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relates to poetry, in a recent number of this review, we shall not re-open that question, but shall proceed to examine the spirit manifested in our contemporary painting, drama, and fiction, as compared with the English tradition of these arts, with a view to discovering what light is thereby thrown upon the present political temper of the nation.

produce anything great; can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator. The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive: instead of endeavoring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his imitations, he must endeavor to improve them by the grandeur of his ideas; instead of seeking praise by deceiving the superficial sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame by captivating the imagination.

of his hearers the necessity of aiming at Hence he always kept before the mind the "great style."

This great ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought in the heavens but upon the earth. They are about us and upon every side deformed in nature, or, in other words, what is of us. But the power of discovering what is particular and uncommon, can be acquired only by experience; and the whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists, in my opinion, in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind.

As to painting, we want no better exponent of the English conception of that art than the greatest painter that England has produced, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Nothing can be more constitutional than Sir Joshua's instructions to the students at the Royal Academy. The prevailing note in his admirable "Discourses" is an indig. nant repudiation of the doctrine that genius implies absolute power. The highest genius, he says over and over again, proceeds in obedience to the highest law, and it is only because the majority of mankind are insensible of the limits of law, that they impute the actions of genius to capricious inspiration. "The summit of excelHow far, then, has the tradition establence seems to be an assemblage of con-lished by the first president of the Royal trary qualities, but mixed in such pro- Academy been preserved by the modern portions that no one part is found to representatives of his art? But before we Counteract the other." The nearest ap- attempt to answer this question, we ought proach to this excellence is found in the to make certain deductions from his theory works of the greatest masters, and Sir that have been rendered necessary by time Joshua therefore recommends his audience and circumstance. Painting, he thought, to render to these a rational obedience, and should speak an universal language, and, not even to be afraid of being called their in so far as it expresses itself by means of form and color, it is plain that this art has a more extended sphere than poetry, the limits of which are defined by the diversities of human speech. But this common language could only remain intelligible so long as it expressed common thought and sentiment, a truth which Sir Joshua very clearly understood.

imitators.

When [says he] we have had continually before us the great works of art to impregnate our minds with kindred ideas, we are then, and not till then, fit to produce something of the same species. We behold all about us with the eyes of those penetrating observers, whose works we contemplate; and our minds, accustomed to think the thoughts of the noblest and brightest intellects, are prepared for the discovery and selection of all that is great and noble in nature. The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own will be soon reduced from mere barrenness to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated. When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.

Yet, with all his sense of the necessity of authority, he was an ardent lover of liberty.

A mere copier of nature [we cannot in these days quote Sir Joshua too often], can never

"State of English Poetry," Quarterly Review, July, 1873.

Strictly speaking [says he], no subject can be of universal, hardly can it be of general, concern; but there are events and characters so popularly known in those countries where our art is in request, that they may be consid ered as sufficiently general for all our purposes. Such are the great events of Greek and Roman fable and history, which early education and the usual course of reading have made familiar and interesting to all Europe, without being degraded by the vulgarism of ordinary life in any country. Such too are the capital subjects of Scripture history, which, besides their general notoriety, become venerable by their connection with our religion.

While a system of European authority prevailed, which prescribed the limits of religious faith and secular education, it was possible to treat the subjects named by Sir Joshua in the universal style he

d

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looking at things and a willing obedience to the unwritten law of experience and tradition. But can it be said that the tra ditions of the "characteristic English style still prevail? Let us endeavor to determine this by a few recollections of the last Academy.

desired. Scholarship widely diffused un- | reflect the English character and constituder the protection of princes and nobles tion. For, with all their force and origi familiarized the people with the stories of nality, they still show a general way of heathen mythology. The authoritative doctrine of the Catholic Church, and the continuous development of Italian art, gave a traditional character to religious painting throughout Europe, and only allowed the subject under treatment to be characterized by such variety as appeared in the national tendencies of the Florentine and Roman schools on the one side, and by the Venetian and Flemish on the other. But ever since the triumph of the French Revolution, the tradition of the classical Renaissance has been on the decline, nor can it any longer be said, that "the great events of Greek and Roman fable and history have been made familiar and interesting to all Europe by the usual course of reading." So too the authority of the Catholic tradition in painting was mortally wounded by the great disruption of Christendom at the Reformation.

The framework of Europe has in fact changed; and the medieval ideal of universal empire in Church and State has been replaced by the doctrines of nationality and the balance of power. Still it may be thought that the art of painting has received compensation for the decline of authority by the increase of liberty, and that what it has lost in grandeur and sub limity it may have gained in originality and character. If it no longer speaks in telligibly an universal language, it may speak with more force the language of nations and individuals. Sir Joshua himself, while subordinating what he calls the 'characteristical" style to the "great" style, fully recognizes the claims of the former to be a genuine province of painting.

To represent action in some form or another is the aim of every great painter. In landscape, for example; how full of action is the painting of Turner, who may be truly said to have invented the "great style" in this branch of the art. The dif fused light and the far distances of his pictures blend in extraordinary sympathy with the human associations of the scenes represented. His "Rise" and "Decline of Carthage," and his "Fighting Témé raire," though the representation of human life in them is entirely subordinate, have all the feeling of a great tragic poet; they seize the unseen truth or "character" of the subject,

The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration, and the poet's dream. But Turner's influence is apparently on the wane. Undoubtedly the most popular landscape in the last Academy was Mr. Brett's "Cornish Lions." A dazzling blue sea shone beneath a cloudless blue sky, in a sunlight so brilliant that each cranny and indentation in the cliffs was visible. Every particular in the actual landscape was exhibited; yet the general effect of the picture appeared to us to be that of sus pended life. There was no central idea of action to blend the various parts into a harmonious whole; nevertheless the very particularity of the imitation secured far more favor from the public than the genThere is another style [he says], which, eralization of Mr. Vicat Cole, whose though inferior to the former, has still greatShowery Day" seemed to us to have merit, because it shows that those who cultiadmirably caught the "character" of that soft shining atmosphere which gives their chief beauty to so many spring days in England.

vated it were men of lively and vigorous imagination. This, which may be called the origi nal or characteristical style, being less referred to any true archetype existing either in general or particular nature, must be supported by the Another picture in which action was painter's consistency in the principles which sacrificed to imitation was Mr. Frith's he has assumed, and in the union and harmony" Road to Ruin." The idea of this work of his whole design. The excellency of every was evidently suggested by Hogarth, but style, but of the subordinate styles more espe- had the crowds who filed in front of the dally, will very much depend on preserving picture proceeded afterwards to compare that union and harmony between all the com- their impressions of it with Hogarth's ponent parts, that they may appear to hang "Marriage à la Mode," they would have well together, as if the whole proceeded from one mind.

Such were the styles of Hogarth, Gainsborough, Wilkie, and Turner, which truly

seen that between the method of the master and the disciple there was absolutely nothing in common. Hogarth's style is full of the sava indignatio of the satir

ist; every incident and detail conspires to point the general moral; the action of the drama grows naturally out of its original source; the very lines of the various countenances seem to indicate the painter's abhorrence of the vices which he makes them reflect. Hogarth would have done justice to Mr. Frith's subject. There is scarcely a corner of English society that has not been contaminated by the universal passion for gambling. What scope for invention, what revelations of manners, are possible to a painter in an age which has seen the fortunes of historic houses wasted on a racecourse, and has listened to the tales of public credulity related by a Benson! But Mr. Frith is no satirist. The moral of his picture was indeed strong enough for a transpontine theatre, but the story in which the moral was conveyed was an ingenuous fable. If we are to believe him, it is customary for commonplace young gentlemen, who play cards at the university, eventually to shoot themselves in a garret from extremity of want; and this, even though they may have been originally possessed of large estates, and presumably of good connections. The public which besieged Mr. Frith's picture must have been perfectly well aware that this is not the road to ruin in our days; they must have perceived, if they had reflected, that the various compartments of the picture had no other connection with the apparent subject, or with each other, than a common frame; but so enchanted were they with the undeniable skill of the painter in reproducing commonplace objects with which they were familiar, that they remained insensible to his deflections from truth and

nature.

has commenced his work with a central idea, which gives life and balance to the whole composition. The action of the picture, in the one case, starts from the sweep of the fiddler's bow, and the spectator seems to hear the sound, and to understand the various passions which this excites in each particular member of the audience. So, in "Blind Man's Buff," the action is grouped round the cautious, groping figure of the blind man, and nothing can be more beautiful than the balance which the painter has obtained out of the varied attitudes of coquetry and mock terror which the situation has produced in the rustic groups. Mr. Herkomer, on the other hand, had apparently chosen his subject, not so much because he was humanly interested in it, as because it enabled him to make an exhibition of his rare mastery over light and color.

Composition, imagination, and invention, at all events, it may be said, were manifest in the work of Mr. Long; and in the graceful attitudes of the figures, the expressive humor of the faces, and the lifelike clinging of the cat-model, the idea of action was more visible in the "Making of the Gods," than in any other picture in the Academy. We had but one ground of quarrel with Mr. Long. Why were not all this grace, humor, and vitality, devoted to the representation of some living interest, instead of being employed in realizing the idea of an obsolete superstition? So, too, a touch of regret mingled with our amusement at the admirably comic "Convocation" of Mr. Marks, to think that such dramatic power should not find expression in the representation of human action.

Putting aside, however, a few exceptional Mr. Herkomer, another representative pictures of a similar character to those we painter, is not, like Mr. Frith, a stranger have just mentioned, it may be said that to poetry. In his "Evening in the West- the prevailing note in the work of the minster Workhouse," it appeared to us Academy was domesticity. Few of the there were many fine strokes of imagina- exhibitors let their imagination travel far tion, and those who studied that picture from home; the majority remained content will not easily forget the poetical manner with the careful imitation of familiar obin which light and shadow were made to jects. Very different in character is that accentuate the characteristics of old age, curious phase of modern art which reprein the figures obscurely seen cowering in sents the revolt of a certain section of the firelight, or advancing feebly with a society from the modes of thought prevastaff from the far end of the room. But lent among the middle classes. Those, how came a painter of such capacity to try who last summer visited the Grosvenor and interest the spectator in his group of Gallery, found themselves in a region from old women, in the forepart of a long bare which the vulgar and the familiar were room, drinking tea, reading, and cutting fastidiously banished. If they had been out linen? It is not that common subjects offended in the Academy with the someare incapable of beautiful treatment; what slavish imitation of particulars, they Wilkie's "Blind Fiddler" and "Blind might here solace_themselves with pure Man's Buff" are standing instances to the abstraction; if, in Burlington House, they contrary; but in these pictures the painter | had breathed with some difficulty the con

Look here, my boys; see, what a world of ground

Lies westward from the midst of Cancer's line

Unto the rising of this earthly globe,
Whereas the sun declining from our sight
Begins the day with our antipodes !
And shall I die with this unconquered?
Lo, here, my sons, are all the golden mines,
Inestimable drugs, and precious stones,
More worth than Asia and the world beside:
And from the antarctic pole eastward behold
As much more land which never was descried,
Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright
And shall I die and this unconquered?
As all the lamps that beautify the sky-
Here, lovely boys; what death forbids my life,
That let your lives command in spite of death.

ventional atmosphere of modern society, the Great." And if he had wanted a text here at least they might retire into the from which to inveigh against the maMiddle Ages; they might listen to the terialistic spirit which inspired the voyages pastoral pipe of the Renaissance, roam of Raleigh, he might have found it in the among rocks and mountains that appeared dying speech of the great Scythian shepto have strayed out of the pictures of herd, where he bids his son follow his Benozzo Gozzoli, or ransack their memo- conquests on the map: ries before the faces of knights and angels, whose acquaintance they fancied they had made long ago on some canvas of Giorgione or Sandro Botticelli. Surely here, if anywhere, was to be found that artistic generalization, that imaginative energy, which Sir Joshua Reynolds declared to be the characteristic of the " great style." Alas, no! The representative painters of the Grosvenor Gallery had even less conception of action than the painters of the Academy. For if the latter restricted themselves to imitation, at least they imitated actual life, but the former merely imitated certain peculiarities in the style of the old masters. Mr. Burne Jones is the chief master of this school. His picture entitled "Laus Veneris" represented a number of ladies sitting in the foreground gorgeously attired, and in the background some knights in white armor, looking in at a window as they rode by. The women in the chief group were doing -nothing. They had even stopped singing the praises of Venus, which it appears was their sole resource for passing the time. They had all one type of face, one morbid kind of complexion, one monotonous expression, which culminated in the figure of the queen, who, with her seat thrust back from the rest, her crown on her knees, and her feet far extended in front of her, seemed to have resigned herself to the dominion of ennui. A similar somnolent languor pervaded Mr. Jones's "Chant d'Amour;" indeed so potent was its influence, that a Cupid, who had been apparently borrowed from Botticelli for the purpose of blowing the bellows of an organ which for some reason the female musician has chosen to play on the top of a wall-had actually fallen asleep at his work. In like manner the abstractions of day and night and the four seasons indicated not the action of light and darkness, nor the variety of generation and production, but the perpetual presence in the painter's mind of thoughts on revolution and decay.

But Mr. Gladstone may take comfort if he turns to the Victorian stage, and reflects that the public, of whose aggressive spirit he is so much afraid, have for thirteen hundred successive nights been following with rapt attention the fortunes of two young men, whom true love has induced to throw up all the advantages of wealth, and to work for their living in a garret. From "Tamburlane " to "Our Boys' is a long journey, but the artistic stages on the way are as clearly marked as those of our political constitution. The spirit of the drama under Elizabeth was at once monarchical and national, for the cause of the throne was completely identified with that of the people. During the civil wars dramatic representation was naturally suspended. After the Restoration it took from the court a tone that was entirely opposed to the national character. When taste had been purified and regulated by the great critics of the early part of the eighteenth century, the stage reflected for a long period the more temperate manners of the aristocracy. The Reform Bill again initiated a fresh epoch; the aristoc racy after that date gradually ceased to visit the theatre; and the course of the drama has, up to the present day, been almost completely controlled by the taste of the middle classes.

The tendencies which we have noticed At each of these stages we may observe in our painting are equally observable in a restriction of the national idea of action. Our drama. Had Mr. Gladstone lived Founded as the Elizabethan drama was on in the reign of Elizabeth, he would no purely national principles, it was natural doubt have swelled the outcry of the that its poetical tradition should have been Critics against Marlowe's "Tamburlane | lost during the period when the nation

Kept within due limits, the Puritanic element in the English nation exercised a salutary influence on the stage. Many excellent comedies were produced during the eighteenth century, but in none of them is there a trace of the licentiousness which disfigured the work of the dramatists after the Restoration. At the same time, the moralizing class of dramas, like "The Gamester" and "The Road to Ruin," which followed in the steps of "George Barnwell," caught a certain style and vivacity from the aristocratic tone of society. But when, after the first Reform Bill, the middle-class element prevailed over the aristocratic, life and action began to languish on the stage. The descendants of the old Puritans brought with them to the theatre strong domestic feelings, but a limited experience and a narrow imagination. The influence of their taste soon became apparent. In the first place, the poetic drama languished, and then died. In the second place, the taste and sentiments of that part of the audience which the dramatist felt himself chiefly obliged to court, being very restricted in their range, he was forced to borrow many of his situations from abroad. The comedies of the last century are evidently of native origin; but we suppose we are within the mark in saying that at least two-thirds of the plays produced in this generation are taken from the French. As the character and traditions of the two nations are totally different, it is evident that no truly representative dramatic situation can be transplanted from the one to the other without losing all its life and spirit. We remember a year or two ago witnessing a play called Peril," which had been adapted from a French original, turning of course on certain ill-adjusted relations of the marriage state. In Paris such a drama would have been written, acted, and criticised, by men to the manner born, and would doubtless have succeeded accordingly. In England it produced indeed a comic effect, but not of the kind intended by the writer; the comedy consisted in the ineffectual struggle of the author with materials which he could not master, the embarrassment of the actors in assuming characters with which they failed to sympathize, and the uneasiness of the audience at finding themselves interested in a situation which they were bound to disapprove.

was divided against itself. The spirit of interjections and inversions which are the old tragedians never really reappears proper only to poetry. after the Restoration. But comedy survived, and as every comedy turns more or less upon a love-plot-flourished in a society which still retained traces of chivalrous gallantry and an aristocratic freedom of manners. Again, however, the genius of the old comedy receded before the advance of the middle classes. Bred as these classes had been on Puritanic principles, which had for a long time condemned all kinds of dramatic representation, it was not to be expected that they should be tolerant of the somewhat easy morals which had hitherto regulated the comic stage. They were moreover far more austere and serious in their general views of life than the aristocracy, and before the age of their political supremacy had now and then uttered a note of tragic earnestness, which sounded strangely amid the gay vivacity and good breeding of the fashionable dramatists of the eighteenth century. As early as 1732 George Lillo, a tradesman, surprised the town by his tragedy, "The True Story of George Barnwell." "On its being announced for publication," says Mrs. Inchhald in a preface to the play, "the well-known title made a very unfavorable impression on the refined part of the town and they condemned the presumption of the author in hoping to make them sympathize in the sorrows of any beneath the rank of an emperor, king, or statesman.” Nevertheless "George Barnwell" made an impression. "The play was performed twenty nights successively on its first appearance, nor did it lose its attraction in the winter season, being frequently acted to crowded houses, and warmly patronized by merchants and other opulent citizens."

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All this is highly significant as an anticipation of the change hereafter to be effected in dramatic taste. It shows us that the society of that period was still familiar with the conceptions of extended action which had prevailed in the poetical drama, and that it was shocked at the idea of domestic tragedy. The play itself reveals, on the other hand, the unimaginative realistic quality of middle-class taste, in its idea of action strong but harsh, and strictly limited to the range of a narrow experience. Its moral tone, impressive from a genuine earnestness, is yet slightly ridiculous; for though, in conformity with its domestic character, the tragedy is written in prose, the desire of the author Of the dramatists of this generation to be lofty and eloquent has made him put who have relied on their native powers of into the mouths of the meanest persons | invention, the two most thoroughly repre