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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a40f17 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #64074 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64074) diff --git a/old/64074-0.txt b/old/64074-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 480c337..0000000 --- a/old/64074-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2446 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of G. F. Watts, by G. K. Chesterton - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: G. F. Watts - -Author: G. K. Chesterton - -Release Date: December 22, 2020 [eBook #64074] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/Canadian Libraries) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK G. F. WATTS *** - - - - - G. F. WATTS - - [Illustration: THE HABIT DOES NOT MAKE THE MONK.] - - - - - G. F. WATTS - - BY G. K. CHESTERTON - - [Illustration] - - LONDON - - DUCKWORTH & CO. - - HENRIETTA ST. COVENT GARDEN - - - - - _Published 1904_ - _Reprinted 1906, 1909, 1913, 1914_ - - - PRINTED AT - THE BALLANTYNE PRESS - LONDON - - - - -LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURES - - - _Facing p._ - -THE HABIT DOES NOT MAKE THE MONK _Frontispiece_ - -G. F. WATTS, R.A. 8 - -THE RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE 10 - -LESLIE STEPHEN 14 - -WALTER CRANE 16 - -THE SLUMBER OF THE AGES 18 - -CARDINAL MANNING 20 - -CHAOS 22 - -“FOR HE HAD GREAT POSSESSIONS” 26 - -AN IDLE CHILD OF FANCY 28 - -THE MINOTAUR 32 - -THE COURT OF DEATH 34 - -MATTHEW ARNOLD 36 - -JOHN STUART MILL 36 - -ROBERT BROWNING 38 - -LORD TENNYSON 38 - -THE DWELLER IN THE INNERMOST 40 - -GEORGE MEREDITH 42 - -ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 44 - -HOPE 46 - -JONAH 48 - -MAMMON 52 - -DEATH CROWNING INNOCENCE 54 - -A STORY FROM BOCCACCIO 56 - -LORD LYTTON 58 - -DAWN 60 - -EVE REPENTANT 62 - -LOVE AND DEATH 64 - -WILLIAM MORRIS 66 - -DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 68 - -THOMAS CARLYLE 70 - -GOOD LUCK TO YOUR FISHING 74 - - - _The Photogravures are from photographs by Fredk. Hollyer. - Permanent photographs of works of Watts, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, - Holbein, and of pictures in the Dublin and Hague Galleries can be - obtained of Fredk. Hollyer, 9 Pembroke Square, Kensington._ - -[Illustration: G. F. WATTS, R.A. - -Photograph from Life by Frederick Hollyer.] - - -George Frederick Watts was born on 23rd February 1817. His whole rise -and career synchronizes roughly with the rise and career of the -nineteenth century. As a rule, no doubt, such chronological parallels -are peculiarly fanciful and unmeaning. Nothing can be imagined more -idle, in a general way, than talking about a century as if it were some -kind of animal with a head and tail, instead of an arbitrary length cut -from an unending scroll. Nor is it less erroneous to assume that even if -a period be definitely vital or disturbing, art must be a mirror of it; -the greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity; poets, -like bricklayers, work on through a century of wars, and Bewick’s birds, -to take an instance, have the air of persons unaffected by the French -Revolution. But in the case of Watts there are two circumstances which -render the dates relevant. The first is that the nineteenth century was -self-conscious, believed itself to be an idea and an atmosphere, and -changed its name from a chronological almost to a philosophical term. I -do not know whether all centuries do this or whether an advanced and -progressive organ called “The Eleventh Century” was ever in -contemplation in the dawn of the Middle Ages. But with us it is clear -that a certain spirit was rightly or wrongly associated with the late -century and that it called up images and thoughts like any historic or -ritual date, like the Fourth of July or the First of April. What these -images and thoughts were we shall be obliged in a few minutes and in the -interests of the subject to inquire. But this is the first circumstance -which renders the period important; and the second is that it has always -been so regarded by Watts himself. He, more than any other modern man, -more than politicians who thundered on platforms or financiers who -captured continents, has sought in the midst of his quiet and hidden -life to mirror his age. He was born in the white and austere dawn of -that great reforming century, and he has lingered after its grey and -doubtful close. He is above all things a typical figure, a survival of -the nineteenth century. - -It will appear to many a somewhat grotesque matter to talk about a -period in which most of us were born and which has only been dead a year -or two, as if it were a primal Babylonian empire of which only a few -columns are left crumbling in the desert. And yet such is, in spirit, -the fact. There is no more remarkable psychological element in history -than the way in which a period can suddenly become unintelligible. To -the early Victorian period we have in a moment lost the key: the Crystal -Palace is the temple of a forgotten creed. The thing always happens -sharply: a whisper runs through the salons, Mr. Max Beerbohm waves a -wand and a whole generation of great men and great achievement suddenly -looks mildewed and unmeaning. We see precisely the same thing in that -other great reaction towards art and the vanities, the Restoration of -Charles II. In that hour both the great schools of faith and valour -which had seemed either angels or devils to all men: the dreams of -Strafford and the great High Churchmen on the one hand; the Moslem -frenzy of the English Commons, the worship of the English law upon the - -[Illustration: THE RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE] - -other; both seemed distant and ridiculous. The new Cavalier despised the -old Cavalier even more than he despised the Roundhead. The last stand of -English chivalry dwindled sharply to the solitary figure of the absurd -old country gentleman drinking wine out of an absurd old flagon. The -great roar of Roundhead psalms which cried out that the God of Battles -was loose in English meadows shrank to a single snuffle. The new and -polite age saw the old and serious one exactly as we see the early -Victorian era: they saw it, that is to say, not as splendid, not as -disastrous, not as fruitful, not as infamous, not as good or bad, but -simply as ugly. Just as we can see nothing about Lord Shaftesbury but -his hat, they could see nothing about Cromwell but his nose. There is no -doubt of the shock and sharpness of the silent transition. The only -difference is that accordingly as we think of man and his nature, -according to our deepest intuitions about things, we shall see in the -Restoration and the _fin de siècle_ philosophy a man waking from a -turbid and pompous dream, or a man hurled from heaven and the wars of -the angels. - -G. F. Watts is so deeply committed to, and so unalterably steeped in, -this early Victorian seriousness and air of dealing with great matters, -that unless we sharply apprehend that spirit, and its difference from -our own, we shall misunderstand his work from the outset. Splendid as is -the art of Watts technically or obviously considered, we shall yet find -much in it to perplex and betray us, unless we understand his original -theory and intention, a theory and intention dyed deeply with the -colours of a great period which is gone. The great technical -inequalities of his work, its bursts of stupendous simplicity in colour -and design, its daring failures, its strange symbolical portraits, all -will mislead or bewilder if we have not the thread of intention. In -order to hold that, we must hold something which runs through and -supports, as a string supports jewels, all the wars and treaties and -reforms of the nineteenth century. - -There are at least three essential and preliminary points on which Watts -is so completely at one with the nineteenth century and so completely -out of accord with the twentieth, that it may be advisable to state them -briefly before we proceed to the narrower but not more cogent facts of -his life and growth. The first of these is a nineteenth-century -atmosphere which is so difficult to describe, that we can only convey it -by a sort of paradox. It is difficult to know whether it should be -called doubt or faith. For if, on the one hand, real faith would have -been more confident, real doubt, on the other hand, would have been more -indifferent. The attitude of that age of which the middle and best parts -of Watts’ work is most typical, was an attitude of devouring and -concentrated interest in things which were, by their own system, -impossible or unknowable. Men were, in the main, agnostics: they said, -“We do not know”; but not one of them ever ventured to say, “We do not -care.” In most eras of revolt and question, the sceptics reap something -from their scepticism: if a man were a believer in the eighteenth -century, there was Heaven; if he were an unbeliever, there was the -Hell-Fire Club. But these men restrained themselves more than hermits -for a hope that was more than half hopeless, and sacrificed hope itself -for a liberty which they would not enjoy; they were rebels without -deliverance and saints without reward. There may have been and there was -something arid and over-pompous about them: a newer and gayer philosophy -may be passing before us and changing many things for the better; but -we shall not easily see any nobler race of men, and of them all most -assuredly there was none nobler than Watts. If anyone wishes to see that -spirit, he will see it in pictures painted by Watts in a form beyond -expression sad and splendid. _Hope_ that is dim and delicate and yet -immortal, the indestructible minimum of the spirit; _Love and Death_ -that is awful and yet the reverse of horrible; _The Court of Death_ that -is like a page of Epictetus and might have been dreamt by a dead Stoic: -these are the visions of that spirit and the incarnations of that time. -Its faith was doubtful, but its doubt was faithful. And its supreme and -acute difference from most periods of scepticism, from the later -Renaissance, from the Restoration and from the hedonism of our own time -was this, that when the creeds crumbled and the gods seemed to break up -and vanish, it did not fall back, as we do, on things yet more solid and -definite, upon art and wine and high finance and industrial efficiency -and vices. It fell in love with abstractions and became enamoured of -great and desolate words. - -The second point of _rapport_ between Watts and his time was a more -personal matter, a matter more concerned with the man, or, at least, the -type; but it throws so much light upon almost every step of his career -that it may with advantage be suggested here. Those who know the man -himself, the quaint and courtly old man down at Limnerslease, know that -if he has one trait more arresting than another, it is his almost absurd -humility. He even disparages his own talent that he may insist rather -upon his aims. His speech and gesture are simple, his manner polite to -the point of being deprecating, his soul to all appearance of an almost -confounding clarity and innocence. But although these appearances -accurately represent the truth about him, though he is in reality modest -and even fantastically modest, there is another element in him, an -element which was in almost all the great men of his time, and it is -something which many in these days would call a kind of splendid and -inspired impudence. It is that wonderful if simple power of preaching, -of claiming to be heard, of believing in an internal message and -destiny: it is the audacious faculty of mounting a pulpit. Those would -be very greatly mistaken who, misled by the childlike and humble manner -of this monk of art, expected to find in him any sort of doubt, or any -sort of fear, or any sort of modesty about the aims he follows or the -cause he loves. He has the one great certainty which marks off all the -great Victorians from those who have come after them: he may not be -certain that he is successful, or certain that he is great, or certain -that he is good, or certain that he is capable: but he is certain that -he is right. It is of course the very element of confidence which has in -our day become least common and least possible. We know we are brilliant -and distinguished, but we do not know we are right. We swagger in -fantastic artistic costumes; we praise ourselves; we fling epigrams -right and left; we have the courage to play the egoist and the courage -to play the fool, but we have not the courage to preach. If we are to -deliver a philosophy it must be in the manner of the late Mr. Whistler -and the _ridentem dicere verum_. If our heart is to be aimed at it must -be with the rapier of Stevenson which runs us through without either -pain or puncture. It is only just to say, that good elements as well as -bad ones have joined in making this old Victorian preaching difficult or -alien to us. - -[Illustration: LESLIE STEPHEN.] - -Humility as well as fear, camaraderie as well as cynicism, a sense of -complexity and a kind of gay and worldly charity have led us to avoid -the pose of the preacher, to be moral by ironies, to whisper a word and -glide away. But, whatever may be the accidental advantage of this recoil -from the didactic, it certainly does mean some loss of courage and of -the old and athletic simplicity. Nay, in some sense it is really a loss -of a fine pride and self-regard. Mr. Whistler coquetted and bargained -about the position and sale of his pictures: he praised them; he set -huge prices on them; but still under all disguise, he treated them as -trifles. Watts, when scarcely more than a boy and comparatively unknown, -started his great custom of offering his pictures as gifts worthy of a -great nation. Thus we came to the conclusion, a conclusion which may -seem to some to contain a faint element of paradox, that Mr. Whistler -suffered from an excessive and exaggerated modesty. And this unnatural -modesty of Mr. Whistler can scarcely be more typically symbolized than -in his horror of preaching. The new school of art and thought does -indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into -blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is -only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a -truism. - -Lastly, it would be quite impossible to complete this prefatory -suggestion of the atmosphere in which the mind of Watts grew and -prevailed, without saying something about that weary and weather-beaten -question of the relation of art to ethics on which so much has been said -in connexion with him and his contemporaries. About the real aim and the -real value of Watts’ allegorical pictures I shall speak later, but for -the moment it is only desirable to point out what the early and middle -Victorian view of the matter really was. According to the later -æsthetic creed which Mr. Whistler and others did so much to preach, the -state of the arts under the reign of that Victorian view was a chaos of -everyone minding everyone else’s business. It was a world in which -painters were trying to be novelists, and novelists trying to be -historians, and musicians doing the work of schoolmasters, and sculptors -doing the work of curates. That is a view which has some truth in it, -both as a description of the actual state of things and as involving an -interesting and suggestive philosophy of the arts. But a good deal of -harm may be done by ceaselessly repeating to ourselves even a true and -fascinating fashionable theory, and a great deal of good by endeavouring -to realize the real truth about an older one. The thing from which -England suffers just now more than from any other evil is not the -assertion of falsehoods, but the endless and irrepressible repetition of -half-truths. There is another side to every historic situation, and that -often a startling one; and the other side of the Victorian view of art, -now so out of mode, is too little considered. The salient and essential -characteristic of Watts and men of his school was that they regarded -life as a whole. They had in their heads, as it were, a synthetic -philosophy which put everything into a certain relation with God and the -wheel of things. Thus, psychologically speaking, they were incapable not -merely of holding such an opinion, but actually of thinking such a -thought as that of art for art’s sake; it was to them like talking about -voting for voting’s sake, or amputating for amputating’s sake. To them -as to the ancient Jews the Spirit of the unity of existence declared in -thunder that they should not make any graven image, or have any gods but -Him. Doubtless, they did not give art a - -[Illustration: WALTER CRANE.] - -relation of unimpeachable correctness: in their scheme of things it may -be true, or rather it is true, that the æsthetic was confused with the -utilitarian, that good gardens were turned so to speak into bad -cornfields, and a valuable temple into a useless post-office. But in so -far as they had this fundamental idea that art must be linked to life, -and to the strength and honour of nations, they were a hundred times -more broad-minded and more right than the new ultra-technical school. -The idea of following art through everything for itself alone, through -extravagance, through cruelty, through morbidity, is just exactly as -superstitious as the idea of following theology for itself alone through -extravagance and cruelty and morbidity. To deny that Baudelaire is -loathsome, or Nietzsche inhuman, because we stand in awe of beauty, is -just the same thing as denying that the Court of Pope Julius was -loathsome, or the rack inhuman, because we stand in awe of religion. It -is not necessary and it is not honest. The young critics of the Green -Carnation, with their nuances and technical mysteries, would doubtless -be surprised to learn that as a class they resemble ecstatic nuns, but -their principle is, in reality, the same. There is a great deal to be -said for them, and a great deal, for that matter, to be said for nuns. -But there is nothing to be surprised at, nothing to call for any charge -of inconsistency or lack of enlightenment, about the conduct of Watts -and the great men of his age, in being unable to separate art from -ethics. They were nationalists and universalists: they thought that the -ecstatic isolation of the religious sense had done incalculable harm to -religion. It is not remarkable or unreasonable that they should think -that the ecstatic isolation of the artistic sense would do incalculable -harm to art. - -This, then, was the atmosphere of Watts and Victorian idealism: an -atmosphere so completely vanished from the world of art in which we now -live that the above somewhat long introduction is really needed to make -it vivid or human to us. These three elements may legitimately, as I -have said, be predicated of it as its main characteristics: first, the -sceptical idealism, the belief that abstract verities remained the chief -affairs of men when theology left them; second, the didactic simplicity, -the claim to teach other men and to assume one’s own value and -rectitude; third, the cosmic utilitarianism, the consideration of any -such thing as art or philosophy perpetually with reference to a general -good. They may be right or wrong, they may be returning or gone for -ever; theories and fashions may change the face of humanity again and -yet again; but at least in that one old man at Limnerslease, burned, and -burned until death, these convictions, like three lamps in an old pagan -temple of stoicism. - -Of the ancestry of Watts so little is known that it resolves itself into -one hypothesis: a hypothesis which brings with it a suggestion, a -suggestion employed by almost all his existing biographers, but a -suggestion which cannot, I think, pass unchallenged, although the matter -may appear somewhat theoretic and remote. Watts was born in London, but -his family had in the previous generation come from Hereford. The vast -amount of Welsh blood which is by the nature of the case to be found in -Herefordshire has led to the statement that Watts is racially a Celt, -which is very probably true. But it is also said, in almost every notice -of his life and work, that the Celtic spirit can be detected in his -painting, that the Celtic principle of mysticism is a characteristic of -his artistic conceptions. It is in no idly antagonistic spirit that I -venture to doubt this most profoundly. - -[Illustration: THE SLUMBER OF THE AGES] - -Watts may or may not be racially a Celt, but there is nothing Celtic -about his mysticism. The essential Celtic spirit in letters and art may, -I think, be defined as a sense of the unbearable beauty of things. The -essential spirit of Watts may, I think, be much better expressed as a -sense of the joyful austerity of things. The dominant passion of the -artistic Celt, of Mr. W. B. Yeats or Sir Edward Burne-Jones, is in the -word “escape”: escape into a land where oranges grow on plum-trees and -men can sow what they like and reap what they enjoy. To Watts the very -word “escape” would be horrible, like an obscene word: his ideal is -altogether duty and the great wheel. To the Celt frivolity is most truly -the most serious of things, since in the tangle of roses is always the -old serpent who is wiser than the world. To Watts seriousness is most -truly the most “joyful of things,” since in it we come nearest to that -ultimate equilibrium and reconciliation of things whereby alone they -live and endure life and each other. It is difficult to imagine that -amid all the varieties of noble temper and elemental desire there could -possibly be two exhibiting a more total divergence than that between a -kindly severity and an almost cruel love of sweetness; than that between -a laborious and open-air charity and a kind of Bacchic asceticism; -between a joy in peace and a joy in disorder; between a reduction of -existence to its simplest formula and an extension of it to its most -frantic corollary; between a lover of justice who accepts the real world -more submissively than a slave and a lover of pleasure who despises the -real world more bitterly than a hermit; between a king in battle-harness -and a vagabond in elf-land; between Watts and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. - -It is remarkable that even the technical style of Watts gives a -contradiction to this Celtic theory. Watts is strong precisely where -the Celt is weak, and weak precisely where the Celt is strong. The only -thing that the Celt has lacked in art is that hard mass, that naked -outline, that ἀρχιτεκτονική, which makes Watts a sort of sculptor of -draughtsmanship. It is as well for us that the Celt has not had this: if -he had, he would rule the world with a rod of iron; for he has -everything else. There are no hard black lines in Burke’s orations, or -Tom Moore’s songs, or the plays of Mr. W. B. Yeats. Burke is the -greatest of political philosophers, because in him only are there -distances and perspectives, as there are on the real earth, with its -mists of morning and evening, and its blue horizons and broken skies. -Moore’s songs have neither a pure style nor deep realization, nor -originality of form, nor thought nor wit nor vigour, but they have -something else which is none of these things, which is nameless and the -one thing needful. In Mr. Yeats’ plays there is only one character: the -hero who rules and kills all the others, and his name is Atmosphere. -Atmosphere and the gleaming distances are the soul of Celtic greatness -as they were of Burne-Jones, who was, as I have said, weak precisely -where Watts is strong, in the statuesque quality in drawing, in the love -of heavy hands like those of _Mammon_, of a strong back like that of -_Eve Repentant_, in a single fearless and austere outline like that of -the angel in _The Court of Death_, in the frame-filling violence of -_Jonah_, in the half-witted brutality of _The Minotaur_. He is -deficient, that is to say, in what can only be called the god-like -materialism of art. Watts, on the other hand, is peculiarly strong in -it. Idealist as he is, there is nothing frail or phantasmal about the -things or the figures he loves. Though not himself a robust man, he -loves robustness; he loves a great bulk of shoulder, an abrupt bend of -neck, a gigantic stride, - -[Illustration: CARDINAL MANNING.] - -a large and swinging limb, a breast bound as with bands of brass. Of -course the deficiency in such a case is very far from being altogether -on one side. There are abysses in Burne-Jones which Watts could not -understand, the Celtic madness, older than any sanity, the hunger that -will remain after the longest feast, the sorrow that is built up of -stratified delights. From the point of view of the true Celt, Watts, the -Watts who painted the great stoical pictures _Love and Death_, _Time, -Death and Judgment_, _The Court of Death_, _Mammon_, and _Cain_, this -pictorial Watts would probably be, must almost certainly be, simply a -sad, sane, strong, stupid Englishman. He may or may not be Welsh by -extraction or by part of his extraction, but in spirit he is an -Englishman, with all the faults and all the disadvantages of an -Englishman. He is a great Englishman like Milton or Gladstone, of the -type, that is to say, that were too much alive for anything but gravity, -and who enjoyed themselves far too much to trouble to enjoy a joke. -Matthew Arnold has come near to defining that kind of idealism, so -utterly different from the Celtic kind, which is to be found in Milton -and again in Watts. He has called it, in one of his finest and most -accurate phrases, “the imaginative reason.” - -This racial legend about the Watts family does not seem to rest upon any -certain foundations, and as I have said, the deduction drawn from it is -quite loose and misleading. The whole is only another example of that -unfortunate, if not infamous, modern habit of talking about such things -as heredity with a vague notion that science has closed the question -when she has only just opened it. Nobody knows, as a matter of fact, -whether a Celtic mysticism can be inherited any more than a theory on -the Education Bill. But the eagerness of the popular mind to snatch at -a certainty is too impatient for the tardy processes of real hypothesis -and research. Long before heredity has become a science, it has become a -superstition. And this curious though incidental case of the origin of -the Watts genius is just one of those cases which make us wonder what -has been the real result of the great rise of science. So far the result -would painfully appear to be that whereas men in the earlier times said -unscientific things with the vagueness of gossip and legend, they now -say unscientific things with the plainness and the certainty of science. - -The actual artistic education of Watts, though thorough indeed in its -way, had a somewhat peculiar character, the air of something detached -and private, and to the external eye something even at random. He works -hard, but in an elusive and personal manner. He does not remember the -time when he did not draw: he was an artist in his babyhood as he is an -artist still in his old age. Like Ruskin and many other of the great and -serious men of the century, he would seem to have been brought up -chiefly on what may be called the large legendary literature, on such as -Homer and Scott. Among his earliest recorded works was a set of coloured -illustrations to the Waverley Novels, and a sketch of the struggle for -the body of Patroclus. He went to the Academy schools, but only stayed -there about a month; never caring for or absorbing the teaching, such as -it was, of the place. He wandered perpetually in the Greek galleries of -the British Museum, staring at the Elgin marbles, from which he always -declared he learnt all the art he knew. “There,” he said, stretching out -his hand towards the Ilyssus in his studio, “there is my master.” We -hear of a friendship between him and the sculptor William Behnes, of -Watts lounging about that artist’s studio, playing with clay, modelling -busts, and staring - -[Illustration: CHAOS.] - -at the work of sculpture. His eyes seemed to have been at this time the -largest and hungriest part of him. Even when the great chance and first -triumph of his life arrived a year or two later, even when he gained the -great scholarship which sent him abroad to work amid the marbles of -Italy, when a famous ambassador was his patron and a brilliant circle -his encouragement, we do not find anything of the conventional student -about him. He never painted in the galleries; he only dreamed in them. -This must not, of course, be held to mean that he did not work; though -one or two people who have written memoirs of Watts have used a -phraseology, probably without noticing it, which might be held to imply -this. Not only is the thing ludicrously incongruous with his exact -character and morals; but anyone who knows anything whatever about the -nature of pictorial art will know quite well that a man could not paint -like that without having worked; just as he would know that a man could -not be the Living Serpent without any previous practice with his joints. -To say that he could really learn to paint and draw with the technical -merit of Watts, or with any technical merit at all, by simply looking at -other people’s pictures and statues will seem to anyone, with a small -technical sense, like saying that a man learnt to be a sublime violinist -by staring at fiddles in a shop window. It is as near a physical -impossibility as can exist in these matters. Work Watts must have done -and did do; it is the only conclusion possible which is consistent -either with the nature of Watts or the nature of painting; and it is -fully supported by the facts. But what the facts do reveal is that he -worked in this curiously individual, this curiously invisible way. He -had his own notion of when to dream and when to draw; as he shrank from -no toil, so he shrank from no idleness. He was something which is one of -the most powerful and successful things in the world, something which is -far more powerful and successful than a legion of students and prizemen: -he was a serious and industrious truant. - -It is worth while to note this in his boyhood, partly, of course, -because from one end of his life to the other there is this queer note -of loneliness and liberty. But it is also more immediately and -practically important because it throws some light on the development -and character of his art, and even especially of his technique. The -great singularity of Watts, considered as a mere artist, is that he -stands alone. He is not connected with any of the groups of the -nineteenth century: he has neither followed a school nor founded one. He -is not mediæval; but no one could exactly call him classical: we have -only to compare him to Leighton to feel the difference at once. His -artistic style is rather a thing more primitive than paganism; a thing -to which paganism and mediævalism are alike upstart sects; a style of -painting there might have been upon the tower of Babel. He is mystical; -but he is not mediæval: we have only to compare him to Rossetti to feel -the difference. When he emerged into the artistic world, that world was -occupied by the pompous and historical school, that school which was so -exquisitely caricatured by Thackeray in Gandish and his “Boadishia”; but -Watts was not pompous or historical: he painted one historical picture, -which brought him a youthful success, and he has scarcely painted -another. He lived on through the great Pre-Raphaelite time, that very -noble and very much undervalued time, when men found again what had been -hidden since the thirteenth century under loads of idle civilization, -the truth that simplicity and a monastic laboriousness is the happiest -of all things; the great truth that purity is the only atmosphere for -passion; the great truth that silver is more beautiful than gold. But -though there is any quantity of this sentiment in Watts himself, Watts -never has been a Pre-Raphaelite. He has seen other fashions come and go; -he has seen the Pre-Raphaelites overwhelmed by a heavy restoration of -the conventional, headed by Millais with his Scotch moors and his -English countesses; but he has not heeded it. He has seen these again -overturned by the wild lancers of Whistler; he has seen the mists of -Impressionism settle down over the world, making it weird and delicate -and noncommittal: but he thinks no more of the wet mist of the -Impressionist than he thought of the dry glare of the Pre-Raphaelite. - -He, the most mild of men, has yet never been anything but Watts. He has -followed the gleam, like some odd modern Merlin. He has escaped all the -great atmospheres, the divine if deluding intoxications, which have -whirled one man one way and one another; which flew to the head of a -perfect stylist like Ruskin and made him an insane scientist; which flew -to the head of a great artist like Whistler and made him a pessimistic -dandy. He has passed them with a curious immunity, an immunity which, if -it were not so nakedly innocent, might almost be called egotism; but -which is in fact rather the single eye. He said once that he had not -even consented to illustrate a book; his limitation was that he could -express no ideas but his own. He admired Tennyson; he thought him the -greatest of poets; he thought him a far greater man than himself; he -read him, he adored him, but he could not illustrate him. This is the -curious secret strength which kept him independent in his youth and -kept him independent through the great roaring triumph of the -Pre-Raphaelite and the great roaring triumph of the Impressionist. He -stands in the world of art as he stood in the studio of Behnes and in -the Uffizi Gallery. He stands gazing, but not copying. - -Of Watts as he was at this time there remains a very interesting -portrait painted by himself. It represents him at the age of nineteen, a -dark, slim, and very boyish-looking creature. Something in changed -conditions may no doubt account for the flowing and voluminous dark -hair: we see such a mane in many of the portraits of the most -distinguished men of that time; but if a man appeared now and walked -down Fleet Street with so neglected a _hure_, he would be mistaken for -an advertisement of a hair-dresser, or by the more malicious for a minor -poet. But there is about this picture not a trace of affectation or the -artistic immunity in these matters: the boy’s dress is rough and -ordinary, his expression is simple and unconscious. From a modern -standpoint we should say without hesitation that if his hair is long it -is because he has forgotten to have it cut. And there is something about -this contrast between the unconsciously leonine hair and the innocent -and almost bashful face, there is something like a parable of Watts. His -air is artistic, if you will. His famous skull cap, which makes him look -like a Venetian senator, is as pictorial and effective as the boyish -mane in the picture. But he belongs to that older race of Bohemians, of -which even Thackeray only saw the sunset, the great old race of art and -literature who were ragged because they were really poor, frank because -they were really free, and untidy because they were really forgetful. It -will not do to confuse Watts with these men; there is - -[Illustration: “FOR HE HAD GREAT POSSESSIONS.”] - -much about him that is precise and courtly, and which, as I shall have -occasion to remark, belongs really to a yet older period. But it is more -right to reckon Watts along with them in their genuine raggedness than -to suppose that the unquestionable picturesqueness with which he fronts -the world has any relation with that new Bohemianism which is untidy -because it is conventional, frank because it follows a fashion, careless -because it watches for all its effects, and ragged and coarse in its -tastes because it has too much money. - -The first definite encouragement, or at least the first encouragement -now ascertainable, probably came to the painter from that interesting -Greek amateur, Mr. Constantine Ionides. It was under his encouragement -that Watts began all his earlier work of the more ambitious kind, and it -was the portrait of Mrs. Constantine Ionides which ranks among the -earliest of his definite successes. He achieved immediate professional -success, however, at an astonishingly early age, judged by modern -standards. When he was barely twenty he had three pictures in the Royal -Academy: the first two were portraits, and the third a picture called -_The Wounded Heron_. There is always a very considerable temptation to -fantasticality in dealing with these artistic origins: no doubt it does -not always follow that a man is destined to be a military conqueror -because he beats other little boys at school, nor endued with a -passionate and clamorous nature because he begins this mortal life with -a yell. But Watts has, to a rather unusual degree, a sincere and -consistent and homogeneous nature; and this first exhibit of his has -really a certain amount of symbolism about it. Portraiture, with which -he thus began, he was destined to raise to a level never before attained -in English art, so far as significance and humanity are concerned; and -there is really something a little fascinating about the fact that along -with these pictures went one picture which had, for all practical -purposes, an avowedly humanitarian object. The picture of _The Wounded -Heron_ scarcely ever attracts attention, I imagine, in these days, but -it may, of course, have been recalled for a moment to the popular mind -by that curious incident which occurred in connexion with it and which -has often been told. Long after the painter who produced that picture in -his struggling boyhood had lost sight of it and in all probability -forgotten all about its existence, a chance traveller with a taste in -the arts happened to find it in the dusty curiosity-shop of a -north-country town. He bought it and gave it back to the now celebrated -painter, who hung it among the exhibits at Little Holland House. It is, -as I have said, a thing painted clearly with a humanitarian object: it -depicts the suffering of a stricken creature; it depicts the -helplessness of life under the cruelty of the inanimate violence; it -depicts the pathos of dying and the greater pathos of living. Since -then, no doubt, Watts has improved his machinery of presentation and -found larger and more awful things to tell his tale with than a bleeding -bird. The wings of the heron have widened till they embrace the world -with the terrible wings of Time or Death: he has summoned the stars to -help him and sent the angels as his ambassadors. He has changed the plan -of operations until it includes Heaven and Tartarus. He has never -changed the theme. - -The relations of Watts to Constantine Ionides either arose or became -important about this time. The painter’s fortunes rose quickly and -steadily, so far as the Academy was concerned. He continued to exhibit -with a fair amount of regularity, chiefly in the form of subjects from -the great romantic or - -[Illustration: AN IDLE CHILD OF FANCY.] - -historic traditions which were then the whole pabulum of the young -idealistic artist. In the Academy of 1840 came a picture on the old -romantic subject of Ferdinand and Isabella; in the following year but -one, a picture on the old romantic subject of Cymbeline. The portrait of -Mrs. Constantine Ionides appeared in 1842. - -But Watts’ mode of thought from the very beginning had very little -kinship with the Academy and very little kinship with this kind of -private and conventional art. An event was shortly to occur, the first -success of his life, but an event far less important when considered as -the first success of his life than it is when considered as an essential -characteristic of his mind. The circumstances are so extremely -characteristic of something in the whole spirit of the man’s art that it -may be permissible to dwell at length on the significance of the fact -rather than on the fact itself. - -The great English Parliament, the Senate that broke the English kings, -had just moved its centre of existence. The new Houses of Parliament had -opened with what seemed to the men of that time an opening world. A -competition was started for the decoration of the halls, and Watts -suddenly sprang into importance: he won the great prize. The cartoon of -_Caractacus led in triumph through the streets of Rome_ was accepted -from this almost nameless man by the great central power of English -history. And until we have understood that fact we have not understood -Watts: it was (one may be permitted to fancy) the supreme hour of his -life. For Watts’ nature is essentially public--that is to say, it is -modest and noble, and has nothing to hide. His art is an outdoor art, -like that of the healthy ages of the world, like the statuesque art of -Greece, like the ecclesiastical and external Gothic art of Christianity: -an art that can look the sun in the face. He ought to be employed to -paint factory chimneys and railway stations. I know that this will sound -like an insolence: my only answer is that he, in accordance with this -great conception of his, actually offered to paint a railway station. -With a splendid and truly religious imagination, he asked permission to -decorate Euston. The railway managers (not perceiving, in their dull -classical routine, the wild poetry of their own station) declined. But -until we have understood this immense notion of publicity in the soul of -Watts, we have understood nothing. The fundamental modern fallacy is -that the public life must be an artificial life. It is like saying that -the public street must be an artificial air. Men like Watts, men like -all the great heroes, only breathe in public. What is the use of abusing -a man for publicity when he utters in public the true and the enduring -things? What is the use, above all, of prying into his secrecy when he -has cried his best from the house-tops? - -This is the real argument which makes a detailed biography of Watts -unnecessary for all practical purposes. It is in vain to climb walls and -hide in cupboards in order to show whether Watts eats mustard or pepper -with his curry or whether Watts takes sugar or salt with his porridge. -These things may or may not become public: it matters little. The -innermost that the biographer could at last discover, after all possible -creepings and capers, would be what Watts in his inmost soul believes, -and that Watts has splashed on twenty feet of canvas and given to the -nation for nothing. Like one of the great orators of the eighteenth -century, his public virtues, his public ecstasies are far more really -significant than his private weaknesses. The rest of his life is so -simple that it is scarcely worth telling. He went with the great -scholarship he gained with his _Caractacus_ to Italy. There he found a -new patron--the famous Lord Holland, with the whole of whose great -literary circle he rapidly became acquainted. He painted many of his -most famous portraits in connexion with this circle, both in Italy and -afterwards in Paris. But this great vision of the public idea had -entered his blood. He offered his cartoons to Euston Station; he painted -St. George and the Dragon for the House of Lords; he presented a fresco -to the great hall at Lincoln’s Inn. Of his life there is scarcely more -to say, except the splendid fact that he three times refused a title. Of -his character there is a great deal more to say. - -There is unquestionably about the personal attitude of Watts something -that in the vague phraseology of modern times would be called Puritan. -Puritan, however, is very far from being really the right word. The -right word is a word which has been singularly little used in English -nomenclature because historical circumstances have separated us from the -origin from which it sprang. The right word for the spirit of Watts is -_Stoicism_. Watts is at one with the Puritans in the actual objects of -his attack. One of his deepest and most enduring troubles, a matter of -which he speaks and writes frequently, is the prevalence of gambling. -With the realism of an enthusiast, he has detected the essential fact -that the problem of gambling is even more of a problem in the case of -the poorer classes than in the case of the richer. It is, as he asserts, -a far worse danger than drink. There are many other instances of his -political identity with Puritanism. He told Mr. W. T. Stead that he had -defended and was prepared to defend the staggering publications of the -“Maiden Tribute”; it was the only way, he said, to stem the evil. A -picturesque irradiation asserts indeed that it was under the glow of -Hebraic anger against these Babylonian cruelties of Piccadilly and the -Strand that he painted as a symbol of those cruelties that brutal and -magnificent picture _The Minotaur_. The pictures themselves of course -bear sufficient attestation to this general character: _Mammon_ is what -we call a Puritan picture, and _Jonah_, and _Fata Morgana_, and _For he -had Great Possessions_. It is not difficult to see that Watts has the -Puritan vigilance, the Puritan realism, and the Puritan severity in his -attitude towards public affairs. Nevertheless, as I have said, he is to -be described rather as a Stoic than a Puritan. The essential difference -between Christian and Pagan asceticism lies in the fact that Paganism in -renouncing pleasure gives up something which it does not think -desirable; whereas Christianity in giving up pleasure gives up something -which it thinks very desirable indeed. Thus there is a frenzy in -Christian asceticism; its follies and renunciations are like those of -first love. There is a passion, and as it were a regret, in the -Puritanism of Bunyan; there is none in the Puritanism of Watts. He is -not Bunyan, he is Cato. The difference may be a difficult one to convey, -but it is one that must not be ignored or great misunderstandings will -follow. The one self-abnegation is more reasonable but less joyful. The -Stoic casts away pleasure like the parings of his nails; the Mystic cuts -it off like his right hand that offends him. In Watts we have the noble -self-abnegation of a noble type and school; but everything, however -noble, that has shape has limitation, and we must not look in Watts, -with his national self-mastery, either for the nightmare of Stylites or -the gaiety of Francis of Assisi. - -It has already been remarked that the chief note - -[Illustration: THE MINOTAUR.] - -of the painter’s character is a certain mixture of personal delicacy and -self-effacement with the most immense and audacious aims. But it is so -essential a trait that it will bear a repetition and the introduction of -a curious example of it. Watts in his quaint and even shy manner of -speech often let fall in conversation words which hint at a certain -principle or practice of his, a principle and practice which are, when -properly apprehended, beyond expression impressive and daring. The -spectator who studies his allegorical paintings one after another will -be vaguely impressed with something uniquely absent, something which is -usual and familiar in such pictures conspicuous by its withdrawal; a -blank or difference which makes them things sundered altogether from the -millions of allegorical pictures that throng the great and small -galleries of painting. At length the nature of this missing thing may -suddenly strike him: in the whole range of Watts’ symbolic art there is -scarcely a single example of the ordinary and arbitrary current symbol, -the ecclesiastical symbol, the heraldic symbol, the national symbol. A -primeval vagueness and archaism hang over all the canvases and cartoons, -like frescoes from some prehistoric temple. There is nothing there but -the eternal things, clay and fire and the sea, and motherhood and the -dead. We cannot imagine the rose or the lion of England; the keys or the -tiara of Rome; the red cap of Liberty or the crescent of Islam in a -picture by Watts; we cannot imagine the Cross itself. And in light and -broken phrases, carelessly and humbly expressed, as I have said, the -painter has admitted that this great omission was observed on principle. -Its object is that the pictures may be intelligible if they survive the -whole modern order. Its object is, that is to say, that if some savage -in a dim futurity dug up one of these dark designs on a lonely -mountain, though he worshipped strange gods and served laws yet -unwritten, it might strike the same message to his soul that it strikes -upon clerks and navvies from the walls of the Tate Gallery. It is -impossible not to feel a movement of admiration for the magnitude of the -thought. Here is a man whose self-depreciation is internal and vital; -whose life is cloistered, whose character is childlike, and he has yet -within such an unconscious and colossal sense of greatness that he -paints on the assumption that his work may outlast the cross of the -Eternal City. As a boy he scarcely expected worldly success: as an old -man he still said that his worldly success had astonished him. But in -his nameless youth and in his silent old age he paints like one upon a -tower looking down the appalling perspective of the centuries towards -fantastic temples and inconceivable republics. - -This union of small self-esteem with a vast ambition is a paradox in the -very soul of the painter; and when we look at the symbolic pictures in -the light of this theory of his, it is interesting and typical to -observe how consistently he pursues any intellectual rule that he laid -down for himself. An æsthetic or ethical notion of this kind is not to -him, as to most men with the artistic temperament, a thing to talk about -sumptuously, to develop in lectures, and to observe when it happens to -be suitable. It is a thing like his early rising or his personal -conscience, a thing which is either a rule or nothing. And we find this -insistence on universal symbols, this rejection of all symbols that are -local or temporary or topical, even if the locality be a whole -continent, the time a stretch of centuries, or the topic a vast -civilization or an undying church--we find this insistence looking out -very clearly from the allegories of Watts. It would - -[Illustration: THE COURT OF DEATH.] - -have been easy and effective, as he himself often said, to make the -meaning of a picture clear by the introduction of some popular and -immediate image: and it must constantly be remembered that Watts does -care very much for making the meaning of his pictures clear. His work -indeed has, as I shall suggest shortly, a far more subtle and unnamable -quality than the merely hard and didactic; but it must not be for one -moment pretended that Watts does not claim to teach: to do so would be -to falsify the man’s life. And it would be easy, as is quite obvious, to -make the pictures clearer: to hang a crucifix over the _Happy Warrior_, -to give _Mammon_ some imperial crown or typical heraldic symbols, to -give a theological machinery to _The Court of Death_. But this is put on -one side like a temptation of the flesh, because it conflicts with this -stupendous idea of painting for all peoples and all centuries. I am not -saying that this extraordinary ambition is necessarily the right view of -art, or the right view of life. I am only reiterating it as an absolute -trait of men of the time and type and temper of Watts. It may plausibly -be maintained, I am not sure that it cannot more truly be maintained, -that man cannot achieve and need not achieve this frantic universality. -A man, I fancy, is after all only an animal that has noble preferences. -It is the very difference between the artistic mind and the mathematical -that the former sees things as they are in a picture, some nearer and -larger, some smaller and further away: while to the mathematical mind -everything, every unit in a million, every fact in a cosmos, must be of -equal value. That is why mathematicians go mad; and poets scarcely ever -do. A man may have as wide a view of life as he likes, the wider the -better; a distant view, a bird’s-eye view, if he will, but still a view -and not a map. The one thing he cannot attempt in his version of the -universe is to draw things to scale. I have put myself for a moment -outside this universalism and doubted its validity because a thing -always appears more sharp and personal and picturesque if we do not -wholly agree with it. And this universalism is an essential and dominant -feature of such great men as Watts and of his time as a whole. Mr. -Herbert Spencer is a respectable, almost a dapper, figure, his theory is -agnostic and his tone polite and precise. And yet he threw himself into -a task more insane and gigantic than that of Dante, an inventory or plan -of the universe itself; the awful vision of existence as a single -organism, like an amœba on the disc of a microscope. He claimed, by -implication, to put in their right places the flaming certainty of the -martyrs, the wild novelties of the modern world; to arrange the eternal -rock of Peter and the unbroken trance of Buddhism. It is only in this -age of specialists, of cryptic experiences in art and faith like the -present, that we can see how huge was that enterprise; but the spirit of -it is the spirit of Watts. The man of that aggressive nineteenth century -had many wild thoughts, but there was one thought that never even for an -instant strayed across his burning brain. He never once thought, “Why -should I understand the cat, any more than the cat understands me?” He -never thought, “Why should I be just to the merits of a Chinaman, any -more than a pig studies the mystic virtues of a camel?” He affronted -heaven and the angels, but there was one hard arrogant dogma that he -never doubted even when he doubted Godhead: he never doubted that he -himself was as central and as responsible as God. - -This paradox, then, we call the first element in the artistic and -personal claim of Watts, that he - -[Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD.] - -[Illustration: JOHN STUART MILL.] - -realizes the great paradox of the Gospel. He is meek, but he claims to -inherit the earth. But there is, of course, a great deal more to be said -before this view of the matter can be considered complete. The -universalism preached by Watts and the other great Victorians was of -course subject to certain specialisations; it is not necessary to call -them limitations. Like Matthew Arnold, the last and most sceptical of -them, who expressed their basic idea in its most detached and -philosophic form, they held that conduct was three-fourths of life. They -were ingrainedly ethical; the mere idea of thinking anything more -important than ethics would have struck them as profane. In this they -were certainly right, but they were nevertheless partial or partisan; -they did not really maintain the judicial attitude of the universalist. -The mere thought of Watts painting a picture called _The Victory of Joy -over Morality_, or _Nature rebuking Conscience_, is enough to show the -definite limits of that cosmic equality. This is not, of course, to be -taken as a fault in the attitude of Watts. He simply draws the line -somewhere, as all men, including anarchists, draw it somewhere; he is -dogmatic, as all sane men are dogmatic. - -There is another phase of this innocent audacity. It may appear to be -more fanciful, it is certainly more completely a matter of inference; -but it throws light on yet another side of the character of Watts. - -Watts’ relation to friends and friendship has something about it very -typical. He is not a man desirous or capable of a very large or rich or -varied circle of acquaintance. There is nothing Bohemian about him. He -belongs both chronologically and psychologically to that period which is -earlier even than Thackeray and his Cave of Harmony: he belongs to the -quiet, struggling, self-created men of the forties, with their tradition -of self-abnegating individualism. Much as there is about him of the -artist and the poet, there is something about him also of the -industrious apprentice. That strenuous solitude in which Archbishop -Temple as a boy struggled to carry a bag of ironmongery which crushed -his back, in which Gladstone cut down trees and John Stuart Mill read -half the books of the world in boyhood, that strenuous solitude entered -to some degree into the very soul of Watts and made him independent of -them. But the friends he made have as a general rule been very -characteristic: they have marked the strange and haughty fastidiousness -that goes along with his simplicity. His friends, his intimate friends, -that is, have been marked by a certain indescribable and stately -worthiness: more than one of them have been great men like himself. The -greatest and most intimate of all his friends, probably, was Tennyson, -and in this there is something singularly characteristic of Watts. About -the actuality of the intellectual tie that bound him to Tennyson there -can be little doubt. He painted three, if not four, portraits of him; -his name was often on his lips; he invoked him always as the typical -great poet, excusing his faults and expounding his virtues. He invoked -his authority as that of the purest of poets, and invoked it very finely -and well in a sharp controversial interview he had on the nature and -ethics of the nude in art. - -At the time I write, there is standing at the end of the garden at -Limnerslease a vast shed, used for a kind of sculptor’s studio, in which -there stands a splendid but unfinished statue, on which the veteran of -the arts is even now at work. It represents Tennyson, wrapped in his -famous mantle, with his magnificent head bowed, gazing at something in -the - -[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING.] - -[Illustration: LORD TENNYSON.] - -hollow of his hand. The subject is _Flower in the Crannied Wall_. There -is something very characteristic of Watts in the contrast between the -colossal plan of the figure and the smallness of the central object. - -But while the practical nature of the friendship between Watts and -Tennyson is clear enough, there is something really significant, -something really relevant to Watts’ attitude in its ultimate and -psychological character. It is surely most likely that Watts and -Tennyson were drawn together because they both represented a certain -relation towards their art which is not common in our time and was -scarcely properly an attribute of any artists except these two. Watts -could not have found the thing he most believed in Browning or Swinburne -or Morris or any of the other poets. Tennyson could not have found the -thing he most believed in Leighton or Millais or any of the other -painters. They were brought together, it must be supposed, by the one -thing that they had really in common, a profound belief in the -solemnity, the ceremoniousness, the responsibility, and what most men -would now, in all probability, call the pomposity of the great arts. - -Watts has always a singular kind of semi-mystical tact in the matter of -portrait painting. His portraits are commonly very faultless comments -and have the same kind of superlative mental delicacy that we see in the -picture of _Hope_. And the whole truth of this last matter is very well -expressed in Watts’ famous portrait of Tennyson, particularly if we look -at it in conjunction with his portrait of Browning. The head of Browning -is the head of a strong, splendid, joyful, and anxious man who could -write magnificent poetry. The head of Tennyson is the head of a poet. -Watts has painted Tennyson with his dark dome-like head relieved -against a symbolic green and blue of the eternal sea and the eternal -laurels. He has behind him the bays of Dante and he is wrapped in the -cloak of the prophets. Browning is dressed like an ordinary modern man, -and we at once feel that it should and must be so. To dress Browning in -the prophet’s robe and the poet’s wreath would strike us all as suddenly -ridiculous; it would be like sending him to a fancy-dress ball. It would -be like attiring Matthew Arnold in the slashed tights of an Elizabethan, -or putting Mr. Lecky into a primitive Celto-Irish kilt. But it does not -strike us as absurd in the case of Tennyson: it does not strike us as -even eccentric or outlandish or remote. We think of Tennyson in that -way; we think of him as a lordly and conscious bard. Some part of this -fact may, of course, be due to his possession of a magnificent physical -presence; but not, I think, all. Lord Kitchener (let us say) is a -handsome man, but we should laugh at him very much in silver armour. It -is much more due to the fact that Tennyson really assumed and was -granted this stately and epic position. It is not true that Tennyson was -more of a poet than Browning, if we mean by that statement that Browning -could not compose forms as artistic and well-managed, lyrics as light -and poignant, and rhythms as swelling and stirring as any in English -letters. But it is true that Tennyson was more of a poet than Browning, -if we mean by that statement that Tennyson was a poet in person, in post -and circumstance and conception of life; and that Browning was not, in -that sense, a poet at all. Browning first inaugurated in modern art and -letters the notion or tradition, in many ways perhaps a more wholesome -one, that the fact that a man pursued the trade or practice of poetry -was his own affair and a thing apart, - -[Illustration: THE DWELLER IN THE INNERMOST.] - -like the fact that he collected coins or earned his living as a hatter. -But Tennyson really belonged to an older tradition, the tradition that -believed that the poet, the appointed “Vates,” was a recognized and -public figure like the bard or jester at the mediæval courts, like the -prophet in the old Commonwealth of Israel. In Tennyson’s work appeared -for the last time in English history this notion of the stately and -public and acknowledged poet: it was the lay of the last minstrel. - -Now there is in Watts, gentle and invisible as he is, something that -profoundly responds to that spirit. Leighton, like Browning, was a -courtier and man of the world: Millais, like Browning, was a good fellow -and an ordinary gentleman: but Watts has more of Tennyson in him; he -believes in a great priesthood of art. He believes in a certain pure and -childish publicity. If anyone suggested that before a man ventured to -paint pictures or to daub with plaster he should be initiated with some -awful rites in some vast and crowded national temple, should swear to -work worthily before some tremendous altar or over some symbolic flame, -Millais would have laughed heartily at the idea and Leighton also. But -it would not seem either absurd or unreasonable to Watts. In the thick -of this smoky century he is living in a clear age of heroes. - -Watts’ relations to Tennyson were indeed very characteristic of what was -finest, and at the same time quaintest, in the two men. The painter, -with a typical sincerity, took the poet seriously, I had almost said -literally, in his daily life, and liked him to live up to his poetry. -The poet, with that queer sulky humour which gave him, perhaps, more -breadth than Watts, but less strength, said, after reading some acid and -unjust criticisms, “I wish I had never written a line.” “Come,” said -Watts, “you wouldn’t like ‘King Arthur’ to talk like that.” Tennyson -paused a moment and then spread out his fingers. “Well,” he said, “what -do you expect? It’s all the gout.” The artist, with a characteristic -power of juvenile and immortal hero-worship, tells this story as an -instance of the fundamental essence of odd magnanimity and sombre -geniality in Tennyson. It is such an instance and a very good one: but -it is also an instance of the sharp logical idealism, of the prompt -poetic candour of Watts. He asked Tennyson to be King Arthur, and it -never occurred to him to think that he was asking Addison to be Cato, or -Massinger to be Saint Dorothy. The incident is a fine tribute to a -friendship. - -The real difficulty which many cultivated people have in the matter of -Watts’ allegorical pictures is far more difficult. It is indeed nothing -else but the great general reaction against allegorical art which has -arisen during the last artistic period. The only way in which we can -study, with any real sincerity, the allegoric art of Watts is to ask to -what is really due the objection to allegory which has thus arisen. The -real objection to allegory is, it may roughly be said, founded upon the -conception that allegory involves one art imitating another. This is, up -to a certain point, true. To paint a figure in a blue robe and call her -Necessity, and then paint a small figure in a yellow robe and call it -Invention; to put the second on the knee of the first, and then say that -you are enunciating the sublime and eternal truth, that Necessity is the -mother of Invention, this is indeed an idle and foolish affair. It is -saying in six weeks’ work with brush and palette knife what could be -said much better in six words. And there can be no reasonable dispute -that of this character were a considerable - -[Illustration: GEORGE MEREDITH.] - -number of the allegorical pictures that have crowded the galleries and -sprawled over the ceilings of ancient and modern times. Of such were the -monstrous pictures of Rubens, which depicted a fat Religion and a -bloated Temperance dancing before some foreign conqueror; of such were -the florid designs of the eighteenth century, which showed Venus and -Apollo encouraging Lord Peterborough to get over the inconvenience of -his breastplate; of such, again, were the meek Victorian allegories -which showed Mercy and Foresight urging men to found a Society for the -Preservation of Young Game. Of such were almost all the allegories which -have dominated the art of Europe for many centuries back. Of such, most -emphatically, the allegories of Watts are not. They are not mere -pictorial forms, combined as in a kind of cryptogram to express -theoretic views or relations. They are not proverbs or verbal relations -rendered with a cumbrous exactitude in oil and Chinese white. They are -not, in short, the very thing that the opponents of Watts and his school -say that they are. They are not merely literary. There is one definite -current conception on which this idea that Watts’ allegorical art is -merely literary is eventually based. It is based upon the idea that lies -at the root of rationalism, at the root of useless logomachies, at the -root, in no small degree, of the whole modern evil. It is based on the -assumption of the perfection of language. Every religion and every -philosophy must, of course, be based on the assumption of the authority -or the accuracy of something. But it may well be questioned whether it -is not saner and more satisfactory to ground our faith on the -infallibility of the Pope, or the infallibility of the Book of Mormon, -than on this astounding modern dogma of the infallibility of human -speech. Every time one man says to another, “Tell us plainly what you -mean?” he is assuming the infallibility of language: that is to say, he -is assuming that there is a perfect scheme of verbal expression for all -the internal moods and meanings of men. Whenever a man says to another, -“Prove your case; defend your faith,” he is assuming the infallibility -of language: that is to say, he is assuming that a man has a word for -every reality in earth, or heaven, or hell. He knows that there are in -the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless than -the colours of an autumn forest; he knows that there are abroad in the -world and doing strange and terrible service in it crimes that have -never been condemned and virtues that have never been christened. Yet he -seriously believes that these things can every one of them, in all their -tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately -represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes -that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own -inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the -agonies of desire. Whenever, on the other hand, a man rebels faintly or -vaguely against this way of speaking, whenever a man says that he cannot -explain what he means, and that he hates argument, that his enemy is -misrepresenting him, but he cannot explain how; that man is a true sage, -and has seen into the heart of the real nature of language. Whenever a -man refuses to be caught by some dilemma about reason and passion, or -about reason and faith, or about fate and free-will, he has seen the -truth. Whenever a man declines to be cornered as an egotist, or an -altruist, or any such modern monster, he has seen the truth. For the -truth is that language is not a scientific thing at all, but wholly an -artistic thing, a thing invented by hunters, and killers, and such -artists long before science was - -[Illustration: ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.] - -dreamed of. The truth is simply that--that the tongue is not a reliable -instrument, like a theodolite or a camera. The tongue is most truly an -unruly member, as the wise saint has called it, a thing poetic and -dangerous, like music or fire. - -Now we can easily imagine an alternative state of things, roughly -similar to that produced in Watts’ allegories, a system, that is to say, -whereby the moods or facts of the human spirit were conveyed by -something other than speech, by shapes or colours or some such things. -As a matter of fact, of course, there are a great many other languages -besides the verbal. Descriptions of spiritual states and mental purposes -are conveyed by a variety of things, by hats, by bells, by guns, by -fires on a headland, or by jerks of the head. In fact there does exist -an example which is singularly analogous to decorative and symbolic -painting. This is a scheme of æsthetic signs or emblems, simple indeed -and consisting only of a few elemental colours, which is actually -employed to convey great lessons in human safety and great necessities -of the commonwealth. It need hardly be said that I allude to the railway -signals. They are as much a language, and surely as solemn a language, -as the colour sequence of ecclesiastical vestments, which sets us red -for martyrdom, and white for resurrection. For the green and red of the -night-signals depict the two most fundamental things of all, which lie -at the back of all language. Yes and no, good and bad, safe and unsafe, -life and death. It is perfectly conceivable that a degree of flexibility -or subtlety might be introduced into these colours so as to suggest -other and more complex meanings. We might (under the influence of some -large poetic station-masters) reach a state of things in which a certain -rich tinge of purple in the crimson light would mean “Travel for a few -seconds at a slightly more lingering pace, that a romantic old lady in a -first-class carriage may admire the scenery of the forest.” A tendency -towards peacock blue in the green might mean “An old gentleman with a -black necktie has just drunk a glass of sherry at the station -restaurant.” But however much we modified or varied this colour sequence -or colour language, there would remain one thing which it would be quite -ridiculous and untrue to say about it. It would be quite ridiculous and -untrue to say that this colour sequence was simply a symbol representing -language. It would be another language: it would convey its meaning to -aliens who had another word for forest, and another word for sherry, and -another word for old lady. It would not be a symbol of language, a -symbol of a symbol; it would be one symbol of the reality, and language -would be another. That is precisely the true position touching -allegorical art in general, and, above all, the allegorical art of -Watts. - -So long as we conceive that it is, fundamentally, the symbolizing of -literature in paint, we shall certainly misunderstand it and the rare -and peculiar merits, both technical and philosophical, which really -characterize it. If the ordinary spectator at the art galleries finds -himself, let us say, opposite a picture of a dancing flower-crowned -figure in a rose-coloured robe, he feels a definite curiosity to know -the title, looks it up in the catalogue, and finds that it is called, -let us say, “Hope.” He is immediately satisfied, as he would have been -if the title had run “Portrait of Lady Warwick,” a “View of Kilchurn -Castle.” It represents a certain definite thing, the word “hope.” But -what does the word “hope” represent? It represents only a broken -instantaneous glimpse of something that is immeasurably older and -wilder - -[Illustration: HOPE.] - -than language, that is immeasurably older and wilder than man; a mystery -to saints and a reality to wolves. To suppose that such a thing is dealt -with by the word “hope,” any more than America is represented by a -distant view of Cape Horn, would indeed be ridiculous. It is not merely -true that the word itself is, like any other word, arbitrary; that it -might as well be “pig” or “parasol”; but it is true that the -philosophical meaning of the word, in the conscious mind of man, is -merely a part of something immensely larger in the unconscious mind, -that the gusty light of language only falls for a moment on a fragment, -and that obviously a semi-detached, unfinished fragment of a certain -definite pattern on the dark tapestries of reality. It is vain and worse -than vain to declaim against the allegoric, for the very word “hope” is -an allegory, and the very word “allegory” is an allegory. - -Now let us suppose that instead of coming before that hypothetical -picture of _Hope_ in conventional flowers and conventional pink robes, -the spectator came before another picture. Suppose that he found himself -in the presence of a dim canvas with a bowed and stricken and secretive -figure cowering over a broken lyre in the twilight. What would he think? -His first thought, of course, would be that the picture was called -_Despair_; his second (when he discovered his error in the catalogue), -that it has been entered under the wrong number; his third, that the -painter was mad. But if we imagine that he overcame these preliminary -feelings and that as he stared at that queer twilight picture a dim and -powerful sense of meaning began to grow upon him--what would he see? He -would see something for which there is neither speech nor language, -which has been too vast for any eye to see and too secret for any -religion to utter, even as an esoteric doctrine. Standing before that -picture, he finds himself in the presence of a great truth. He perceives -that there is something in man which is always apparently on the eve of -disappearing, but never disappears, an assurance which is always -apparently saying farewell and yet illimitably lingers, a string which -is always stretched to snapping and yet never snaps. He perceives that -the queerest and most delicate thing in us, the most fragile, the most -fantastic, is in truth the backbone and indestructible. He knows a great -moral fact: that there never was an age of assurance, that there never -was an age of faith. Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a -perpetually defeated thing which survives all its conquerors. The -desperate modern talk about dark days and reeling altars, and the end of -Gods and angels, is the oldest talk in the world: lamentations over the -growth of agnosticism can be found in the monkish sermons of the dark -ages; horror at youthful impiety can be found in the Iliad. This is the -thing that never deserts men and yet always, with daring diplomacy, -threatens to desert them. It has indeed dwelt among and controlled all -the kings and crowds, but only with the air of a pilgrim passing by. It -has indeed warmed and lit men from the beginning of Eden with an -unending glow, but it was the glow of an eternal sunset. - -Here, in this dim picture, its trick is almost betrayed. No one can name -this picture properly, but Watts, who painted it, has named it _Hope_. -But the point is that this title is not (as those think who call it -“literary”) the reality behind the symbol, but another symbol for the -same thing, or, to speak yet more strictly, another symbol describing -another part or aspect of the same complex reality. Two men felt a -swift, violent, invisible thing in the world: one said the word “hope,” -the other painted a - -[Illustration: JONAH.] - -picture in blue and green paint. The picture is inadequate; the word -“hope” is inadequate; but between them, like two angles in the -calculation of a distance, they almost locate a mystery, a mystery that -for hundreds of ages has been hunted by men and evaded them. And the -title is therefore not so much the substance of one of Watts’ pictures, -it is rather an epigram upon it. It is merely an approximate attempt to -convey, by snatching up the tool of another craftsman, the direction -attempted in the painter’s own craft. He calls it _Hope_, and that is -perhaps the best title. It reminds us among other things of a fact which -is too little remembered, that faith, hope, and charity, the three -mystical virtues of Christianity, are also the gayest of the virtues. -Paganism, as I have suggested, is not gay, but rather nobly sad; the -spirit of Watts, which is as a rule nobly sad also, here comes nearer -perhaps than anywhere else to mysticism in the strict sense, the -mysticism which is full of secret passion and belief, like that of Fra -Angelico or Blake. But though Watts calls his tremendous reality _Hope_, -we may call it many other things. Call it faith, call it vitality, call -it the will to live, call it the religion of to-morrow morning, call it -the immortality of man, call it self-love and vanity; it is the thing -that explains why man survives all things and why there is no such thing -as a pessimist. It cannot be found in any dictionary or rewarded in any -commonwealth: there is only one way in which it can even be noticed and -recognized. If there be anywhere a man who has really lost it, his face -out of a whole crowd of men will strike us like a blow. He may hang -himself or become Prime Minister; it matters nothing. The man is dead. - -Now, of course the ordinary objection to allegory, and it is a very -sound objection, can be sufficiently well stated by saying that the -pictorial figures are mere arbitrary symbols of the words. An allegorist -of the pompous school might paint some group of Peace and Commerce doing -something to Britannia. There might be a figure of Commerce in a Greek -robe with a cornucopia or bag of gold or an argosy or any other -conventional symbol. But it is surely quite evident that such a figure -is a mere sign like the word commerce: the word might just as well be -“dandelion,” and the Greek lady with the cornucopia might just as well -be a Hebrew prophet standing on his head. It is scarcely even a -language: it is a cipher-code. Nobody can maintain that the figure, -taken as a figure, makes one think of commerce, of the forces that -effect commerce, of a thousand ports, of a thousand streets, of a -thousand warehouses and bills of lading, of a thousand excited men in -black coats who certainly would not know what to do with a cornucopia. -If we find ourselves gazing at some monument of the fragile and eternal -faith of man, at some ruined chapel, at some nameless altar, at some -scrap of old Jacobin eloquence, we might actually find our own minds -moving in certain curves that centre in the curved back of Watts’ -_Hope_: we might almost think for ourselves of a bowed figure in the -twilight, holding to her breast something damaged but undestroyed. But -can anyone say that by merely looking at the Stock Exchange on a busy -day we should think of a Greek lady with an argosy? Can anyone say that -Threadneedle Street, in itself, would inspire our minds to move in the -curves which centre in a cornucopia? Can anyone say that a very stolid -figure in a very outlandish drapery is anything but a purely arbitrary -sign, like _x_ or _y_, for such a thing as modern commerce, for the -savagery of the rich, for the hunger of the satisfied, for the vast -tachycardia or galloping of the heart that has fallen on all the great -new centres of civilization, for the sudden madness of all the mills of -the world? - -Watts’ _Hope_ does tell us something more about the nature of hope than -we can be told by merely noticing that hope is shown in individual -cases: that a man rehearses successful love speeches when he is in love, -and takes a return ticket when he goes out to fight a duel. But the -figure of Commerce with the cornucopia gives us less insight into what -is behind commerce than we might get from reading a circular or staring -out into the street. In the case of Commerce the figure is merely a -symbol of commerce, which is a symbol. In the case of Hope the matter is -quite the other way; the figure brings us nearer to something which is -not a symbol, but the reality behind symbols. In the one case we go -further down towards the river’s delta; in the other, further up towards -its fountain; that at least may be called a difference. And now, suppose -that our imaginary sight-seer who had seen so much of the pompous -allegory of Commerce in her Grecian draperies were to see, for the -second time, a second picture. Suppose he saw before him a throned -figure clad in splendid, heavy scarlet and gold, above the lustre and -dignity of which rose, in abrupt contrast, a face like the face of a -blind beast. Suppose that as this imperial thing, with closed eyes and -fat, sightless face, sat upon his magnificent seat, he let his heavy -hand and feet fall, as if by a mere pulverizing accident, on the naked -and god-like figures of the young, on men and women. Suppose that in the -background there rose straight into the air a raw and turgid smoke, as -if from some invisible and horrible sacrifice, and that by one final, -fantastic, and triumphal touch this all-destroying god and king were -adorned with the ears of an ass, declaring that he was royal, imperial, -irresistible, and, when all is said, imbecile. Suppose that a man sick -of argosies and cornucopias came before that picture, would he not say, -perhaps even before he looked in the catalogue and found that the -painter had called it _Mammon_, would he not say, “This is something -which in spirit and in essence I have seen before, something which in -spirit and in essence I have seen everywhere. That bloated, unconscious -face, so heavy, so violent, so wicked, so innocent, have I not seen it -at street corners, in billiard-rooms, in saloon bars, laying down the -law about Chartered shares or gaping at jokes about women? Those huge -and smashing limbs, so weighty, so silly, so powerless, and yet so -powerful, have I not seen them in the pompous movements, the morbid -health of the prosperous in the great cities? The hard, straight pillars -of that throne, have I not seen them in the hard, straight, hideous -tiers of modern warehouses and factories? That tawny and sulky smoke, -have I not seen it going up to heaven from all the cities of the coming -world? This is no trifling with argosies and Greek drapery. This is -commerce. This is the home of the god himself. This is why men hate him, -and why men fear him, and why men endure him.” - -Now, of course, it is at once obvious that this view would be very -unjust to commerce; but that modification, as a matter of fact, very -strongly supports the general theory at the moment under consideration. -Commerce is really an arbitrary phrase, a thing including a million -motives, from the motive which makes a man drink to the motive which -makes him reform; from the motive that makes a starving man eat a horse -to the motive which makes an idle man chase a butterfly. But whatever -other spirits there are in commerce, there is, beyond all reasonable - -[Illustration: MAMMON.] - -question, in it this powerful and enduring spirit which Watts has -painted. There is, as a ruling element in modern life, in all life, this -blind and asinine appetite for mere power. There is a spirit abroad -among the nations of the earth which drives men incessantly on to -destroy what they cannot understand, and to capture what they cannot -enjoy. This, and not commerce, is what Watts has painted. He has -painted, not the allegory of a great institution, but the vision of a -great appetite, the vision of a great motive. It is not true that this -is a picture of Commerce; but that Commerce and Watts’ picture spring -from the same source. There does exist a certain dark and driving force -in the world; one of its products is this picture, another is Commerce. -The picture is not Commerce, it is Mammon. And, indeed, so powerfully -and perfectly has Watts, in this case, realized the awful being whom he -was endeavouring to call up by his artistic incantation, that we may -even say the common positions of allegory and reality are reversed. The -fact is not that here we have an effective presentation under a certain -symbol of red robes and smoke and a throne, of what the financial world -is, but rather that here we have something of the truth that is hidden -behind the symbol of white waistcoats and hats on the back of the head, -of financial papers and sporting prophets, of butter closing quiet and -Pendragon being meant to win. This is not a symbol of commerce: commerce -is a symbol of this. - -In sketching this general and necessary attitude towards the art of -Watts, particularly in the matter of allegory, I have taken deliberately -these two very famous and obvious pictures, and I have occupied, equally -deliberately, a considerable amount of space in expounding them. It is -far better in a subject so subtle and so bewildering as the relation -between art and philosophy, that we should see how our conceptions and -hypotheses really get on when applied systematically and at some length -to some perfectly familiar and existent object. A philosopher cannot -talk about any single thing, down to a pumpkin, without showing whether -he is wise or foolish; but he can easily talk about everything with -anyone having any views about him beyond gloomy suspicions. But at this -point I become fully conscious of another and most important kind of -criticism, which has been and can be levelled against the allegories of -Watts; and which must be, by the nature of things, evoked by the -particular line of discussion or reflection that I have here adopted. - -It may be admitted that Watts’ art is not merely literary in the sense -in which I have originally used the term. It may be admitted that there -is truth in the general position I have sketched out--that Watts is not -a man copying literature or philosophy, but rather a man copying the -great spiritual and central realities which literature and philosophy -also set out to copy. It may be admitted that _Mammon_ is obviously an -attempt to portray, not a twopenny phrase, but a great idea. But along -with all these admissions it will certainly be said, by the most -powerful and recent school in art criticism, that all this amounts to -little more than a difference between a mean and a magnificent blunder. -Pictorial art, it will be said, has no more business, as such, to -portray great ideas than small ideas. Its affair is with its own -technique, with the love of a great billowing line for its own sake, of -a subtle and perfect tint for its own sake. If a man mistakes his trade -and attends to the technique of another, the sublimity of his mind is -only a very slight consolation. If I summon a paperhanger - -[Illustration: DEATH CROWNING INNOCENCE.] - -to cover the walls, and he insists on playing the piano, it matters -little whether he plays Beethoven or “The Yachmak.” If I charter a -pianist, and he is found drinking in the wine cellar, it matters little -whether he has made his largest hole in good Burgundy or bad Marsala. If -the whole of this question of great ideas and small ideas, of large -atmospheres and superficial definitions, of the higher and the lower -allegory--if all this be really irrelevant to the discussion of the -position of a painter, then, indeed, we have been upon an idle track. As -I think I shall show in a moment, this is a very inadequate view of the -matter. But it does draw our attention to an aspect of the matter which -must, without further delay, be discussed. That aspect, as I need hardly -say, is the technique of Watts. - -There is of course a certain tendency among all interesting and novel -critical philosophers to talk as if they had discovered things which it -is perfectly impossible that any human being could ever have denied; to -shout that the birds fly, and declare that in spite of persecution they -will still assert that cows have four legs. In this way some raw -pseudo-scientists talk about heredity or the physical basis of life as -if it were not a thing embedded in every creed and legend, and even the -very languages of men. In this way some of the new oligarchists of -to-day imagine they are attacking the doctrine of human equality by -pointing out that some men are stronger or cleverer than others; as if -they really believed that Danton and Washington thought that every man -was the same height and had the same brains. And something of this -preliminary cloud of folly or misunderstanding attaches doubtless to the -question of the technical view--that is, the solely technical view--of -painting. If the principle of “art for art’s sake” means simply that -there is a solely technical view of painting, and that it must be -supreme on its own ground, it appears a piece of pure madness to suppose -it other than true. Surely there never was really a man who held that a -picture that was vile in colour and weak in drawing was a good picture -because it was a picture of Florence Nightingale! Surely there never was -really a man who said that when one leg in a drawing was longer than -another, yet they were both the same length because the artist painted -it for an altar-piece! When the new critics with a burst of music and a -rocket shower of epigrams enunciated their new criticism, they must at -any rate have meant something more than this. Undoubtedly they did mean -something more; they meant that a picture was not a good vehicle for -moral sentiment at all; they meant that not only was it not the better -for having a philosophic meaning, but that it was worse. This, if it be -true, is beyond all question a real indictment of Watts. - -About the whole of this Watts controversy about didactic art there is at -least one perfectly plain and preliminary thing to be said. It is said -that art cannot teach a lesson. This is true, and the only proper -addition is the statement that neither, for the matter of that, can -morality teach a lesson. For a thing to be didactic, in the strict and -narrow and scholastic sense, it must be something about facts or the -physical sciences: you can only teach a lesson about such a thing as -Euclid or the making of paper boats. The thing is quite inapplicable to -the great needs of man, whether moral or æsthetic. Nobody ever held a -class in philanthropy with fifteen millionaires in a row writing -cheques. Nobody ever held evening continuation classes in martyrdom, or -drilled boys in a playground to die for their country. A - -[Illustration: A STORY FROM BOCCACCIO.] - -picture cannot give a plain lesson in morals; neither can a sermon. A -didactic poem was a thing known indeed among the ancients and the old -Latin civilization, but as a matter of fact it scarcely ever professed -to teach people how to live the higher life. It taught people how to -keep bees. - -Since we find, therefore, that ethics is like art, a mystic and -intuitional affair, the only question that remains is, have they any -kinship? If they have not, a man is not a man, but two men and probably -more: if they have, there is, to say the least of it, at any rate a -reasonable possibility that a note in moral feeling might have affinity -with a note in art, that a curve in law, so to speak, may repeat a curve -in draughtsmanship, that there may be genuine and not artificial -correspondences between a state of morals and an effect in painting. -This would, I should tentatively suggest, appear to be a most reasonable -hypothesis. It is not so much the fact that there is no such thing as -allegorical art, but rather the fact that there is no art that is not -allegorical. But the meanings expressed in high and delicate art are not -to be classed under cheap and external ethical formulæ, they deal with -strange vices and stranger virtues. Art is only unmoral in so far as -most morality is immoral. Thus Mr. Whistler when he drops a spark of -perfect yellow or violet into some glooming pool of the nocturnal Thames -is, in all probability, enunciating some sharp and wholesome moral -comment. When the young Impressionists paint dim corners of meadows or -splashes of sunlight in the wood, this does not mean necessarily that -they are unmoral; it may only mean that they are a very original and -sincere race of stern young moralists. - -Now if we adopt this general theory of the existence of genuine -correspondences between art and moral beauty, of the existence, that is -to say, of genuine allegories, it is perfectly clear wherein the test of -such genuineness must consist. It must consist in the nature of the -technique. If the technique, considered as technique, is calculated to -evoke in us a certain kind of pleasure, and there is an analogous -pleasure in the meaning considered as meaning, then there is a true -wedding of the arts. But if the pleasure in the technique be of a kind -quite dissimilar in its own sphere to the pleasure in the spiritual -suggestion, then it is a mechanical and unlawful union, and this -philosophy, at any rate, forbids the banns. If the intellectual -conceptions uttered in Michel Angelo’s _Day of Judgment_ in the Sistine -Chapel were the effect of a perfect and faultless workmanship, but the -workmanship such as we should admire in a Gothic missal or a picture by -Gerard Dow, we should then say that absolute excellence in both -departments did not excuse their being joined. The thing would have been -a mere accident, or convenience. Just as two plotters might communicate -by means of a bar or two of music, so these subtle harmonies of colour -and form would have been used for their detached and private ends by the -dark conspirators of morality. - -Now there is nothing in the world that is really so thoroughly -characteristic of Watts’ technique as the fact that it does almost -startlingly correspond to the structure of his spiritual sense. If such -pictures as _The Dweller in the Innermost_ and _Mammon_ and _Diana and -Endymion_ and _Eve Repentant_ had neither title nor author, if no one -had heard of Watts or heard of Eve; if, for the matter of that, the -pictures had neither human nor animal form, it would be possible to -guess something of the painter’s attitude from the mere colour and line. -If Watts painted an arabesque, it would be moral; if he designed a -Turkey - -[Illustration: LORD LYTTON.] - -carpet, it would be stoical. So individual is his handling that his very -choice and scale of colours betray him. A man with a keen sense of the -spiritual and symbolic history of colours could guess at something about -Watts from the mess on his palette. He would see giants and the sea and -cold primeval dawns and brown earth-men and red earth-women lying in the -heaps of greens and whites and reds, like forces in chaos before the -first day of creation. A certain queer and yet very simple blue there -is, for instance, which is like Titian’s and yet not like it, which is -more lustrous and yet not less opaque, and which manages to suggest the -north rather than Titian’s south, in spite of its intensity; which -suggests also the beginning of things rather than their maturity; a hot -spring of the earth rather than Titian’s opulent summer. Then there is -that tremendous autochthonous red, which was the colour of Adam, whose -name was Red Earth. It is, if one may say so, the clay in which no one -works, except Watts and the Eternal Potter. There are other colours that -have this character, a character indescribable except by saying that -they come from the palette of Creation--a green especially that -reappears through portraits, allegories, landscapes, heroic designs, but -always has the same fierce and elfish look, like a green that has a -secret. It may be seen in the signet ring of Owen Meredith, and in the -eyes of the _Dweller in the Innermost_. But all these colours have, as I -say, the first and most characteristic and most obvious of the mental -qualities of Watts; they are simple and like things just made by God. -Nor is it, I think, altogether fanciful to push this analogy or harmony -a step further and to see in the colours and the treatment of them the -other side or typical trait which I have frequently mentioned as making -up the identity of the painter. He is, as I say, a stoic; therefore to -some extent, at least, a pagan; he has no special sympathy with Celtic -intensity, with Catholic mysticism, with Romanticism, with all the -things that deal with the cells of the soul, with agonies and dreams. -And I think a broad distinction between the finest pagan and the finest -Christian point of view may be found in such an approximate phrase as -this, that paganism deals always with a light shining on things, -Christianity with a light shining through them. That is why the whole -Renaissance colouring is opaque, the whole Pre-Raphaelite colouring -transparent. The very sky of Rubens is more solid than the rocks of -Giotto: it is like a noble cliff of immemorial blue marble. The artists -of the devout age seemed to regret that they could not make the light -show through everything, as it shows through the little wood in the -wonderful _Nativity_ of Botticelli. And that is why, again, -Christianity, which has been attacked so strangely as dull and austere, -invented the thing which is more intoxicating than all the wines of the -world, stained-glass windows. - -Now Watts, with all his marvellous spirituality, or rather because of -his peculiar type of marvellous spirituality, has the Platonic, the -philosophic, rather than the Catholic order of mysticism. And it can -scarcely be a coincidence that here again we feel it to be something -that could almost be deduced from the colours if they were splashed at -random about a canvas. The colours are mystical, but they are not -transparent; that is, not transparent in the very curious but -unmistakable sense in which the colours of Botticelli or Rossetti are -transparent. What they are can only be described as iridescent. A -curious lustre or glitter, conveyed chiefly by a singular and individual -brushwork, lies over all his great pictures. - -[Illustration: DAWN.] - -It is the dawn of things: it is the glow of the primal sense of wonder; -it is the sun of the childhood of the world; it is the light that never -was on sea or land; but still it is a light shining on things, not -shining through them. It is a light which exhibits and does honour to -this world, not a light that breaks in upon this world to bring it -terror or comfort, like the light that suddenly peers round the corner -of some dark Gothic chapel with its green or golden or blood-red eyes. -The Gothic artists, as I say, would have liked men’s bodies to become -like burning glass (as the figures in their windows do), that the light -might pass through them. There is no fear of light passing through -Watts’ _Cain_. - -These analogies must inevitably appear fantastic to those who do not -accept the general hypothesis of a possible kinship between pictorial -and moral harmonies in the psychology of men; but to those who do accept -this not very extravagant hypothesis, it may, I think, be repeated by -way of summary, that the purely technical question of Watts’ colour -scheme does provide us, at least suggestively, with these two parallels. -Watts, so far as his moral and mental attitude can be expressed by any -phrases of such brevity, has two main peculiarities: first, a large -infantile poetry which delights in things fresh, raw, and gigantic; -second, a certain Greek restraint and agnostic severity, which throws a -strong light on this world as it is. The colours he uses have also two -main peculiarities: first, a fresh, raw, and, as it were, gigantic -character; secondly, an opaque reflected light, unlike the mediæval -lighting, a strong light thrown on this world as it is. - -Similar lines of comparison, so far as they appear to possess any value, -could, of course, be very easily pointed out in connexion with the -character of Watts’ draughtsmanship. That his lines are simple and -powerful, that both in strength and weakness they are candid and -austere, that they are not Celtic, not Catholic, and not romantic lines -of draughtsmanship, would, I think, appear sufficiently clear to anyone -who has any instinct for this mode of judgment at all. In the matter of -line and composition, of course, the same general contention applies as -in the case of colour. The curve of the bent figure of _Hope_, -considered simply as a curve, half repeating as it does the upper curve -of the globe, suggests a feeling, a sense of fear, of simplicity, of -something which lies near to the nature of the idea itself, the idea -which inspires the title of the picture. The splendid rushing whirlpool -of curves which constitutes, as it were, the ellipse of the two figures -in _Diana and Endymion_ is a positive inspiration. It is, simply as a -form for a picture, a mere scheme of lines, the very soul of Greece. It -is simple; it is full and free; it follows great laws of harmony, but it -follows them swiftly and at will; it is headlong, and yet at rest, like -the solid arch of a waterfall. It is a rushing and passionate meeting of -two superb human figures; and it is almost a mathematical harmony. -Technically, at least, and as a matter of outlines, it is probably the -artist’s masterpiece. - -Before we quit this second department of the temperament of Watts, as -expressed in his line, mention must be made of what is beyond all -question the most interesting and most supremely personal of all the -elements in the painter’s designs and draughtsmanship. That is, of -course, his magnificent discovery of the artistic effect of the human -back. The back is the most awful and mysterious thing in the universe: -it is impossible to speak about it. It is the part of man that he knows -nothing of; like an - -[Illustration: EVE REPENTANT.] - -outlying province forgotten by an emperor. It is a common saying that -anything may happen behind our backs: transcendentally considered the -thing has an eerie truth about it. Eden may be behind our backs, or -Fairyland. But this mystery of the human back has again its other side -in the strange impression produced on those behind: to walk behind -anyone along a lane is a thing that, properly speaking, touches the -oldest nerve of awe. Watts has realized this as no one in art or letters -has realized it in the whole history of the world: it has made him -great. There is one possible exception to his monopoly of this -magnificent craze. Two thousand years before, in the dark scriptures of -a nomad people, it had been said that their prophet saw the immense -Creator of all things, but only saw Him from behind. I do not know -whether even Watts would dare to paint that. But it reads like one of -his pictures, like the most terrific of all his pictures, which he has -kept veiled. - -I need not instance the admirable and innumerable cases of this fine and -individual effect. _Eve Repentant_ (that fine picture), in which the -agony of a gigantic womanhood is conveyed as it could not be conveyed by -any power of visage, in the powerful contortion of the muscular and yet -beautiful back, is the first that occurs to the mind. The sad and -sardonic picture painted in later years, _For He had Great -Possessions_--showing the young man of the Gospel loaded with his -intolerable pomp of garments and his head sunken out of sight--is of -course another. Others are slighter instances, like _Good Luck to your -Fishing_. He has again carried the principle, in one instance, to an -extreme seldom adopted, I should fancy, either by artist or man. He has -painted a very graceful portrait of his wife, in which that lady’s face -is entirely omitted, the head being abruptly turned away. But it is -indeed idle to multiply these instances of the painter’s hobby (if one -may use the phrase) of the worship of the human back, when all such -instances have been dwarfed and overshadowed by the one famous and -tremendous instance that everyone knows. _Love and Death_ is truly a -great achievement: if it stood alone it would have made a man great. And -it fits in with a peculiar importance with the general view I am -suggesting of the Watts technique. For the whole picture really hangs, -both technically and morally, upon one single line, a line that could be -drawn across a blank canvas, the spine-line of the central figure of -Death with its great falling garment. The whole composition, the whole -conception, and, I was going to say, the whole moral of the picture, -could be deduced from that single line. The moral of the picture (if -moral were the right phrase for these things) is, it is scarcely -necessary to point out, the monument of about as noble a silence and -suppression as the human mind ever bent itself to in its pride. It is -the great masterpiece of agnosticism. In that picture agnosticism--not -the cheap and querulous incredulity which abuses the phrase, but loyal -and consistent agnosticism, which is as willing to believe good as evil -and to harbour faith as doubt--has here its great and pathetic place and -symbol in the house of the arts. It is the artistic embodiment of -reverent ignorance at its highest, fully as much as the Divine Comedy is -the artistic embodiment of Christianity. - -Technically, in a large number of cases, it is probably true that Watts’ -portraits, or some of them at least, are his most successful -achievements. But here also we find our general conclusion: for if his -portraits are his best pictures, it is certainly not because they - -[Illustration: LOVE AND DEATH.] - -are merely portraits; if they are in some cases better than his symbolic -designs, it is certainly not because they are less symbolic. In his -gallery of great men, indeed, we find Watts almost more himself than -anywhere else. Most men are allegorical when they are painting -allegories, but Watts is allegorical when he is painting an old -alderman. A change passes over that excellent being, a change of a kind -to which aldermen are insufficiently inured. He begins to resolve into -the primal elements, to become dust and the shadow, to become the red -clay of Adam and the wind of God. His eyes become, in spite of his -earnest wish, the fixed stars in the sky of the spirit; his complexion -begins to show, not the unmeaning red of portraits and miniatures, but -that secret and living red which is within us, and which is the river of -man. The astounding manner in which Watts has, in some cases, treated -his sitters is one of the most remarkable things about his character. He -is not (it is almost absurd to have to mention such a thing about the -almost austere old democrat) a man likely to flatter a sitter in any -worldly or conventional sense. Nor is he, for the matter of that, a man -likely to push compliments far from any motive: he is a strict, and I -should infer a candid, man. The type of virtues he chiefly admires and -practises are the reverse of those which would encourage a courtier or -even a universalist. But he scarcely ever paints a man without making -him about five times as magnificent as he really looks. The real men -appear, if they present themselves afterwards, like mean and -unsympathetic sketches from the Watts original. - -The fact is that this indescribable primalism, which we have noted as -coming out in the designs, in the titles, and in Watts’ very -oil-colours, is present in this matter in a most extraordinary way. -Watts does not copy men at all: he makes them over again. He dips his -hand in the clay of chaos and begins to model a man named William Morris -or a man named Richard Burton: he is assisted, no doubt, in some degree -by a quaint old text-book called Reality, with its stiff but suggestive -woodcuts and its shrewd and simple old hints. But the most that can be -said for the portraiture is that Watts asks a hint to come and stop with -him, puts the hint in a chair in his studio and stares at him. The thing -that comes out at last upon the canvas is not generally a very precise -picture of the sitter, though, of course, it is almost always a very -accurate picture of the universe. - -And yet while this, on the one side, is true enough, the portraits are -portraits, and very fine portraits. But they are dominated by an element -which is the antithesis of the whole tendency of modern art, that -tendency which for want of a better word we have to call by the absurd -name of optimism. It is not, of course, in reality a question of -optimism in the least, but of an illimitable worship and wonder directed -towards the fact of existence. There is a great deal of difference -between the optimism which says that things are perfect and the optimism -which merely says (with a more primeval modesty) that they are very -good. One optimism says that a one-legged man has two legs because it -would be so dreadful if he had not. The other optimism says that the -fact that the one-legged was born of a woman, has a soul, has been in -love, and has stood alive under the stars, is a fact so enormous and -thrilling that, in comparison, it does not matter whether he has one leg -or five. One optimism says that this is the best of all possible worlds. -The other says that it is certainly not the best of all possible worlds, -but - -[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS.] - -it is the best of all possible things that a world should be possible. -Watts, as has been more than once more or less definitely suggested, is -dominated throughout by this prehistoric wonder. A man to him, -especially a great man, is a thing to be painted as Fra Angelico painted -angels, on his knees. He has indeed, like many brilliant men in the age -that produced Carlyle and Ruskin, an overwhelming tendency to -hero-worship. That worship had not, of course, in the case of these men -any trace of that later and more denaturalized hero-worship, the -tendency to worship madmen--to dream of vast crimes as one dreams of a -love-affair, and to take the malformation of the soul to be the only -originality. To the Carlylean (and Watts has been to some by no means -inconsiderable extent a Carlylean), to the Carlylean the hero, the great -man, was a man more human than humanity itself. In worshipping him you -were worshipping humanity in a sacrament: and Watts seems to express in -almost every line of his brush this ardent and reverent view of the -great man. He overdoes it. Tennyson, fine as he was both physically and -mentally, was not quite so much of a demi-god as Watts’ splendid -pictures would seem to suggest. Many other sitters have been subjected, -past all recognition, to this kind of devout and ethereal caricature. -But the essential of the whole matter was that the attitude of Watts was -one which might almost be called worship. It was not, of course, that he -always painted men as handsome in the conventional sense, or even as -handsome as they were. William Morris impressed most people as a very -handsome man: in Watts’ marvellous portrait, so much is made of the -sanguine face, the bold stare, the almost volcanic suddenness of the -emergence of the head from the dark green background, that the effect -of ordinary good looks, on which many of Morris’s intimates would -probably have prided themselves, is in some degree lost. Carlyle, again, -when he saw the painter’s fine rendering of him, said with -characteristic surliness that he “looked like a mad labourer.” -Conventionally speaking, it is of course, therefore, to be admitted that -the sitters did not always come off well. But the exaggeration or the -distortion, if exaggeration or distortion there were, was always -effected in obedience to some almost awestruck notion of the greatness -or goodness of the great or good sitter. The point is not whether Watts -sometimes has painted men as ugly as they were painted by the primary -religious painters; the point is, as I have said, that he painted as -they did, on his knees. Now no one thinks that Mr. Sargent paints the -Misses Wertheimer on his knees. His grimness and decision of drawing and -colouring are not due to a sacred optimism. But those of Watts are due -to this: are due to an intense conviction that there is within the -sitter a great reality which has to give up its secret before he leaves -the seat or the model’s throne. Hence come the red violent face and -minatory eyes of William Morris: the painter sought to express, and he -did most successfully express, the main traits and meaning of -Morris--the appearance of a certain plain masculine passion in the realm -of decorative art. Morris was a man who wanted good wall-papers, not as -a man wants a coin of the Emperor Constantine, which was the cloistered -or abnormal way in which men had commonly devised such things: he wanted -good wall-papers as a man wants beer. He clamoured for art: he brawled -for it. He asserted the perfectly virile and ordinary character of the -appetite for beauty. And he possessed and developed a power of moral -violence on pure - -[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.] - -matters of taste which startled the flabby world of connoisseurship and -opened a new era. He grew furious with furniture and denounced the union -of wrong colours as men denounce an adultery. All this is expressed far -more finely than in these clumsy sentences in that living and leonine -head in the National Portrait Gallery. It is exactly the same with -Carlyle. Watts’ Carlyle is immeasurably more subtle and true than the -Carlyle of Millais, which simply represents him as a shaggy, handsome, -magnificent old man. The uglier Carlyle of Watts has more of the truth -about him, the strange combination of a score of sane and healthy -visions and views, with something that was not sane, which bloodshot and -embittered them all, the great tragedy of the union of a strong -countryside mind and body with a disease of the vitals and something -like a disease of the spirit. In fact, Watts painted Carlyle “like a mad -labourer” because Carlyle was a mad labourer. - -This general characteristic might of course be easily traced in all the -portraits one by one. If space permitted, indeed, such a process might -be profitable; for while we take careful note of all the human -triviality of faces, the one thing that we all tend to forget is that -divine and common thing which Watts celebrates. It is the misfortune of -the nonreligious ages that they tend to cultivate a sense of -individuality, not only at the expense of religion, but at the expense -of humanity itself. For the modern portrait-painter not only does not -see the image of God in his sitters, he does not even see the image of -man. His object is not to insist on the glorious and solemn heritage -which is common to Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Albert Chevalier, to -Count Tolstoy and Mr. Wanklyn, that is the glorious and solemn heritage -of a nose and two eyes and a mouth. The effort of the dashing modern is -rather to make each of these features individual almost to the point of -being incredible: it is his desire to paint the mouth whose grimace is -inimitable, the eyes that could be only in one head, and the nose that -never was on sea or land. There is value in this purely personal -treatment, but something in it so constantly lost: the quality of the -common humanity. The new art gallery is too like a museum of freaks, it -is too wild and wonderful, like a realistic novel. Watts errs -undoubtedly on the other side. He makes all his portraits too classical. -It may seem like a paradox to say that he makes them too human; but -humanity is a _classis_ and therefore classical. He recurs too much to -the correct type which includes all men. He has, for instance, a worship -of great men so complete that it makes him tend in the direction of -painting them all alike. There may be too much of Browning in his -Tennyson, too much of Tennyson in his Browning. There is certainly a -touch of Manning in his John Stuart Mill, and a touch of the Minotaur in -many of his portraits of Imperial politicians. While he celebrates the -individual with a peculiar insight, it is nevertheless always referred -to a general human type. We feel when we look at even the most -extraordinary of Watts’ portraits, as, for instance, the portrait of -Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, that before Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was -born, and apart from that fact, there was such a thing as a human being. -When we look at a brilliant modern canvas like that of Mr. Sargent’s -portrait of Wertheimer, we do not feel that any human being analogous to -him had of necessity existed. We feel that Mr. Wertheimer might have -been created before the stars. Watts has a tendency to resume his -characters into his background as if they were half returning - -[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE.] - -to the forces of nature. In his more successful portraits the actual -physical characteristics of the sitter appear to be something of the -nature of artistic creations; they are decorative and belong to a whole. -We feel that he has filled in the fiery orange of Swinburne’s hair as -one might fill in a gold or copper panel. We know that he was -historically correct in making the hair orange, but we cannot get rid of -a haunting feeling that if his scheme had been a little different he -would have made it green. This indescribable sentiment is particularly -strong in the case of the portrait of Rossetti. Rossetti is dressed in a -dark green coat which perfectly expresses his sumptuous Pre-Raphaelite -affectation. But we do not feel that Rossetti has adopted the dark green -coat to suit his dark red beard. We rather feel that if anyone had -seized Rossetti and forcibly buttoned him up in the dark green coat he -would have grown the red beard by sheer force of will. - -Before we quit the subject of portraiture a word ought to be said about -two exceedingly noble portraits, those of Matthew Arnold and Cardinal -Manning. The former is interesting because, as an able critic said -somewhere (I wish I could remember who he was or where he wrote), this -is the one instance of Watts approaching tentatively a man whom he in -all reasonable probability did not understand. In this particular case -the picture is a hundred times better for that. The portrait-painter of -Matthew Arnold obviously ought not to understand him, since he did not -understand himself. And the bewilderment which the artist felt for those -few hours reproduced in a perfect, almost in an immortal, picture the -bewilderment which the sitter felt from the cradle to the grave. The -bewilderment of Matthew Arnold was more noble and faithful than most -men’s certainty, and Watts has not failed to give that nobility a place -even greater perhaps than that which he would have given to it had he -been working on that fixed theory of admiration in which he dealt with -Tennyson or Morris. The sad sea-blue eyes of Matthew Arnold seemed to -get near to the fundamental sadness of blue. It is a certain eternal -bleakness in the colour which may for all I know have given rise to the -legend of blue devils. There are times at any rate when the bluest -heavens appear only blue with those devils. The portrait of Cardinal -Manning is worth a further and special notice, because it is an -illustration of the fact to which I have before alluded: the fact that -while Watts in one sense always gets the best out of his sitters, he -does not by any means always get the handsomest out of them. Manning was -a singularly fine-looking man, even in his emaciation. A friend of mine, -who was particularly artistic both by instinct and habits, gazed for a -long time at a photograph of the terrible old man clad in those -Cardinal’s robes and regalia in which he exercised more than a -Cardinal’s power, and said reflectively, “He would have made his fortune -as a model.” A great many of the photographs of Manning, indeed almost -any casual glimpses of him, present him as more beautiful than he -appears in Watts’ portrait. To the ordinary onlooker there was behind -the wreck of flesh and the splendid skeleton the remains of a very -handsome English gentleman; relics of one who might have hunted foxes -and married an American heiress. Watts has no eyes for anything except -that sublime vow which he would himself repudiate, that awful Church -which he would himself disown. He exaggerates the devotionalism of -Manning. He is more ascetic than the ascetics; more Catholic than -Catholicism. Just so, he would be, if he were painting the -Sheik-el-Islam, more Moslem than the Mohammedans. He has no eyes but -for ideas. - -Watts’ allegories and Watts’ portraits exhaust the subject of his art. -It is true that he has on rare occasions attempted pictures merely -reproducing the externals of the ordinary earth. It is characteristic of -him that he should have once, for no apparent reason in particular, -painted a picture of two carthorses and a man. It is still more -characteristic of him that this one picture of a trivial group in the -street should be so huge as to dwarf many of his largest and most -transcendental canvases; that the incidental harmless drayman should be -more gigantic than the Prince of this World or Adam or the Angel of -Death. He condescends to a detail and makes the detail more vast than a -cosmic allegory. One picture, called “The First Oyster,” he is reported -to have painted in response to a challenge which accused him or his art -of lacking altogether the element of humour. The charge is interesting, -because it suggests a comparison with the similar charge commonly -brought against Gladstone. In both charges there is an element of truth, -though not complete truth. Watts proved no doubt that he was not wholly -without humour by this admirable picture. Gladstone proved that he was -not wholly without humour by his reply to Mr. Chaplin, by his singing of -“Doo-dah,” and by his support of a grant to the Duke of Coburg. But both -men were singularly little possessed by the mood or the idea of humour. -To them had been in peculiar fullness revealed the one great truth which -our modern thought does not know and which it may possibly perish -through not knowing. They knew that to enjoy life means to take it -seriously. There is an eternal kinship between solemnity and high -spirits, and almost the very name of it is Gladstone. Its other name is -Watts. They knew that not only life, but every detail of life, is most a -pleasure when it is studied with the gloomiest intensity. They knew that -the men who collect beetles are jollier than the men who kill them, and -that the men who worshipped beetles (in ancient Egypt) were probably the -jolliest of all. The startling cheerfulness of the old age of Gladstone, -the startling cheerfulness of the old age of Watts, are both entirely -redolent of this exuberant seriousness, this uproarious gravity. They -were as happy as the birds, because, like the birds, they were untainted -by the disease of laughter. They are as awful and philosophical as -children at play: indeed they remind us of a truth true for all of us, -though capable of misunderstanding, that the great aim of a man’s life -is to get into his second childhood. - -Of his work we have concluded our general survey. It has been hard in -conducting such a survey to avoid the air of straying from the subject. -But the greatest hardness of the subject is that we cannot stray from -the subject. This man has attempted, whether he has succeeded or no, to -paint such pictures of such things that no one shall be able to get -outside them; that everyone should be lost in them for ever like -wanderers in a mighty park. Whether we strike a match or win the -Victoria Cross, we are still giants sprawling in Chaos. Whether we hide -in a monastery or thunder on a platform, we are still standing in the -Court of Death. If any experience at all is genuine, it affects the -philosophy of these pictures; if any halfpenny stamp supports them, they -are the better pictures; if any dead cat in a dust-bin contradicts them, -they are the worse pictures. This is the great pathos and the great -dignity of philosophy and theology. Men talk of philosophy and theology -as if they were something specialistic and arid and - -[Illustration: GOOD LUCK TO YOUR FISHING.] - -academic. But philosophy and theology are not only the only democratic -things, they are democratic to the point of being vulgar, to the point, -I was going to say, of being rowdy. They alone admit all matters; they -alone lie open to all attacks. All other sciences may, while studying -their own, laugh at the rag-tag and bobtail of other sciences. An -astronomer may sneer at animalculæ, which are very like stars; an -entomologist may scorn the stars, which are very like animalculæ. -Physiologists may think it dirty to grub about in the grass; botanists -may think it dirtier to grub about in an animal’s inside. But there is -nothing that is not relevant to these more ancient studies. There is no -detail, from buttons to kangaroos, that does not enter into the gay -confusion of philosophy. There is no fact of life, from the death of a -donkey to the General Post Office, which has not its place to dance and -sing in, in the glorious Carnival of theology. - -Therefore I make no apology if I have asked the reader, in the course of -these remarks, to think about things in general. It is not I, but George -Frederick Watts, who asks the reader to think about things in general. -If he has not done this, he has failed. If he has not started in us such -trains of reflection as I am now concluding and many more and many -better, he has failed. And this brings me to my last word. Now and again -Watts has failed. I am afraid that it may possibly be inferred from the -magniloquent language which I have frequently, and with a full -consciousness of my act, applied to this great man, that I think the -whole of his work technically triumphant. Clearly it is not. For I -believe that often he has scarcely known what he was doing; I believe -that he has been in the dark when the lines came wrong; that he has been -still deeper in the dark and things came right. As I have already -pointed out, the vague lines which his mere physical instinct would -make him draw, have in them the curves of the Cosmos. His automatic -manual action was, I think, certainly a revelation to others, certainly -a revelation to himself. Standing before a dark canvas upon some quiet -evening, he has made lines and something has happened. In such an hour -the strange and splendid phrase of the Psalm he has literally fulfilled. -He has gone on because of the word of meekness and truth and of -righteousness. And his right hand has taught him terrible things. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK G. F. WATTS *** - -***** This file should be named 64074-0.txt or 64074-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - https://www.gutenberg.org/6/4/0/7/64074/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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F. Watts, by G. K. Chesterton</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: G. F. Watts</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: G. K. Chesterton</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 22, 2020 [eBook #64074]</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> -<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)</div> -<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK G. F. WATTS ***</div> -<hr class="full" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/cover.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" height="550" alt="" /></a> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1">{1}</a></span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2">{2}</a></span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3">{3}</a></span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4">{4}</a></span> </p> - -<p class="cbig">G. F. WATTS</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5">{5}</a></span> </p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_1" id="ill_1"></a><a name="front" id="front"></a> -<a href="images/i_frontispiece.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_frontispiece.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE HABIT DOES NOT MAKE THE MONK.</p></div> -</div> - -<h1>G. F. WATTS</h1> - -<p class="cbig">BY G. K. CHESTERTON<br /> -</p> - -<p class="c" style="margin-top:2em;"> -<img src="images/colophon.jpg" -width="150" -alt="" -/> -<br /> -<br /><br /> -LONDON<br /> -<br /> -D U C K W O R T H & C O.<br /> -<br /> -HENRIETTA ST. COVENT GARDEN<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_6" id="page_6">{6}</a></span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Published 1904</i><br /> -<i>Reprinted 1906, 1909, 1913, 1914</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -PRINTED AT<br /> -THE BALLANTYNE PRESS<br /> -LONDON<br /></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7">{7}</a></span> </p> - -<h2><a name="LIST_OF_PHOTOGRAVURES" id="LIST_OF_PHOTOGRAVURES"></a>LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURES</h2> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td> </td><td class="rt"><small><i>Facing p.</i></small></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_1">THE HABIT DOES NOT MAKE THE MONK</a> <a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_2">G. F. WATTS, R.A.</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_8">8</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_3">THE RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_10">10</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_4">LESLIE STEPHEN</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_14">14</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_5">WALTER CRANE</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_16">16</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_6">THE SLUMBER OF THE AGES</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_18">18</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_7">CARDINAL MANNING</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_20">20</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_8">CHAOS</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_22">22</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_9">“FOR HE HAD GREAT POSSESSIONS”</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_26">26</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_10">AN IDLE CHILD OF FANCY</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_28">28</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_11">THE MINOTAUR</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_32">32</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_12">THE COURT OF DEATH</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_34">34</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_13">MATTHEW ARNOLD</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_36">36</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_14">JOHN STUART MILL</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_36">36</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_15">ROBERT BROWNING</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_38">38</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_16">LORD TENNYSON</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_38">38</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_17">THE DWELLER IN THE INNERMOST</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_40">40</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_18">GEORGE MEREDITH</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_42">42</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_19">ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_44">44</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_20">HOPE</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_46">46</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_21">JONAH</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_48">48</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8">{8}</a></span> -<a href="#ill_22">MAMMON</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_52">52</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_23">DEATH CROWNING INNOCENCE</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_54">54</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_24">A STORY FROM BOCCACCIO</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_56">56</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_25">LORD LYTTON</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_58">58</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_26">DAWN</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_60">60</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_27">EVE REPENTANT</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_62">62</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_28">LOVE AND DEATH</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_64">64</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_29">WILLIAM MORRIS</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_66">66</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_30">DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_68">68</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_31">THOMAS CARLYLE</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_70">70</a></td></tr> -<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#ill_32">GOOD LUCK TO YOUR FISHING</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_74">74</a></td></tr> - -</table> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind"><i>The Photogravures are from photographs by Fredk. Hollyer. -Permanent photographs of works of Watts, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, -Holbein, and of pictures in the Dublin and Hague Galleries can be -obtained of Fredk. Hollyer, 9 Pembroke Square, Kensington.</i></p></div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_2" id="ill_2"></a> -<a href="images/i_008fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_008fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>G. F. WATTS, R.A.</p> - -<p>Photograph from Life by Frederick Hollyer.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9">{9}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">G</span>EORGE FREDERICK WATTS was born on 23rd February 1817. His whole rise -and career synchronizes roughly with the rise and career of the -nineteenth century. As a rule, no doubt, such chronological parallels -are peculiarly fanciful and unmeaning. Nothing can be imagined more -idle, in a general way, than talking about a century as if it were some -kind of animal with a head and tail, instead of an arbitrary length cut -from an unending scroll. Nor is it less erroneous to assume that even if -a period be definitely vital or disturbing, art must be a mirror of it; -the greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity; poets, -like bricklayers, work on through a century of wars, and Bewick’s birds, -to take an instance, have the air of persons unaffected by the French -Revolution. But in the case of Watts there are two circumstances which -render the dates relevant. The first is that the nineteenth century was -self-conscious, believed itself to be an idea and an atmosphere, and -changed its name from a chronological almost to a philosophical term. I -do not know whether all centuries do this or whether an advanced and -progressive organ called “The Eleventh Century” was ever in -contemplation in the dawn of the Middle Ages. But with us it is clear -that a certain spirit was rightly or wrongly associated with the late -century and that it called up images and thoughts like any historic or -ritual date, like the Fourth<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10">{10}</a></span> of July or the First of April. What these -images and thoughts were we shall be obliged in a few minutes and in the -interests of the subject to inquire. But this is the first circumstance -which renders the period important; and the second is that it has always -been so regarded by Watts himself. He, more than any other modern man, -more than politicians who thundered on platforms or financiers who -captured continents, has sought in the midst of his quiet and hidden -life to mirror his age. He was born in the white and austere dawn of -that great reforming century, and he has lingered after its grey and -doubtful close. He is above all things a typical figure, a survival of -the nineteenth century.</p> - -<p>It will appear to many a somewhat grotesque matter to talk about a -period in which most of us were born and which has only been dead a year -or two, as if it were a primal Babylonian empire of which only a few -columns are left crumbling in the desert. And yet such is, in spirit, -the fact. There is no more remarkable psychological element in history -than the way in which a period can suddenly become unintelligible. To -the early Victorian period we have in a moment lost the key: the Crystal -Palace is the temple of a forgotten creed. The thing always happens -sharply: a whisper runs through the salons, Mr. Max Beerbohm waves a -wand and a whole generation of great men and great achievement suddenly -looks mildewed and unmeaning. We see precisely the same thing in that -other great reaction towards art and the vanities, the Restoration of -Charles II. In that hour both the great schools of faith and valour -which had seemed either angels or devils to all men: the dreams of -Strafford and the great High Churchmen on the one hand; the Moslem -frenzy of the English Commons, the worship of the English law upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11">{11}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_3" id="ill_3"></a> -<a href="images/i_010fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_010fp.jpg" width="478" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12">{12}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">other; both seemed distant and ridiculous. The new Cavalier despised the -old Cavalier even more than he despised the Roundhead. The last stand of -English chivalry dwindled sharply to the solitary figure of the absurd -old country gentleman drinking wine out of an absurd old flagon. The -great roar of Roundhead psalms which cried out that the God of Battles -was loose in English meadows shrank to a single snuffle. The new and -polite age saw the old and serious one exactly as we see the early -Victorian era: they saw it, that is to say, not as splendid, not as -disastrous, not as fruitful, not as infamous, not as good or bad, but -simply as ugly. Just as we can see nothing about Lord Shaftesbury but -his hat, they could see nothing about Cromwell but his nose. There is no -doubt of the shock and sharpness of the silent transition. The only -difference is that accordingly as we think of man and his nature, -according to our deepest intuitions about things, we shall see in the -Restoration and the <i>fin de siècle</i> philosophy a man waking from a -turbid and pompous dream, or a man hurled from heaven and the wars of -the angels.</p> - -<p>G. F. Watts is so deeply committed to, and so unalterably steeped in, -this early Victorian seriousness and air of dealing with great matters, -that unless we sharply apprehend that spirit, and its difference from -our own, we shall misunderstand his work from the outset. Splendid as is -the art of Watts technically or obviously considered, we shall yet find -much in it to perplex and betray us, unless we understand his original -theory and intention, a theory and intention dyed deeply with the -colours of a great period which is gone. The great technical -inequalities of his work, its bursts of stupendous simplicity in colour -and design, its daring failures, its strange symbolical portraits, all -will mislead or bewilder if we have not the thread of intention. In -order to hold that, we must hold something which runs through and -supports, as a string supports jewels, all the wars and treaties and -reforms of the nineteenth century.</p> - -<p>There are at least three essential and preliminary points on which Watts -is so completely at one with the nineteenth century and so completely -out of accord with the twentieth, that it may be advisable to state them -briefly before we proceed to the narrower but not more cogent facts of -his life and growth. The first of these is a nineteenth-century -atmosphere which is so difficult to describe, that we can only convey it -by a sort of paradox. It is difficult to know whether it should be -called doubt or faith. For if, on the one hand, real faith would have -been more confident, real doubt, on the other hand, would have been more -indifferent. The attitude of that age of which the middle and best parts -of Watts’ work is most typical, was an attitude of devouring and -concentrated interest in things which were, by their own system, -impossible or unknowable. Men were, in the main, agnostics: they said, -“We do not know”; but not one of them ever ventured to say, “We do not -care.” In most eras of revolt and question, the sceptics reap something -from their scepticism: if a man were a believer in the eighteenth -century, there was Heaven; if he were an unbeliever, there was the -Hell-Fire Club. But these men restrained themselves more than hermits -for a hope that was more than half hopeless, and sacrificed hope itself -for a liberty which they would not enjoy; they were rebels without -deliverance and saints without reward. There may have been and there was -something arid and over-pompous about them: a newer and gayer philosophy -may be passing before us and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13">{13}</a></span> changing many things for the better; but -we shall not easily see any nobler race of men, and of them all most -assuredly there was none nobler than Watts. If anyone wishes to see that -spirit, he will see it in pictures painted by Watts in a form beyond -expression sad and splendid. <i>Hope</i> that is dim and delicate and yet -immortal, the indestructible minimum of the spirit; <i>Love and Death</i> -that is awful and yet the reverse of horrible; <i>The Court of Death</i> that -is like a page of Epictetus and might have been dreamt by a dead Stoic: -these are the visions of that spirit and the incarnations of that time. -Its faith was doubtful, but its doubt was faithful. And its supreme and -acute difference from most periods of scepticism, from the later -Renaissance, from the Restoration and from the hedonism of our own time -was this, that when the creeds crumbled and the gods seemed to break up -and vanish, it did not fall back, as we do, on things yet more solid and -definite, upon art and wine and high finance and industrial efficiency -and vices. It fell in love with abstractions and became enamoured of -great and desolate words.</p> - -<p>The second point of <i>rapport</i> between Watts and his time was a more -personal matter, a matter more concerned with the man, or, at least, the -type; but it throws so much light upon almost every step of his career -that it may with advantage be suggested here. Those who know the man -himself, the quaint and courtly old man down at Limnerslease, know that -if he has one trait more arresting than another, it is his almost absurd -humility. He even disparages his own talent that he may insist rather -upon his aims. His speech and gesture are simple, his manner polite to -the point of being deprecating, his soul to all appearance of an almost -con<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14">{14}</a></span>founding clarity and innocence. But although these appearances -accurately represent the truth about him, though he is in reality modest -and even fantastically modest, there is another element in him, an -element which was in almost all the great men of his time, and it is -something which many in these days would call a kind of splendid and -inspired impudence. It is that wonderful if simple power of preaching, -of claiming to be heard, of believing in an internal message and -destiny: it is the audacious faculty of mounting a pulpit. Those would -be very greatly mistaken who, misled by the childlike and humble manner -of this monk of art, expected to find in him any sort of doubt, or any -sort of fear, or any sort of modesty about the aims he follows or the -cause he loves. He has the one great certainty which marks off all the -great Victorians from those who have come after them: he may not be -certain that he is successful, or certain that he is great, or certain -that he is good, or certain that he is capable: but he is certain that -he is right. It is of course the very element of confidence which has in -our day become least common and least possible. We know we are brilliant -and distinguished, but we do not know we are right. We swagger in -fantastic artistic costumes; we praise ourselves; we fling epigrams -right and left; we have the courage to play the egoist and the courage -to play the fool, but we have not the courage to preach. If we are to -deliver a philosophy it must be in the manner of the late Mr. Whistler -and the <i>ridentem dicere verum</i>. If our heart is to be aimed at it must -be with the rapier of Stevenson which runs us through without either -pain or puncture. It is only just to say, that good elements as well as -bad ones have joined in making this old Victorian preaching difficult or -alien to us.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_4" id="ill_4"></a> -<a href="images/i_014fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_014fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>LESLIE STEPHEN.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15">{15}</a></span></p> - -<p>Humility as well as fear, camaraderie as well as cynicism, a sense of -complexity and a kind of gay and worldly charity have led us to avoid -the pose of the preacher, to be moral by ironies, to whisper a word and -glide away. But, whatever may be the accidental advantage of this recoil -from the didactic, it certainly does mean some loss of courage and of -the old and athletic simplicity. Nay, in some sense it is really a loss -of a fine pride and self-regard. Mr. Whistler coquetted and bargained -about the position and sale of his pictures: he praised them; he set -huge prices on them; but still under all disguise, he treated them as -trifles. Watts, when scarcely more than a boy and comparatively unknown, -started his great custom of offering his pictures as gifts worthy of a -great nation. Thus we came to the conclusion, a conclusion which may -seem to some to contain a faint element of paradox, that Mr. Whistler -suffered from an excessive and exaggerated modesty. And this unnatural -modesty of Mr. Whistler can scarcely be more typically symbolized than -in his horror of preaching. The new school of art and thought does -indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into -blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is -only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a -truism.</p> - -<p>Lastly, it would be quite impossible to complete this prefatory -suggestion of the atmosphere in which the mind of Watts grew and -prevailed, without saying something about that weary and weather-beaten -question of the relation of art to ethics on which so much has been said -in connexion with him and his contemporaries. About the real aim and the -real value of Watts’ allegorical pictures I shall speak later, but for -the moment it is only desirable to point out what the early and middle -Victorian view of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16">{16}</a></span> the matter really was. According to the later -æsthetic creed which Mr. Whistler and others did so much to preach, the -state of the arts under the reign of that Victorian view was a chaos of -everyone minding everyone else’s business. It was a world in which -painters were trying to be novelists, and novelists trying to be -historians, and musicians doing the work of schoolmasters, and sculptors -doing the work of curates. That is a view which has some truth in it, -both as a description of the actual state of things and as involving an -interesting and suggestive philosophy of the arts. But a good deal of -harm may be done by ceaselessly repeating to ourselves even a true and -fascinating fashionable theory, and a great deal of good by endeavouring -to realize the real truth about an older one. The thing from which -England suffers just now more than from any other evil is not the -assertion of falsehoods, but the endless and irrepressible repetition of -half-truths. There is another side to every historic situation, and that -often a startling one; and the other side of the Victorian view of art, -now so out of mode, is too little considered. The salient and essential -characteristic of Watts and men of his school was that they regarded -life as a whole. They had in their heads, as it were, a synthetic -philosophy which put everything into a certain relation with God and the -wheel of things. Thus, psychologically speaking, they were incapable not -merely of holding such an opinion, but actually of thinking such a -thought as that of art for art’s sake; it was to them like talking about -voting for voting’s sake, or amputating for amputating’s sake. To them -as to the ancient Jews the Spirit of the unity of existence declared in -thunder that they should not make any graven image, or have any gods but -Him. Doubtless, they did not give art a</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_5" id="ill_5"></a> -<a href="images/i_016fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_016fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WALTER CRANE.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17">{17}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">relation of unimpeachable correctness: in their scheme of things it may -be true, or rather it is true, that the æsthetic was confused with the -utilitarian, that good gardens were turned so to speak into bad -cornfields, and a valuable temple into a useless post-office. But in so -far as they had this fundamental idea that art must be linked to life, -and to the strength and honour of nations, they were a hundred times -more broad-minded and more right than the new ultra-technical school. -The idea of following art through everything for itself alone, through -extravagance, through cruelty, through morbidity, is just exactly as -superstitious as the idea of following theology for itself alone through -extravagance and cruelty and morbidity. To deny that Baudelaire is -loathsome, or Nietzsche inhuman, because we stand in awe of beauty, is -just the same thing as denying that the Court of Pope Julius was -loathsome, or the rack inhuman, because we stand in awe of religion. It -is not necessary and it is not honest. The young critics of the Green -Carnation, with their nuances and technical mysteries, would doubtless -be surprised to learn that as a class they resemble ecstatic nuns, but -their principle is, in reality, the same. There is a great deal to be -said for them, and a great deal, for that matter, to be said for nuns. -But there is nothing to be surprised at, nothing to call for any charge -of inconsistency or lack of enlightenment, about the conduct of Watts -and the great men of his age, in being unable to separate art from -ethics. They were nationalists and universalists: they thought that the -ecstatic isolation of the religious sense had done incalculable harm to -religion. It is not remarkable or unreasonable that they should think -that the ecstatic isolation of the artistic sense would do incalculable -harm to art.</p> - -<p>This, then, was the atmosphere of Watts and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18">{18}</a></span> Victorian idealism: an -atmosphere so completely vanished from the world of art in which we now -live that the above somewhat long introduction is really needed to make -it vivid or human to us. These three elements may legitimately, as I -have said, be predicated of it as its main characteristics: first, the -sceptical idealism, the belief that abstract verities remained the chief -affairs of men when theology left them; second, the didactic simplicity, -the claim to teach other men and to assume one’s own value and -rectitude; third, the cosmic utilitarianism, the consideration of any -such thing as art or philosophy perpetually with reference to a general -good. They may be right or wrong, they may be returning or gone for -ever; theories and fashions may change the face of humanity again and -yet again; but at least in that one old man at Limnerslease, burned, and -burned until death, these convictions, like three lamps in an old pagan -temple of stoicism.</p> - -<p>Of the ancestry of Watts so little is known that it resolves itself into -one hypothesis: a hypothesis which brings with it a suggestion, a -suggestion employed by almost all his existing biographers, but a -suggestion which cannot, I think, pass unchallenged, although the matter -may appear somewhat theoretic and remote. Watts was born in London, but -his family had in the previous generation come from Hereford. The vast -amount of Welsh blood which is by the nature of the case to be found in -Herefordshire has led to the statement that Watts is racially a Celt, -which is very probably true. But it is also said, in almost every notice -of his life and work, that the Celtic spirit can be detected in his -painting, that the Celtic principle of mysticism is a characteristic of -his artistic conceptions. It is in no idly antagonistic spirit that I -venture to doubt this most profoundly.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_6" id="ill_6"></a> -<a href="images/i_018fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_018fp.jpg" width="531" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE SLUMBER OF THE AGES</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19">{19}</a></span></p> - -<p>Watts may or may not be racially a Celt, but there is nothing Celtic -about his mysticism. The essential Celtic spirit in letters and art may, -I think, be defined as a sense of the unbearable beauty of things. The -essential spirit of Watts may, I think, be much better expressed as a -sense of the joyful austerity of things. The dominant passion of the -artistic Celt, of Mr. W. B. Yeats or Sir Edward Burne-Jones, is in the -word “escape”: escape into a land where oranges grow on plum-trees and -men can sow what they like and reap what they enjoy. To Watts the very -word “escape” would be horrible, like an obscene word: his ideal is -altogether duty and the great wheel. To the Celt frivolity is most truly -the most serious of things, since in the tangle of roses is always the -old serpent who is wiser than the world. To Watts seriousness is most -truly the most “joyful of things,” since in it we come nearest to that -ultimate equilibrium and reconciliation of things whereby alone they -live and endure life and each other. It is difficult to imagine that -amid all the varieties of noble temper and elemental desire there could -possibly be two exhibiting a more total divergence than that between a -kindly severity and an almost cruel love of sweetness; than that between -a laborious and open-air charity and a kind of Bacchic asceticism; -between a joy in peace and a joy in disorder; between a reduction of -existence to its simplest formula and an extension of it to its most -frantic corollary; between a lover of justice who accepts the real world -more submissively than a slave and a lover of pleasure who despises the -real world more bitterly than a hermit; between a king in battle-harness -and a vagabond in elf-land; between Watts and Sir Edward Burne-Jones.</p> - -<p>It is remarkable that even the technical style of Watts gives a -contradiction to this Celtic theory.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20">{20}</a></span> Watts is strong precisely where -the Celt is weak, and weak precisely where the Celt is strong. The only -thing that the Celt has lacked in art is that hard mass, that naked -outline, that ἀρχιτεκτονική, which makes Watts a sort of sculptor of -draughtsmanship. It is as well for us that the Celt has not had this: if -he had, he would rule the world with a rod of iron; for he has -everything else. There are no hard black lines in Burke’s orations, or -Tom Moore’s songs, or the plays of Mr. W. B. Yeats. Burke is the -greatest of political philosophers, because in him only are there -distances and perspectives, as there are on the real earth, with its -mists of morning and evening, and its blue horizons and broken skies. -Moore’s songs have neither a pure style nor deep realization, nor -originality of form, nor thought nor wit nor vigour, but they have -something else which is none of these things, which is nameless and the -one thing needful. In Mr. Yeats’ plays there is only one character: the -hero who rules and kills all the others, and his name is Atmosphere. -Atmosphere and the gleaming distances are the soul of Celtic greatness -as they were of Burne-Jones, who was, as I have said, weak precisely -where Watts is strong, in the statuesque quality in drawing, in the love -of heavy hands like those of <i>Mammon</i>, of a strong back like that of -<i>Eve Repentant</i>, in a single fearless and austere outline like that of -the angel in <i>The Court of Death</i>, in the frame-filling violence of -<i>Jonah</i>, in the half-witted brutality of <i>The Minotaur</i>. He is -deficient, that is to say, in what can only be called the god-like -materialism of art. Watts, on the other hand, is peculiarly strong in -it. Idealist as he is, there is nothing frail or phantasmal about the -things or the figures he loves. Though not himself a robust man, he -loves robustness; he loves a great bulk of shoulder, an abrupt bend of -neck, a gigantic stride,</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_7" id="ill_7"></a> -<a href="images/i_020fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_020fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CARDINAL MANNING.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21">{21}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">a large and swinging limb, a breast bound as with bands of brass. Of -course the deficiency in such a case is very far from being altogether -on one side. There are abysses in Burne-Jones which Watts could not -understand, the Celtic madness, older than any sanity, the hunger that -will remain after the longest feast, the sorrow that is built up of -stratified delights. From the point of view of the true Celt, Watts, the -Watts who painted the great stoical pictures <i>Love and Death</i>, <i>Time, -Death and Judgment</i>, <i>The Court of Death</i>, <i>Mammon</i>, and <i>Cain</i>, this -pictorial Watts would probably be, must almost certainly be, simply a -sad, sane, strong, stupid Englishman. He may or may not be Welsh by -extraction or by part of his extraction, but in spirit he is an -Englishman, with all the faults and all the disadvantages of an -Englishman. He is a great Englishman like Milton or Gladstone, of the -type, that is to say, that were too much alive for anything but gravity, -and who enjoyed themselves far too much to trouble to enjoy a joke. -Matthew Arnold has come near to defining that kind of idealism, so -utterly different from the Celtic kind, which is to be found in Milton -and again in Watts. He has called it, in one of his finest and most -accurate phrases, “the imaginative reason.”</p> - -<p>This racial legend about the Watts family does not seem to rest upon any -certain foundations, and as I have said, the deduction drawn from it is -quite loose and misleading. The whole is only another example of that -unfortunate, if not infamous, modern habit of talking about such things -as heredity with a vague notion that science has closed the question -when she has only just opened it. Nobody knows, as a matter of fact, -whether a Celtic mysticism can be inherited any more than a theory on -the Education Bill. But the eagerness of the popular mind to snatch<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</a></span> at -a certainty is too impatient for the tardy processes of real hypothesis -and research. Long before heredity has become a science, it has become a -superstition. And this curious though incidental case of the origin of -the Watts genius is just one of those cases which make us wonder what -has been the real result of the great rise of science. So far the result -would painfully appear to be that whereas men in the earlier times said -unscientific things with the vagueness of gossip and legend, they now -say unscientific things with the plainness and the certainty of science.</p> - -<p>The actual artistic education of Watts, though thorough indeed in its -way, had a somewhat peculiar character, the air of something detached -and private, and to the external eye something even at random. He works -hard, but in an elusive and personal manner. He does not remember the -time when he did not draw: he was an artist in his babyhood as he is an -artist still in his old age. Like Ruskin and many other of the great and -serious men of the century, he would seem to have been brought up -chiefly on what may be called the large legendary literature, on such as -Homer and Scott. Among his earliest recorded works was a set of coloured -illustrations to the Waverley Novels, and a sketch of the struggle for -the body of Patroclus. He went to the Academy schools, but only stayed -there about a month; never caring for or absorbing the teaching, such as -it was, of the place. He wandered perpetually in the Greek galleries of -the British Museum, staring at the Elgin marbles, from which he always -declared he learnt all the art he knew. “There,” he said, stretching out -his hand towards the Ilyssus in his studio, “there is my master.” We -hear of a friendship between him and the sculptor William Behnes, of -Watts lounging about that artist’s studio, playing with clay, modelling -busts, and staring</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_8" id="ill_8"></a> -<a href="images/i_022fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_022fp.jpg" width="600" height="218" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CHAOS.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23">{23}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">at the work of sculpture. His eyes seemed to have been at this time the -largest and hungriest part of him. Even when the great chance and first -triumph of his life arrived a year or two later, even when he gained the -great scholarship which sent him abroad to work amid the marbles of -Italy, when a famous ambassador was his patron and a brilliant circle -his encouragement, we do not find anything of the conventional student -about him. He never painted in the galleries; he only dreamed in them. -This must not, of course, be held to mean that he did not work; though -one or two people who have written memoirs of Watts have used a -phraseology, probably without noticing it, which might be held to imply -this. Not only is the thing ludicrously incongruous with his exact -character and morals; but anyone who knows anything whatever about the -nature of pictorial art will know quite well that a man could not paint -like that without having worked; just as he would know that a man could -not be the Living Serpent without any previous practice with his joints. -To say that he could really learn to paint and draw with the technical -merit of Watts, or with any technical merit at all, by simply looking at -other people’s pictures and statues will seem to anyone, with a small -technical sense, like saying that a man learnt to be a sublime violinist -by staring at fiddles in a shop window. It is as near a physical -impossibility as can exist in these matters. Work Watts must have done -and did do; it is the only conclusion possible which is consistent -either with the nature of Watts or the nature of painting; and it is -fully supported by the facts. But what the facts do reveal is that he -worked in this curiously individual, this curiously invisible way. He -had his own notion of when to dream and when to draw; as he shrank<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24">{24}</a></span> from -no toil, so he shrank from no idleness. He was something which is one of -the most powerful and successful things in the world, something which is -far more powerful and successful than a legion of students and prizemen: -he was a serious and industrious truant.</p> - -<p>It is worth while to note this in his boyhood, partly, of course, -because from one end of his life to the other there is this queer note -of loneliness and liberty. But it is also more immediately and -practically important because it throws some light on the development -and character of his art, and even especially of his technique. The -great singularity of Watts, considered as a mere artist, is that he -stands alone. He is not connected with any of the groups of the -nineteenth century: he has neither followed a school nor founded one. He -is not mediæval; but no one could exactly call him classical: we have -only to compare him to Leighton to feel the difference at once. His -artistic style is rather a thing more primitive than paganism; a thing -to which paganism and mediævalism are alike upstart sects; a style of -painting there might have been upon the tower of Babel. He is mystical; -but he is not mediæval: we have only to compare him to Rossetti to feel -the difference. When he emerged into the artistic world, that world was -occupied by the pompous and historical school, that school which was so -exquisitely caricatured by Thackeray in Gandish and his “Boadishia”; but -Watts was not pompous or historical: he painted one historical picture, -which brought him a youthful success, and he has scarcely painted -another. He lived on through the great Pre-Raphaelite time, that very -noble and very much undervalued time, when men found again what had been -hidden since the thirteenth century under loads<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25">{25}</a></span> of idle civilization, -the truth that simplicity and a monastic laboriousness is the happiest -of all things; the great truth that purity is the only atmosphere for -passion; the great truth that silver is more beautiful than gold. But -though there is any quantity of this sentiment in Watts himself, Watts -never has been a Pre-Raphaelite. He has seen other fashions come and go; -he has seen the Pre-Raphaelites overwhelmed by a heavy restoration of -the conventional, headed by Millais with his Scotch moors and his -English countesses; but he has not heeded it. He has seen these again -overturned by the wild lancers of Whistler; he has seen the mists of -Impressionism settle down over the world, making it weird and delicate -and noncommittal: but he thinks no more of the wet mist of the -Impressionist than he thought of the dry glare of the Pre-Raphaelite.</p> - -<p>He, the most mild of men, has yet never been anything but Watts. He has -followed the gleam, like some odd modern Merlin. He has escaped all the -great atmospheres, the divine if deluding intoxications, which have -whirled one man one way and one another; which flew to the head of a -perfect stylist like Ruskin and made him an insane scientist; which flew -to the head of a great artist like Whistler and made him a pessimistic -dandy. He has passed them with a curious immunity, an immunity which, if -it were not so nakedly innocent, might almost be called egotism; but -which is in fact rather the single eye. He said once that he had not -even consented to illustrate a book; his limitation was that he could -express no ideas but his own. He admired Tennyson; he thought him the -greatest of poets; he thought him a far greater man than himself; he -read him, he adored him, but he could not illustrate him. This is the -curious secret strength which kept him inde<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26">{26}</a></span>pendent in his youth and -kept him independent through the great roaring triumph of the -Pre-Raphaelite and the great roaring triumph of the Impressionist. He -stands in the world of art as he stood in the studio of Behnes and in -the Uffizi Gallery. He stands gazing, but not copying.</p> - -<p>Of Watts as he was at this time there remains a very interesting -portrait painted by himself. It represents him at the age of nineteen, a -dark, slim, and very boyish-looking creature. Something in changed -conditions may no doubt account for the flowing and voluminous dark -hair: we see such a mane in many of the portraits of the most -distinguished men of that time; but if a man appeared now and walked -down Fleet Street with so neglected a <i>hure</i>, he would be mistaken for -an advertisement of a hair-dresser, or by the more malicious for a minor -poet. But there is about this picture not a trace of affectation or the -artistic immunity in these matters: the boy’s dress is rough and -ordinary, his expression is simple and unconscious. From a modern -standpoint we should say without hesitation that if his hair is long it -is because he has forgotten to have it cut. And there is something about -this contrast between the unconsciously leonine hair and the innocent -and almost bashful face, there is something like a parable of Watts. His -air is artistic, if you will. His famous skull cap, which makes him look -like a Venetian senator, is as pictorial and effective as the boyish -mane in the picture. But he belongs to that older race of Bohemians, of -which even Thackeray only saw the sunset, the great old race of art and -literature who were ragged because they were really poor, frank because -they were really free, and untidy because they were really forgetful. It -will not do to confuse Watts with these men; there is</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_9" id="ill_9"></a> -<a href="images/i_026fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_026fp.jpg" width="258" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>“FOR HE HAD GREAT POSSESSIONS.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27">{27}</a></span>”</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">much about him that is precise and courtly, and which, as I shall have -occasion to remark, belongs really to a yet older period. But it is more -right to reckon Watts along with them in their genuine raggedness than -to suppose that the unquestionable picturesqueness with which he fronts -the world has any relation with that new Bohemianism which is untidy -because it is conventional, frank because it follows a fashion, careless -because it watches for all its effects, and ragged and coarse in its -tastes because it has too much money.</p> - -<p>The first definite encouragement, or at least the first encouragement -now ascertainable, probably came to the painter from that interesting -Greek amateur, Mr. Constantine Ionides. It was under his encouragement -that Watts began all his earlier work of the more ambitious kind, and it -was the portrait of Mrs. Constantine Ionides which ranks among the -earliest of his definite successes. He achieved immediate professional -success, however, at an astonishingly early age, judged by modern -standards. When he was barely twenty he had three pictures in the Royal -Academy: the first two were portraits, and the third a picture called -<i>The Wounded Heron</i>. There is always a very considerable temptation to -fantasticality in dealing with these artistic origins: no doubt it does -not always follow that a man is destined to be a military conqueror -because he beats other little boys at school, nor endued with a -passionate and clamorous nature because he begins this mortal life with -a yell. But Watts has, to a rather unusual degree, a sincere and -consistent and homogeneous nature; and this first exhibit of his has -really a certain amount of symbolism about it. Portraiture, with which -he thus began, he was destined to raise to a level never before attained -in English art, so far as significance and humanity<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28">{28}</a></span> are concerned; and -there is really something a little fascinating about the fact that along -with these pictures went one picture which had, for all practical -purposes, an avowedly humanitarian object. The picture of <i>The Wounded -Heron</i> scarcely ever attracts attention, I imagine, in these days, but -it may, of course, have been recalled for a moment to the popular mind -by that curious incident which occurred in connexion with it and which -has often been told. Long after the painter who produced that picture in -his struggling boyhood had lost sight of it and in all probability -forgotten all about its existence, a chance traveller with a taste in -the arts happened to find it in the dusty curiosity-shop of a -north-country town. He bought it and gave it back to the now celebrated -painter, who hung it among the exhibits at Little Holland House. It is, -as I have said, a thing painted clearly with a humanitarian object: it -depicts the suffering of a stricken creature; it depicts the -helplessness of life under the cruelty of the inanimate violence; it -depicts the pathos of dying and the greater pathos of living. Since -then, no doubt, Watts has improved his machinery of presentation and -found larger and more awful things to tell his tale with than a bleeding -bird. The wings of the heron have widened till they embrace the world -with the terrible wings of Time or Death: he has summoned the stars to -help him and sent the angels as his ambassadors. He has changed the plan -of operations until it includes Heaven and Tartarus. He has never -changed the theme.</p> - -<p>The relations of Watts to Constantine Ionides either arose or became -important about this time. The painter’s fortunes rose quickly and -steadily, so far as the Academy was concerned. He continued to exhibit -with a fair amount of regularity, chiefly in the form of subjects from -the great romantic or</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_10" id="ill_10"></a> -<a href="images/i_028fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_028fp.jpg" width="432" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>AN IDLE CHILD OF FANCY.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29">{29}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">historic traditions which were then the whole pabulum of the young -idealistic artist. In the Academy of 1840 came a picture on the old -romantic subject of Ferdinand and Isabella; in the following year but -one, a picture on the old romantic subject of Cymbeline. The portrait of -Mrs. Constantine Ionides appeared in 1842.</p> - -<p>But Watts’ mode of thought from the very beginning had very little -kinship with the Academy and very little kinship with this kind of -private and conventional art. An event was shortly to occur, the first -success of his life, but an event far less important when considered as -the first success of his life than it is when considered as an essential -characteristic of his mind. The circumstances are so extremely -characteristic of something in the whole spirit of the man’s art that it -may be permissible to dwell at length on the significance of the fact -rather than on the fact itself.</p> - -<p>The great English Parliament, the Senate that broke the English kings, -had just moved its centre of existence. The new Houses of Parliament had -opened with what seemed to the men of that time an opening world. A -competition was started for the decoration of the halls, and Watts -suddenly sprang into importance: he won the great prize. The cartoon of -<i>Caractacus led in triumph through the streets of Rome</i> was accepted -from this almost nameless man by the great central power of English -history. And until we have understood that fact we have not understood -Watts: it was (one may be permitted to fancy) the supreme hour of his -life. For Watts’ nature is essentially public—that is to say, it is -modest and noble, and has nothing to hide. His art is an outdoor art, -like that of the healthy ages of the world, like the statuesque art of -Greece, like the ecclesiastical and external Gothic art of Christianity: -an art that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30">{30}</a></span> can look the sun in the face. He ought to be employed to -paint factory chimneys and railway stations. I know that this will sound -like an insolence: my only answer is that he, in accordance with this -great conception of his, actually offered to paint a railway station. -With a splendid and truly religious imagination, he asked permission to -decorate Euston. The railway managers (not perceiving, in their dull -classical routine, the wild poetry of their own station) declined. But -until we have understood this immense notion of publicity in the soul of -Watts, we have understood nothing. The fundamental modern fallacy is -that the public life must be an artificial life. It is like saying that -the public street must be an artificial air. Men like Watts, men like -all the great heroes, only breathe in public. What is the use of abusing -a man for publicity when he utters in public the true and the enduring -things? What is the use, above all, of prying into his secrecy when he -has cried his best from the house-tops?</p> - -<p>This is the real argument which makes a detailed biography of Watts -unnecessary for all practical purposes. It is in vain to climb walls and -hide in cupboards in order to show whether Watts eats mustard or pepper -with his curry or whether Watts takes sugar or salt with his porridge. -These things may or may not become public: it matters little. The -innermost that the biographer could at last discover, after all possible -creepings and capers, would be what Watts in his inmost soul believes, -and that Watts has splashed on twenty feet of canvas and given to the -nation for nothing. Like one of the great orators of the eighteenth -century, his public virtues, his public ecstasies are far more really -significant than his private weaknesses. The rest of his life is so -simple that it is scarcely worth telling. He went<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31">{31}</a></span> with the great -scholarship he gained with his <i>Caractacus</i> to Italy. There he found a -new patron—the famous Lord Holland, with the whole of whose great -literary circle he rapidly became acquainted. He painted many of his -most famous portraits in connexion with this circle, both in Italy and -afterwards in Paris. But this great vision of the public idea had -entered his blood. He offered his cartoons to Euston Station; he painted -St. George and the Dragon for the House of Lords; he presented a fresco -to the great hall at Lincoln’s Inn. Of his life there is scarcely more -to say, except the splendid fact that he three times refused a title. Of -his character there is a great deal more to say.</p> - -<p>There is unquestionably about the personal attitude of Watts something -that in the vague phraseology of modern times would be called Puritan. -Puritan, however, is very far from being really the right word. The -right word is a word which has been singularly little used in English -nomenclature because historical circumstances have separated us from the -origin from which it sprang. The right word for the spirit of Watts is -<i>Stoicism</i>. Watts is at one with the Puritans in the actual objects of -his attack. One of his deepest and most enduring troubles, a matter of -which he speaks and writes frequently, is the prevalence of gambling. -With the realism of an enthusiast, he has detected the essential fact -that the problem of gambling is even more of a problem in the case of -the poorer classes than in the case of the richer. It is, as he asserts, -a far worse danger than drink. There are many other instances of his -political identity with Puritanism. He told Mr. W. T. Stead that he had -defended and was prepared to defend the staggering publications of the -“Maiden Tribute”; it was the only way, he said, to stem the evil. A<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32">{32}</a></span> -picturesque irradiation asserts indeed that it was under the glow of -Hebraic anger against these Babylonian cruelties of Piccadilly and the -Strand that he painted as a symbol of those cruelties that brutal and -magnificent picture <i>The Minotaur</i>. The pictures themselves of course -bear sufficient attestation to this general character: <i>Mammon</i> is what -we call a Puritan picture, and <i>Jonah</i>, and <i>Fata Morgana</i>, and <i>For he -had Great Possessions</i>. It is not difficult to see that Watts has the -Puritan vigilance, the Puritan realism, and the Puritan severity in his -attitude towards public affairs. Nevertheless, as I have said, he is to -be described rather as a Stoic than a Puritan. The essential difference -between Christian and Pagan asceticism lies in the fact that Paganism in -renouncing pleasure gives up something which it does not think -desirable; whereas Christianity in giving up pleasure gives up something -which it thinks very desirable indeed. Thus there is a frenzy in -Christian asceticism; its follies and renunciations are like those of -first love. There is a passion, and as it were a regret, in the -Puritanism of Bunyan; there is none in the Puritanism of Watts. He is -not Bunyan, he is Cato. The difference may be a difficult one to convey, -but it is one that must not be ignored or great misunderstandings will -follow. The one self-abnegation is more reasonable but less joyful. The -Stoic casts away pleasure like the parings of his nails; the Mystic cuts -it off like his right hand that offends him. In Watts we have the noble -self-abnegation of a noble type and school; but everything, however -noble, that has shape has limitation, and we must not look in Watts, -with his national self-mastery, either for the nightmare of Stylites or -the gaiety of Francis of Assisi.</p> - -<p>It has already been remarked that the chief note</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_11" id="ill_11"></a> -<a href="images/i_032fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_032fp.jpg" width="482" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE MINOTAUR.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33">{33}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">of the painter’s character is a certain mixture of personal delicacy and -self-effacement with the most immense and audacious aims. But it is so -essential a trait that it will bear a repetition and the introduction of -a curious example of it. Watts in his quaint and even shy manner of -speech often let fall in conversation words which hint at a certain -principle or practice of his, a principle and practice which are, when -properly apprehended, beyond expression impressive and daring. The -spectator who studies his allegorical paintings one after another will -be vaguely impressed with something uniquely absent, something which is -usual and familiar in such pictures conspicuous by its withdrawal; a -blank or difference which makes them things sundered altogether from the -millions of allegorical pictures that throng the great and small -galleries of painting. At length the nature of this missing thing may -suddenly strike him: in the whole range of Watts’ symbolic art there is -scarcely a single example of the ordinary and arbitrary current symbol, -the ecclesiastical symbol, the heraldic symbol, the national symbol. A -primeval vagueness and archaism hang over all the canvases and cartoons, -like frescoes from some prehistoric temple. There is nothing there but -the eternal things, clay and fire and the sea, and motherhood and the -dead. We cannot imagine the rose or the lion of England; the keys or the -tiara of Rome; the red cap of Liberty or the crescent of Islam in a -picture by Watts; we cannot imagine the Cross itself. And in light and -broken phrases, carelessly and humbly expressed, as I have said, the -painter has admitted that this great omission was observed on principle. -Its object is that the pictures may be intelligible if they survive the -whole modern order. Its object is, that is to say, that if some savage -in a dim futurity dug<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34">{34}</a></span> up one of these dark designs on a lonely -mountain, though he worshipped strange gods and served laws yet -unwritten, it might strike the same message to his soul that it strikes -upon clerks and navvies from the walls of the Tate Gallery. It is -impossible not to feel a movement of admiration for the magnitude of the -thought. Here is a man whose self-depreciation is internal and vital; -whose life is cloistered, whose character is childlike, and he has yet -within such an unconscious and colossal sense of greatness that he -paints on the assumption that his work may outlast the cross of the -Eternal City. As a boy he scarcely expected worldly success: as an old -man he still said that his worldly success had astonished him. But in -his nameless youth and in his silent old age he paints like one upon a -tower looking down the appalling perspective of the centuries towards -fantastic temples and inconceivable republics.</p> - -<p>This union of small self-esteem with a vast ambition is a paradox in the -very soul of the painter; and when we look at the symbolic pictures in -the light of this theory of his, it is interesting and typical to -observe how consistently he pursues any intellectual rule that he laid -down for himself. An æsthetic or ethical notion of this kind is not to -him, as to most men with the artistic temperament, a thing to talk about -sumptuously, to develop in lectures, and to observe when it happens to -be suitable. It is a thing like his early rising or his personal -conscience, a thing which is either a rule or nothing. And we find this -insistence on universal symbols, this rejection of all symbols that are -local or temporary or topical, even if the locality be a whole -continent, the time a stretch of centuries, or the topic a vast -civilization or an undying church—we find this insistence looking out -very clearly from the allegories of Watts. It would</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_12" id="ill_12"></a> -<a href="images/i_034fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_034fp.jpg" width="420" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE COURT OF DEATH.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35">{35}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">have been easy and effective, as he himself often said, to make the -meaning of a picture clear by the introduction of some popular and -immediate image: and it must constantly be remembered that Watts does -care very much for making the meaning of his pictures clear. His work -indeed has, as I shall suggest shortly, a far more subtle and unnamable -quality than the merely hard and didactic; but it must not be for one -moment pretended that Watts does not claim to teach: to do so would be -to falsify the man’s life. And it would be easy, as is quite obvious, to -make the pictures clearer: to hang a crucifix over the <i>Happy Warrior</i>, -to give <i>Mammon</i> some imperial crown or typical heraldic symbols, to -give a theological machinery to <i>The Court of Death</i>. But this is put on -one side like a temptation of the flesh, because it conflicts with this -stupendous idea of painting for all peoples and all centuries. I am not -saying that this extraordinary ambition is necessarily the right view of -art, or the right view of life. I am only reiterating it as an absolute -trait of men of the time and type and temper of Watts. It may plausibly -be maintained, I am not sure that it cannot more truly be maintained, -that man cannot achieve and need not achieve this frantic universality. -A man, I fancy, is after all only an animal that has noble preferences. -It is the very difference between the artistic mind and the mathematical -that the former sees things as they are in a picture, some nearer and -larger, some smaller and further away: while to the mathematical mind -everything, every unit in a million, every fact in a cosmos, must be of -equal value. That is why mathematicians go mad; and poets scarcely ever -do. A man may have as wide a view of life as he likes, the wider the -better; a distant view, a bird’s-eye view, if he will, but still a view -and not a map.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36">{36}</a></span> The one thing he cannot attempt in his version of the -universe is to draw things to scale. I have put myself for a moment -outside this universalism and doubted its validity because a thing -always appears more sharp and personal and picturesque if we do not -wholly agree with it. And this universalism is an essential and dominant -feature of such great men as Watts and of his time as a whole. Mr. -Herbert Spencer is a respectable, almost a dapper, figure, his theory is -agnostic and his tone polite and precise. And yet he threw himself into -a task more insane and gigantic than that of Dante, an inventory or plan -of the universe itself; the awful vision of existence as a single -organism, like an amœba on the disc of a microscope. He claimed, by -implication, to put in their right places the flaming certainty of the -martyrs, the wild novelties of the modern world; to arrange the eternal -rock of Peter and the unbroken trance of Buddhism. It is only in this -age of specialists, of cryptic experiences in art and faith like the -present, that we can see how huge was that enterprise; but the spirit of -it is the spirit of Watts. The man of that aggressive nineteenth century -had many wild thoughts, but there was one thought that never even for an -instant strayed across his burning brain. He never once thought, “Why -should I understand the cat, any more than the cat understands me?” He -never thought, “Why should I be just to the merits of a Chinaman, any -more than a pig studies the mystic virtues of a camel?” He affronted -heaven and the angels, but there was one hard arrogant dogma that he -never doubted even when he doubted Godhead: he never doubted that he -himself was as central and as responsible as God.</p> - -<p>This paradox, then, we call the first element in the artistic and -personal claim of Watts, that he</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_13" id="ill_13"></a> -<a href="images/i_036fp_1.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_036fp_1.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>MATTHEW ARNOLD.</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_14" id="ill_14"></a> -<a href="images/i_036fp_2.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_036fp_2.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>JOHN STUART MILL.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37">{37}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">realizes the great paradox of the Gospel. He is meek, but he claims to -inherit the earth. But there is, of course, a great deal more to be said -before this view of the matter can be considered complete. The -universalism preached by Watts and the other great Victorians was of -course subject to certain specialisations; it is not necessary to call -them limitations. Like Matthew Arnold, the last and most sceptical of -them, who expressed their basic idea in its most detached and -philosophic form, they held that conduct was three-fourths of life. They -were ingrainedly ethical; the mere idea of thinking anything more -important than ethics would have struck them as profane. In this they -were certainly right, but they were nevertheless partial or partisan; -they did not really maintain the judicial attitude of the universalist. -The mere thought of Watts painting a picture called <i>The Victory of Joy -over Morality</i>, or <i>Nature rebuking Conscience</i>, is enough to show the -definite limits of that cosmic equality. This is not, of course, to be -taken as a fault in the attitude of Watts. He simply draws the line -somewhere, as all men, including anarchists, draw it somewhere; he is -dogmatic, as all sane men are dogmatic.</p> - -<p>There is another phase of this innocent audacity. It may appear to be -more fanciful, it is certainly more completely a matter of inference; -but it throws light on yet another side of the character of Watts.</p> - -<p>Watts’ relation to friends and friendship has something about it very -typical. He is not a man desirous or capable of a very large or rich or -varied circle of acquaintance. There is nothing Bohemian about him. He -belongs both chronologically and psychologically to that period which is -earlier even than Thackeray and his Cave of Harmony: he belongs<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38">{38}</a></span> to the -quiet, struggling, self-created men of the forties, with their tradition -of self-abnegating individualism. Much as there is about him of the -artist and the poet, there is something about him also of the -industrious apprentice. That strenuous solitude in which Archbishop -Temple as a boy struggled to carry a bag of ironmongery which crushed -his back, in which Gladstone cut down trees and John Stuart Mill read -half the books of the world in boyhood, that strenuous solitude entered -to some degree into the very soul of Watts and made him independent of -them. But the friends he made have as a general rule been very -characteristic: they have marked the strange and haughty fastidiousness -that goes along with his simplicity. His friends, his intimate friends, -that is, have been marked by a certain indescribable and stately -worthiness: more than one of them have been great men like himself. The -greatest and most intimate of all his friends, probably, was Tennyson, -and in this there is something singularly characteristic of Watts. About -the actuality of the intellectual tie that bound him to Tennyson there -can be little doubt. He painted three, if not four, portraits of him; -his name was often on his lips; he invoked him always as the typical -great poet, excusing his faults and expounding his virtues. He invoked -his authority as that of the purest of poets, and invoked it very finely -and well in a sharp controversial interview he had on the nature and -ethics of the nude in art.</p> - -<p>At the time I write, there is standing at the end of the garden at -Limnerslease a vast shed, used for a kind of sculptor’s studio, in which -there stands a splendid but unfinished statue, on which the veteran of -the arts is even now at work. It represents Tennyson, wrapped in his -famous mantle, with his magnificent head bowed, gazing at something in -the</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_15" id="ill_15"></a> -<a href="images/i_038fp_1.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_038fp_1.jpg" width="491" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>ROBERT BROWNING.</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_16" id="ill_16"></a> -<a href="images/i_038fp_2.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_038fp_2.jpg" width="486" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>LORD TENNYSON.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39">{39}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">hollow of his hand. The subject is <i>Flower in the Crannied Wall</i>. There -is something very characteristic of Watts in the contrast between the -colossal plan of the figure and the smallness of the central object.</p> - -<p>But while the practical nature of the friendship between Watts and -Tennyson is clear enough, there is something really significant, -something really relevant to Watts’ attitude in its ultimate and -psychological character. It is surely most likely that Watts and -Tennyson were drawn together because they both represented a certain -relation towards their art which is not common in our time and was -scarcely properly an attribute of any artists except these two. Watts -could not have found the thing he most believed in Browning or Swinburne -or Morris or any of the other poets. Tennyson could not have found the -thing he most believed in Leighton or Millais or any of the other -painters. They were brought together, it must be supposed, by the one -thing that they had really in common, a profound belief in the -solemnity, the ceremoniousness, the responsibility, and what most men -would now, in all probability, call the pomposity of the great arts.</p> - -<p>Watts has always a singular kind of semi-mystical tact in the matter of -portrait painting. His portraits are commonly very faultless comments -and have the same kind of superlative mental delicacy that we see in the -picture of <i>Hope</i>. And the whole truth of this last matter is very well -expressed in Watts’ famous portrait of Tennyson, particularly if we look -at it in conjunction with his portrait of Browning. The head of Browning -is the head of a strong, splendid, joyful, and anxious man who could -write magnificent poetry. The head of Tennyson is the head of a poet. -Watts has painted Tennyson with his dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40">{40}</a></span> dome-like head relieved -against a symbolic green and blue of the eternal sea and the eternal -laurels. He has behind him the bays of Dante and he is wrapped in the -cloak of the prophets. Browning is dressed like an ordinary modern man, -and we at once feel that it should and must be so. To dress Browning in -the prophet’s robe and the poet’s wreath would strike us all as suddenly -ridiculous; it would be like sending him to a fancy-dress ball. It would -be like attiring Matthew Arnold in the slashed tights of an Elizabethan, -or putting Mr. Lecky into a primitive Celto-Irish kilt. But it does not -strike us as absurd in the case of Tennyson: it does not strike us as -even eccentric or outlandish or remote. We think of Tennyson in that -way; we think of him as a lordly and conscious bard. Some part of this -fact may, of course, be due to his possession of a magnificent physical -presence; but not, I think, all. Lord Kitchener (let us say) is a -handsome man, but we should laugh at him very much in silver armour. It -is much more due to the fact that Tennyson really assumed and was -granted this stately and epic position. It is not true that Tennyson was -more of a poet than Browning, if we mean by that statement that Browning -could not compose forms as artistic and well-managed, lyrics as light -and poignant, and rhythms as swelling and stirring as any in English -letters. But it is true that Tennyson was more of a poet than Browning, -if we mean by that statement that Tennyson was a poet in person, in post -and circumstance and conception of life; and that Browning was not, in -that sense, a poet at all. Browning first inaugurated in modern art and -letters the notion or tradition, in many ways perhaps a more wholesome -one, that the fact that a man pursued the trade or practice of poetry -was his own affair and a thing apart,</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_17" id="ill_17"></a> -<a href="images/i_040fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_040fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE DWELLER IN THE INNERMOST.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41">{41}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">like the fact that he collected coins or earned his living as a hatter. -But Tennyson really belonged to an older tradition, the tradition that -believed that the poet, the appointed “Vates,” was a recognized and -public figure like the bard or jester at the mediæval courts, like the -prophet in the old Commonwealth of Israel. In Tennyson’s work appeared -for the last time in English history this notion of the stately and -public and acknowledged poet: it was the lay of the last minstrel.</p> - -<p>Now there is in Watts, gentle and invisible as he is, something that -profoundly responds to that spirit. Leighton, like Browning, was a -courtier and man of the world: Millais, like Browning, was a good fellow -and an ordinary gentleman: but Watts has more of Tennyson in him; he -believes in a great priesthood of art. He believes in a certain pure and -childish publicity. If anyone suggested that before a man ventured to -paint pictures or to daub with plaster he should be initiated with some -awful rites in some vast and crowded national temple, should swear to -work worthily before some tremendous altar or over some symbolic flame, -Millais would have laughed heartily at the idea and Leighton also. But -it would not seem either absurd or unreasonable to Watts. In the thick -of this smoky century he is living in a clear age of heroes.</p> - -<p>Watts’ relations to Tennyson were indeed very characteristic of what was -finest, and at the same time quaintest, in the two men. The painter, -with a typical sincerity, took the poet seriously, I had almost said -literally, in his daily life, and liked him to live up to his poetry. -The poet, with that queer sulky humour which gave him, perhaps, more -breadth than Watts, but less strength, said, after reading some acid and -unjust criticisms, “I wish I had never<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42">{42}</a></span> written a line.” “Come,” said -Watts, “you wouldn’t like ‘King Arthur’ to talk like that.” Tennyson -paused a moment and then spread out his fingers. “Well,” he said, “what -do you expect? It’s all the gout.” The artist, with a characteristic -power of juvenile and immortal hero-worship, tells this story as an -instance of the fundamental essence of odd magnanimity and sombre -geniality in Tennyson. It is such an instance and a very good one: but -it is also an instance of the sharp logical idealism, of the prompt -poetic candour of Watts. He asked Tennyson to be King Arthur, and it -never occurred to him to think that he was asking Addison to be Cato, or -Massinger to be Saint Dorothy. The incident is a fine tribute to a -friendship.</p> - -<p>The real difficulty which many cultivated people have in the matter of -Watts’ allegorical pictures is far more difficult. It is indeed nothing -else but the great general reaction against allegorical art which has -arisen during the last artistic period. The only way in which we can -study, with any real sincerity, the allegoric art of Watts is to ask to -what is really due the objection to allegory which has thus arisen. The -real objection to allegory is, it may roughly be said, founded upon the -conception that allegory involves one art imitating another. This is, up -to a certain point, true. To paint a figure in a blue robe and call her -Necessity, and then paint a small figure in a yellow robe and call it -Invention; to put the second on the knee of the first, and then say that -you are enunciating the sublime and eternal truth, that Necessity is the -mother of Invention, this is indeed an idle and foolish affair. It is -saying in six weeks’ work with brush and palette knife what could be -said much better in six words. And there can be no reasonable dispute -that of this character were a considerable</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_18" id="ill_18"></a> -<a href="images/i_042fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_042fp.jpg" width="449" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>GEORGE MEREDITH.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43">{43}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">number of the allegorical pictures that have crowded the galleries and -sprawled over the ceilings of ancient and modern times. Of such were the -monstrous pictures of Rubens, which depicted a fat Religion and a -bloated Temperance dancing before some foreign conqueror; of such were -the florid designs of the eighteenth century, which showed Venus and -Apollo encouraging Lord Peterborough to get over the inconvenience of -his breastplate; of such, again, were the meek Victorian allegories -which showed Mercy and Foresight urging men to found a Society for the -Preservation of Young Game. Of such were almost all the allegories which -have dominated the art of Europe for many centuries back. Of such, most -emphatically, the allegories of Watts are not. They are not mere -pictorial forms, combined as in a kind of cryptogram to express -theoretic views or relations. They are not proverbs or verbal relations -rendered with a cumbrous exactitude in oil and Chinese white. They are -not, in short, the very thing that the opponents of Watts and his school -say that they are. They are not merely literary. There is one definite -current conception on which this idea that Watts’ allegorical art is -merely literary is eventually based. It is based upon the idea that lies -at the root of rationalism, at the root of useless logomachies, at the -root, in no small degree, of the whole modern evil. It is based on the -assumption of the perfection of language. Every religion and every -philosophy must, of course, be based on the assumption of the authority -or the accuracy of something. But it may well be questioned whether it -is not saner and more satisfactory to ground our faith on the -infallibility of the Pope, or the infallibility of the Book of Mormon, -than on this astounding modern dogma of the infallibility of human -speech. Every time one man says to another, “Tell us plainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44">{44}</a></span> what you -mean?” he is assuming the infallibility of language: that is to say, he -is assuming that there is a perfect scheme of verbal expression for all -the internal moods and meanings of men. Whenever a man says to another, -“Prove your case; defend your faith,” he is assuming the infallibility -of language: that is to say, he is assuming that a man has a word for -every reality in earth, or heaven, or hell. He knows that there are in -the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless than -the colours of an autumn forest; he knows that there are abroad in the -world and doing strange and terrible service in it crimes that have -never been condemned and virtues that have never been christened. Yet he -seriously believes that these things can every one of them, in all their -tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately -represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes -that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own -inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the -agonies of desire. Whenever, on the other hand, a man rebels faintly or -vaguely against this way of speaking, whenever a man says that he cannot -explain what he means, and that he hates argument, that his enemy is -misrepresenting him, but he cannot explain how; that man is a true sage, -and has seen into the heart of the real nature of language. Whenever a -man refuses to be caught by some dilemma about reason and passion, or -about reason and faith, or about fate and free-will, he has seen the -truth. Whenever a man declines to be cornered as an egotist, or an -altruist, or any such modern monster, he has seen the truth. For the -truth is that language is not a scientific thing at all, but wholly an -artistic thing, a thing invented by hunters, and killers, and such -artists long before science was</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_19" id="ill_19"></a> -<a href="images/i_044fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_044fp.jpg" width="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45">{45}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">dreamed of. The truth is simply that—that the tongue is not a reliable -instrument, like a theodolite or a camera. The tongue is most truly an -unruly member, as the wise saint has called it, a thing poetic and -dangerous, like music or fire.</p> - -<p>Now we can easily imagine an alternative state of things, roughly -similar to that produced in Watts’ allegories, a system, that is to say, -whereby the moods or facts of the human spirit were conveyed by -something other than speech, by shapes or colours or some such things. -As a matter of fact, of course, there are a great many other languages -besides the verbal. Descriptions of spiritual states and mental purposes -are conveyed by a variety of things, by hats, by bells, by guns, by -fires on a headland, or by jerks of the head. In fact there does exist -an example which is singularly analogous to decorative and symbolic -painting. This is a scheme of æsthetic signs or emblems, simple indeed -and consisting only of a few elemental colours, which is actually -employed to convey great lessons in human safety and great necessities -of the commonwealth. It need hardly be said that I allude to the railway -signals. They are as much a language, and surely as solemn a language, -as the colour sequence of ecclesiastical vestments, which sets us red -for martyrdom, and white for resurrection. For the green and red of the -night-signals depict the two most fundamental things of all, which lie -at the back of all language. Yes and no, good and bad, safe and unsafe, -life and death. It is perfectly conceivable that a degree of flexibility -or subtlety might be introduced into these colours so as to suggest -other and more complex meanings. We might (under the influence of some -large poetic station-masters) reach a state of things in which a certain -rich tinge of purple in the crimson light would mean “Travel for a few<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46">{46}</a></span> -seconds at a slightly more lingering pace, that a romantic old lady in a -first-class carriage may admire the scenery of the forest.” A tendency -towards peacock blue in the green might mean “An old gentleman with a -black necktie has just drunk a glass of sherry at the station -restaurant.” But however much we modified or varied this colour sequence -or colour language, there would remain one thing which it would be quite -ridiculous and untrue to say about it. It would be quite ridiculous and -untrue to say that this colour sequence was simply a symbol representing -language. It would be another language: it would convey its meaning to -aliens who had another word for forest, and another word for sherry, and -another word for old lady. It would not be a symbol of language, a -symbol of a symbol; it would be one symbol of the reality, and language -would be another. That is precisely the true position touching -allegorical art in general, and, above all, the allegorical art of -Watts.</p> - -<p>So long as we conceive that it is, fundamentally, the symbolizing of -literature in paint, we shall certainly misunderstand it and the rare -and peculiar merits, both technical and philosophical, which really -characterize it. If the ordinary spectator at the art galleries finds -himself, let us say, opposite a picture of a dancing flower-crowned -figure in a rose-coloured robe, he feels a definite curiosity to know -the title, looks it up in the catalogue, and finds that it is called, -let us say, “Hope.” He is immediately satisfied, as he would have been -if the title had run “Portrait of Lady Warwick,” a “View of Kilchurn -Castle.” It represents a certain definite thing, the word “hope.” But -what does the word “hope” represent? It represents only a broken -instantaneous glimpse of something that is immeasurably older and -wilder</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_20" id="ill_20"></a> -<a href="images/i_046fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_046fp.jpg" width="480" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>HOPE.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47">{47}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">than language, that is immeasurably older and wilder than man; a mystery -to saints and a reality to wolves. To suppose that such a thing is dealt -with by the word “hope,” any more than America is represented by a -distant view of Cape Horn, would indeed be ridiculous. It is not merely -true that the word itself is, like any other word, arbitrary; that it -might as well be “pig” or “parasol”; but it is true that the -philosophical meaning of the word, in the conscious mind of man, is -merely a part of something immensely larger in the unconscious mind, -that the gusty light of language only falls for a moment on a fragment, -and that obviously a semi-detached, unfinished fragment of a certain -definite pattern on the dark tapestries of reality. It is vain and worse -than vain to declaim against the allegoric, for the very word “hope” is -an allegory, and the very word “allegory” is an allegory.</p> - -<p>Now let us suppose that instead of coming before that hypothetical -picture of <i>Hope</i> in conventional flowers and conventional pink robes, -the spectator came before another picture. Suppose that he found himself -in the presence of a dim canvas with a bowed and stricken and secretive -figure cowering over a broken lyre in the twilight. What would he think? -His first thought, of course, would be that the picture was called -<i>Despair</i>; his second (when he discovered his error in the catalogue), -that it has been entered under the wrong number; his third, that the -painter was mad. But if we imagine that he overcame these preliminary -feelings and that as he stared at that queer twilight picture a dim and -powerful sense of meaning began to grow upon him—what would he see? He -would see something for which there is neither speech nor language, -which has been too vast for any eye to see and too secret for any -religion to utter, even as an esoteric doctrine. Standing before<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48">{48}</a></span> that -picture, he finds himself in the presence of a great truth. He perceives -that there is something in man which is always apparently on the eve of -disappearing, but never disappears, an assurance which is always -apparently saying farewell and yet illimitably lingers, a string which -is always stretched to snapping and yet never snaps. He perceives that -the queerest and most delicate thing in us, the most fragile, the most -fantastic, is in truth the backbone and indestructible. He knows a great -moral fact: that there never was an age of assurance, that there never -was an age of faith. Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a -perpetually defeated thing which survives all its conquerors. The -desperate modern talk about dark days and reeling altars, and the end of -Gods and angels, is the oldest talk in the world: lamentations over the -growth of agnosticism can be found in the monkish sermons of the dark -ages; horror at youthful impiety can be found in the Iliad. This is the -thing that never deserts men and yet always, with daring diplomacy, -threatens to desert them. It has indeed dwelt among and controlled all -the kings and crowds, but only with the air of a pilgrim passing by. It -has indeed warmed and lit men from the beginning of Eden with an -unending glow, but it was the glow of an eternal sunset.</p> - -<p>Here, in this dim picture, its trick is almost betrayed. No one can name -this picture properly, but Watts, who painted it, has named it <i>Hope</i>. -But the point is that this title is not (as those think who call it -“literary”) the reality behind the symbol, but another symbol for the -same thing, or, to speak yet more strictly, another symbol describing -another part or aspect of the same complex reality. Two men felt a -swift, violent, invisible thing in the world: one said the word “hope,” -the other painted a</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_21" id="ill_21"></a> -<a href="images/i_048fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_048fp.jpg" width="361" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>JONAH.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49">{49}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">picture in blue and green paint. The picture is inadequate; the word -“hope” is inadequate; but between them, like two angles in the -calculation of a distance, they almost locate a mystery, a mystery that -for hundreds of ages has been hunted by men and evaded them. And the -title is therefore not so much the substance of one of Watts’ pictures, -it is rather an epigram upon it. It is merely an approximate attempt to -convey, by snatching up the tool of another craftsman, the direction -attempted in the painter’s own craft. He calls it <i>Hope</i>, and that is -perhaps the best title. It reminds us among other things of a fact which -is too little remembered, that faith, hope, and charity, the three -mystical virtues of Christianity, are also the gayest of the virtues. -Paganism, as I have suggested, is not gay, but rather nobly sad; the -spirit of Watts, which is as a rule nobly sad also, here comes nearer -perhaps than anywhere else to mysticism in the strict sense, the -mysticism which is full of secret passion and belief, like that of Fra -Angelico or Blake. But though Watts calls his tremendous reality <i>Hope</i>, -we may call it many other things. Call it faith, call it vitality, call -it the will to live, call it the religion of to-morrow morning, call it -the immortality of man, call it self-love and vanity; it is the thing -that explains why man survives all things and why there is no such thing -as a pessimist. It cannot be found in any dictionary or rewarded in any -commonwealth: there is only one way in which it can even be noticed and -recognized. If there be anywhere a man who has really lost it, his face -out of a whole crowd of men will strike us like a blow. He may hang -himself or become Prime Minister; it matters nothing. The man is dead.</p> - -<p>Now, of course the ordinary objection to allegory,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50">{50}</a></span> and it is a very -sound objection, can be sufficiently well stated by saying that the -pictorial figures are mere arbitrary symbols of the words. An allegorist -of the pompous school might paint some group of Peace and Commerce doing -something to Britannia. There might be a figure of Commerce in a Greek -robe with a cornucopia or bag of gold or an argosy or any other -conventional symbol. But it is surely quite evident that such a figure -is a mere sign like the word commerce: the word might just as well be -“dandelion,” and the Greek lady with the cornucopia might just as well -be a Hebrew prophet standing on his head. It is scarcely even a -language: it is a cipher-code. Nobody can maintain that the figure, -taken as a figure, makes one think of commerce, of the forces that -effect commerce, of a thousand ports, of a thousand streets, of a -thousand warehouses and bills of lading, of a thousand excited men in -black coats who certainly would not know what to do with a cornucopia. -If we find ourselves gazing at some monument of the fragile and eternal -faith of man, at some ruined chapel, at some nameless altar, at some -scrap of old Jacobin eloquence, we might actually find our own minds -moving in certain curves that centre in the curved back of Watts’ -<i>Hope</i>: we might almost think for ourselves of a bowed figure in the -twilight, holding to her breast something damaged but undestroyed. But -can anyone say that by merely looking at the Stock Exchange on a busy -day we should think of a Greek lady with an argosy? Can anyone say that -Threadneedle Street, in itself, would inspire our minds to move in the -curves which centre in a cornucopia? Can anyone say that a very stolid -figure in a very outlandish drapery is anything but a purely arbitrary -sign, like <i>x</i> or <i>y</i>, for such a thing as modern commerce, for the -savagery of the rich, for the hunger of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51">{51}</a></span> satisfied, for the vast -tachycardia or galloping of the heart that has fallen on all the great -new centres of civilization, for the sudden madness of all the mills of -the world?</p> - -<p>Watts’ <i>Hope</i> does tell us something more about the nature of hope than -we can be told by merely noticing that hope is shown in individual -cases: that a man rehearses successful love speeches when he is in love, -and takes a return ticket when he goes out to fight a duel. But the -figure of Commerce with the cornucopia gives us less insight into what -is behind commerce than we might get from reading a circular or staring -out into the street. In the case of Commerce the figure is merely a -symbol of commerce, which is a symbol. In the case of Hope the matter is -quite the other way; the figure brings us nearer to something which is -not a symbol, but the reality behind symbols. In the one case we go -further down towards the river’s delta; in the other, further up towards -its fountain; that at least may be called a difference. And now, suppose -that our imaginary sight-seer who had seen so much of the pompous -allegory of Commerce in her Grecian draperies were to see, for the -second time, a second picture. Suppose he saw before him a throned -figure clad in splendid, heavy scarlet and gold, above the lustre and -dignity of which rose, in abrupt contrast, a face like the face of a -blind beast. Suppose that as this imperial thing, with closed eyes and -fat, sightless face, sat upon his magnificent seat, he let his heavy -hand and feet fall, as if by a mere pulverizing accident, on the naked -and god-like figures of the young, on men and women. Suppose that in the -background there rose straight into the air a raw and turgid smoke, as -if from some invisible and horrible sacrifice, and that by one final, -fantastic, and triumphal touch this all-destroying god<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52">{52}</a></span> and king were -adorned with the ears of an ass, declaring that he was royal, imperial, -irresistible, and, when all is said, imbecile. Suppose that a man sick -of argosies and cornucopias came before that picture, would he not say, -perhaps even before he looked in the catalogue and found that the -painter had called it <i>Mammon</i>, would he not say, “This is something -which in spirit and in essence I have seen before, something which in -spirit and in essence I have seen everywhere. That bloated, unconscious -face, so heavy, so violent, so wicked, so innocent, have I not seen it -at street corners, in billiard-rooms, in saloon bars, laying down the -law about Chartered shares or gaping at jokes about women? Those huge -and smashing limbs, so weighty, so silly, so powerless, and yet so -powerful, have I not seen them in the pompous movements, the morbid -health of the prosperous in the great cities? The hard, straight pillars -of that throne, have I not seen them in the hard, straight, hideous -tiers of modern warehouses and factories? That tawny and sulky smoke, -have I not seen it going up to heaven from all the cities of the coming -world? This is no trifling with argosies and Greek drapery. This is -commerce. This is the home of the god himself. This is why men hate him, -and why men fear him, and why men endure him.”</p> - -<p>Now, of course, it is at once obvious that this view would be very -unjust to commerce; but that modification, as a matter of fact, very -strongly supports the general theory at the moment under consideration. -Commerce is really an arbitrary phrase, a thing including a million -motives, from the motive which makes a man drink to the motive which -makes him reform; from the motive that makes a starving man eat a horse -to the motive which makes an idle man chase a butterfly. But whatever -other spirits there are in commerce, there is, beyond all reasonable</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_22" id="ill_22"></a> -<a href="images/i_052fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_052fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>MAMMON.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53">{53}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">question, in it this powerful and enduring spirit which Watts has -painted. There is, as a ruling element in modern life, in all life, this -blind and asinine appetite for mere power. There is a spirit abroad -among the nations of the earth which drives men incessantly on to -destroy what they cannot understand, and to capture what they cannot -enjoy. This, and not commerce, is what Watts has painted. He has -painted, not the allegory of a great institution, but the vision of a -great appetite, the vision of a great motive. It is not true that this -is a picture of Commerce; but that Commerce and Watts’ picture spring -from the same source. There does exist a certain dark and driving force -in the world; one of its products is this picture, another is Commerce. -The picture is not Commerce, it is Mammon. And, indeed, so powerfully -and perfectly has Watts, in this case, realized the awful being whom he -was endeavouring to call up by his artistic incantation, that we may -even say the common positions of allegory and reality are reversed. The -fact is not that here we have an effective presentation under a certain -symbol of red robes and smoke and a throne, of what the financial world -is, but rather that here we have something of the truth that is hidden -behind the symbol of white waistcoats and hats on the back of the head, -of financial papers and sporting prophets, of butter closing quiet and -Pendragon being meant to win. This is not a symbol of commerce: commerce -is a symbol of this.</p> - -<p>In sketching this general and necessary attitude towards the art of -Watts, particularly in the matter of allegory, I have taken deliberately -these two very famous and obvious pictures, and I have occupied, equally -deliberately, a considerable amount of space in expounding them. It is -far better in a subject so<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54">{54}</a></span> subtle and so bewildering as the relation -between art and philosophy, that we should see how our conceptions and -hypotheses really get on when applied systematically and at some length -to some perfectly familiar and existent object. A philosopher cannot -talk about any single thing, down to a pumpkin, without showing whether -he is wise or foolish; but he can easily talk about everything with -anyone having any views about him beyond gloomy suspicions. But at this -point I become fully conscious of another and most important kind of -criticism, which has been and can be levelled against the allegories of -Watts; and which must be, by the nature of things, evoked by the -particular line of discussion or reflection that I have here adopted.</p> - -<p>It may be admitted that Watts’ art is not merely literary in the sense -in which I have originally used the term. It may be admitted that there -is truth in the general position I have sketched out—that Watts is not -a man copying literature or philosophy, but rather a man copying the -great spiritual and central realities which literature and philosophy -also set out to copy. It may be admitted that <i>Mammon</i> is obviously an -attempt to portray, not a twopenny phrase, but a great idea. But along -with all these admissions it will certainly be said, by the most -powerful and recent school in art criticism, that all this amounts to -little more than a difference between a mean and a magnificent blunder. -Pictorial art, it will be said, has no more business, as such, to -portray great ideas than small ideas. Its affair is with its own -technique, with the love of a great billowing line for its own sake, of -a subtle and perfect tint for its own sake. If a man mistakes his trade -and attends to the technique of another, the sublimity of his mind is -only a very slight consolation. If I summon a paperhanger</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_23" id="ill_23"></a> -<a href="images/i_054fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_054fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>DEATH CROWNING INNOCENCE.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55">{55}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">to cover the walls, and he insists on playing the piano, it matters -little whether he plays Beethoven or “The Yachmak.” If I charter a -pianist, and he is found drinking in the wine cellar, it matters little -whether he has made his largest hole in good Burgundy or bad Marsala. If -the whole of this question of great ideas and small ideas, of large -atmospheres and superficial definitions, of the higher and the lower -allegory—if all this be really irrelevant to the discussion of the -position of a painter, then, indeed, we have been upon an idle track. As -I think I shall show in a moment, this is a very inadequate view of the -matter. But it does draw our attention to an aspect of the matter which -must, without further delay, be discussed. That aspect, as I need hardly -say, is the technique of Watts.</p> - -<p>There is of course a certain tendency among all interesting and novel -critical philosophers to talk as if they had discovered things which it -is perfectly impossible that any human being could ever have denied; to -shout that the birds fly, and declare that in spite of persecution they -will still assert that cows have four legs. In this way some raw -pseudo-scientists talk about heredity or the physical basis of life as -if it were not a thing embedded in every creed and legend, and even the -very languages of men. In this way some of the new oligarchists of -to-day imagine they are attacking the doctrine of human equality by -pointing out that some men are stronger or cleverer than others; as if -they really believed that Danton and Washington thought that every man -was the same height and had the same brains. And something of this -preliminary cloud of folly or misunderstanding attaches doubtless to the -question of the technical view—that is, the solely technical view—of -painting. If the principle of “art for ar<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56">{56}</a></span>t’s sake” means simply that -there is a solely technical view of painting, and that it must be -supreme on its own ground, it appears a piece of pure madness to suppose -it other than true. Surely there never was really a man who held that a -picture that was vile in colour and weak in drawing was a good picture -because it was a picture of Florence Nightingale! Surely there never was -really a man who said that when one leg in a drawing was longer than -another, yet they were both the same length because the artist painted -it for an altar-piece! When the new critics with a burst of music and a -rocket shower of epigrams enunciated their new criticism, they must at -any rate have meant something more than this. Undoubtedly they did mean -something more; they meant that a picture was not a good vehicle for -moral sentiment at all; they meant that not only was it not the better -for having a philosophic meaning, but that it was worse. This, if it be -true, is beyond all question a real indictment of Watts.</p> - -<p>About the whole of this Watts controversy about didactic art there is at -least one perfectly plain and preliminary thing to be said. It is said -that art cannot teach a lesson. This is true, and the only proper -addition is the statement that neither, for the matter of that, can -morality teach a lesson. For a thing to be didactic, in the strict and -narrow and scholastic sense, it must be something about facts or the -physical sciences: you can only teach a lesson about such a thing as -Euclid or the making of paper boats. The thing is quite inapplicable to -the great needs of man, whether moral or æsthetic. Nobody ever held a -class in philanthropy with fifteen millionaires in a row writing -cheques. Nobody ever held evening continuation classes in martyrdom, or -drilled boys in a playground to die for their country. A</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_24" id="ill_24"></a> -<a href="images/i_056fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_056fp.jpg" width="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>A STORY FROM BOCCACCIO.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57">{57}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">picture cannot give a plain lesson in morals; neither can a sermon. A -didactic poem was a thing known indeed among the ancients and the old -Latin civilization, but as a matter of fact it scarcely ever professed -to teach people how to live the higher life. It taught people how to -keep bees.</p> - -<p>Since we find, therefore, that ethics is like art, a mystic and -intuitional affair, the only question that remains is, have they any -kinship? If they have not, a man is not a man, but two men and probably -more: if they have, there is, to say the least of it, at any rate a -reasonable possibility that a note in moral feeling might have affinity -with a note in art, that a curve in law, so to speak, may repeat a curve -in draughtsmanship, that there may be genuine and not artificial -correspondences between a state of morals and an effect in painting. -This would, I should tentatively suggest, appear to be a most reasonable -hypothesis. It is not so much the fact that there is no such thing as -allegorical art, but rather the fact that there is no art that is not -allegorical. But the meanings expressed in high and delicate art are not -to be classed under cheap and external ethical formulæ, they deal with -strange vices and stranger virtues. Art is only unmoral in so far as -most morality is immoral. Thus Mr. Whistler when he drops a spark of -perfect yellow or violet into some glooming pool of the nocturnal Thames -is, in all probability, enunciating some sharp and wholesome moral -comment. When the young Impressionists paint dim corners of meadows or -splashes of sunlight in the wood, this does not mean necessarily that -they are unmoral; it may only mean that they are a very original and -sincere race of stern young moralists.</p> - -<p>Now if we adopt this general theory of the existence of genuine -correspondences between art and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58">{58}</a></span> moral beauty, of the existence, that is -to say, of genuine allegories, it is perfectly clear wherein the test of -such genuineness must consist. It must consist in the nature of the -technique. If the technique, considered as technique, is calculated to -evoke in us a certain kind of pleasure, and there is an analogous -pleasure in the meaning considered as meaning, then there is a true -wedding of the arts. But if the pleasure in the technique be of a kind -quite dissimilar in its own sphere to the pleasure in the spiritual -suggestion, then it is a mechanical and unlawful union, and this -philosophy, at any rate, forbids the banns. If the intellectual -conceptions uttered in Michel Angelo’s <i>Day of Judgment</i> in the Sistine -Chapel were the effect of a perfect and faultless workmanship, but the -workmanship such as we should admire in a Gothic missal or a picture by -Gerard Dow, we should then say that absolute excellence in both -departments did not excuse their being joined. The thing would have been -a mere accident, or convenience. Just as two plotters might communicate -by means of a bar or two of music, so these subtle harmonies of colour -and form would have been used for their detached and private ends by the -dark conspirators of morality.</p> - -<p>Now there is nothing in the world that is really so thoroughly -characteristic of Watts’ technique as the fact that it does almost -startlingly correspond to the structure of his spiritual sense. If such -pictures as <i>The Dweller in the Innermost</i> and <i>Mammon</i> and <i>Diana and -Endymion</i> and <i>Eve Repentant</i> had neither title nor author, if no one -had heard of Watts or heard of Eve; if, for the matter of that, the -pictures had neither human nor animal form, it would be possible to -guess something of the painter’s attitude from the mere colour and line. -If Watts painted an arabesque, it would be moral; if he designed a -Turkey</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_25" id="ill_25"></a> -<a href="images/i_058fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_058fp.jpg" width="487" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>LORD LYTTON.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59">{59}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">carpet, it would be stoical. So individual is his handling that his very -choice and scale of colours betray him. A man with a keen sense of the -spiritual and symbolic history of colours could guess at something about -Watts from the mess on his palette. He would see giants and the sea and -cold primeval dawns and brown earth-men and red earth-women lying in the -heaps of greens and whites and reds, like forces in chaos before the -first day of creation. A certain queer and yet very simple blue there -is, for instance, which is like Titian’s and yet not like it, which is -more lustrous and yet not less opaque, and which manages to suggest the -north rather than Titian’s south, in spite of its intensity; which -suggests also the beginning of things rather than their maturity; a hot -spring of the earth rather than Titian’s opulent summer. Then there is -that tremendous autochthonous red, which was the colour of Adam, whose -name was Red Earth. It is, if one may say so, the clay in which no one -works, except Watts and the Eternal Potter. There are other colours that -have this character, a character indescribable except by saying that -they come from the palette of Creation—a green especially that -reappears through portraits, allegories, landscapes, heroic designs, but -always has the same fierce and elfish look, like a green that has a -secret. It may be seen in the signet ring of Owen Meredith, and in the -eyes of the <i>Dweller in the Innermost</i>. But all these colours have, as I -say, the first and most characteristic and most obvious of the mental -qualities of Watts; they are simple and like things just made by God. -Nor is it, I think, altogether fanciful to push this analogy or harmony -a step further and to see in the colours and the treatment of them the -other side or typical trait which I have frequently mentioned as making -up the identity<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60">{60}</a></span> of the painter. He is, as I say, a stoic; therefore to -some extent, at least, a pagan; he has no special sympathy with Celtic -intensity, with Catholic mysticism, with Romanticism, with all the -things that deal with the cells of the soul, with agonies and dreams. -And I think a broad distinction between the finest pagan and the finest -Christian point of view may be found in such an approximate phrase as -this, that paganism deals always with a light shining on things, -Christianity with a light shining through them. That is why the whole -Renaissance colouring is opaque, the whole Pre-Raphaelite colouring -transparent. The very sky of Rubens is more solid than the rocks of -Giotto: it is like a noble cliff of immemorial blue marble. The artists -of the devout age seemed to regret that they could not make the light -show through everything, as it shows through the little wood in the -wonderful <i>Nativity</i> of Botticelli. And that is why, again, -Christianity, which has been attacked so strangely as dull and austere, -invented the thing which is more intoxicating than all the wines of the -world, stained-glass windows.</p> - -<p>Now Watts, with all his marvellous spirituality, or rather because of -his peculiar type of marvellous spirituality, has the Platonic, the -philosophic, rather than the Catholic order of mysticism. And it can -scarcely be a coincidence that here again we feel it to be something -that could almost be deduced from the colours if they were splashed at -random about a canvas. The colours are mystical, but they are not -transparent; that is, not transparent in the very curious but -unmistakable sense in which the colours of Botticelli or Rossetti are -transparent. What they are can only be described as iridescent. A -curious lustre or glitter, conveyed chiefly by a singular and individual -brushwork, lies over all his great pictures.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_26" id="ill_26"></a> -<a href="images/i_060fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_060fp.jpg" width="260" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>DAWN.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61">{61}</a></span></p> - -<p>It is the dawn of things: it is the glow of the primal sense of wonder; -it is the sun of the childhood of the world; it is the light that never -was on sea or land; but still it is a light shining on things, not -shining through them. It is a light which exhibits and does honour to -this world, not a light that breaks in upon this world to bring it -terror or comfort, like the light that suddenly peers round the corner -of some dark Gothic chapel with its green or golden or blood-red eyes. -The Gothic artists, as I say, would have liked men’s bodies to become -like burning glass (as the figures in their windows do), that the light -might pass through them. There is no fear of light passing through -Watts’ <i>Cain</i>.</p> - -<p>These analogies must inevitably appear fantastic to those who do not -accept the general hypothesis of a possible kinship between pictorial -and moral harmonies in the psychology of men; but to those who do accept -this not very extravagant hypothesis, it may, I think, be repeated by -way of summary, that the purely technical question of Watts’ colour -scheme does provide us, at least suggestively, with these two parallels. -Watts, so far as his moral and mental attitude can be expressed by any -phrases of such brevity, has two main peculiarities: first, a large -infantile poetry which delights in things fresh, raw, and gigantic; -second, a certain Greek restraint and agnostic severity, which throws a -strong light on this world as it is. The colours he uses have also two -main peculiarities: first, a fresh, raw, and, as it were, gigantic -character; secondly, an opaque reflected light, unlike the mediæval -lighting, a strong light thrown on this world as it is.</p> - -<p>Similar lines of comparison, so far as they appear to possess any value, -could, of course, be very easily pointed out in connexion with the -character of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62">{62}</a></span> Watts’ draughtsmanship. That his lines are simple and -powerful, that both in strength and weakness they are candid and -austere, that they are not Celtic, not Catholic, and not romantic lines -of draughtsmanship, would, I think, appear sufficiently clear to anyone -who has any instinct for this mode of judgment at all. In the matter of -line and composition, of course, the same general contention applies as -in the case of colour. The curve of the bent figure of <i>Hope</i>, -considered simply as a curve, half repeating as it does the upper curve -of the globe, suggests a feeling, a sense of fear, of simplicity, of -something which lies near to the nature of the idea itself, the idea -which inspires the title of the picture. The splendid rushing whirlpool -of curves which constitutes, as it were, the ellipse of the two figures -in <i>Diana and Endymion</i> is a positive inspiration. It is, simply as a -form for a picture, a mere scheme of lines, the very soul of Greece. It -is simple; it is full and free; it follows great laws of harmony, but it -follows them swiftly and at will; it is headlong, and yet at rest, like -the solid arch of a waterfall. It is a rushing and passionate meeting of -two superb human figures; and it is almost a mathematical harmony. -Technically, at least, and as a matter of outlines, it is probably the -artist’s masterpiece.</p> - -<p>Before we quit this second department of the temperament of Watts, as -expressed in his line, mention must be made of what is beyond all -question the most interesting and most supremely personal of all the -elements in the painter’s designs and draughtsmanship. That is, of -course, his magnificent discovery of the artistic effect of the human -back. The back is the most awful and mysterious thing in the universe: -it is impossible to speak about it. It is the part of man that he knows -nothing of; like an</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_27" id="ill_27"></a> -<a href="images/i_062fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_062fp.jpg" width="277" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>EVE REPENTANT.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63">{63}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">outlying province forgotten by an emperor. It is a common saying that -anything may happen behind our backs: transcendentally considered the -thing has an eerie truth about it. Eden may be behind our backs, or -Fairyland. But this mystery of the human back has again its other side -in the strange impression produced on those behind: to walk behind -anyone along a lane is a thing that, properly speaking, touches the -oldest nerve of awe. Watts has realized this as no one in art or letters -has realized it in the whole history of the world: it has made him -great. There is one possible exception to his monopoly of this -magnificent craze. Two thousand years before, in the dark scriptures of -a nomad people, it had been said that their prophet saw the immense -Creator of all things, but only saw Him from behind. I do not know -whether even Watts would dare to paint that. But it reads like one of -his pictures, like the most terrific of all his pictures, which he has -kept veiled.</p> - -<p>I need not instance the admirable and innumerable cases of this fine and -individual effect. <i>Eve Repentant</i> (that fine picture), in which the -agony of a gigantic womanhood is conveyed as it could not be conveyed by -any power of visage, in the powerful contortion of the muscular and yet -beautiful back, is the first that occurs to the mind. The sad and -sardonic picture painted in later years, <i>For He had Great -Possessions</i>—showing the young man of the Gospel loaded with his -intolerable pomp of garments and his head sunken out of sight—is of -course another. Others are slighter instances, like <i>Good Luck to your -Fishing</i>. He has again carried the principle, in one instance, to an -extreme seldom adopted, I should fancy, either by artist or man. He has -painted a very graceful portrait of his wife, in which that lady’s face -is entirely<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64">{64}</a></span> omitted, the head being abruptly turned away. But it is -indeed idle to multiply these instances of the painter’s hobby (if one -may use the phrase) of the worship of the human back, when all such -instances have been dwarfed and overshadowed by the one famous and -tremendous instance that everyone knows. <i>Love and Death</i> is truly a -great achievement: if it stood alone it would have made a man great. And -it fits in with a peculiar importance with the general view I am -suggesting of the Watts technique. For the whole picture really hangs, -both technically and morally, upon one single line, a line that could be -drawn across a blank canvas, the spine-line of the central figure of -Death with its great falling garment. The whole composition, the whole -conception, and, I was going to say, the whole moral of the picture, -could be deduced from that single line. The moral of the picture (if -moral were the right phrase for these things) is, it is scarcely -necessary to point out, the monument of about as noble a silence and -suppression as the human mind ever bent itself to in its pride. It is -the great masterpiece of agnosticism. In that picture agnosticism—not -the cheap and querulous incredulity which abuses the phrase, but loyal -and consistent agnosticism, which is as willing to believe good as evil -and to harbour faith as doubt—has here its great and pathetic place and -symbol in the house of the arts. It is the artistic embodiment of -reverent ignorance at its highest, fully as much as the Divine Comedy is -the artistic embodiment of Christianity.</p> - -<p>Technically, in a large number of cases, it is probably true that Watts’ -portraits, or some of them at least, are his most successful -achievements. But here also we find our general conclusion: for if his -portraits are his best pictures, it is certainly not because they</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_28" id="ill_28"></a> -<a href="images/i_064fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_064fp.jpg" width="289" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>LOVE AND DEATH.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65">{65}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">are merely portraits; if they are in some cases better than his symbolic -designs, it is certainly not because they are less symbolic. In his -gallery of great men, indeed, we find Watts almost more himself than -anywhere else. Most men are allegorical when they are painting -allegories, but Watts is allegorical when he is painting an old -alderman. A change passes over that excellent being, a change of a kind -to which aldermen are insufficiently inured. He begins to resolve into -the primal elements, to become dust and the shadow, to become the red -clay of Adam and the wind of God. His eyes become, in spite of his -earnest wish, the fixed stars in the sky of the spirit; his complexion -begins to show, not the unmeaning red of portraits and miniatures, but -that secret and living red which is within us, and which is the river of -man. The astounding manner in which Watts has, in some cases, treated -his sitters is one of the most remarkable things about his character. He -is not (it is almost absurd to have to mention such a thing about the -almost austere old democrat) a man likely to flatter a sitter in any -worldly or conventional sense. Nor is he, for the matter of that, a man -likely to push compliments far from any motive: he is a strict, and I -should infer a candid, man. The type of virtues he chiefly admires and -practises are the reverse of those which would encourage a courtier or -even a universalist. But he scarcely ever paints a man without making -him about five times as magnificent as he really looks. The real men -appear, if they present themselves afterwards, like mean and -unsympathetic sketches from the Watts original.</p> - -<p>The fact is that this indescribable primalism, which we have noted as -coming out in the designs, in the titles, and in Watts’ very -oil-colours, is present<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66">{66}</a></span> in this matter in a most extraordinary way. -Watts does not copy men at all: he makes them over again. He dips his -hand in the clay of chaos and begins to model a man named William Morris -or a man named Richard Burton: he is assisted, no doubt, in some degree -by a quaint old text-book called Reality, with its stiff but suggestive -woodcuts and its shrewd and simple old hints. But the most that can be -said for the portraiture is that Watts asks a hint to come and stop with -him, puts the hint in a chair in his studio and stares at him. The thing -that comes out at last upon the canvas is not generally a very precise -picture of the sitter, though, of course, it is almost always a very -accurate picture of the universe.</p> - -<p>And yet while this, on the one side, is true enough, the portraits are -portraits, and very fine portraits. But they are dominated by an element -which is the antithesis of the whole tendency of modern art, that -tendency which for want of a better word we have to call by the absurd -name of optimism. It is not, of course, in reality a question of -optimism in the least, but of an illimitable worship and wonder directed -towards the fact of existence. There is a great deal of difference -between the optimism which says that things are perfect and the optimism -which merely says (with a more primeval modesty) that they are very -good. One optimism says that a one-legged man has two legs because it -would be so dreadful if he had not. The other optimism says that the -fact that the one-legged was born of a woman, has a soul, has been in -love, and has stood alive under the stars, is a fact so enormous and -thrilling that, in comparison, it does not matter whether he has one leg -or five. One optimism says that this is the best of all possible worlds. -The other says that it is certainly not the best of all possible worlds, -but</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_29" id="ill_29"></a> -<a href="images/i_066fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_066fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WILLIAM MORRIS.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67">{67}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">it is the best of all possible things that a world should be possible. -Watts, as has been more than once more or less definitely suggested, is -dominated throughout by this prehistoric wonder. A man to him, -especially a great man, is a thing to be painted as Fra Angelico painted -angels, on his knees. He has indeed, like many brilliant men in the age -that produced Carlyle and Ruskin, an overwhelming tendency to -hero-worship. That worship had not, of course, in the case of these men -any trace of that later and more denaturalized hero-worship, the -tendency to worship madmen—to dream of vast crimes as one dreams of a -love-affair, and to take the malformation of the soul to be the only -originality. To the Carlylean (and Watts has been to some by no means -inconsiderable extent a Carlylean), to the Carlylean the hero, the great -man, was a man more human than humanity itself. In worshipping him you -were worshipping humanity in a sacrament: and Watts seems to express in -almost every line of his brush this ardent and reverent view of the -great man. He overdoes it. Tennyson, fine as he was both physically and -mentally, was not quite so much of a demi-god as Watts’ splendid -pictures would seem to suggest. Many other sitters have been subjected, -past all recognition, to this kind of devout and ethereal caricature. -But the essential of the whole matter was that the attitude of Watts was -one which might almost be called worship. It was not, of course, that he -always painted men as handsome in the conventional sense, or even as -handsome as they were. William Morris impressed most people as a very -handsome man: in Watts’ marvellous portrait, so much is made of the -sanguine face, the bold stare, the almost volcanic suddenness of the -emergence of the head from the dark green background,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68">{68}</a></span> that the effect -of ordinary good looks, on which many of Morris’s intimates would -probably have prided themselves, is in some degree lost. Carlyle, again, -when he saw the painter’s fine rendering of him, said with -characteristic surliness that he “looked like a mad labourer.” -Conventionally speaking, it is of course, therefore, to be admitted that -the sitters did not always come off well. But the exaggeration or the -distortion, if exaggeration or distortion there were, was always -effected in obedience to some almost awestruck notion of the greatness -or goodness of the great or good sitter. The point is not whether Watts -sometimes has painted men as ugly as they were painted by the primary -religious painters; the point is, as I have said, that he painted as -they did, on his knees. Now no one thinks that Mr. Sargent paints the -Misses Wertheimer on his knees. His grimness and decision of drawing and -colouring are not due to a sacred optimism. But those of Watts are due -to this: are due to an intense conviction that there is within the -sitter a great reality which has to give up its secret before he leaves -the seat or the model’s throne. Hence come the red violent face and -minatory eyes of William Morris: the painter sought to express, and he -did most successfully express, the main traits and meaning of -Morris—the appearance of a certain plain masculine passion in the realm -of decorative art. Morris was a man who wanted good wall-papers, not as -a man wants a coin of the Emperor Constantine, which was the cloistered -or abnormal way in which men had commonly devised such things: he wanted -good wall-papers as a man wants beer. He clamoured for art: he brawled -for it. He asserted the perfectly virile and ordinary character of the -appetite for beauty. And he possessed and developed a power of moral -violence on pure</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_30" id="ill_30"></a> -<a href="images/i_068fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_068fp.jpg" width="480" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69">{69}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">matters of taste which startled the flabby world of connoisseurship and -opened a new era. He grew furious with furniture and denounced the union -of wrong colours as men denounce an adultery. All this is expressed far -more finely than in these clumsy sentences in that living and leonine -head in the National Portrait Gallery. It is exactly the same with -Carlyle. Watts’ Carlyle is immeasurably more subtle and true than the -Carlyle of Millais, which simply represents him as a shaggy, handsome, -magnificent old man. The uglier Carlyle of Watts has more of the truth -about him, the strange combination of a score of sane and healthy -visions and views, with something that was not sane, which bloodshot and -embittered them all, the great tragedy of the union of a strong -countryside mind and body with a disease of the vitals and something -like a disease of the spirit. In fact, Watts painted Carlyle “like a mad -labourer” because Carlyle was a mad labourer.</p> - -<p>This general characteristic might of course be easily traced in all the -portraits one by one. If space permitted, indeed, such a process might -be profitable; for while we take careful note of all the human -triviality of faces, the one thing that we all tend to forget is that -divine and common thing which Watts celebrates. It is the misfortune of -the nonreligious ages that they tend to cultivate a sense of -individuality, not only at the expense of religion, but at the expense -of humanity itself. For the modern portrait-painter not only does not -see the image of God in his sitters, he does not even see the image of -man. His object is not to insist on the glorious and solemn heritage -which is common to Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Albert Chevalier, to -Count Tolstoy and Mr. Wanklyn, that is the glorious and solemn heritage -of a nose and two eyes and a mouth. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70">{70}</a></span> effort of the dashing modern is -rather to make each of these features individual almost to the point of -being incredible: it is his desire to paint the mouth whose grimace is -inimitable, the eyes that could be only in one head, and the nose that -never was on sea or land. There is value in this purely personal -treatment, but something in it so constantly lost: the quality of the -common humanity. The new art gallery is too like a museum of freaks, it -is too wild and wonderful, like a realistic novel. Watts errs -undoubtedly on the other side. He makes all his portraits too classical. -It may seem like a paradox to say that he makes them too human; but -humanity is a <i>classis</i> and therefore classical. He recurs too much to -the correct type which includes all men. He has, for instance, a worship -of great men so complete that it makes him tend in the direction of -painting them all alike. There may be too much of Browning in his -Tennyson, too much of Tennyson in his Browning. There is certainly a -touch of Manning in his John Stuart Mill, and a touch of the Minotaur in -many of his portraits of Imperial politicians. While he celebrates the -individual with a peculiar insight, it is nevertheless always referred -to a general human type. We feel when we look at even the most -extraordinary of Watts’ portraits, as, for instance, the portrait of -Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, that before Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was -born, and apart from that fact, there was such a thing as a human being. -When we look at a brilliant modern canvas like that of Mr. Sargent’s -portrait of Wertheimer, we do not feel that any human being analogous to -him had of necessity existed. We feel that Mr. Wertheimer might have -been created before the stars. Watts has a tendency to resume his -characters into his background as if they were half returning</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_31" id="ill_31"></a> -<a href="images/i_070fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_070fp.jpg" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THOMAS CARLYLE.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71">{71}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">to the forces of nature. In his more successful portraits the actual -physical characteristics of the sitter appear to be something of the -nature of artistic creations; they are decorative and belong to a whole. -We feel that he has filled in the fiery orange of Swinburne’s hair as -one might fill in a gold or copper panel. We know that he was -historically correct in making the hair orange, but we cannot get rid of -a haunting feeling that if his scheme had been a little different he -would have made it green. This indescribable sentiment is particularly -strong in the case of the portrait of Rossetti. Rossetti is dressed in a -dark green coat which perfectly expresses his sumptuous Pre-Raphaelite -affectation. But we do not feel that Rossetti has adopted the dark green -coat to suit his dark red beard. We rather feel that if anyone had -seized Rossetti and forcibly buttoned him up in the dark green coat he -would have grown the red beard by sheer force of will.</p> - -<p>Before we quit the subject of portraiture a word ought to be said about -two exceedingly noble portraits, those of Matthew Arnold and Cardinal -Manning. The former is interesting because, as an able critic said -somewhere (I wish I could remember who he was or where he wrote), this -is the one instance of Watts approaching tentatively a man whom he in -all reasonable probability did not understand. In this particular case -the picture is a hundred times better for that. The portrait-painter of -Matthew Arnold obviously ought not to understand him, since he did not -understand himself. And the bewilderment which the artist felt for those -few hours reproduced in a perfect, almost in an immortal, picture the -bewilderment which the sitter felt from the cradle to the grave. The -bewilderment of Matthew Arnold was more noble and faithful than most -men’s certainty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72">{72}</a></span> and Watts has not failed to give that nobility a place -even greater perhaps than that which he would have given to it had he -been working on that fixed theory of admiration in which he dealt with -Tennyson or Morris. The sad sea-blue eyes of Matthew Arnold seemed to -get near to the fundamental sadness of blue. It is a certain eternal -bleakness in the colour which may for all I know have given rise to the -legend of blue devils. There are times at any rate when the bluest -heavens appear only blue with those devils. The portrait of Cardinal -Manning is worth a further and special notice, because it is an -illustration of the fact to which I have before alluded: the fact that -while Watts in one sense always gets the best out of his sitters, he -does not by any means always get the handsomest out of them. Manning was -a singularly fine-looking man, even in his emaciation. A friend of mine, -who was particularly artistic both by instinct and habits, gazed for a -long time at a photograph of the terrible old man clad in those -Cardinal’s robes and regalia in which he exercised more than a -Cardinal’s power, and said reflectively, “He would have made his fortune -as a model.” A great many of the photographs of Manning, indeed almost -any casual glimpses of him, present him as more beautiful than he -appears in Watts’ portrait. To the ordinary onlooker there was behind -the wreck of flesh and the splendid skeleton the remains of a very -handsome English gentleman; relics of one who might have hunted foxes -and married an American heiress. Watts has no eyes for anything except -that sublime vow which he would himself repudiate, that awful Church -which he would himself disown. He exaggerates the devotionalism of -Manning. He is more ascetic than the ascetics; more Catholic than -Catholicism. Just so, he would be, if he were painting the -Sheik-el-Islam, more Moslem<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73">{73}</a></span> than the Mohammedans. He has no eyes but -for ideas.</p> - -<p>Watts’ allegories and Watts’ portraits exhaust the subject of his art. -It is true that he has on rare occasions attempted pictures merely -reproducing the externals of the ordinary earth. It is characteristic of -him that he should have once, for no apparent reason in particular, -painted a picture of two carthorses and a man. It is still more -characteristic of him that this one picture of a trivial group in the -street should be so huge as to dwarf many of his largest and most -transcendental canvases; that the incidental harmless drayman should be -more gigantic than the Prince of this World or Adam or the Angel of -Death. He condescends to a detail and makes the detail more vast than a -cosmic allegory. One picture, called “The First Oyster,” he is reported -to have painted in response to a challenge which accused him or his art -of lacking altogether the element of humour. The charge is interesting, -because it suggests a comparison with the similar charge commonly -brought against Gladstone. In both charges there is an element of truth, -though not complete truth. Watts proved no doubt that he was not wholly -without humour by this admirable picture. Gladstone proved that he was -not wholly without humour by his reply to Mr. Chaplin, by his singing of -“Doo-dah,” and by his support of a grant to the Duke of Coburg. But both -men were singularly little possessed by the mood or the idea of humour. -To them had been in peculiar fullness revealed the one great truth which -our modern thought does not know and which it may possibly perish -through not knowing. They knew that to enjoy life means to take it -seriously. There is an eternal kinship between solemnity and high -spirits, and almost the very name of it is Gladstone. Its other<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74">{74}</a></span> name is -Watts. They knew that not only life, but every detail of life, is most a -pleasure when it is studied with the gloomiest intensity. They knew that -the men who collect beetles are jollier than the men who kill them, and -that the men who worshipped beetles (in ancient Egypt) were probably the -jolliest of all. The startling cheerfulness of the old age of Gladstone, -the startling cheerfulness of the old age of Watts, are both entirely -redolent of this exuberant seriousness, this uproarious gravity. They -were as happy as the birds, because, like the birds, they were untainted -by the disease of laughter. They are as awful and philosophical as -children at play: indeed they remind us of a truth true for all of us, -though capable of misunderstanding, that the great aim of a man’s life -is to get into his second childhood.</p> - -<p>Of his work we have concluded our general survey. It has been hard in -conducting such a survey to avoid the air of straying from the subject. -But the greatest hardness of the subject is that we cannot stray from -the subject. This man has attempted, whether he has succeeded or no, to -paint such pictures of such things that no one shall be able to get -outside them; that everyone should be lost in them for ever like -wanderers in a mighty park. Whether we strike a match or win the -Victoria Cross, we are still giants sprawling in Chaos. Whether we hide -in a monastery or thunder on a platform, we are still standing in the -Court of Death. If any experience at all is genuine, it affects the -philosophy of these pictures; if any halfpenny stamp supports them, they -are the better pictures; if any dead cat in a dust-bin contradicts them, -they are the worse pictures. This is the great pathos and the great -dignity of philosophy and theology. Men talk of philosophy and theology -as if they were something specialistic and arid and</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<br /><a name="ill_32" id="ill_32"></a> -<a href="images/i_074fp.jpg"> -<img src="images/i_074fp.jpg" width="506" height="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>GOOD LUCK TO YOUR FISHING.</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75">{75}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">academic. But philosophy and theology are not only the only democratic -things, they are democratic to the point of being vulgar, to the point, -I was going to say, of being rowdy. They alone admit all matters; they -alone lie open to all attacks. All other sciences may, while studying -their own, laugh at the rag-tag and bobtail of other sciences. An -astronomer may sneer at animalculæ, which are very like stars; an -entomologist may scorn the stars, which are very like animalculæ. -Physiologists may think it dirty to grub about in the grass; botanists -may think it dirtier to grub about in an animal’s inside. But there is -nothing that is not relevant to these more ancient studies. There is no -detail, from buttons to kangaroos, that does not enter into the gay -confusion of philosophy. There is no fact of life, from the death of a -donkey to the General Post Office, which has not its place to dance and -sing in, in the glorious Carnival of theology.</p> - -<p>Therefore I make no apology if I have asked the reader, in the course of -these remarks, to think about things in general. It is not I, but George -Frederick Watts, who asks the reader to think about things in general. -If he has not done this, he has failed. If he has not started in us such -trains of reflection as I am now concluding and many more and many -better, he has failed. And this brings me to my last word. Now and again -Watts has failed. I am afraid that it may possibly be inferred from the -magniloquent language which I have frequently, and with a full -consciousness of my act, applied to this great man, that I think the -whole of his work technically triumphant. Clearly it is not. For I -believe that often he has scarcely known what he was doing; I believe -that he has been in the dark when the lines came wrong; that he has been -still deeper in the dark and things came right. As I have already -pointed out,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76">{76}</a></span> the vague lines which his mere physical instinct would -make him draw, have in them the curves of the Cosmos. His automatic -manual action was, I think, certainly a revelation to others, certainly -a revelation to himself. Standing before a dark canvas upon some quiet -evening, he has made lines and something has happened. In such an hour -the strange and splendid phrase of the Psalm he has literally fulfilled. -He has gone on because of the word of meekness and truth and of -righteousness. And his right hand has taught him terrible things.</p> - -<hr class="full" /> -<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK G. F. 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