for running from place to place.]

95

[Written in 1862. I little thought that when I next corrected my type, the "existing" war best illustrative of the sentence would be between Frenchmen in the Elysian Fields of Paris.]

96

Compare the close of the Fourth Lecture in Aratra Pentelici.

97

It was not a little curious, that in the very number of the Art Union which repeated this direct falsehood about the Pre-Raphaelite rejection of "linear perspective" (by-the-bye, the next time J. B. takes upon him to speak of any one connected with the Universities, he may as well first ascertain the difference between a Graduate and an Under-Graduate), the second plate given should have been of a picture of Bonington's,—a professional landscape painter, observe,—for the want of aërial perspective in which the Art Union itself was obliged to apologise, and in which the artist has committed nearly as many blunders in linear perspective as there are lines in the picture.

98

These false statements may be reduced to three principal heads, and directly contradicted in succession.

The first, the current fallacy of society as well as of the press, was, that the Pre-Raphaelites imitated the errors of early painters.

A falsehood of this kind could not have obtained credence anywhere but in England, few English people, comparatively, having ever seen a picture of early Italian Masters. If they had, they would have known that the Pre-Raphaelite pictures are just as superior to the early Italian in skill of manipulation, power of drawing, and knowledge of effect, as inferior to them in grace of design; and that in a word, there is not a shadow of resemblance between the two styles. The Pre-Raphaelites imitate no pictures: they paint from nature only. But they have opposed themselves as a body to that kind of teaching above described, which only began after Raphael's time: and they have opposed themselves as sternly to the entire feeling of the Renaissance schools; a feeling compounded of indolence, infidelity, sensuality, and shallow pride. Therefore they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelites. If they adhere to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble school in England. If their sympathies with the early artists lead them into mediævalism or Romanism, they will of course come to nothing. But I believe there is no danger of this, at least for the strongest among them. There may be some weak ones, whom the Tractarian heresies may touch; but if so, they will drop off like decayed branches from a strong stem. I hope all things from the school.

The second falsehood was, that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well. This was asserted, and could have been asserted only by persons who had never looked at the pictures.

The third falsehood was, that they had no system of light and shade. To which it may be simply replied that their system of light and shade is exactly the same as the Sun's; which is, I believe, likely to outlast that of the Renaissance, however brilliant.

99

He did not use his full signature, J. M. W., until about the year 1800.

100

I shall give a catalogue raisonnée of all this in the third volume of "Modern Painters."

101

The plate was, however, never published.

102

And the more probably because Turner was never fond of staying long at any place, and was least of all likely to make a pause of two or three days at the beginning of his journey.

103

Vide Modern Painters, Part II. Sect. III. Chap. IV. § 14.

104

This state of mind appears to have been the only one which Wordsworth had been able to discern in men of science; and in disdain of which, he wrote that short-sighted passage in the Excursion, Book III. l. 165-190, which is, I think, the only one in the whole range of his works which his true friends would have desired to see blotted out. What else has been found fault with as feeble or superfluous, is not so in the intense distinctive relief which it gives to his character. But these lines are written in mere ignorance of the matter they treat; in mere want of sympathy with the men they describe; for, observe, though the passage is put into the mouth of the Solitary, it is fully confirmed, and even rendered more scornful, by the speech which follows.

105

Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished sculpture; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the more roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For the rendering of all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of forms disturbed by the lustre of metal or polished stone, the method employed in the plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory. Casts are first taken from the coins, in white plaster; these are photographed, and the photograph printed by the heliotype process of Messrs. Edwards and Kidd. Plate XII. is exceptional, being a pure mezzotint engraving of the old school, excellently carried through by my assistant, Mr. Allen, who was taught, as a personal favour to myself, by my friend, and Turner's fellow-worker, Thomas Lupton. Plate IV. was intended to be a photograph from the superb vase in the British Museum, No. 564 in Mr. Newton's Catalogue; but its variety of colour defied photography, and after the sheets had gone to press I was compelled to reduce Le Normand's plate of it, which is unsatisfactory, but answers my immediate purpose.

The enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made for me with most successful skill by Sergeant Spackman, of South Kensington; and the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is acknowledged in the course of the Lectures; though with thanks which must remain inadequate lest they should become tedious; for Mr. Burgess drew the subjects of Plates III., X., and XIII.; drew and engraved every woodcut in the book; and printed all the plates with his own hand.

106

A pamphlet by the Earl of Southesk, "Britain's Art Paradise," (Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh) contains an entirely admirable criticism of the most faultful pictures of the 1871 Exhibition. It is to be regretted that Lord Southesk speaks only to condemn; but indeed, in my own three days' review of the rooms, I found nothing deserving of notice otherwise, except Mr. Hook's always pleasant sketches from fisher life, and Mr. Pettie's graceful and powerful, though too slightly painted, study from Henry VI.

107

I had a real ploughshare on my lecture table; but it would interrupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if I attempted here to illustrate by figures the relation of the coulter to the share, and of the hard to the soft pieces of metal in the share itself.

108

A sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable by the reader, without a figure.

109

One of William Hunt's peaches; not, I am afraid, imaginable altogether, but still less representable by figure.

110

The crystal ball above mentioned.

111

All grandest effects in mouldings may be, and for the most part have been, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental) section. More refined sections, as that of the fluting of a Doric shaft, are only of use near the eye and in beautiful stone; and the pursuit of them was one of the many errors of later Gothic. The statement in the text that the mouldings, even of best time, "have no real relation to construction," is scarcely strong enough: they in fact contend with, and deny the construction, their principal purpose seeming to be the concealment of the joints of the voussoirs.

112

Some of the most precious work done for me by my assistant Mr. Burgess, during the course of these lectures, consisted in making enlarged drawings from portions of photographs. Plate III. is engraved from a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of which Plate I. is a reduction.

113

Glance forward at once to § 75, read it, and return to this.

114

There is a primary and vulgar sense of "exhibited" in Lucian's mind; but the higher meaning is involved in it.

115

In the Greek, "ambrosial." Recollect always that ambrosia, as food of gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food is ambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called "ambrosial" because it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the 23rd Psalm, the stillness of waters.

116

I have italicised this final promise of blessedness, given by the noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's 5th Latter-day pamphlet, throughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition.

117

"Falsely represented," would be the better expression. In the cast of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is represented by a repetition of casts from one mould, of which the design itself is entirely conjectural.

118

I shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my other writings, to use the terms, Idolatry and Imagination in a more comprehensive sense; but here I use them for convenience sake, limitedly, to avoid the continual occurrence of the terms, noble and ignoble, or false and true, with reference to modes of conception.

119

"And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, and Athena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused the moulded things to have soul (psyche) in them."—Lucian, Prometheus.

120

His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne, belong to another group of myths. The father of Athena is the lower and nearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, long withdraws and disguises herself.

121

The Latin verses are of later date; the contemporary plain prose retains the Venetian gutturals and aspirates.

122

The best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty of representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability of representing either a man, a horse, or a lion.

123

See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girl of eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire.

124

In Durer's "Melencholia."

125

Turner's, in the Hakewill series.

126

Nothing is more wonderful, or more disgraceful among the forms of ignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of gain, than the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentially Athletic. I received a letter from Birmingham, some little time since, inviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, "machinery excelled rude hand work." The writer had not the remotest conception that he might as well have asked me to come and see a mechanical boat-race rowed by automata, and "how much machinery excelled rude arm-work."

127

Such as the sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance, referred to in the Third Lecture, § 84.

128

It is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of the Athenian Ceramicus to the French Tile-fields, Tileries, or Tuileries; and how these last may yet become—have already partly become—"the Potter's field," blood-bought (December, 1870.)

129

This relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in the lower school in the University galleries.

130

The reference is to a cast from a small and low relief of Florentine work in the Kensington Museum.

131

The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above the twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for this Lecture, so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch for maximum projection.

132

This plate has been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, in which he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and preserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph would have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains.

133

These two marbles will always, henceforward, be sufficiently accessible for reference in my room at Corpus Christi College.

134

That it was also, in, some cases, the earliest that the Greeks gave, is proved by Lucian's account of his first lesson at his uncle's; the ενκοπευς, literally "in-cutter"—being the first tool put into his hand, and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy pressing too hard, presently breaks;—gets beaten—goes home crying, and becomes, after his dream above quoted, a philosopher instead of a sculptor.

135

The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine, though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in fuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth Lecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the published course on Florentine Sculpture.

136

These plates of coins are given for future reference and examination, not merely for the use made of them in this place. The Lacinian Hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be very noble; her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape of storms though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes on its altar. (Livy, xxiv. 3.)

137

Ancient Cities and Kings, Plate IV. No. 20.

138

The siege of Paris, at the time of the delivery of this Lecture, was in one of its most destructive phases.

139

Compare Time and Tide, § 169, and Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV, page 9.

140

See Appendix, "Modern Education," and compare § 70 of Time and Tide.

141

[They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this year, 1873, at the rate of a regiment a week.]

142

The late Sir Herbert Edwardes.

143

I would much rather print these passages of Carlyle in large golden letters than small black ones; but they are only here at all for unlucky people who can't read them with the context.

144

I do not mean, in saying 'imaginary,' that I have not permitted to myself, in several instances, the affectionate discourtesy of some reminiscence of personal character; for which I must hope to be forgiven by my old pupils and their friends, as I could not otherwise have written the book at all. But only two sentences in all the dialogues, and the anecdote of 'Dotty,' are literally 'historical.'

145

Dante, Inf. 7. 1.

146

Note i.

147

Note iii.

148

Note ii.

149

Note iii.

150

Note iv.

151

Quartz is not much harder than epidote; the strength is only supposed to be in some proportion to the squares of the diameters.

152

Note v.

153

Note vi.

154

Nell, in the Old Curiosity Shop, was simply killed for the market, as a butcher kills a lamb (see Forster's Life), and Paul was written under the same conditions of illness which affected Scott—a part of the ominous palsies, grasping alike author and subject, both in Dombey and Little Dorrit.

155

Chourineur' not striking with dagger-point, but ripping with knife-edge. Yet I do him, and La Louve, injustice in classing them with the two others; they are put together only as parts in the same phantasm. Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the 'Louvécienne' (Lucienne) of Gaboriau—she, province-born and bred; and opposed to Parisian civilisation in the character of her sempstress friend. 'De ce Paris, où elle était née, elle savait tout—elle connaissait tout. Rien ne l'étonnait, nul ne l'intimidait. Sa science des détails matériels de l'existence était inconcevable. Impossible de la duper!—Eh bien! cette fille si laborieuse et si économe n'avait même pas la plus vague notion des sentiments qui sont l'honneur de la femme. Je n'avais pas idée d'une si complète absence de sens moral; d'une si inconsciente dépravation, d'une impudence si effrontément naïve.'—L'Argent des autres, vol. i. p. 358.

156

The reader who cares to seek it may easily find medical evidence of the physical effects of certain states of brain disease in producing especially images of truncated and Hermes-like deformity, complicated with grossness. Horace, in the Epodes, scoffs at it, but not without horror. Luca Signorelli and Raphael in their arabesques are deeply struck by it: Durer, defying and playing with it alternately, is almost beaten down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and suspended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lord's Prayer; it takes entire possession of Balzac in the Contes Drolatiques; it struck Scott in the earliest days of his childish 'visions' intensified by the axe-stroke murder of his grand aunt; L. i. 142, and see close of this note. It chose for him the subject of the Heart of Midlothian, and produced afterwards all the recurrent ideas of executions, tainting Nigel, almost spoiling Quentin Durward—utterly the Fair Maid of Perth: and culminating in Bizarro, L. x. 149. It suggested all the deaths by falling, or sinking, as in delirious sleep—Kennedy, Eveline Neville (nearly repeated in Clara Mowbray), Amy Robsart, the Master of Ravenswood in the quicksand, Morris, and Corporal Grace-be-here—compare the dream of Gride, in Nicholas Nickleby, and Dickens's own last words, on the ground, (so also, in my own inflammation of the brain, two years ago, I dreamed that I fell through the earth and came out on the other side). In its grotesque and distorting power, it produced all the figures of the Lay Goblin, Pacolet, Flibbertigibbet, Cockledemoy, Geoffrey Hudson, Fenella, and Nectabanus; in Dickens it in like manner gives Quilp, Krook, Smike, Smallweed, Miss Mowcher, and the dwarfs and wax-work of Nell's caravan; and runs entirely wild in Barnaby Rudge, where, with a corps de drame composed of one idiot, two madmen, a gentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy fool who is also a blackguard, a hangman, a shrivelled virago, and a doll in ribands—carrying this company through riot and fire, till he hangs the hangman, one of the madmen, his mother, and the idiot, runs the gentleman-fool through in a bloody duel, and burns and crushes the shop-boy fool into shapelessness, he cannot yet be content without shooting the spare lover's leg off, and marrying him to the doll in a wooden one; the shapeless shop-boy being finally also married in two wooden ones. It is this mutilation, observe, which is the very sign manual of the plague; joined, in the artistic forms of it, with a love of thorniness—(in their mystic root, the truncation of the limbless serpent and the spines of the dragon's wing. Compare Modern Painters, vol. iv., 'Chapter on the Mountain Gloom,' s. 19); and in all forms of it, with petrifaction or loss of power by cold in the blood, whence the last Darwinian process of the witches' charm—'cool it with a baboon's blood, then the charm is firm and good.' The two frescoes in the colossal handbills which have lately decorated the streets of London (the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooke decapitation) are the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque under this influence; and it is well worth while to get the number for the week ending April 3, 1880, of Young Folks—'A magazine of instructive and entertaining literature for boys and girls of all ages,' containing 'A Sequel to Desdichado' (the modern development of Ivanhoe), in which a quite monumental example of the kind of art in question will be found as a leading illustration of this characteristic sentence, "See, good Cerberus," said Sir Rupert, "my hand has been struck off. You must make me a hand of iron, one with springs in it, so that I can make it grasp a dagger." The text is also, as it professes to be, instructive; being the ultimate degeneration of what I have above called the 'folly' of Ivanhoe; for folly begets folly down, and down; and whatever Scott and Turner did wrong has thousands of imitators—their wisdom none will so much as hear, how much less follow!

In both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil and good are alike conditions of literal vision: and therefore also, inseparably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first elements of all Scott's errors were in the milk of his consumptive nurse, which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19—and was without doubt the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i. 20). Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him read the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and her death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own murder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at Carlisle (24), his aunt's husband having seen them; issuing, he himself scarcely knows how, in the unaccountable terror that came upon him at the sight of statuary, 31—especially Jacob's ladder; then the murder of Mrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the blood vessel at Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-67—solaced, while he was being 'bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,' by that history of the Knights of Malta—fondly dwelt on and realised by actual modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the theme of its last effort in passing away.

157

'Se dit par dénigrement, d'un chrétien qui ne croit pas les dogmes de sa religion.'—Fleming, vol. ii. p. 659.

158

'A son nom,' properly. The sentence is one of Victor Cherbuliez's, in Prosper Randoce, which is full of other valuable ones. See the old nurse's 'ici bas les choses vont de travers, comme un chien qui va à vêpres, p. 93; and compare Prosper's treasures, 'la petite Vénus, et le petit Christ d'ivoire,' p. 121; also Madame Brehanne's request for the divertissement of 'quelque belle batterie à coups de couteau' with Didier's answer. 'Hélas! madame, vous jouez de malheur, ici dans la Drôme, l'on se massacre aussi peu que possible,' p. 33.

159

Edgeworth's Tales (Hunter, 1827), 'Harrington and Ormond,' vol. iii. p. 260.

160

Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth.

161

Scott's father was habitually ascetic. 'I have heard his son tell that it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good, to taste it again, and say, "Yes—it is too good, bairns," and dash a tumbler of cold water into his plate.'—Lockhart's Life (Black, Edinburgh, 1869), vol. i. p. 312. In other places I refer to this book in the simple form of 'L.'