Part 6 (1/2)

Of course a co like it, would involve a treatise on the whole history of the world I shallandon the subject, and to show sufficient practical ground for the conclusion, that landscape-painting is indeed a noble and useful art, though one not long known by man I shall therefore examine, as best I can, the effect of landscape, 1st, on the Classical mind; 2dly, on the Mediaeval mind; and lastly, on the Modernthe effect of it on _any mind_, which must be settled first; and this I will endeavour to do in the next chapter

[51] The Society of Painters in Water-Colours, often referred to as the Old Water-Colour Society Ruskin was elected an honorary member in 1873

OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY

VOLUME III, CHAPTER 12

Now, therefore, putting these tiresoo on at our ease to examine the point in question,--namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper, and true appearances of things to us; and the extraordinary, or false appearances, e are under the influence of emotion, or conte entirely unconnected with any real power or character in the object, and only imputed to it by us

For instance--

The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the old[53]

This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue The crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron

How is it that we enjoy soelse than a plain crocus?

It is an is about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or ulti pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless _un_true And what is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all theso

It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this fallacy is of two principal kinds Either, as in this case of the crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real expectation that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused by an excited state of the feelings,us, for the ti of the fancy we shall have to speak presently; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of the other error, that which the ly by emotion Thus, for instance, in _Alton Locke_,--

They rowed her in across the rolling foa foam[54]

The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl The state ofcreature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief All violent feelings have the same effect They produce in us a falseness in all our ienerally characterize as the ”pathetic fallacy”

Noe are in the habit of considering this fallacy as eminently a character of poetical description, and the temper of mind in which we allow it, as one eminently poetical, because passionate But I believe, if we look well into the reatest poets do not often admit this kind of falseness,--that it is only the second order of poets who ht in it[55]

Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling froh,”[56] he gives the htness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that _these_ are souls, and _those_ are leaves; he e speaks of

The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can,[57]

he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the leaf; he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not; confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment, and the wind that shakes it with music Here, however, there is soe; but take an instance in Hoe of Ulysses, Elpenor, his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in the Circean palace, and has been left dead, unmissed by his leader or companions, in the haste of their departure They cross the sea to the Cimmerian land; and Ulysses summons the shades from Tartarus The first which appears is that of the lost Elpenor Ulysses, ahtness which is seen in Hamlet,[58] addresses the spirit with the simple, startled words:--

”Elpenor! How camest thou under the shadowy darkness? Hast thou come faster on foot than I in my black shi+p?”[59]

Which Pope renders thus:--

O, say, what angry power Elpenor led To glide in shades, and wander with the dead?

How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, Outfly the ni wind?