Part 7 (2/2)

135 Lastly The habit of constantly carrying everything up to the uteneral to the merits of men ith an equal love of truth up to a certain point, yet express themselves habitually with speed and power, rather than with finish, and give abstracts of truth rather than total truth Probably to the end of time artists will more or less be divided into these classes, and it will be impossible to make men like Millais understand the retted because the Pre-Raphaelites have enorination, as well as of realization, and do not yet themselves know of how er scale, and with a less laborious finish

136 With all their faults, their pictures are, since Turner's death, the best--incomparably the best--on the walls of the Royal Academy; and such works as Mr Hunt's ”Claudio and Isabella” have never been rivaled, in some respects never approached, at any other period of art

This I believe to be a most candid statement of all their faults and all their deficiencies; not such, you perceive, as are likely to arrest their progress The ”na est veritas” was never more sure of accomplishment than by these radually unite their influence hatever is true or powerful in the reactionary art of other countries; and on their works such a school will be founded as shall justify the third age of the world's civilization, and render it as great in creation as it has been in discovery

137 And now let, you will bestated to you,--that none was ever truly great but that which represented the living for whom it arose;--that all precious historical work records, not the past, but the present Re_ pictures, as in _being_ pictures, that you can encourage a noble school The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiue ideality, nor for beauty of fore; but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion

ADDENDA

TO

THE FOURTH LECTURE

138 I could not enter, in a popular lecture, upon one intricate and difficult question, closely connected with the subject of Pre-Raphaelitism--namely, the relation of invention to observation; and composition to imitation It is still less a question to be discussed in the compass of a note; and I must defer all careful examination of it to a future opportunity Nevertheless, it is iether unanswered the first objection which is now most commonly made to the Pre-Raphaelite work, namely, that the principle of it seeinative power Indeed, such an objection sounds strangely on the lips of a public who have been in the habit of purchasing, for hundreds of pounds, s only servile ie that an imitation of a cow's head by Paul Potter, or of an old woman's by Ostade, or of a scene of tavern debauchery by Teniers, should be purchased and proclai of thein Hunt's ”Isabella,” or of the loveliest English landscape, haunted by sorrow, in Millais' ”Ophelia,”

should be declared ”puerile” But, strange though the utterance of it be, there is so as the Pre-Raphaelites only paint frorouped, their pictures can never have the characters of the highest class of compositions But, on the other hand, the shallow and conventional arrangements commonly called ”compositions” by the artists of the present day, are infinitely farther froreat art than the most patient work of the Pre-Raphaelites That work is, even in its humblest form, a secure foundation, capable of infinite superstructure; a reality of true value, as far as it reaches, while the cos are a vain effort at superstructure without foundation--utter negation and fallacy fro to end

139 But more than this, the very faithfulness of the Pre-Raphaelites arises froinative power Not only can all the members of the school compose a thousand times better than the men who pretend to look down upon thereatest men of old times possessed more exhaustless invention than either Millais or Rossetti; and it is partly the very ease hich they invent which leads theination, but have learned merely to produce a spurious resemblance of its results by the recipes of cohtily on their concoctive science; but the inations haunt, every hour, is apt to care too little for the for the perfect truth which he finds is not to be coly admit that it is possible to love this truth of reality too intensely, yet I have no hesitation in declaring that there is _no hope_ for those who despise it, and that the painter, whoever he be, who despises the pictures already produced by the Pre-Raphaelites, has hireat painter of any kind Paul Veronese and Tintoret the to imitate the Pre-Raphaelite work, would have looked upon it with deep respect, as John Bellini looked on that of Albert Durer; none but the ignorant could be unconscious of its truth, and none but the insincere regardless of it

140 How far it is possible for men educated on the severest Pre-Raphaelite principles to advance froreat schools of composition, I do not care to inquire, for at this period such an advance is certainly not desirable Of great coh, and it would be well for the world if it illing to take some care of those it has Of pure and s done and seen around us daily, we have hitherto had nothing And in art, as in all other things, besides the literature of which it speaks, that sentence of Carlyle is inevitably and irreversibly true:--”Day after day, looking at the high destinies which yet await literature, which literature will ere long address herself with rows clearer to us that the proper task of literature lies in the domain of BELIEF, within which, poetic fiction, as it is charitably naure, if allowed a settlement there Whereby were it not reasonable to prophesy that this exceeding great eneration, gradually do one of two things, either retire into nurseries, and work for children, minors, and semifatuous persons of both sexes, or else, ere far better, sweep their novel fabric into the dust cart, and betake them, with such faculty as they have, _to understand and record what is true_, of which surely there is and forever will be a whole infinitude unknown to us, of infinite importance to us? Poetry will her knowledge, and the only genuine Ro this sentence, a paythemselves Pre-Raphaelites”[40]

[Footnote 40: Art, its Constitution and Capacities, etc By the Rev

Edward Young, MA The phrase ”exceedingly youngtwice quoted (carefully excluding the context) from my pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitis, and that strength is still with them, and life, with all the war of it, still in front of thee at which Raphael painted the ”Disputa,” his greatest work; Rossetti and Hunt are both of the as Giotto, when he was chosen fro the painters of Italy to decorate the Vatican But Italy, in her great period, knew her great land to insult the strength of her noblest children--to wither their warm enthusiasm early into the bitterness of patient battle, and leave to those whom she should have cherished and aided, no hope but in resolution, no refuge but in disdain

142 Indeed it is woful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the wisdons of these ti the darkest But hoe had not lost its honor; nor did childhood ever refuse its reverence, except where age had forgotten correction The cry, ”Go up, thou bald head,” will never be heard in the land which remembers the precept, ”See that ye despise not one of these little ones;” and although indeed youth _ed into presuressive power into arrested pride, there is soe which has learned neither judgentleness, which is ithout charity, and cold without discretion