(Jlontelius 31. Qlaiitgatt 
 immortal (EolUrtton 
 

 
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ART AND DECORATION 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/artdecorationOOwild 
 
ART AND DECORATION 
 
 BEING EXTRACTS FROM 
 REVIEWS AND MISCELLANIES 
 
 BY 
 
 1 / 
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 METHUEN & CO. LTD. 
 6 ESSEX STREET W.C. 
 LONDON 
 
CD 
 
 f R 
 
 ■ A? 
 
 First Published in IQ20 
 
 0S5TON CO’ LEGE UBRAKK 
 CHESTNUi MASS* 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Phrases and Philosophies for the use of 
 
 the Young ...... 1 
 
 House Decoration ..... 4 
 
 Art and the Handicraftsman ... 17 
 
 Lecture to Art Students .... 39 
 
 Mrs. Langtry as Hester Grazebrook . 53 
 
 Slaves of Fashion ...... 56 
 
 Woman’s Dress ...... 60 
 
 More Radical Ideas upon Dress Reform . 66 
 
 Costume ........ 80 
 
 The American Invasion .... 83 
 
 Sermons in Stones at Bloomsbury . . 90 
 
 London Models ...... 95 
 
 y 
 
vi ART AND DECORATION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 La Sainte Courtisane ; or^ The Woman 
 
 COVERED WITH JEWELS .... 107 
 
 L’Envoi 119 
 
 The Rise of Historical Criticism . . 132 
 
 Sententiae 
 
 194 
 
ART AND DECORATION 
 
PHRASES AND PHILOSOPHIES FOR 
 THE USE OF THE YOUNG 
 
 (December 1894) 
 
 HE first duty in life is to be as artificial as 
 
 possible. What the second duty is no one 
 has as yet discovered. 
 
 Wickedness is a myth invented by good people 
 to account for the curious attractiveness of 
 others. 
 
 If the poor only had profiles there would be 
 no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty. 
 
 Those who see any difference between soul 
 and body have neither. 
 
 A really well-made buttonhole is the only link 
 between Art and Nature. 
 
 Religions die when they are proved to be 
 true. Science is the record of dead religions. 
 
 The well-bred contradict other people. The 
 wise contradict themselves. 
 
 Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest 
 importance. 
 
 Dulness is the coming of age of seriousness. 
 
 A 
 
ART AND DECORATION 
 
 In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, 
 is the essential. In all important matters, style, 
 not sincerity, is the essential. 
 
 If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or 
 later, to be found out. 
 
 Pleasure is the only thing one should live for. 
 Nothing ages like happiness. 
 
 It is only by not paying one’s bills that one 
 can hope to live in the memory of the commercial 
 classes. 
 
 No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. 
 Vulgarity is the conduct of others. 
 
 Only the shallow know themselves. 
 
 Time is waste of money. 
 
 One should always be a little improbable. 
 
 There is a fatality about all good resolutions. 
 They are invariably made too soon. 
 
 The only way to atone for being occasionally 
 a little overdressed is by being always absolutely 
 overeducated. 
 
 To be premature is to be perfect. 
 
 Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right 
 or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellec- 
 tual development. 
 
 Ambition is the last refuge of the failure. 
 
 A truth ceases to be true when more than one 
 person believes in it. 
 
 In examinations the foolish ask questions that 
 the wise cannot answer. 
 
PHRASES AND PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 3 
 
 Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. 
 Nothing should reveal the body but the body. 
 
 One should either be a work of art, or wear 
 a work of art. 
 
 It is only the superficial qualities that last. 
 Man's deeper nature is soon found out. 
 
 Industry is the root of all ugliness. 
 
 The ages live in history through their ana- 
 chronisms. 
 
 It is only the gods who taste of death. Apollo 
 has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say 
 he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always 
 with us. 
 
 The old believe everything : the middle-aged 
 suspect everything ; the young know everything. 
 
 The condition of perfection is idleness : the 
 aim of perfection is youth. 
 
 Only the great masters of style ever succeeded 
 in being obscure. 
 
 There is something tragic about the enormous 
 number of young men there are in England at 
 the present moment who start life with perfect 
 profiles, and end by adopting some useful pro- 
 fession. 
 
 To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long 
 
 romance. 
 
HOUSE DECORATION 1 
 
 I N my last lecture I gave you something of the 
 history of Art in England. I sought to trace 
 the influence of the French Revolution upon its 
 development. I said something of the song of 
 Keats and the school of the pre-Raphaelites. 
 But I do not want to shelter the movement, 
 which I have called the English Renaissance, 
 under any palladium however noble, or any 
 name however revered. The roots of it have, 
 indeed, to be sought for in things that have long 
 passed away, and not, as some suppose, in the 
 fancy of a few young men — although I am not 
 altogether sure that there is anything much 
 better than the fancy of a few young men. 
 
 When I appeared before you on a previous 
 occasion, I had seen nothing of American art 
 save the Doric columns and Corinthian chimney- 
 
 1 A lecture delivered in America during Wilde’s tour in 
 1882. It was announced as a lecture on ‘The Practical 
 Application of the Principles of the ^Esthetic Theory to 
 Exterior and Interior House Decoration, With Observations 
 upon Dress and Personal Ornaments.’ The earliest date on 
 which it is known to have been given is May 11, 1882. 
 
 4 
 
HOUSE DECORATION 
 
 5 
 
 pots visible on your Broadway and Fifth Avenue. 
 Since then, I have been through your country to 
 some fifty or sixty different cities, I think. I 
 find that what your people need is not so much 
 high imaginative art but that which hallows the 
 vessels of everyday use. I suppose that the poet 
 will sing and the artist will paint regardless 
 whether the world praises or blames. He has 
 his own world and is independent of his fellow- 
 men. But the handicraftsman is dependent on 
 your pleasure and opinion. He needs your 
 encouragement and he must have beautiful 
 surroundings. Your people love art but do 
 not sufficiently honour the handicraftsman. Of 
 course, those millionaires who can pillage Europe 
 for their pleasure need have no care to encourage 
 such ; but I speak for those whose desire for 
 beautiful things is larger than their means. I 
 find that one great trouble all over is that your 
 workmen are not given to noble designs. You 
 cannot be indifferent to this, because Art is not 
 something which you can take or leave. It is a 
 necessity of human life. 
 
 And what is the meaning of this beautiful 
 decoration which we call art ? In the first place, 
 it means value to the workman and it means 
 the pleasure which he must necessarily take in 
 making a beautiful thing. The mark of all good 
 art is not that the thing done is done exactly or 
 
6 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 finely, for machinery may do as much, but that 
 it is worked out with the head and the work- 
 man's heart. I cannot impress the point too 
 frequently that beautiful and rational designs 
 are necessary in all work. I did not imagine, 
 until I went into some of your simpler cities, 
 that there was so much bad work done. I found, 
 where I went, bad wall-papers horribly designed, 
 and coloured carpets, and that old offender the 
 horse-hair sofa, whose stolid look of indifference 
 is always so depressing. I found meaningless 
 chandeliers and machine-made furniture, gener- 
 ally of rosewood, which creaked dismally under 
 the weight of the ubiquitous interviewer. I 
 came across the small iron stove which they 
 always persist in decorating with machine-made 
 ornaments, and which is as great a bore as a wet 
 day or any other particularly dreadful institution. 
 When unusual extravagance was indulged in, it 
 was garnished with two funeral urns. 
 
 It must always be remembered that what is 
 well and carefully made by an honest workman, 
 after a rational design, increases in beauty and 
 value as the years go on. The old furniture 
 brought over by the Pilgrims, two hundred years 
 ago, which I saw in New England, is just as 
 good and as beautiful to-day as it was when it 
 first came here. Now, what you must do is 
 to bring artists and handicraftsmen together. 
 
HOUSE DECORATION 
 
 7 
 
 Handicraftsmen cannot live, certainly cannot 
 thrive, without such companionship. Separate 
 these two and you rob art of all spiritual motive. 
 
 Having done this, you must place your work- 
 man in the midst of beautiful surroundings. 
 The artist is not dependent on the visible and 
 the tangible. He has his visions and his dreams 
 to feed on. But the workman must see lovely 
 forms as he goes to his work in the morning and 
 returns at eventide. And, in connection with 
 this, I want to assure you that noble and beauti- 
 ful designs are never the result of idle fancy or 
 purposeless day-dreaming. They come only as 
 the accumulation of habits of long and delightful 
 observation. And yet such things may not be 
 taught. Right ideas concerning them can 
 certainly be obtained only by those who have 
 been accustomed to rooms that are beautiful and 
 colours that are satisfying. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us 
 to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for 
 men. There would be more joy in life if we 
 were to accustom ourselves to use all the 
 beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own 
 clothes. The dress of the future, I think, will 
 use drapery to a great extent and will abound 
 with joyous colour. At present we have lost all 
 nobility of dress and, in doing so, have almost 
 annihilated the modern sculptor. And, in looking 
 
8 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 around at the figures which adorn our parks, one 
 could almost wish that we had completely killed 
 the noble art. To see the frockcoat of the 
 drawing-room done in bronze, or the double 
 waistcoat perpetuated in marble, adds a new 
 horror to death. But indeed, in looking through 
 the history of costume, seeking an answer to the 
 questions we have propounded, there is little 
 that is either beautiful or appropriate. One of 
 the earliest forms is the Greek drapery which is 
 so exquisite for young girls. And then, I think 
 we may be pardoned a little enthusiasm over the 
 dress of the time of Charles i., so beautiful 
 indeed, that in spite of its invention being with 
 the Cavaliers it was copied by the Puritans. 
 And the dress for the children of that time must 
 not be passed over. It was a very golden age of 
 the little ones. I do not think that they have 
 ever looked so lovely as they do in the pictures 
 of that time. The dress of the last century in 
 England is also peculiarly gracious and graceful. 
 There is nothing bizarre or strange about it, but 
 it is full of harmony and beauty. In these days, 
 when we have suffered so dreadfully from the 
 incursions of the modern milliner, we hear ladies 
 boast that they do not wear a dress more than 
 once. In the old days, when the dresses were 
 decorated with beautiful designs and worked 
 with exquisite embroidery, ladies rather took a 
 
HOUSE DECORATION 
 
 9 
 
 pride in bringing out the garment and wearing 
 it many times and handing it down to their 
 daughters — a process that would, I think, be 
 quite appreciated by a modern husband when 
 called upon to settle his wife's bills. 
 
 And how shall men dress? Men say that 
 they do not particularly care how they dress, 
 and that it is little matter. I am bound to reply 
 that I do not think that you do. In all my 
 journeys through the country, the only well- 
 dressed men that I saw — and in saying this I 
 earnestly deprecate the polished indignation of 
 your Fifth Avenue dandies — were the Western 
 miners. Their wide-brimmed hats, which shaded 
 their faces from the sun and protected them from 
 the rain, and the cloak, which is by far the most 
 beautiful piece of drapery ever invented, may 
 well be dwelt on with admiration. Their high 
 boots, too, were sensible and practical. They 
 wore only what was comfortable, and therefore 
 beautiful. As I looked at them I could not help 
 thinking with regret of the time when these 
 picturesque miners would have made their for- 
 tunes and would go East to assume again all 
 the abominations of modern fashionable attire. 
 Indeed, so concerned was I that I made some 
 of them promise that when they again appeared 
 in the more crowded scenes of Eastern civilisa- 
 tion they would still continue to wear their 
 
10 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 lovely costume. But I do not believe they 
 will. 
 
 Now, what America wants to-day is a school 
 of rational art. Bad art is a great deal worse 
 than no art at all. You must show your work- 
 men specimens of good work so that they come 
 to know what is simple and true and beautiful. 
 To that end I would have you have a museum 
 attached to these schools — not one of those 
 dreadful modern institutions where there is a 
 stuffed and very dusty giraffe, and a case or two 
 of fossils, but a place where there are gathered 
 examples of art decoration from various periods 
 and countries. Such a place is the South 
 Kensington Museum in London whereon we 
 build greater hopes for the future than on any 
 other one thing. There I go every Saturday 
 night, when the museum is open later than 
 usual, to see the handicraftsman, the wood- 
 worker, the glass-blower and the worker in 
 metals. And it is here that the man of refine- 
 ment and culture comes face to face with the 
 workman who ministers to his joy. He comes 
 to know more of the nobility of the workman, 
 and the workman, feeling the appreciation, 
 comes to know more of the nobility of his 
 work. 
 
 You have too many white walls. More colour 
 is wanted. You should have such men as 
 
HOUSE DECORATION 
 
 11 
 
 Whistler among you to teach you the beauty 
 and joy of colour. Take Mr. Whistler’s * Sym- 
 phony in White/ which you no doubt have 
 imagined to be something quite bizarre. It is 
 nothing of the sort. Think of a cool grey sky 
 flecked here and there with white clouds, a grey 
 ocean and three wonderfully beautiful figures 
 robed in white, leaning over the water and 
 dropping white flowers from their fingers. Here 
 is no extensive intellectual scheme to trouble 
 you, and no metaphysics of which we have had 
 quite enough in art. But if the simple and 
 unaided colour strike the right keynote, the 
 whole conception is made clear. I regard Mr. 
 Whistler’s famous Peacock Room as the finest 
 thing in colour and art decoration which the 
 world has known since Correggio painted that 
 wonderful room in Italy where the little children 
 are dancing on the walls. Mr. Whistler finished 
 another room just before I came away — a break- 
 fast room in blue and yellow. The ceiling was 
 a light blue, the cabinet-work and the furniture 
 were of a yellow wood, the curtains at the 
 windows were white and worked in yellow, and 
 when the table was set for breakfast with dainty 
 blue china nothing can be conceived at once so 
 simple and so joyous. 
 
 The fault which I have so observed in most of 
 your rooms is that there is apparent no definite 
 
12 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 scheme of colour. Everything is not attuned to 
 a key-note as it should be. The apartments are 
 crowded with pretty things which have no 
 relation to one another. Again, your artists 
 must decorate what is more simply useful. In 
 your art schools I found no attempt to decorate 
 such things as the vessels for water. I know of 
 nothing uglier than the ordinary jug or pitcher. 
 A museum could be filled with the different 
 kinds of water vessels which are used in hot 
 countries. Yet we continue to submit to the 
 depressing jug with the handle all on one side. 
 I do not see the wisdom of decorating dinner- 
 plates with sunsets and soup-plates with moon- 
 light scenes. I do not think it adds anything to 
 the pleasure of the canvas-back duck to take it 
 out of such glories. Besides, we do not want a 
 soup-plate whose bottom seems to vanish in the 
 distance. One feels neither safe nor comfortable 
 under such conditions. In fact, I did not find 
 in the art schools of the country that the 
 difference was explained between decorative and 
 imaginative art. 
 
 The conditions of art should be simple. A 
 great deal more depends upon the heart than 
 upon the head. Appreciation of art is not 
 secured by any elaborate scheme of learning. 
 Art requires a good healthy atmosphere. The 
 motives for art are still around about us as they 
 
HOUSE DECORATION 
 
 13 
 
 were round about the ancients. And the sub- 
 jects are also easily found by the earnest sculptor 
 and the painter. Nothing is more picturesque 
 and graceful than a man at work. The artist 
 . who goes on the children’s playground, watches 
 them at their sport and sees the boy stop to tie 
 his shoe, will find the same themes that engaged 
 the attention of the ancient Greeks, and such 
 observation and the illustrations which follow 
 will do much to correct that foolish impression 
 that mental and physical beauty are always 
 divorced. 
 
 To you, more than perhaps to any other 
 country, has Nature been generous in furnishing 
 material for art workers to work in. You have 
 marble quarries where the stone is more beautiful 
 in colour than any the Greeks ever had for their 
 beautiful work, and yet day after day I am 
 confronted with the great building of some 
 stupid man who has used the beautiful material 
 as if it were not precious almost beyond speech. 
 Marble should not be used save by noble work- 
 men. There is nothing which gave me a greater 
 sense of barrenness in travelling through the 
 country than the entire absence of wood carving 
 on your houses. Wood carving is the simplest 
 of the decorative arts. In Switzerland the little 
 bare-footed boy beautifies the porch of his father’s 
 house with examples of skill in this direction. 
 
14 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 Why should not American boys do a great deal 
 more and better than Swiss boys? 
 
 There is nothing to my mind more coarse in 
 conception and more vulgar in execution than 
 modern jewellery. This is something that can 
 easily be corrected. Something better should 
 be made out of the beautiful gold which is stored 
 up in your mountain hollows and strewn along 
 your river beds. When I was at Leadville and 
 reflected that all the shining silver that I saw 
 coming from the mines would be made into ugly 
 dollars, it made me sad. It should be made into 
 something more permanent. The golden gates 
 at Florence are as beautiful to-day as when 
 Michael Angelo saw them. 
 
 We should see more of the workman than we 
 do. We should not be content to have the 
 salesman stand between us — the salesman who 
 knows nothing of what he is selling save that he 
 is charging a great deal too much for it. And 
 watching the workman will teach that most 
 important lesson — the nobility of all rational 
 workmanship. 
 
 I said in my last lecture that art would create 
 a new brotherhood among men by furnishing a 
 universal language. I said that under its bene- 
 ficent influences war might pass away. Thinking 
 this, what place can I ascribe to art in our 
 education? If children grow up among all fair 
 
HOUSE DECORATION 
 
 15 
 
 and lovely things, they will grow to love beauty 
 and detest ugliness before they know the reason 
 why. If you go into a house where everything 
 is coarse, you find things chipped and broken 
 and unsightly. Nobody exercises any care. 
 If everything is dainty and delicate, gentleness 
 and refinement of manner are unconsciously 
 acquired. When I was in San Francisco I used 
 to visit the Chinese Quarter frequently. There 
 I used to watch a great hulking Chinese workman 
 at his task of digging, and used to see him every 
 day drink his tea from a little cup as delicate in 
 texture as the petal of a flower, whereas in all 
 the grand hotels of the land, where thousands of 
 dollars have been lavished on great gilt mirrors 
 and gaudy columns, I have been given my coffee 
 or my chocolate in cups an inch and a quarter 
 thick. I think I have deserved something nicer. 
 
 The art systems of the past have been devised 
 by philosophers who looked upon human beings 
 as obstructions. They have tried to educate 
 boys’ minds before they had any. How much 
 better it would be in these early years to teach 
 children to use their hands in the rational 
 service of mankind. I would have a workshop 
 attached to every school, and one hour a day 
 given up to the teaching of sir- ole decorative 
 arts. It would be a golden hour to the children. 
 And you would soon raise up a race of handi- 
 
16 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 craftsmen who would transform the face of your 
 country. I have seen only one such school in 
 the United States, and this was in Philadelphia 
 and was founded by my friend Mr. Leyland. I 
 stopped there yesterday and have brought some 
 of the work here this afternoon to show you. 
 Here are two discs of beaten brass : the designs 
 on them are beautiful, the workmanship is 
 simple, and the entire result is satisfactory. 
 The work was done by a little boy twelve years 
 old. This is a wooden bowl decorated by a little 
 girl of thirteen. The design is lovely and the 
 colouring delicate and pretty. Here you see a 
 piece of beautiful wood carving accomplished by 
 a boy of nine. In such work as this, children 
 learn sincerity in art. They learn to abhor the 
 liar in art — the man who paints wood to look 
 like iron, or iron to look like stone. It is a 
 practical school of morals. No better way is 
 there to learn to love Nature than to understand 
 Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. 
 And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty 
 which a bird on the wing becomes when trans- 
 ferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw 
 the customary stone. What we want is some- 
 thing spiritual added to life. Nothing is so 
 ignoble that Art cannot sanctify it. 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 1 
 
 EOPLE often talk as if there was an opposi- 
 
 tion between what is beautiful and what is 
 
 useful. There is no opposition to beauty except 
 ugliness : all things are either beautiful or ugly, 
 and utility will be always on the side of the 
 beautiful thing, because beautiful decoration is 
 always on the side of the beautiful thing, because 
 beautiful decoration is always an expression of 
 the use you put a thing to and the value placed 
 on it. No workman will beautifully decorate 
 bad work, nor can you possibly get good handi- 
 craftsmen or workmen without having beautiful 
 designs. You should be quite sure of that. If 
 you have poor and worthless designs in any craft 
 or trade you will get poor and worthless workmen 
 only, but the minute you have noble and beauti- 
 ful designs, then you get men of power and 
 intellect and feeling to work for you. By having 
 
 1 The fragments of which this lecture is composed are taken 
 entirely from the original manuscripts which have but recently 
 been discovered. It is not certain that they all belong to the 
 same lecture, nor that all were written at the same period. 
 Some portions were written in Philadelphia in 1882. 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 good designs you have workmen who work not 
 merely with their hands but with their hearts 
 and heads too ; otherwise you will get merely 
 the fool or the loafer to work for you. 
 
 That the beauty of life is a thing of no 
 moment, I suppose few people would venture to 
 assert. And yet most civilized people act as if 
 it were of none, and in so doing are wronging 
 both themselves and those that are to come 
 after them. For that beauty which is meant by 
 art is no mere accident of human life which 
 people can take or leave, but a positive necessity 
 of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, 
 that is to say unless we are content to be less 
 than men. 
 
 Do not think that the commercial spirit which 
 is the basis of your life and cities here is opposed 
 to art. Who built the beautiful cities of the 
 world but commercial men and commercial men 
 only ? Genoa built by its traders, Florence by 
 its bankers, and Venice, most lovely of all, by 
 its noble and honest merchants. 
 
 I do not wish you, remember, 1 to build a new 
 Pisa/ nor to bring f the life or the decorations 
 of the thirteenth century back again/ ‘ The 
 circumstances with which you must surround 
 your workmen are those ’ of modern American 
 life, ‘ because the designs you have now to ask 
 for from your workmen are such as will make 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 19 
 
 modern’ American f life beautiful.’ The art we 
 want is the art based on all the inventions of 
 modern civilization, and to suit all the needs of 
 nineteenth century life. 
 
 Do you think, for instance, that we object to 
 machinery ? I tell you we reverence it ; we 
 reverence it when it does its proper work, when 
 it relieves man from ignoble and soulless labour, 
 not when it seeks to do that which is valuable 
 only when wrought by the hands and hearts of 
 men. Let us have no machine-made ornament 
 at all ; it is all bad and worthless and ugly. 
 And let us not mistake the means of civilization 
 for the end of civilization ; steam-engine, tele- 
 phone and the like, are all wonderful, but 
 remember that their value depends entirely on 
 the noble uses we make of them, on the noble 
 spirit in which we employ them, not on the 
 things themselves. 
 
 It is, no doubt, a great advantage to talk to a 
 man at the Antipodes through a telephone ; its 
 advantage depends entirely on the value of what 
 the two men have to say to one another. If one 
 merely shrieks slander through a tube and the 
 other whispers folly into a wire, do not think 
 that anybody is very much benefited by the 
 invention. 
 
 The train that whirls an ordinary Englishman 
 through Italy at the rate of forty miles an hour 
 
20 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 and finally sends him home without any memory 
 of that lovely country but that he was cheated 
 by a courier at Rome, or that he got a bad 
 dinner at Verona, does not do him or civilization 
 much good. But that swift legion of fiery- 
 footed engines that bore to the burning ruins of 
 Chicago the loving help and generous treasure 
 of the world was as noble and as beautiful as any 
 golden troop of angels that ever fed the hungry 
 and clothed the naked in the antique times. As 
 beautiful, yes ; all machinery may be beautiful 
 when it is undecorated even. Do not seek to 
 decorate it. We cannot but think all good 
 machinery is graceful, also, the line of strength 
 and the line of beauty being one. 
 
 Give then, as I said, to your workmen of 
 to-day the bright and noble surroundings that 
 you can yourself create. Stately and simple 
 architecture for your cities, bright and simple 
 dress for your men and women ; those are the 
 conditions of a real artistic movement. For the 
 artist is not concerned primarily with any theory 
 of life but with life itself, with the joy and 
 loveliness that should come daily on eye and ear 
 for a beautiful external world. 
 
 But the simplicity must not be barrenness nor 
 the bright colour gaudy. For all beautiful 
 colours are graduated colours, the colours that 
 seem about to pass into one another’s realm — 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 21 
 
 colour without tone being like music without 
 harmony, mere discord. Barren architecture, the 
 vulgar and glaring advertisements that desecrate 
 not merely your cities but every rock and river 
 that I have seen yet in America — all this is not 
 enough. A school of design we must have too 
 in each city. It should be a stately and noble 
 building, full of the best examples of the best 
 art of the world. Furthermore, do not put your 
 designers in a barren whitewashed room and bid 
 them work in that depressing and colourless 
 atmosphere as I have seen many of the American 
 schools of design, but give them beautiful 
 surroundings. Because you want to produce a 
 permanent canon and standard of taste in your 
 workman, he must have always by him and 
 before him specimens of the best decorative art 
 of the world, so that you can say to him : ‘ This 
 is good work. Greek or Italian or Japanese 
 wrought it so many years ago, but it is eternally 
 young because eternally beautiful. 5 Work in 
 this spirit and you will be sure to be right. Do 
 not copy it, but work with the same love, the 
 same reverence, the same freedom of imagina- 
 tion. You must teach him colour and design, 
 how all beautiful colours are graduated colours 
 and glaring colours the essence of vulgarity. 
 Show him the quality of any beautiful work of 
 nature like the rose, or any beautiful work of 
 
22 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 art like an Eastern carpet — being merely the 
 exquisite graduation of colour, one tone answer- 
 ing another like the answering chords of a 
 symphony. Teach him how the true designer 
 is not he who makes the design and then colours 
 it, but he who designs in colour, creates in 
 colour, thinks in colour too. Show him how 
 the most gorgeous stained glass windows of 
 Europe are filled with white glass, and the 
 most gorgeous Eastern tapestry with toned 
 colours — the primary colours in both places 
 being set in the white glass, and the tone 
 colours like brilliant jewels set in dusky gold. 
 And then as regards design, show him how 
 the real designer will take first any given 
 limited space, little disk of silver, it may be, 
 like a Greek coin, or wide expanse of fretted 
 ceiling or lordly wall as Tintoret chose at Venice 
 (it does not matter which), and to this limited 
 space — the first condition of decoration being 
 the limitation of the size of the material used — 
 he will give the effect of its being filled with 
 beautiful decoration, filled with it as a golden 
 cup will be filled with wine, so complete that 
 you should not be able to take away anything 
 from it or add anything to it. For from a good 
 piece of design you can take away nothing, nor 
 can you add anything to it, each little bit of 
 design being as absolutely necessary and as 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 23 
 
 vitally important to the whole effect as a note 
 or chord of music is for a sonata of Beethoven. 
 
 But I said the effect of its being so filled, 
 because this, again, is of the essence of good 
 design. With a simple spray of leaves and a 
 bird in flight a Japanese artist will give you 
 the impression that he has completely covered 
 with lovely design the reed fan or lacquer 
 cabinet at which he is working, merely because 
 he knows the exact spot in which to place them. 
 All good design depends on the texture of the 
 utensil used and the use you wish to put it to. 
 One of the first things I saw in an American 
 school of design was a young lady painting a 
 romantic moonlight landscape on a large round 
 dish, and another young lady covering a set of 
 dinner plates with a series of sunsets of the most 
 remarkable colours. Let your ladies paint moon- 
 light landscapes and sunsets, but do not let them 
 paint them on dinner plates or dishes. Let 
 them take canvas or paper for "such work, but 
 not clay or china. They are merely painting 
 the wrong subjects on the wrong material, that 
 is all. They have not been taught that every 
 material and texture has certain qualities of its 
 own. The design suitable for one is quite wrong 
 for the other, just as the design which you 
 should work on a flat table-cover ought to be 
 quite different from the design you would work 
 
24 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 on a curtain, for the one will always be straight, 
 the other broken into folds ; and the use too one 
 puts the object to should guide one in the choice 
 of design. One does not want to eat one’s terra- 
 pins off a romantic moonlight nor one’s clams off 
 a harrowing sunset. Glory of sun and moon, let 
 them be wrought for us by our landscape artist 
 and be on the walls of the rooms we sit in to 
 remind us of the undying beauty of the sunsets 
 that fade and die, but do not let us eat our soup 
 off them and send them down to the kitchen 
 twice a day to be washed and scrubbed by the 
 handmaid. 
 
 All these things are simple enough, yet nearly 
 always forgotten. Your school of design here 
 will teach your girls and your boys, your handi- 
 craftsmen of the future (for all your schools of 
 art should be local schools, the schools of 
 particular cities). We talk of the Italian school 
 of painting, but there is no Italian school ; there 
 were the schools of each city. Every town in 
 Italy, from Venice itself, queen of the sea, to 
 the little hill fortress of Perugia, each had its 
 own school of art, each different and all beautiful. 
 
 So do not mind what art Philadelphia or New 
 York is having, but make by the hands of your 
 own citizens beautiful art for the joy of your 
 own citizens, for you have here the primary 
 elements of a great artistic movement. 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 25 
 
 For, believe me, the conditions of art are 
 much simpler than people imagine. For the 
 noblest art one requires a clear healthy atmo- 
 sphere, not polluted as the air of our English 
 cities is by the smoke and grime and horridness 
 which comes from open furnace and from 
 factory chimney. You must have strong, sane, 
 healthy physique among your men and women. 
 Sickly or idle or melancholy people do not do 
 much in art. And lastly, you require a sense of 
 individualism, about each man and woman, for 
 this is the essence of art — a desire on the part 
 of man to express himself in the noblest way 
 possible. And this is the reason that the 
 grandest art of the world always came from a 
 republic, Athens, Venice, and Florence — there 
 were no kings there and so their art was as noble 
 and simple as sincere. But if you want to know 
 what kind of art the folly of kings will impose 
 on a country look at the decorative art of France 
 under the grand monarchy under Louis the 
 Fourteenth ; the gaudy gilt furniture writhing 
 under a sense of its own horror and ugliness, 
 with a nymph smirking at every angle and a 
 dragon mouthing on every claw. Unreal and 
 monstrous art this, and fit only for such peri- 
 wigged pomposities as the nobility of France 
 at that time, but not at all fit for you or me. 
 We do not want the rich to possess more 
 
26 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 f 
 
 beautiful things but the poor to create more 
 beautiful things ; for every man is poor who 
 cannot create. Nor shall the art which you 
 and I need be merely a purple robe woven by 
 a slave and thrown over the w r hitened body 
 of some leprous king to adorn or to conceal 
 the sin of his luxury , but rather shall it be 
 the noble and beautiful expression of a people’s 
 noble and beautiful life. Art shall be again 
 the most glorious of all the chords through 
 which the spirit of a great nation finds its 
 noblest utterance. 
 
 All around you, I said, lie the conditions for 
 a great artistic movement for every great art. 
 Let us think of one of them ; a sculptor for 
 instance. 
 
 If a modern sculptor were to come and say, 
 ‘ Very well, but where can one find subjects for 
 sculpture out of men who wear frock-coats and 
 chimney-pot hats ? ’ I would tell him to go to 
 the docks of a great city and watch the men 
 loading or unloading the stately ships, working 
 at wheel or windlass, hauling at rope or gangway. 
 I have never watched a man do anything useful 
 who has not been graceful at some moment of 
 his labour; it is only the loafer and the idle 
 saunterer who is as useless and uninteresting to 
 the artist as he is to himself. I would ask the 
 sculptor to go with me to any of your schools 
 
ART AND THE: HANDICRAFTSMAN 27 
 
 or universities, to the running ground and 
 gymnasium, to watch the young men start for 
 a race, hurling quoit or club, kneeling to tie 
 their shoes before leaping, stepping from the 
 boat or bending to the oar, and to carve them ; 
 and when he was weary of cities I would ask 
 him to come to your fields and meadows to 
 watch the reaper with his sickle and the cattle 
 driver with lifted lasso. For if a man cannot 
 find the noblest motives for his art in such 
 simple daily things as a woman drawing water 
 from the well or a man leaning with his scythe, 
 he will not find them anywhere at all. Gods 
 and goddesses the Greek carved because he 
 loved them ; saint and king the Goth because 
 he believed in them. But you, you do not 
 care much for Greek gods and goddesses, and 
 you are perfectly and entirely right ; and you 
 do not think much of kings either, and you 
 are quite right. But what you do love are your 
 own men and women, your own flowers and 
 fields, your own hills and mountains, and these 
 are what your art should represent to you. 
 
 Ours has been the first movement which 
 has brought the handicraftsman and the artist 
 together, for remember that by separating the 
 one from the other you do ruin to both ; you rob 
 the one of all spiritual motive and all imagina- 
 tive joy, you isolate the other from all real 
 
28 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 technical perfection. The two greatest schools 
 of art in the world, the sculptor at Athens and 
 the school of painting at Venice, had their 
 origin entirely in a long succession of simple 
 and earnest handicraftsmen. It was the Greek 
 potter who taught the sculptor that restraining 
 influence of design which was the glory of the 
 Parthenon ; it was the Italian decorator of chests 
 and household goods who kept Venetian painting 
 always true to its primary pictorial condition of 
 noble colour. For we should remember that all 
 the arts are fine arts and all the arts decorative 
 arts. The greatest triumph of Italian painting 
 was the decoration of a pope’s chapel in Rome 
 and the wall of a room in Venice. Michael 
 Angelo wrought the one and Tintoret, the dyer’s 
 son, the other. And the little f Dutch landscape, 
 which you put over your sideboard to-day, and 
 between the windows to-morrow, is’ no less a 
 glorious ‘ piece of work than the extents of field 
 and forest with which Benozzo has made green 
 and beautiful the once melancholy arcade of the 
 Campo Santo at Pisa,’ as Ruskin says. 
 
 Do not imitate the works of a nation, Greek 
 or Japanese, Italian or English ; but their 
 artistic spirit of design and their artistic attitude 
 to-day, their own world, you should absorb but 
 imitate never, copy never. Unless you can make 
 as beautiful a design in painted china or em- 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 29 
 
 broidered screen or beaten brass out of your 
 American turkey as the Japanese does out of 
 his grey silver-winged stork, you will never do 
 anything. Let the Greek carve his lions and 
 and the Goth his dragons ; buffalo and wild 
 deer are the animals for you. 
 
 Golden rod and aster and rose and all the 
 flowers that cover your valleys in the spring 
 and your hills in the autumn : let them be 
 the flowers for your art. Not merely has 
 Nature given you the noblest motives for a 
 new school of decoration, but to you above all 
 other countries has she given the utensils to 
 work in. 
 
 You have quarries of marble richer than Pan- 
 telicus, more varied than Paros, but do not 
 build a great white square house of marble 
 and think that it is beautiful, or that you are 
 using marble nobly. If you build in marble 
 you must either carve it into joyous decoration, 
 like the lives of dancing children that adorn 
 the marble castles of the Loire, or fill it with 
 beautiful sculpture, frieze and pediment, as the 
 Greeks did, or inlay it with other coloured 
 marbles as they did in Venice. Otherwise you 
 had better build in simple red brick as your 
 Puritan fathers, with no pretence and with some 
 beauty. Do not treat your marble as if it was 
 ordinary stone and build a house of mere 
 
30 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 blocks of it. For it is indeed a precious stone 
 this marble of yours, and only workmen of 
 nobility of invention and delicacy of hand 
 should be allowed to touch it at all, carving 
 it into noble statues or into beautiful decora- 
 tion, or inlaying it with other coloured marbles : 
 for the true colours of architecture are those 
 of natural stone, and I would fain see them 
 taken advantage of to the full. Every variety 
 is here, from pale yellow to purple passing 
 through orange, red and brown, entirely at 
 your command ; nearly every kind of green 
 and grey also is attainable, and with these 
 and with pure white what harmony might 
 you not achieve. Of stained and variegated 
 stone the quantity is unlimited, the kinds 
 innumerable. Were brighter colours required, 
 let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used 
 in mosaic, a kind of work as durable as the 
 solid stone and incapable of losing its lustre by 
 time. And let the painter’s work be reserved 
 for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber. 
 
 This is the true and faithful way of building. 
 Where this cannot be, the device of external 
 colouring may indeed be employed without 
 dishonour — but it must be with the warning 
 reflection that a time will come when such 
 aids will pass away and when the building 
 will be judged in its lifelessness, dying the 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 31 
 
 death of the dolphin. Better the less bright, 
 more enduring fabric. The transparent ala- 
 basters of San Miniato and the mosaics of 
 Saint Mark's are more warmly filled and more 
 brightly touched by every return of morning 
 and evening rays, while the hues of the 
 Gothic cathedrals have died like the iris out 
 of the cloud, and the temples, whose azure 
 and purple once flamed above the Grecian 
 promontory, stand in their faded whiteness 
 like snows which the sunset has left cold. 
 
 I do not know anything so perfectly common- 
 place in design as most modern jewellery. How 
 easy for you to change that and to produce gold- 
 smith's work that would be a joy to all of us. 
 The gold is ready for you in unexhausted 
 treasure, stored up in the mountain hollow or 
 strewn on the river sand, and was not given 
 to you merely for barren speculation. There 
 should be some better record of it left in your 
 history than the merchant's panic and the 
 ruined home. We do not remember often 
 enough how constantly the history of a great 
 nation will live in and by its art. Only a 
 few thin wreaths of beaten gold remain to 
 tell us of the stately empire of Etruria ; and, 
 while from the streets of Florence the noble 
 knight and haughty duke have long since 
 
32 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 passed away, the gates which the simple gold- 
 smith Gheberti made for their pleasure still 
 guard their lovely house of baptism, worthy 
 still of the praise of Michael Angelo who 
 called them worthy to be the Gates of Paradise. 
 
 Have then your school of design, search out 
 your workmen and, when you find one who has 
 delicacy of hand and that wonder of invention 
 necessary for goldsmiths’ work, do not leave him 
 to toil in obscurity and dishonour and have a 
 great glaring shop and two great glaring shop- 
 boys in it (not to take your orders : they never 
 do that ; but to force you to buy something y ou 
 do not want at all). When you want a thing 
 wrought in gold, goblet or shield for the feast, 
 necklace or wreath for the women, tell him 
 what you like most in decoration, flower or 
 vrreath, bird in flight or hound in the chase, 
 image of the woman you love or the friend you 
 honour. Watch him as he beats out the gold 
 into those thin plates delicate as the petals of a 
 yellow rose, or draws it into the long wires like 
 tangled sunbeams at dawn. Whoever that work- 
 man be help him, cherish him, and you will have 
 such lovely work from his hand as will be a joy 
 to you for all time. 
 
 This is the spirit of our movement in England, 
 and this is the spirit in which we would wish you 
 to work, making eternal by your art all that is 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 33 
 
 noble in your men and women, stately in your 
 lakes and mountains, beautiful in your own flowers 
 and natural life. We want to see that you have 
 nothing in your houses that has not been a joy 
 to the man who made it, and is not a joy to those 
 that use it. We want to see you create an art 
 made by the hands of the people to please the 
 hearts of the people too. Do you like this spirit 
 or not ? Do you think it simple and strong, 
 noble in its aim, and beautiful in its result ? I 
 know you do. 
 
 Folly and slander have their own way for a 
 little time, but for a little time only. You now 
 know what we mean : you will be able to esti- 
 mate what is said of us — its value and its motive. 
 
 There should be a law that no ordinary news- 
 paper should be allowed to write about art. 
 The harm they do by their foolish and random 
 writing it would be impossible to overestimate — 
 not to the artist but to the public, blinding them 
 to all, but harming the artist not at all. With- 
 out them we would judge a man simply by his 
 work ; but at present the newspapers are trying 
 hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, 
 for instance, never by his statues but by the way 
 he treats his wife ; a painter by the amount of 
 his income and a poet by the colour of his neck- 
 tie. I said there should be a law, but there is 
 really no necessity for a new Jaw : nothing could 
 c 
 
34 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 be easier than to bring the ordinary critic under 
 the head of the criminal classes. But let us 
 leave such an inartistic subject and return to 
 beautiful and comely things, remembering that 
 the art which would represent the spirit of 
 modern newspapers would be exactly the art 
 which you and I want to avoid — grotesque art, 
 malice mocking you from every gateway, slander 
 sneering at you from every corner. 
 
 Perhaps you may be surprised at my talking of 
 labour and the workman. You have heard of 
 me, I fear, through the medium of your some- 
 what imaginative newspapers as, if not a 
 f Japanese young man/ at least a young man to 
 whom the rush and clamour and reality of the 
 modern world were distasteful, and whose great- 
 est difficulty in life was the difficulty of living 
 up to the level of his blue china — a paradox 
 from which England has not yet recovered. 
 
 Well, let me tell you how it first came to me 
 at all to create an artistic movement in England, 
 a movement to show the rich what beautiful 
 things they might enjoy and the poor what 
 beautiful things they might create. 
 
 One summer afternoon in Oxford — f that sweet 
 city with her dreaming spires/ lovely as Venice 
 in its splendour, noble in its learning as Rome, 
 down the long High Street that winds from 
 tower to tower, past silent cloister and stately 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 35 
 
 gateway, till it reaches that long, grey seven- 
 arched bridge which Saint Mary used to guard 
 (used to, I say, because they are now pulling it 
 down to build a tramway and a light cast-iron 
 bridge in its place, desecrating the loveliest city 
 in England) — well, we were coming down the 
 street — a troop of young men, some of them 
 like myself only nineteen, going to the river or 
 tennis-court or cricket-field — when Ruskin going 
 up to lecture in cap and gown met us. He 
 seemed troubled and prayed us to go back with 
 him to his lecture, which a few of us did, and 
 there he spoke to us not on art this time but on 
 life, saying that it seemed to him to be wrong 
 that all the best physique and strength of the 
 young men in England should be spent aim- 
 lessly on cricket-ground or river, without any 
 result at all except that if one rowed well one 
 got a pewter-pot, and if one made a good score, 
 a cane-handled bat. He thought, he said, that 
 we should be working at something that would 
 do good to other people, at something by which 
 we might show that in all labour there was 
 something noble. Well, we were a good deal 
 moved, and said we would do anything he 
 wished. So he went out round Oxford and 
 found two villages. Upper and Lower Hinksey, 
 and between them there lay a great swamp, so 
 that the villagers could not pass from one to the 
 
36 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 other without many miles of a round. And 
 when we came back in winter he asked us to 
 help him to make a road across this morass for 
 these village people to use. So out we went, 
 day after day, and learned how to lay levels and 
 to break stones, and to wheel barrows along a 
 plank — a very difficult thing to do. And Ruskin 
 worked with us in the mist and rain and mud of 
 an Oxford winter, and our friends and our 
 enemies came out and mocked us from the 
 bank. We did not mind it much then, and we 
 did not mind it afterwards at all, but worked 
 away for two months at our road. And what 
 became of the road? Well, like a bad lecture 
 it ended abruptly — in the middle of the swamp. 
 Ruskin going away to Venice, when we came 
 back for the next term there was no leader, and 
 the c diggers/ as they called us, fell asunder. 
 And I felt that if there was enough spirit 
 amongst the young men to go out to such work 
 as road-making for the sake of a noble ideal of 
 life, I could from them create an artistic move- 
 ment that might change, as it has changed, the 
 face of England. So I sought them out — leader 
 they would call me — but there was no leader : 
 we were all searchers only and we were bound 
 to each other by noble friendship and by noble 
 art. There was none of us idle : poets most of 
 us, so ambitious were we : painters some of us. 
 
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN 37 
 
 or workers in metal or modellers, determined 
 that we would try and create for ourselves 
 beautiful work : for the handicraftsman beautiful 
 work, for those who love us poems and pictures, 
 for those who love us not epigrams and para- 
 doxes and scorn. 
 
 Well, we have done something in England 
 and we will do something more. Now, I do 
 not want you, believe me, to ask your brilliant 
 young men, your beautiful young girls, to go out 
 and make a road on a swamp for any village in 
 America, but I think you might each of you 
 have some art to practise. 
 
 We must have, as Emerson said, a mechanical 
 craft for our culture, a basis for our higher 
 accomplishments in the w ork of our hands — the 
 uselessness of most people’s hands seems to me 
 one of the most unpractical things. * No separa- 
 tion from labour can be without some loss of 
 power or truth to the seer/ says Emerson again. 
 The heroism which would make on us the 
 impression of Epaminondas must be that of a 
 domestic conqueror. The hero of the future is 
 he who shall bravely and gracefully subdue this 
 Gorgon of fashion and of convention. 
 
 When you have chosen your own part, abide 
 by it, and do not weakly try and reconcile your- 
 self with the world. The heroic cannot be the 
 
38 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 common nor the common the heroic. Congratu- 
 late yourself if you have done something strange 
 and extravagant and broken the monotony of a 
 decorous age. 
 
 xAnd lastly, let us remember that art is the 
 one thing which Death cannot harm. The little 
 house at Concord may be desolate, but the 
 wisdom of New England’s Plato is not silenced 
 nor the brilliancy of that Attic genius dimmed : 
 the lips of Longfellow are still musical for us 
 though his dust be turning into the flowers 
 which he loved : and as it is with the greater 
 artists, poet and philosoper and songbird, so let 
 it be with you. 
 
LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS 1 
 
 I N the lecture which it is my privilege to 
 deliver before you to-night I do not desire 
 to give you any abstract definition of beauty at 
 all. For, we who are working in art cannot 
 accept any theory of beauty in exchange for 
 beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to isolate 
 it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on 
 the contrary, seek to materialize it in a form that 
 gives joy to the soul through the senses. We 
 want to create it, not to define it. The defini- 
 tion should follow the work : the work should 
 not adapt itself to the definition. 
 
 Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the 
 young artist than any conception of ideal beauty; 
 he is constantly led by it either into weak pretti- 
 ness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch 
 the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. 
 You must find it in life and re-create it in art. 
 While, then, on the one hand I do not desire 
 
 1 Delivered to the Art students of the Royal Academy at 
 their Club in Golden Square, Westminster, on June 30, 1883. 
 The text is taken from the original manuscript. 
 
 39 
 
40 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 to give you any philosophy of beauty — for, what 
 I want to-night is to investigate how we can 
 create art, not how we can talk of it — on the 
 other hand, I do not wish to deal with anything 
 like a history of English art. 
 
 To begin with, such an expression as English 
 art is a meaningless expression. One might 
 just as well talk of English mathematics. Art 
 is the science of beauty, and Mathematics the 
 science of truth : there is no national school of 
 either. Indeed, a national school is a provincial 
 school, merely. Nor is there any such thing as 
 a school of art even. There are merely artists, 
 that is all. 
 
 And as regards histories of art, they are quite 
 valueless to you unless you are seeking the 
 ostentatious oblivion of an art professorship. It 
 is of no use to you to know the date of Perugino 
 or the birthplace of Salvator Rosa : all that you 
 should learn about art is to know a good picture 
 when you see it, and a bad picture when you see 
 it. As regards the date of the artist, all good 
 work looks perfectly modern ; a piece of Greek 
 sculpture, a portrait of Velasquez — they are 
 always modern, always of our time. And as 
 regards the nationality of the artist, art is not 
 national but universal. As regards archaeology, 
 then, avoid it altogether : archaeology is merely 
 the science of making excuses for bad art ; it is 
 
LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS 
 
 41 
 
 the rock on which many a young artist founders 
 and shipwrecks ; it is the abyss from which 
 no artist, old or young, ever returns. Or, if he 
 does return, he is covered with the dust of ages 
 and the mildew of time, that he is quite un- 
 recognizable as an artist, and has to conceal 
 himself for the rest of his days under the cap of 
 a professor, or as a mere illustrator of ancient 
 history. How worthless archaeology is in art 
 you can estimate by the fact of its being so 
 popular. Popularity is the crown of laurel 
 which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is 
 popular is wrong. 
 
 As I am not going to talk to you, then, about 
 the philosophy of the beautiful, or the history of 
 art, you will ask me what I am going to talk 
 about. The subject of my lecture to-night is 
 what makes an artist and what does the artist 
 make ; what are the relations of the artist to his 
 surroundings, what is the education the artist 
 should get, and what is the quality of a good 
 work of art. 
 
 Now, as regards the relations of the artist to 
 his surroundings, by which I mean the age and 
 country in which he is born. All good art, as I 
 said before, has nothing to do with any particular 
 century ; but this universality is the quality of 
 the work of art ; the conditions that produce 
 that quality are different. And what, I think. 
 
42 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 you should do is to realize completely your age 
 in order completely to abstract yourself from it ; 
 remembering that if you are an artist at all, you 
 will be not the mouthpiece of a century, but the 
 master of eternity ; that all art rests on a prin- 
 ciple, and that mere temporal considerations are 
 no principle at all ; and that those who advise 
 you to make your art representative of the nine- 
 teenth century are advising you to produce an 
 art which your children, when you have them, 
 will think old-fashioned. But you will tell me 
 this is an inartistic age, and we are an inartistic 
 people, and the artist suffers much in this nine- 
 teenth century of ours. 
 
 Of course he does. I, of all men, am not 
 going to deny that. But remember that there 
 never has been an artistic age, or an artistic 
 people, since the beginning of the world. The 
 artist has always been, and will always be, an 
 exquisite exception. There is no golden age of 
 art; only artists who have produced what is 
 more golden than gold. 
 
 What, you will say to me, the Greeks ? were 
 not they an artistic people ? 
 
 Well, the Greeks certainly not, but, perhaps, 
 you mean the Athenians, the citizens of one out 
 of a thousand cities. 
 
 Do you think that they were an artistic people ? 
 Take them even at the time of their highest 
 
LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS 
 
 43 
 
 artistic development, the latter part of the fifth 
 century before Christ, when they had the greatest 
 poets and the greatest artists of the antique 
 world, when the Parthenon rose in loveliness at 
 the bidding of a Phidias, and the philosopher 
 spake of wisdom in the shadow of the painted 
 portico, and tragedy swept in the perfection of 
 pageant and pathos across the marble of the 
 stage. Were they an artistic people then ? 
 Not a bit of it. What is an artistic people but 
 a people who love their artists and understand 
 their art ? The Athenians could do neither. 
 
 How did they treat Phidias ? To Phidias we 
 owe the great era, not merely in Greek but in 
 all art — I mean of the introduction of the use of 
 the living model. 
 
 And what would you say if all the English 
 bishops, backed by the English people, came 
 down from Exeter Hall to the Royal Academy 
 one day and took off Sir Frederick Leighton in 
 a prison van to Newgate on the charge of having 
 allowed you to make use of the living model in 
 your designs for sacred pictures ? 
 
 Would you not cry out about the barbarism 
 and the Puritanism of such an idea ? Would 
 you not explain to them that the worst way to 
 honour God is to dishonour man who is made in 
 His image, and is the work of His hands ; and, 
 that if one wants to paint Christ one must take 
 
44 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 the most Christlike person one can find; and if 
 one wants to paint the Madonna, the purest girl 
 one knows. 
 
 Would you not rush off and burn down New- 
 gate, if necessary, and say that such a thing was 
 without parallel in history? 
 
 Without parallel? Well, that is exactly what 
 the Athenians did. 
 
 In the room of the Parthenon marbles, in the 
 British Museum, you will see a marble shield on 
 the wall. On it there are two figures, one of a 
 man whose face is half hidden, the other of a 
 man with the godlike lineaments of Pericles. 
 For having done this, for having introduced into 
 a bas-relief, taken from Greek sacred history, 
 the image of the great statesman who was ruling 
 Athens at the time, Phidias was flung into prison 
 and there, in the common gaol of Athens, died, 
 the supreme artist of the old world. 
 
 And do you think that this was an exceptional 
 case ? The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of 
 immorality against art, and this cry was raised 
 by the Athenian people against every great poet 
 and thinker of their day — iEschylus, Euripides, 
 Socrates. It was the same with Florence in the 
 thirteenth century. Good handicrafts are due 
 to guilds not to the people. The moment the 
 guilds lost their power and the people rushed in, 
 beauty and honesty of work died. 
 
LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS 
 
 45 
 
 And so, never talk of an artistic people ; there 
 never has been such a thing. 
 
 But, perhaps, you will tell me that the external 
 beauty of the world has almost entirely passed 
 away from us, that the artist dwells no longer in 
 the midst of the lovely surroundings which, in 
 ages past, were the natural inheritance of every 
 one, and that art is very difficult in this unlovely 
 town of ours, where, as you go to your work 
 in the morning, or return from it at eventide, 
 you have to pass through street after street of 
 the most foolish and stupid architecture that the 
 world has ever seen ; architecture, where every 
 lovely Greek form is desecrated and defiled, and 
 every lovely Gothic form defiled and desecrated, 
 reducing three-fourths of the London houses to 
 being, merely, like square boxes of the vilest 
 proportions, as gaunt as they are grimy, and as 
 poor as they are pretentious — the hall door 
 always of the wrong colour, and the windows of 
 the wrong size, and where, even when wearied 
 of the houses, you turn to contemplate the street 
 itself, you have nothing to look at but chimney- 
 pot hats, men with sandwich boards, vermilion 
 letter-boxes, and do that even at the risk of being 
 run over by an emerald-green omnibus. 
 
 Is not art difficult, you will say to me, in such 
 surroundings as these ? Of course it is difficult, 
 but then art was never easy ; you yourself would 
 
46 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 not wish it to be easy ; and, besides, nothing is 
 worth doing except what the world says is 
 impossible. 
 
 Still, you do not care to be answered merely 
 by a paradox. What are the relations of the 
 artist to the external world, and what is the 
 result of the loss of beautiful surroundings to 
 you, is one of the most important questions of 
 modern art.; and there is no point on which Mr. 
 Ruskin so insists as that the decadence of art 
 has come from the decadence of beautiful things ; 
 and that when the artist can not feed his eye 
 on beauty, beauty goes from his work. 
 
 1 remember in one of his lectures, after 
 describing the sordid aspect of a great English 
 city, he draws for us a picture of what were 
 the artistic surroundings long ago. 
 
 Think, he says, in words of perfect and 
 picturesque imagery, whose beauty I can but 
 feebly echo, think of what was the scene which 
 presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a 
 designer of the Gothic school of Pisa — Nino 
 Pisano or any of his men 1 : 
 
 On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of 
 brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with 
 deep red porphyry, and with serpentine ; along the 
 quays before their gates were riding troops of knights, 
 
 1 The Two Paths , Lect. m. p. 123 (1859 ed.). 
 
LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS 
 
 47 
 
 noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield ; 
 horse and man one labyrinth of quaint colour and 
 gleaming light — the purple, and silver, and scarlet 
 fringes flowing over the strong limbs and clashing 
 mail, like sea-waves over rocks at sunset. Opening 
 on each side from the river were gardens, courts, and 
 cloisters ; long successions of white pillars among 
 wreaths of vine ; leaping of fountains through buds 
 of pomegranate and orange : and still along the 
 garden-paths, and under and through the crimson of 
 the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of 
 the fairest women that Italy ever saw — fairest, because 
 purest and thoughtfullest ; trained in all high know- 
 ledge, as in all courteous art — in dance, in song, in 
 sweet wit, in lofty learning, in loftier courage, in 
 loftiest love — able alike to cheer, to enchant, or save, 
 the souls of men. Above all this scenery of perfect 
 human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with 
 white alabaster and gold : beyond dome and bell- 
 tower the slopes of mighty hills, hoary with olive ; 
 far in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn 
 Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains 
 sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into 
 amber sky ; the great sea itself, scorching with 
 expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the 
 Gorgonian isles ; and over all these, ever present, 
 near or far — seen through the leaves of vine, or 
 imaged with all its march of clouds in the Arno's 
 stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the 
 golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight, — 
 that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, 
 in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unques- 
 tioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men ; and 
 which opened straight through its gates of cloud and 
 
48 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world ; 
 — a heaven in which every cloud that passed was 
 literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its 
 Evening- and Morning streamed from the throne of 
 God. 
 
 What think you of that for a school of design ? 
 
 And then look at the depressing, monotonous 
 appearance of any modern city, the sombre dress 
 of men and women, the meaningless and barren 
 architecture, the colourless and dreadful sur- 
 roundings. Without a beautiful national life, 
 not sculpture merely, but all the arts will die. 
 
 Well, as regards the religious feeling of the 
 close of the passage, I do not think I need speak 
 about that. Religion springs from religious 
 feeling, art from artistic feeling : you never get 
 one from the other ; unless you have the right 
 root you will not get the right flower ; and, if a 
 man sees in a cloud the chariot of an angel, he 
 will probably paint it very unlike a cloud. 
 
 But, as regards the general idea of the early 
 part of that lovely bit of prose, is it really true 
 that beautiful surroundings are necessary for the 
 artist ? I think not ; I am sure not. Indeed, 
 to me the most inartistic thing in this age of 
 ours is not the indifference of the public to 
 beautiful things, but the indifference of the 
 artist to the things that are called ugly. For, 
 to the real artist, nothing is beautiful or ugly in 
 
LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS 
 
 49 
 
 itself at all. With the facts of the object he 
 has nothing to do, but with its appearance only, 
 and appearance is a matter of light and shade, 
 of masses, of position, and of value. 
 
 Appearance is, in fact, a matter of effect 
 merely, and it is with the effects of nature that 
 you have to deal, not with the real condition of 
 the object. What you, as painters, have to paint, 
 is not things as they are but things as they seem 
 to be, not things as they are but things as they 
 are not. 
 
 No object is so ugly that, under certain con- 
 ditions of light and shade, or proximity to other 
 things, it will not look beautiful ; no object is so 
 beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will 
 not look ugly. I believe that in every twenty- 
 four hours what is beautiful looks ugly, and what 
 is ugly looks beautiful once. 
 
 And, the commonplace character of so much 
 of our English painting seems to me due to the 
 fact that so many of our young artists look 
 merely at what we call f ready-made beauty/ 
 whereas you exist as artists not to copy beauty 
 but to create it in your art, to wait and watch 
 for it in nature. 
 
 What would you say of a dramatist who would 
 take nobody but virtuous people as characters in 
 his play ? Would you not say he was missing 
 half of life? Well, of the young artist who 
 D 
 
50 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 paints nothing but beautiful things, I say, he 
 misses one half of the world. 
 
 Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try 
 and see life under picturesque conditions. These 
 conditions you can create for yourselves in your 
 studio, for they are merely conditions of light. 
 In nature you must wait for them, watch for 
 them, choose them ; and, if you wait and watch, 
 come they will. 
 
 In Gower Street at night you may see a 
 letter-box that is picturesque; on the Thames 
 Embankment you may see picturesque policemen. 
 Even Venice is not always beautiful, nor France. 
 
 To paint what you see is a good rule in art, 
 but to see what is worth painting is better. See 
 life under pictorial conditions. It is better to 
 live in a city of changeable weather than in a 
 city of lovely surroundings. 
 
 Now, having seen what makes the artist, and 
 what the artist makes, who is the artist ? There 
 is a man living amongst us who unites in himself 
 all the qualities of the noblest art, whose work 
 is a joy for all time, who is, himself, a master of 
 all time. That man is Mr. Whistler. 
 
 But, you will say, modern dress, that is bad. 
 If you cannot paint black cloth you could not 
 have painted silken doublet. Ugly dress is better 
 for art — facts of vision, not of the object. 
 
LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS 
 
 51 
 
 What is a picture ? Primarly, a picture is a 
 beautifully covered surface, merely, with no 
 more spiritual message or meaning for you than 
 an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a 
 blue tile from the wall of Damascus. It is, 
 primarily, a purely decorative thing, a delight to 
 look at. 
 
 All archaeological pictures that make you say 
 ‘ How curious ! ’ all sentimental pictures that 
 make you say ' How sad ! ’ all historical pictures 
 that make you say * How interesting ! * all 
 pictures that do not immediately give you such 
 artistic joy as to make you say f How beautiful ! * 
 are bad pictures. 
 
 We never know what an artist is going to do. 
 Of course not. The artist is not a specialist. 
 All such divisions as animal painters, landscape 
 painters, painters of Scotch cattle in an English 
 mist, painters of English cattle in a Scotch mist, 
 racehorse painters, bull-terrier painters, all are 
 shallow. If a man is an artist he can paint 
 everything. 
 
 The object of art is to stir the most divine 
 and remote of the chords which make music 
 in our soul ; and colour, is, indeed, of itself a 
 mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of 
 sentinel. 
 
52 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 Am I pleading, then, for mere technique ? 
 No. As long as there are any signs of technique 
 at all, the picture is unfinished. What is finish ? 
 A picture is finished when all traces of work, 
 and of the means employed to bring about the 
 result, have disappeared. 
 
 In the case of handicraftsmen — the weaver, 
 the potter, the smith — on their work are the 
 traces of their hand. But it is not so with the 
 painter ; it is not so with the artist. 
 
 Art should have no sentiment about it but 
 its beauty, no technique except what you cannot 
 observe. One should be able to say of a picture 
 not that it is ' well painted/ but that it is 'not 
 painted/ 
 
 What is the difference between absolutely 
 decorative art and a painting ? Decorative art 
 emphasizes its material : imaginative art anni- 
 hilates it. Tapestry shows its threads as part 
 of its beauty : a picture annihilates its canvas ; 
 it shows nothing of it. Porcelain emphasizes 
 its glaze : water-colours reject the paper. 
 
 A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no 
 message but its joy. That is the first truth 
 about art that you must never lose sight of. 
 A picture is a purely decorative thing. 
 
MRS. LANGTRY AS HESTER 
 GRAZEBROOK 
 
 {New York World , November 7, 1882) 
 
 I T is only in the best Greek gems, on the 
 silver coins of Syracuse, or among the 
 marble figures of the Parthenon frieze, that one 
 can find the ideal representation of the marvel- 
 lous beauty of that face which laughed through 
 the leaves last night as Hester Grazebrook. 
 
 Pure Greek it is, with the grave low forehead, 
 the exquisitely arched brow ; the noble chisel- 
 ling of the mouth, shaped as if it were the 
 mouthpiece of an instrument of music ; the 
 supreme and splendid curve of the cheek ; the 
 augustly pillared throat which bears it all : it is 
 Greek, because the lines which compose it are 
 so definite and so strong, and yet so exquisitely 
 harmonized that the effect is one of simple love- 
 liness purely : Greek, because its essence and its 
 quality, as is the quality of music and of archi- 
 tecture, is that of beauty based on absolutely 
 mathematical laws. 
 
 53 
 
54 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 But while art remains dumb and immobile 
 in its passionless serenity, with the beauty of 
 this face it is different : the grey eyes lighten 
 into blue or deepen into violet as fancy succeeds 
 fancy ; the lips become flower-like in laughter 
 or, tremulous as a bird’s wing, mould themselves 
 at last into the strong and bitter moulds of 
 pain or scorn. And then motion comes, and 
 the statue wakes into life. But the life is not 
 the ordinary life of common days ; it is life with 
 a new value given to it, the value of art : and 
 the charm to me of Hester Grazebrook’s acting 
 in the first scene of the play 1 last night was 
 that mingling of classic grace with absolute 
 reality which is the secret of all beautiful art, 
 of the plastic work of the Greeks and of the 
 pictures of Jean Francois Millet equally. 
 
 I do not think that the sovereignty and 
 empire of women’s beauty has at all passed 
 away, though we may no longer go to war for 
 them as the Greeks did for the daughter of 
 Leda. The greatest empire still remains for 
 them — the empire of art. And, indeed, this 
 wonderful face, seen last night for the first 
 time in America, has filled and permeated with 
 the pervading image of its type the whole of 
 our modern art in England. Last century it 
 
 1 An Unequal Match , by Tom Taylor, at Wallack’s 
 Theatre, New York, November 6, 1882. 
 
MRS. LANGTRY AS HESTER GRAZEBROOK 55 
 
 was the romantic type which dominated in art, 
 the type loved by Reynolds and Gainsborough, 
 of wonderful contrasts of colour, of exquisite 
 and varying charm of expression, but without 
 that definite plastic feeling which divides classic 
 from romantic work. This type degenerated 
 into mere facile prettiness in the hands of lesser 
 masters, and, in protest against it, was created 
 by the hands of the Pre-Raphaelites a new type, 
 with its rare combination of Greek form with 
 Florentine mysticism. But this mysticism be- 
 comes over-strained and a burden, rather than 
 an aid to expression, and a desire for the pure 
 Hellenic joy and serenity came in its place ; 
 and in all our modern work, in the paintings 
 of such men as Albert Moore and Leighton and 
 Whistler, we can trace the influence of this 
 single face giving fresh life and inspiration in 
 the form of a new artistic ideal. 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 
 
 M ISS LEFFLER-ARNIM’S statement, in 
 a lecture delivered recently at St. 
 Saviour’s Hospital, that ‘ she had heard of 
 instances where ladies were so determined not 
 to exceed the fashionable measurement that 
 they had actually held on to a cross-bar while 
 their maids fastened the fifteen-inch corset/ has 
 excited a good deal of incredulity, but there 
 is nothing really improbable in it. From the 
 sixteenth century to our own day there is hardly 
 any form of torture that has not been inflicted 
 on girls, and endured by women, in obedience to 
 the dictates of an unreasonable and monstrous 
 Fashion. ‘In order to obtain a real Spanish 
 figure/ says Montaigne, c what a Gehenna of 
 suffering will not women endure, drawn in and 
 compressed by great coches entering the flesh ; 
 nay, sometimes they even die thereof ! ’ ‘A few 
 days after my arrival at school/ Mrs. Somerville 
 tells us in her memoirs, e although perfectly 
 straight and well made, I was enclosed in stiff 
 stays, with a steel busk in front ; while above 
 
 56 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 
 
 57 
 
 my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till 
 the shoulder-blades met. Then a steel rod with 
 a semi-circle, which went under my chin, was 
 clasped to the steel busk in my stays. In this 
 constrained state I and most of the younger girls 
 had to prepare our lessons ’ ; and in the life of 
 Miss Edgeworth we read that, being sent to a 
 certain fashionable establishment, ‘ she under- 
 went all the usual tortures of back-boards, iron 
 collars and dumbs, and also (because she was 
 a very tiny person) the unusual one of being 
 hung by the neck to draw out the muscles and 
 increase the growth/ a signal failure in her case. 
 Indeed, instances of absolute mutilation and 
 misery are so common in the past that it is 
 unnecessary to multiply them ; but it is really 
 sad to think that in our own day a civilized 
 woman can hang on to a cross-bar while her 
 maid laces her waist into a fifteen-inch circle. 
 To begin with, the waist is not a circle at all, 
 but an oval ; nor can there be any greater error 
 than to imagine that an unnaturally small waist 
 gives an air of grace, or even of slightness, to 
 the whole figure. Its effect, as a rule, is simply 
 to exaggerate the width of the shoulders and 
 the hips ; and those whose figures possess that 
 stateliness which is called stoutness by the 
 vulgar, convert what is a quality into a defect 
 by yielding to the silly edicts of Fashion on the 
 
68 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 subject of tight-lacing. The fashionable English 
 waist, also, is not merely far too small, and con- 
 sequently quite out of proportion to the rest of 
 the figure, but it is worn far too low down. 
 I use the expression ‘ worn ' advisedly, for a 
 waist nowadays seems to be regarded as an 
 article of apparel to be put on when and where 
 one likes. A long waist always implies short- 
 ness of the lower limbs, and, from the artistic 
 point of view, has the effect of diminishing the 
 height ; and I am glad to see that many of the 
 most charming women in Paris are returning to 
 the idea of the Directoire style of dress. This 
 style is not by any means perfect, but at least it 
 has the merit of indicating the proper position 
 of the waist. I feel quite sure that all English 
 women of culture and position will set their faces 
 against such stupid and dangerous practices as 
 are related by Miss Leffler-Arnim. Fashion's 
 motto is : II faut souf'rir pour etre belle ; but the 
 motto of art and of common-sense is : II faut 
 etre bete pour souffrir. 
 
 Talking of Fashion, a critic in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette expresses his surprise that I should have 
 allowed an illustration of a hat, covered with 
 ‘ the bodies of dead birds,' to appear in the first 
 number of the Woman $ World ; and as I have 
 received many letters on the subject, it is only 
 right that I should state my exact position in 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 
 
 59 
 
 the matter. Fashion is such an essential part 
 of the mundus muliebris of our day, that it seems 
 to me absolutely necessary that its growth, de- 
 velopment, and phases should be duly chronicled; 
 and the historical and practical value of such a 
 record depends entirely upon its perfect fidelity 
 to fact. Besides, it is quite easy for the children 
 of light to adapt almost any fashionable form 
 of dress to the requirements of utility and the 
 demands of good taste. The Sarah Bernhardt 
 tea-gown, for instance, figured in the present 
 issue, has many good points about it, and the 
 gigantic dress-improver does not appear to me 
 to be really essential to the mode ; and though 
 the Postillion costume of the fancy dress ball 
 is absolutely detestable in its silliness and vul- 
 garity, the so-called Late Georgian costume in 
 the same plate is rather pleasing. I must, how- 
 ever, protest against the idea that to chronicle 
 the development of Fashion implies any approval 
 of the particular forms that Fashion may adopt. 
 
WOMAN’S DRESS 
 
 {Pall Mall Gazette , October 14, 1884) 
 
 Mr. Oscar Wilde, who asks us to permit him ‘that most 
 charming of all pleasures, the pleasure of answering one’s 
 critics,’ sends us the following remarks : — 
 
 HE ‘ Girl Graduate ' must of course have 
 
 precedence, not merely for her sex but 
 for her sanity : her letter is extremely sensible. 
 She makes two points : that high heels are a 
 necessity for any lady who wishes to keep her 
 dress clean from the Stygian mud of our streets, 
 and that without a tight corset ‘the ordinary 
 number of petticoats and etceteras ’ cannot be 
 properly or conveniently held up. Now, it is 
 quite true that as long as the lower garments 
 are suspended from the hips a corset is an 
 absolute necessity ; the mistake lies in not sus- 
 pending all apparel from the shoulders. In the 
 latter case a corset becomes useless, the body 
 is left free and unconfined for respiration and 
 motion, there is more health, and consequently 
 more beauty. Indeed all the most ungainly and 
 
 60 
 
WOMAN’S DRESS 
 
 61 
 
 uncomfortable articles of dress that fashion has 
 ever in her folly prescribed, not the tight corset 
 merely, but the farthingale, the vertugadin, the 
 hoop, the crinoline, and that modern monstrosity 
 the so-called * dress improver’ also, all of them 
 have owed their origin to the same error, the 
 error of not seeing that it is from the shoulders, 
 and from the shoulders only, that all garments 
 should be hung. 
 
 And as regards high heels, I quite admit that 
 some additional height to the shoe or boot is 
 necessary if long gowns are to be worn in the 
 street; but what I object to is that the height 
 should be given to the heel only, and not to the 
 sole of the foot also. The modern high-heeled 
 boot is, in fact, merely the clog of the time of 
 Henry vi., with the front prop left out, and its 
 inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, 
 to shorten the steps, and consequently to pro- 
 duce that want of grace which always follows 
 want of freedom. 
 
 Why should clogs be despised? Much art 
 has been expended on clogs. They have been 
 made of lovely woods, and delicately inlaid with 
 ivory, and with mother-of-pearl. A clog might 
 be a dream of beauty, and, if not too high or too 
 heavy, most comfortable also. But if there be 
 any who do not like clogs, let them try some 
 adaptation of the trouser of the Turkish lady. 
 
62 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 which is loose round the limb and tight at 
 the ankle. 
 
 The f Girl Graduate/ with a pathos to which 
 I am not insensible, entreats me not to apotheo- 
 size f that awful, befringed, beflounced, and 
 bekilted divided skirt/ Well, I will acknow- 
 ledge that the fringes, the flounces, and the 
 kilting do certainly defeat the whole object of 
 the dress, which is that of ease and liberty ; 
 but I regard these things as mere wicked super- 
 fluities, tragic proofs that the divided skirt is 
 ashamed of its own division. The principle of 
 the dress is good, and, though it is not by any 
 means perfection, it is a step towards it. 
 
 Here I leave the c Girl Graduate/ with much 
 regret, for Mr. Wentworth Huy she. Mr. Huy she 
 makes the old criticism that Greek dress is un- 
 suited to our climate, and, to me the somewhat 
 new assertion, that the men's dress of a hundred 
 years ago was preferable to that of the second 
 part of the seventeenth century, which I con- 
 sider to have been the exquisite period of 
 English costume. 
 
 Now, as regards the first of these two state- 
 ments, I will say, to begin with, that the warmth 
 of apparel does not depend really on the number 
 of garments worn, but on the material of which 
 they are made. One of the chief faults of modern 
 dress is that it is composed of far too many 
 
WOMAN'S DRESS 
 
 63 
 
 articles of clothing, most of which are of the 
 wrong substance ; but over a substratum of pure 
 wool, such as is supplied by Dr. Jaeger under 
 the modern German system, some modification 
 of Greek costume is perfectly applicable to our 
 climate, our country and our century. This 
 important fact has already been pointed out by 
 Mr. E. W. Godwin in his excellent, though too 
 brief handbook on Dress, contributed to the 
 Health Exhibition. I call it an important fact 
 because it makes almost any form of lovely 
 costume perfectly practicable in our cold climate. 
 Mr. Godwin, it is true, points out that the 
 English ladies of the thirteenth century aban- 
 doned after some time the flowing garments of 
 the early Renaissance in favour of a tighter 
 mode, such as Northern Europe seems to de- 
 mand. This I quite admit, and its significance ; 
 but what I contend, and what I am sure Mr. 
 Godwin would agree with me in, is that the 
 principles, the laws of Greek dress may be 
 perfectly realized, even in a moderately tight 
 gown with sleeves : I mean the principle of 
 suspending all apparel from the shoulders, and 
 of relying for beauty of effect not on the stiff 
 ready-made ornaments of the modern milliner — 
 the bows where there should be no bows, and 
 the flounces where there should be no flounces — 
 but on the exquisite play of light and line that 
 
64 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 one gets from rich and rippling folds. I am not 
 proposing any antiquarian revival of an ancient 
 costume, but trying merely to point out the 
 right laws of dress, laws which are dictated by 
 art and not by archaeology, by science and not 
 by fashion ; and just as the best work of art in 
 our days is that which combines classic grace 
 with absolute reality, so from a continuation of 
 the Greek principles of beauty with the German 
 principles of health will come, I feel certain, the 
 costume of the future. 
 
 And now to the question of men’s dress, or 
 rather to Mr. Huyshe’s claim of the superiority, 
 in point of costume, of the last quarter of the 
 eighteenth century over the second quarter of 
 the seventeenth. The broad-brimmed hat of 1640 
 kept the rain of winter and the glare of summer 
 from the face ; the same cannot be said of the hat 
 of one hundred years ago, which, with its com- 
 paratively narrow brim and high crown, was the 
 precursor of the modern f chimney-pot ' : a wide 
 turned-down collar is a healthier thing than a 
 strangling stock, and a short cloak much more 
 comfortable than a sleeved overcoat, even though 
 the latter may have had * three capes ’ ; a cloak 
 is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the 
 shoulder in summer, and wrapped round one in 
 winter keeps one perfectly warm. A doublet, 
 again, is simpler than a coat and waistcoat ; 
 
W OMAN’S DRESS 
 
 65 
 
 instead of two garments one has one ; by not 
 being open also it protects the chest better. 
 
 Short loose trousers are in every way to be 
 preferred to the tight knee-breeches which often 
 impede the proper circulation of the blood ; and 
 finally, the soft leather boots which could be 
 worn above or below the knee, are more supple, 
 and give consequently more freedom, than the 
 stiff Hessian which Mr. Huy she so praises. I say 
 nothing about the question of grace and pic- 
 turesqueness, for I suppose that no one, not even 
 Mr. Huyshe, would prefer a maccaroni to a 
 cavalier, a Lawrence to a Vandyke, or the third 
 George to the first Charles ; but for ease, warmth 
 and comfort this seventeenth-century dress is 
 infinitely superior to anything that came after it, 
 and I do not think it is excelled by any pre- 
 ceeding form of costume. I sincerely trust that 
 we may soon see in England some national 
 revival of it. 
 
 K 
 
MORE RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS 
 REFORM 
 
 ( Pall Mall Gazette , November 11, 1884) 
 
 I HAVE been much interested at reading the 
 large amount of correspondence that has 
 been called forth by my recent lecture on Dress. 
 It shows me that the subject of dress reform is 
 one that is occupying many wise and charming 
 people, who have at heart the principles 'of 
 health, freedom, and beauty in costume, and I 
 hope that ‘ H. B. TV and f Materfamilias * will 
 have all the real influence which their letters 
 — excellent letters both of them — certainly 
 deserve. 
 
 I turn first to Mr. Huyshe’s second letter, and 
 the drawing that accompanies it ; but before 
 entering into any examination of the theory 
 contained in each, I think I should state at 
 once that I have absolutely no idea whether this 
 gentleman wears his hair long or short, or his 
 cuffs back or forward, or indeed what he is like 
 at all. I hope he consults his own comfort and 
 66 
 
RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM 67 
 
 wishes in everything which has to do with his 
 dress, and is allowed to enjoy that individualism 
 in apparel which he so eloquently claims for 
 himself, and so foolishly tries to deny to others ; 
 but I really could not take Mr. Wentworth 
 Huyshe’s personal appearance as any intellectual 
 basis for an investigation of the principles which 
 should guide the costume of a nation. I am not 
 denying the force, or even the popularity, of the 
 6 ’Eave arf a brick ’ school of criticism, but I 
 acknowledge it does not interest me. The 
 gamin in the gutter may be a necessity, but the 
 gamin in discussion is a nuisance. So I will 
 proceed at once to the real point at issue, the 
 value of the late eighteenth-century costume 
 over that worn in the second quarter of the 
 seventeenth : the relative merits, that is, of the 
 principles contained in each. Now, as regards 
 the eighteenth-century costume, Mr. Wentworth 
 Huyshe acknowledges that he has had no practi- 
 cal experience of it at all ; in fact he makes a 
 pathetic appeal to his friends to corroborate him 
 in his assertion, which I do not question for a 
 moment, that he has never been ‘ guilty of the 
 eccentricity ’ of wearing himself the dress which 
 he proposes for general adoption by others. 
 There is something so naive and so amusing 
 about this last passage in Mr. Huyshe’ s letter 
 that I am really in doubt whether I am not 
 
68 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 doing him a wrong in regarding him as having 
 any serious, or sincere, views on the question of 
 a possible reform in dress; still, as irrespective 
 of any attitude of Mr. Huyshe’s in the matter, 
 the subject is in itself an interesting one, I think 
 it is worth continuing, particularly as I have my- 
 self worn this late eighteenth-century dress 
 many times, both in public and in private, and 
 so may claim to have a very positive right to 
 speak on its comfort and suitability. The par- 
 ticular form of the dress I wore was very similar 
 to that given in Mr. Godwin’s handbook, from a 
 print of Northcote’s, and had a certain elegance 
 and grace about it which was very charming ; 
 still, I gave it up for these reasons : — After a 
 further consideration of the laws of dress I saw 
 that a doublet is a far simpler and easier garment 
 than a coat and waistcoat, and, if buttoned from 
 the shoulder, far warmer also, and that tails have 
 no place in costume, except on some Darwinian 
 theory of heredity ; from absolute experience in 
 the matter I found that the excessive tightness 
 of knee-breeches is not really comfortable if one 
 wears them constantly ; and, in fact, I satisfied 
 myself that the dress is not one founded on any 
 real principles. The broad-brimmed hat and 
 loose cloak, which, as my object was not, of 
 course, historical accuracy but modern ease, I 
 had always worn with the costume in ques- 
 
RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM 69 
 
 tion, I have still retained, and find them most 
 comfortable. 
 
 Well, although Mr. Huyshe has no real ex- 
 perience of the dress he proposes, he gives us a 
 drawing of it, which he labels, somewhat prema- 
 turely, 'An ideal dress/ An ideal dress of 
 course it is not ; ' passably picturesque/ he says 
 I may possibly think it; well, passably pictur- 
 esque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly, 
 simply because it is not founded on right prin- 
 ciples, or, indeed, on any principles at all. 
 Picturesqueness one may get in a variety of 
 ways ; ugly things that are strange, or unfamiliar 
 to us, for instance, may be picturesque, such as 
 a late sixteenth-century costume, or a Georgian 
 house. Ruins, again, may be picturesque, but 
 beautiful they never can be, because their lines 
 are meaningless. Beauty, in fact, is to be got 
 only from the perfection of principles ; and in 
 4 the ideal dress ’ of Mr. Huyshe there are no 
 ideas or principles at all, much less the perfec- 
 tion of either. Let us examine it, and see its 
 faults ; they are obvious to any one who desires 
 more than a ' Fancy-dress ball ' basis for costume. 
 To begin with, the hat and boots are all wrong. 
 Whatever one w r ears on the extremities, such as 
 the feet and head, should, for the sake of com- 
 fort, be made of a soft material, and for the sake 
 of freedom should take its shape from the way 
 
70 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 one chooses to wear it, and not from any stiff, 
 stereotyped design of hat or boot maker. In a 
 hat made on right principles one should be able 
 to turn the brim up or down according as the 
 day is dark or fair, dry or wet; but the hat brim 
 of Mr. Huyshe’s drawing is perfectly stiff, and 
 does not give much protection to the face, or the 
 possibility of any at all to the back of the head 
 or the ears, in case of a cold east wind ; whereas 
 the bycocket, a hat made in accordance with 
 the right laws, can be turned down behind and 
 at the sides, and so give the same warmth as a 
 hood. The crown, again, of Mr. Huyshe’s hat is 
 far too high ; a high crown diminishes the stature 
 of a small person, and in the case of any one who 
 is tall is a great inconvenience when one is 
 getting in and out of hansoms and railway 
 carriages, or passing under a street awning : in 
 no case is it of any value whatsoever, and being 
 useless it is of course against the principles of 
 dress. 
 
 As regards the boots, they are not quite so 
 ugly or so uncomfortable as the hat ; still they 
 are evidently made of stiff leather, as otherwise 
 they would fall down to the ankle, whereas the 
 boot should be made of soft leather always, and 
 if worn high at all must be either laced up the 
 front or carried well over the knee : in the latter 
 case one combines perfect freedom for walking 
 
RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM 71 
 
 together with perfect protection against rain, 
 neither of which advantages a short stiff boot 
 will ever give one, and when one is resting in 
 the house the long soft boot can be turned down 
 as the boot of 1640 was. Then there is the 
 overcoat : now, what are the right principles 
 of an overcoat ? To begin with, it should be 
 capable of being easily put on or off, and worn 
 over any kind of dress ; consequently it should 
 never have narrow sleeves, such as are shown in 
 Mr. Huyshe’s drawing. If an opening or slit for 
 the arm is required it should be made quite wide, 
 and may be protected by a flap, as in that excel- 
 lent overall the modern Inverness cape; secondly, 
 it should not be too tight, as otherwise all free- 
 dom of walking is impeded. If the young 
 gentleman in the drawing buttons his overcoat 
 he may succeed in being statuesque, though 
 that I doubt very strongly, but he will never 
 succeed in being swift ; his super-totus is made 
 for him on no principle whatsoever ; a super - 
 totus , or overall, should be capable of being worn 
 long or short, quite loose or moderately tight, 
 just as the wearer wishes ; he should be able to 
 have one arm free and one arm covered, or both 
 arms free or both arms covered, just as he 
 chooses for his convenience in riding, walking, 
 or driving ; an overall again should never be 
 heavy, and should always be warm : lastly, it 
 
72 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 should be capable of being easily carried if one 
 wants to take it off ; in fact, its principles are 
 those of freedom and comfort, and a cloak 
 realizes them all, just as much as an overcoat 
 of the pattern suggested by Mr. Huyshe violates 
 them. 
 
 The knee-breeches are of course far too tight ; 
 any one who has worn them for any length of 
 time — any one, in fact, whose views on the 
 subject are not purely theoretical — will agree 
 with me there ; like everything else in the dress, 
 they are a great mistake. The substitution of 
 the jacket for the coat and waistcoat of the 
 period is a step in the right direction, which I 
 am glad to see ; it is, however, far too tight over 
 the hips for any possible comfort. Whenever a 
 jacket or doublet comes below the waist it should 
 be slit at each side. In the seventeenth century 
 the skirt of the jacket was sometimes laced on 
 by points and tags, so that it could be removed 
 at will, sometimes it was merely left open at 
 the sides : in each case it exemplified what are 
 always the true principles of dress, I mean free- 
 dom and adaptability to circumstances. 
 
 Finally, as regards drawings of this kind, I 
 would point out that there is absolutely no limit 
 at all to the amount of r passably picturesque ' 
 costumes which can be either revived or invented 
 for us ; but that unless a costume is founded on 
 
RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM 73 
 
 principles and exemplified laws, it never can be 
 of any real value to us in the reform of dress. 
 This particular drawing of Mr. Huy she’s, for 
 instance, proves absolutely nothing, except that 
 our grandfathers did not understand the proper 
 laws of dress. There is not a single rule of right 
 costume which is not violated in it, for it gives us 
 stiffness, tightness and discomfort instead of com- 
 fort, freedom and ease. 
 
 Now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, 
 being founded on principles, can serve us as an 
 excellent guide and model ; it has been drawn 
 for me, most kindly, by Mr. Godwin from the 
 Duke of Newcastle’s delightful book on horse- 
 manship, a book which is one of our best 
 authorities on our best era of costume. I do 
 not of course propose it necessarily for absolute 
 imitation ; that is not the way in which one 
 should regard it; it is not, I mean, a revival of 
 a dead costume, but a realization of living laws. 
 I give it as an example of a particular applica- 
 tion of principles which are universally right. 
 This rationally dressed young man can turn his 
 hat brim down if it rains, and his loose trousers and 
 boots down if he is tired — that is, he can adapt 
 his costume to circumstances ; then he enjoys 
 perfect freedom, the arms and legs are not made 
 awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive 
 tightness of narrow sleeves and knee-breeches, 
 
74 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 and the hips are left quite untrammelled, always 
 an important point ; and as regards comfort, his 
 jacket is not too loose for warmth, nor too close 
 for respiration ; his neck is well protected with- 
 out being strangled, and even his ostrich feathers, 
 if any Philistine should object to them, are not 
 merely dandyism, but fan him very pleasantly, I 
 am sure, in summer, and when the weather is 
 bad they are no doubt left at home, and his cloak 
 taken out. The value of the dress is simply that 
 every separate article of it expresses a law. My 
 young man is consequently apparelled with 
 ideas, while Mr. Huyshe’s young man is stiffened 
 with facts ; the latter teaches one nothing ; from 
 the former one learns everything. I need hardly 
 say that this dress is good, not because it is 
 seventeenth century, but because it is constructed 
 on the true principles of costume, just as a square 
 lintel or pointed arch is good, not because one 
 may be Greek and the other Gothic, but because 
 each of them is the best method of spanning 
 a certain-sized opening, or resisting a certain 
 weight. The fact, however, that this dress was 
 generally worn in England two centuries and a 
 half ago shows at least this, that the right laws 
 of dress have been understood and realized in 
 our country, and so in our country may be 
 realized and understood again. As regards the 
 absolute beauty of this dress and its meaning, I 
 
RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM 75 
 
 should like to say a few words more. Mr. Went- 
 worth Huyshe solemnly announces that ‘he and 
 those who think with him ' cannot permit this 
 question of beauty to be imported into the 
 question of dress ; that he and those who think 
 with him take ‘practical views on the subject/ 
 and so on. Well, I will not enter here into a 
 discussion as to how far any one who does not 
 take beauty and the value of beauty into account 
 can claim to be practical at all. The word 
 practical is nearly always the last refuge of the 
 uncivilized. Of all misused words it is the most 
 evilly treated. But what I want to point out is 
 that beauty is essentially organic ; that is, it 
 comes, not from without, but from within, not 
 from any added prettiness, but from the perfec- 
 tion of its own being ; and that consequently, as 
 the body is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly 
 clothes it must be beautiful also in its construc- 
 tion and in its lines. 
 
 I have no more desire to define ugliness than 
 I have daring to define beauty ; but still I would 
 like to remind those who mock at beauty as 
 being an unpractical thing of this fact, that an 
 ugly thing is merely a thing that is badly made, 
 or a thing that does not serve it purpose ; that 
 ugliness is want of fitness ; that ugliness is 
 failure ; that ugliness is uselessness, such as 
 ornament in the wrong place, while beauty, as 
 
76 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 some one finely said, is the purgation of all 
 superfluities. There is a divine economy about 
 beauty; it gives us just what is needful and no 
 more, whereas ugliness is always extravagant; 
 ugliness is a spendthrift and wastes its material ; 
 in fine, ugliness — and I would commend this 
 remark to Mr. Wentworth Huy she — ugliness, as 
 much in costume as in anything else, is always 
 the sign that somebody has been unpractical. 
 So the costume of the future in England, if it is 
 founded on the true laws of freedom, comfort, 
 and adaptability to circumstances, cannot fail to 
 be most beautiful also, because beauty is the 
 sign always of the rightness of principles, the 
 mystical seal that is set upon what is perfect, 
 and upon what is perfect only. 
 
 As for your other correspondent, the first 
 principle of dress that all garments should be 
 hung from the shoulders and not from the w r aist 
 seems to me to be generally approved of, although 
 an ‘ Old Sailor ’ declares that no sailors or athletes 
 ever suspend their clothes from the shoulders, 
 but always from the hips. My own recollection 
 of the river and running ground at Oxford — 
 those two homes of Hellenism in our little 
 Gothic town — is that the best runners and 
 rowers (and my own college turned out many) 
 wore always a tight jersey, with short drawers 
 attached to it, the whole costume being woven 
 
RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM 77 
 
 in one piece. As for sailors, it is true, I admit, 
 and the bad custom seems to involve that con- 
 stant "hitching up ’ of the lower garments which, 
 however popular in transpontine dramas, cannot, 
 I think, but be considered an extremely awk- 
 ward habit ; and as all awkwardness comes from 
 discomfort of some kind, I trust that this point 
 in our sailor’s dress will be looked to in the 
 coming reform of our navy, for, in spite of all 
 protests, I hope we are about to reform every- 
 thing, from torpedoes to top-hats, and from 
 crinolettes to cruises. 
 
 Then as regards clogs, my suggestion of them 
 seems to have aroused a great deal of terror. 
 Fashion in her high-heeled boots has screamed, 
 and the dreadful word "anachronism’ has been 
 used. Now, whatever is useful cannot be an 
 anachronism. Such a word is applicable only to 
 the revival of some folly ; and, besides, in the 
 England of our own day clogs are still worn in 
 many of our manufacturing towns, such as Old- 
 ham. I fear that in Oldham they may not be 
 dreams of beauty ; in Oldham the art of inlaying 
 them with ivory and with pearl may possibly be 
 unknown ; yet in Oldham they serve their pur- 
 pose. Nor is it so long since they were worn by 
 the upper classes of this country generally. 
 Only a few days ago I had the pleasure of 
 talking to a lady who remembered with affec- 
 
78 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 tionate regret the clogs of her girlhood ; they 
 were, according to her, not too high nor too 
 heavy, and were provided, besides, with some 
 kind of spring in the sole so as to make them 
 the more supple for the foot in walking. Per- 
 sonally, I object to all additional height being 
 given to a boot or shoe ; it is really against the 
 proper principles of dress, although, if any such 
 height is to be given it should be by means of 
 two props ; not one ; but what I should prefer 
 to see is some adaptation of the divided skirt 
 or long and moderately loose knickerbockers. 
 If, however, the divided skirt is to be of any 
 positive value, it must give up all idea of * being 
 identical in appearance with an ordinary skirt ' ; 
 it must diminish the moderate width of each of 
 its divisions, and sacrifice its foolish frills and 
 flounces ; the moment it imitates a dress it is 
 lost ; but let it visibly announce itself as what it 
 actually is, and it will go far towards solving a 
 real difficulty. I feel sure that there will be 
 found many graceful and charming girls ready 
 to adopt a costume founded on these principles, 
 in spite of Mr. Wentworth Huyshe's terrible 
 threat that he will not propose to them as long 
 as they wear it, for all charges of a want of 
 womanly character in these forms of dress are 
 really meaningless ; every right article of apparel 
 belongs equally to both sexes, and there is 
 
RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM 79 
 
 absolutely no such thing as a definitely feminine 
 garment. One word of warning I should like to 
 be allowed to give : The over-tunic should be 
 made full and moderately loose ; it may, if 
 desired, be shaped more or less to the figure, 
 but in no case should it be confined at the waist 
 by any straight band or belt ; on the contrary, it 
 should fall from the shoulder to the knee, or 
 below it, in fine curves and vertical lines, giving 
 more freedom and consequently more grace. 
 Few garments are so absolutely unbecoming as 
 a belted tunic that reaches to the knees, a fact 
 which I wish some of our Rosalinds would con- 
 sider when they don doublet and hose ; indeed, 
 to the disregard of this artistic principle is due 
 the ugliness, the want of proportion, in the 
 Bloomer costume, a costume which in other 
 respects is sensible. 
 
COSTUME 
 
 TE we not all weary of him, that venerable 
 
 impostor fresh from the steps of the 
 Piazza di Spagna, who, in the leisure moments 
 that he can spare from his customary organ, 
 makes the round of the studios and is waited 
 for in Holland Park ? Do we not all recognize 
 him, when, with the gay insouciance of his nation, 
 he reappears on the walls of our summer exhibi- 
 tions as everything that he is not, and as nothing 
 that he is, glaring at us here as a patriarch of 
 Canaan, here beaming as a brigand from the 
 Abruzzi ? Popular is he, this poor peripatetic 
 professor of posing, with those whose joy it is 
 to paint the posthumous portrait of the last 
 philanthropist who in his lifetime had neglected 
 to be photographed, — yet he is the sign of the 
 decadence, the symbol of decay. 
 
 For all costumes are caricatures. The basis of 
 Art is not the Fancy Ball. Where there is 
 loveliness of dress, there is no dressing up. And 
 so, were our national attire delightful in colour, 
 and in construction simple and sincere ; were 
 
COSTUME 
 
 81 
 
 dress the expression of the loveliness that it 
 shields and of the swiftness and motion that it 
 does not impede; did its lines break from the 
 shoulder instead of bulging from the waist ; did 
 the inverted wineglass cease to be the ideal of 
 form ; were these things brought about, as 
 brought about they will be, then would painting 
 be no longer an artificial reaction against the 
 ugliness of life, but become, as it should be, the 
 natural expression of life’s beauty. Nor would 
 painting merely, but all the other arts also, be 
 the gainers by a change such as that which I 
 propose ; the gainers, I mean, through the in- 
 creased atmosphere of Beauty by which the 
 artists would be surrounded and in which they 
 would grow up. For Art is not to be taught 
 in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what 
 one listens to, that makes the artist. The real 
 schools should be the streets. There is not, for 
 instance, a single delicate line, or delightful pro- 
 portion, in the dress of the Greeks, which is 
 not echoed exquisitely in their architecture. A 
 nation arrayed in stove-pipe hats and dress- 
 improvers might have built the Pantechnichon 
 possibly, but the Parthenon never. And finally, 
 there is this to be said : Art, it is true, can never 
 have any other claim but her own perfection, 
 and it may be that the artist, desiring merely to 
 contemplate and to create, is wise in not busying 
 F 
 
82 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 himself about change in others : yet wisdom is 
 not always the best ; there are times when she 
 sinks to the level of common-sense ; and from 
 the passionate folly of those — and there are 
 many — who desire that Beauty shall be con- 
 fined no longer to the bric-a-brac of the collector 
 and the dust of the museum, but shall be, as it 
 should be, the natural and national inheritance 
 of all, — from this noble unwisdom, I say, who 
 knows what new loveliness shall be given to life, 
 and, under these more exquisite conditions, what 
 perfect artist born ? Le milieu se renouvelant, 
 l’ art se renouvelle . 
 
THE AMERICAN INVASION 
 
 (March 1887) 
 
 TERRIBLE danger is hanging over the 
 
 Americans in London. Their future and 
 their reputation this season depend entirely 
 on the success of Buffalo Bill and Mrs. Brown- 
 Potter. The former is certain to draw ; for 
 English people are far more interested in 
 American barbarism than they are in American 
 civilization. When they sight Sandy Hook they 
 look to their rifles and ammunition ; and, after 
 dining once at Delmonico’s, start off for Colorado 
 or California, for Montana or the Yellow Stone 
 Park. Rocky Mountains charm them more than 
 riotous millionaires ; they have been known to 
 prefer buffaloes to Boston. Why should tliej' 
 not ? The cities of America are inexpressibly 
 tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too 
 sadly ; culture with them is an accomplishment 
 rather than an atmosphere ; their ‘ Hub/ as they 
 call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a 
 sort of monster-shop, full of bustle and bores. 
 
 83 
 
84 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 Political life at Washington is like political life 
 in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a 
 week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial ; 
 and though one can dine in New York one 
 could not dwell there. Better the Far West 
 with its grizzly bears and its untamed cow- 
 boys, its free open-air life and its free open-air 
 manners, its boundless prairie and its boundless 
 mendacity! This is what Buffalo Bill is going 
 to bring to London ; and we have no doubt that 
 London will fully appreciate his show. 
 
 With regard to Mrs. Brown-Potter, as acting is 
 no longer considered absolutely essential for 
 success on the English stage, there is really no 
 reason why the pretty bright-eyed lady who 
 charmed us all last June by her merry laugh 
 and her nonchalant ways, should not — to borrow 
 an expression from her native language — make a 
 big boom and paint the town red. We sincerely 
 hope she will ; for, on the whole, the American 
 invasion has done English society a great deal 
 of good. American women are bright, clever, 
 and wonderfully cosmopolitan. Their patriotic 
 feelings are limited to an admiration for Niagara 
 and a regret for the Elevated Railway ; and, 
 unlike the men, they never bore us with 
 Bunkers Hill. They take their dresses from 
 Paris and their manners from Piccadilly, and 
 wear both charmingly. They have a quaint 
 
THE AMERICAN INVASION 
 
 85 
 
 pertness, a delightful conceit, a native self- 
 assertion. They insist on being paid compli- 
 ments and have almost succeeded in making 
 Englishmen eloquent. For our aristocracy they 
 have an ardent admiration ; they adore titles 
 and are a permanent blow to Republican prin- 
 ciples. In the art of amusing men they are 
 adepts, both by nature and education, and can 
 actually tell a story without forgetting the point 
 — an accomplishment that is extremely rare 
 among the women of other countries. It is 
 true that they lack repose and that their voices 
 are somewhat harsh and strident when they 
 land first at Liverpool ; but after a time one 
 gets to love those pretty whirlwinds in petti- 
 coats that sweep so recklessly through society 
 and are so agitating to all duchesses who have 
 daughters. There is something fascinating in 
 their funny, exaggerated gestures and their 
 petulant way of tossing the head. Their eyes 
 have no magic nor mystery in them, but they 
 challenge us for combat ; and when we engage 
 we are always worsted. Their lips seem made 
 for laughter and yet they never grimace. As 
 for their voices they soon get them into tune. 
 Some of them have been known to acquire a 
 fashionable drawl in two seasons ; and after 
 they have been presented to Royalty they all 
 roll their R’s as vigorously as a young equerry 
 
8(3 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 or an old lady-in-waiting. Still, they never 
 really lose their accent ; it keeps peeping out 
 here and there, and when they chatter together 
 they are like a bevy of peacocks. Nothing is 
 more amusing than to watch two American 
 girls greeting each other in a drawing-room or 
 in the Row. They are like children with their 
 shrill staccato cries of wonder, their odd little 
 exclamations. Their conversation sounds like a 
 series of exploding crackers : they are exqui- 
 sitely incoherent and use a sort of primitive, 
 emotional language. After five minutes they 
 are left beautifully breathless and look at each 
 other half in amusement and half in affection. 
 If a stolid young Englishman is fortunate 
 enough to be introduced to them he is amazed 
 at their extraordinary vivacity, their electric 
 quickness of repartee, their inexhaustible store 
 of curious catchwords. He never really under- 
 stands them, for their thoughts flutter about 
 with the sweet irresponsibility of butterflies ; 
 but he is pleased and amused and feels as if he 
 were in an aviary. On the whole, American 
 girls have a wonderful charm and, perhaps, the 
 chief secret of their charm is that they never 
 talk seriously except about amusements. They 
 have, however, one grave fault — their mothers. 
 Dreary as were those old Pilgrim Fathers who 
 left our shores more than two centuries ago to 
 
THE AMERICAN INVASION 
 
 87 
 
 found a New England beyond the seas, the 
 Pilgrim Mothers who have returned to us in the 
 nineteenth century are drearier still. 
 
 Here and there, of course, there are excep- 
 tions, but as a class they are either dull, dowdy or 
 dyspeptic. It is only fair to the rising genera- 
 tion of America to state that they are not to 
 blame for this. Indeed, they spare no pains 
 at all to bring up their parents properly and 
 to give them a suitable, if somewhat late, educa- 
 tion. From its earliest years every American 
 child spends most of its time in correcting the 
 faults of its father and mother; and no one 
 who has had the opportunity of watching an 
 American family on the deck of an Atlantic 
 steamer, or in the refined seclusion of a New 
 York boarding-house, can fail to have been 
 struck by this characteristic of their civilization. 
 In America the young are always ready to give 
 to those who are older than themselves the 
 full benefits of their inexperience. A boy of 
 only eleven or twelve years of age will firmly 
 but kindly point out to his father his defects 
 of manner or temper ; will never weary of 
 warning him against extravagance, idleness, late 
 hours, unpunctuality, and the other temptations 
 to which the aged are so particularly exposed ; 
 and sometimes, should he fancy that he is 
 monopolizing too much of the conversation at 
 
88 . ART AND DECORATION 
 
 dinner, will remind him, across the table, of 
 the new child’s adage, ‘ Parents should be 
 seen, not heard.’ Nor does any mistaken idea 
 of kindness prevent the little American girl 
 from censuring her mother whenever it is 
 necessary. Often, indeed, feeling that a rebuke 
 conveyed in the presence of others is more truly 
 efficacious than one merely whispered in the 
 quiet of the nursery, she will call the attention 
 of perfect strangers to her mother’s general 
 untidiness, her want of intellectual Boston con- 
 versation, immoderate love of iced water and 
 green corn, stinginess in the matter of candy, 
 ignorance of the usages of the best Baltimore 
 Society, bodily ailments, and the like. In fact, 
 it may be truly said that no American child is 
 ever blind to the deficiencies of its parents, no 
 matter how much it may love them. 
 
 Yet, somehow, this educational system has 
 not been so successful as it deserved. In many 
 cases, no doubt, the material with which the 
 children had to deal was crude and incapable of 
 real development ; but the fact remains that 
 the American mother is a tedious person. The 
 American father is better, for he is never seen in 
 London. He passes his life entirely in Wall 
 Street and communicates with his family once 
 a month by means of a telegram in cipher. The 
 mother, however, is always with us, and, lacking 
 
THE AMERICAN INVASION 
 
 80 
 
 the quick imitative faculty of the younger gene- 
 ration, remains uninteresting and provincial to 
 the last. In spite of her, however, the American 
 girl is always welcome. She brightens our dull 
 dinner parties for us and makes life go pleasantly 
 by for a season. In the race for coronets she 
 often carries off the prize ; but, once she has 
 gained the victory, she is generous and forgives 
 her English rivals everything, even their beauty. 
 
 Warned by the example of her mother that 
 American women do not grow old gracefully, 
 she tries not to grow old at all and often suc- 
 ceeds. She has exquisite feet and hands, is 
 always bien chaussee et bien gantee and can talk 
 brilliantly upon any subject, provided that she 
 knows nothing about it. 
 
 Her sense of humour keeps her from the 
 tragedy of a grande passion , and, as there is 
 neither romance nor humility in her love, she 
 makes an excellent wife. What her ultimate 
 influence on English life will be it is difficult to 
 estimate at present ; but there can be no doubt 
 that, of all the factors that have contributed to 
 the social revolution of London, there are few 
 more important, and none more delightful, than 
 the American Invasion. 
 
SERMONS IN STONES AT 
 BLOOMSBURY 
 
 THE NEW SCULPTURE ROOM AT THE BRITISH 
 MUSEUM 
 
 H ROUGH the exertions of Sir Charles 
 
 Newton, to whom every student of classic 
 art should be grateful, some of the wonderful 
 treasures so long immured in the grimy vaults 
 of the British Museum have at last been brought 
 to light, and the new Sculpture Room now 
 opened to the public will amply repay the 
 trouble of a visit, even from those to whom art 
 is a stumbling-block and a rock of offence. For 
 setting aside the mere beauty of form, outline 
 and mass, the grace and loveliness of design and 
 the delicacy of technical treatment, here we 
 have shown to us what the Greeks and Romans 
 thought about death ; and the philosopher, the 
 preacher, the practical man of the world, and 
 even the Philistine himself, cannot fail to be 
 touched by these f sermons in stones/ with their 
 
 (October 1887) 
 
 90 
 
SERMONS IN STONES AT BLOOMSBURY 91 
 
 deep significance, their fertile suggestion, their 
 plain humanity. Common tombstones they are, 
 most of them, the work not of famous artists 
 but of simple handicraftsmen, only they were 
 wrought in days when every handicraft was an 
 art. The finest specimens, from the purely 
 artistic point of view, are undoubtedly the two 
 stelai found at Athens. They are both the 
 tombstones of young Greek athletes. In one 
 the athlete is represented handing his strigil to 
 his slave, in the other the athlete stands alone, 
 strigil in hand. They do not belong to the 
 greatest period of Greek art, they have not the 
 grand style of the Phidian age, but they are 
 beautiful for all that, and it is impossible not to 
 be fascinated by their exquisite grace and by 
 the treatment which is so simple in its means, 
 so subtle in its effect. All the tombstones, how- 
 ever, are full of interest. Here is one of two 
 ladies of Smyrna who were so remarkable in 
 their day that the city voted them honorary 
 crowns ; here is a Greek doctor examining a 
 little boy who is suffering from indigestion ; here 
 is the memorial of Xanthippus who, probably, 
 was a martyr to gout, as he is holding in his 
 hand the model of a foot, intended, no doubt, as 
 a votive offering to some god. A lovely stele 
 from Rhodes gives us a family group. The hus- 
 band is on horseback and is bidding farewell to 
 
92 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 his wife, who seems as if she would follow him 
 but is being held back by a little child. The 
 pathos of parting from those we love is the 
 central motive of Greek funeral art. It is 
 repeated in every possible form, and each mute 
 marble stone seems to murmur xatpe. Roman 
 art is different. It introduces vigorous and 
 realistic portraiture and deals with pure family 
 life far more frequently than Greek art does. 
 They are very ugly, those stern-looking Roman 
 men and women whose portraits are exhibited 
 on their tombs, but they seem to have been 
 loved and respected by their children and their 
 servants. Here is the monument of Aphrodisius 
 and Atilia, a Roman gentleman and his wife, who 
 died in Britain many centuries ago, and whose 
 tombstone was found in the Thames ; and close 
 by it stands a stele from Rome with the busts 
 of an old married couple who are certainly 
 marvellously ill-favoured. The contrast between 
 the abstract Greek treatment of the idea of 
 death and the Roman concrete realization of the 
 individuals who have died is extremely curious. 
 
 Besides the tombstones, the new Sculpture 
 Room contains some most fascinating examples 
 of Roman decorative art under the Emperors. 
 The most wonderful of all, and this alone is 
 worth a trip to Bloomsbury, is a bas-relief repre- 
 senting a marriage scene. Juno Pronuba is 
 
SERMONS IN STONES AT BLOOMSBURY 93 
 
 joining the hands of a handsome young noble 
 and a very stately lady. There is all the grace 
 of Perugino in this marble, all the grace of 
 Raphael even. The date of it is uncertain, but 
 the particular cut of the bridegroom’s beard 
 seems to point to the time of the Emperor 
 Hadrian. It is clearly the work of Greek artists 
 and is one of the most beautiful bas-reliefs in the 
 whole Museum. There is something in it which 
 reminds one of the music and the sweetness 
 of Propertian verse. Then we have delightful 
 friezes of children. One representing children 
 playing on musical instruments might have 
 suggested much of the plastic art of Florence. 
 Indeed, as we view these marbles it is not difficult 
 to see whence the Renaissance sprang and to 
 what we owe the various forms of Renaissance 
 art. The frieze of the Muses, each of whom 
 wears in her hair a feather plucked from the 
 wings of the vanquished sirens, is extremely 
 fine ; there is a lovely little bas-relief of two 
 cupids racing in chariots ; and the frieze of 
 recumbent Amazons has some splendid qualities 
 of design. A frieze of children playing with 
 the armour of the god Mars should also be 
 mentioned. It is full of fancy and delicate 
 humour. 
 
 We hope that some more of the hidden 
 treasures will shortly be catalogued and shown. 
 
94 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 In the vaults at present there is a very remark- 
 able bas-relief of the marriage of Cupid and 
 Psyche, and another representing the profes- 
 sional mourners weeping over the body of the 
 dead. The fine cast of the Lion of Chaeronea 
 should also be brought up, and so should the 
 stele with the marvellous portrait of the Roman 
 slave. Economy is an excellent public virtue, 
 but the parsimony that allows valuable works of 
 art to remain in the grime and gloom of a damp 
 cellar is little short of a detestable public vice. 
 
LONDON MODELS 
 
 (January 1889) 
 
 ROFESSION AL models are a purely modern 
 
 invention. To the Greeks, for instance, 
 they were quite unknown. Mr. Mahaffy, it is 
 true, tells us that Pericles used to present pea- 
 cocks to the great ladies of Athenian society in 
 order to induce them to sit to his friend Phidias, 
 and we know that Polygnotus introduced into 
 his picture of the Trojan women the face of 
 Elpinice, the celebrated sister of the great Con- 
 servative leader of the day, but these grandes 
 dames clearly do not come under our category. 
 As for the old masters, they undoubtedly made 
 constant studies from their pupils and appren- 
 tices, and even their religious pictures are full of 
 the portraits of their friends and relations, but 
 they do not seem to have had the inestimable 
 advantage of the existence of a class of people 
 whose sole profession is to pose. In fact the 
 model, in our sense of the word, is the direct 
 creation of Academic Schools. 
 
 Every country now has its own models, except 
 
 95 
 
96 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 America. In New York, and even in Boston, 
 a good model is so great a rarity that most of 
 the artists are reduced to painting Niagara and 
 millionaires. In Europe, however, it is different. 
 Here we have plenty of models, and of every 
 nationality. The Italian models are the best, 
 the natural grace of their attitudes, as well as 
 the wonderful picturesqueness of their colouring, 
 makes them facile — often too facile — subjects 
 for the painter’s brush. The French models, 
 though not so beautiful as the Italian, possess a 
 quickness of intellectual sympathy, a capacity, 
 in fact, of understanding the artist, which is 
 quite remarkable. They have also a great com- 
 mand over the varieties of facial expression, are 
 peculiarly dramatic, and can chatter the argot of 
 the atelier as cleverly as the critic of the Gil Bias. 
 The English models form a class entirely by 
 themselves. They are not so picturesque as the 
 Italian, nor so clever as the French, and they 
 have absolutely no tradition, so to speak, of their 
 order. Now and then some old veteran knocks 
 at a studio door, and proposes to sit as Ajax 
 defying the lightning, or as King Lear upon the 
 blasted heath. One of them some time ago 
 called on a popular painter who, happening at 
 the moment to require his services, engaged 
 him, and told him to begin by kneeling down in 
 the attitude of prayer. ‘ Shall I be Biblical or 
 
LONDON MODELS 
 
 97 
 
 Shakespearean, sir? * asked the veteran. * Well 
 —Shakespearean/ answered the artist, wondering 
 by what subtle nuance of expression the model 
 would convey the difference. ‘All right, sir/ 
 said the professor of posing, and he solemnly 
 knelt down and began to wink with his left eye ! 
 This class, however, is dying out. As a rule the 
 model, nowadays, is a pretty girl, from about 
 twelve to twenty-five years of age, who knows 
 nothing about art, cares less, and is merely 
 anxious to earn seven or eight shillings a day 
 without much trouble. English models rarely 
 look at a picture, and never venture on any 
 aesthetic theories. In fact, they realize very 
 completely Mr. Whistler's idea of the functions 
 of an art critic, for they pass no criticisms at all. 
 They accept all schools of art with the grand 
 catholicity of the auctioneer, and sit to a fantastic 
 young impressionist as readily as to a learned 
 and laborious academician. They are neither for 
 the Whistlerites nor against them ; the quarrel 
 between the school of facts and the school of 
 effects touches them not ; idealistic and natural- 
 istic are words that convey no meaning to their 
 ears ; they merely desire that the studio shall be 
 warm, and the lunch hot, for all charming artists 
 give their models lunch. 
 
 As to what they are asked to do they are 
 equally indifferent. On Monday they will don 
 G 
 
98 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 the rags of a beggar-girl for Mr. Pumper, whose 
 pathetic pictures of modern life draw such tears 
 from the public, and 1 " on Tuesday they will pose 
 in a peplum for Mr. Phoebus, who thinks that all 
 really artistic subjects are necessarily b.c. They 
 career gaily through all centuries and through 
 all costumes, and, like actors, are interesting 
 only when they are not themselves. They are 
 extremely good-natured, and very accommodat- 
 ing. e What do you sit for ? ’ said a young artist 
 to a model who had sent him in her card (all 
 models, by the way, have cards and a small 
 black bag). c Oh, for anything you like, sir/ 
 said the girl, € landscape if necessary ! ’ 
 
 Intellectually, it must be acknowledged, they 
 are Philistines, but physically they are perfect — 
 at least some are. Though none of them can 
 talk Greek, many can look Greek, which to a 
 nineteenth-century painter is naturally of great 
 importance. If they are allowed, they chatter 
 a great deal, but they never say anything. Their 
 observations are the only banalites heard in 
 Bohemia. However, though they cannot appre- 
 ciate the artist as artist, they are quite ready to 
 appreciate the artist as a man. They are very 
 sensitive to kindness, respect and generosity. 
 A beautiful model who had sat for two years to 
 one of our most distinguished English painters, 
 got engaged to a street vendor of penny ices. 
 
LONDON MODELS 
 
 99 
 
 On her marriage the painter sent her a pretty 
 wedding present, and received in return a nice 
 letter of thanks with the following remarkable 
 postscript : e Never eat the green ices ! ’ 
 
 When they are tired a wise artist gives them 
 a rest. Then they sit in a chair and read penny 
 dreadfuls, till they are roused from the tragedy 
 of literature to take their place again in the 
 tragedy of art. A few of them smoke cigarettes. 
 This, however, is regarded by the other models 
 as showing a want of seriousness, and is not 
 generally approved of. They are engaged by 
 the day and by the half-day. The tariff is a 
 shilling an hour, to which great artists usually 
 add an omnibus fare. The two best things about 
 them are their extraordinary prettiness, and their 
 extreme respectability. As a class they are very 
 well behaved, particularly those who sit for the 
 figure, a fact which is curious or natural according 
 to the view one takes of human nature. They 
 usually marry well, and sometimes they marry 
 the artist. For an artist to marry his model is as 
 fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook : the one 
 gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners. 
 
 On the whole the English female models are 
 very naive, very natural, and very good-humoured. 
 The virtues which the artist values most in them 
 are prettiness and punctuality. Every sensible 
 model consequently keeps a diary of her engage- 
 
100 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 merits, and dresses neatly. The bad season is, 
 of coarse, the summer, when the artists are out 
 of town. However, of late years some artists 
 have engaged their models to follow them, and 
 the wife of one of our most charming painters 
 has often had three or four models under her 
 charge in the country, so that the work of her 
 husband and his friends should not be inter- 
 rupted. In France the models migrate en masse 
 to the little seaport villages or forest hamlets 
 where the painters congregate. The English 
 models, however, wait patiently in London, as a 
 rule, till the artists come back. Nearly all of 
 them live with their parents, and help to support 
 the house. They have every qualification for 
 being immortalized in art except that of beautiful 
 hands. The hands of the English model are 
 nearly always coarse and red. 
 
 As for the male models, there is the veteran 
 whom we have mentioned above. He has all 
 the traditions of the grand style, and is rapidly 
 disappearing with the school he represents. An 
 old man who talks about Fuseli is, of course, 
 unendurable, and, besides, patriarchs have ceased 
 to be fashionable subjects. Then there is the 
 true Academy model. He is usually a man of 
 thirty, rarely good-looking, but a perfect miracle 
 of muscles. In fact he is the apotheosis of 
 anatomy, and is so conscious of his own splen- 
 
LONDON MODELS 
 
 101 
 
 dour that he tells you of his tibia and his thorax, 
 as if no one else had anything of the kind. 
 Then come the Oriental models. The supply of 
 these is limited, but there are always about a 
 dozen in London. They are very much sought 
 after as they can remain immobile for hours, and 
 generally possess lovely costumes. However, 
 they have a very poor opinion of English art, 
 which they regard as something between a vulgar 
 personality and a commonplace photograph. 
 Next we have the Italian youth who has come 
 over specially to be a model, or takes to it when 
 his organ is out of repair. He is often quite 
 charming with his large melancholy eyes, his 
 crisp hair, and his slim brown figure. It is true 
 he eats garlic, but then he can stand like a faun 
 and couch like a leopard, so he is forgiven. He 
 is always full of pretty compliments, and has 
 been known to have kind words of encourage- 
 ment for even our greatest artists. As for the 
 English lad of the same age, he never sits at all. 
 Apparently be does not regard the career of a 
 model as a serious profession. In any case he is 
 rarely, if ever, to be got hold of. English boys, 
 too, are difficult to find. Sometimes an ex-model 
 who has a son will curl his hair, and w'ash his 
 face, and bring him the round of the studios, all 
 soap and shininess. The young school don't 
 like him, but the older school do, and when he 
 
102 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 appears on the walls of the Royal Academy he 
 is called The Infant Samuel. Occasionally also 
 an artist catches a couple of gamins in the gutter 
 and asks them to come to his studio. The first 
 time they always appear, but after that they 
 don't keep their appointments. They dislike 
 sitting still, and have a strong and perhaps 
 natural objection to looking pathetic. Besides, 
 they are always under the impression that the 
 artist is laughing at them. It is a sad fact, but 
 there is no doubt that the poor are completely 
 unconscious of their own picturesqueness. Those 
 of them who can be induced to sit do so with 
 the idea that the artist is merely a benevolent 
 philanthropist who has chosen an eccentric 
 method of distributing alms to the undeserving. 
 Perhaps the School Board will teach the London 
 gamin his own artistic value, and then they will 
 be better models than they are now. One 
 remarkable privilege belongs to the Academy 
 model, that of extorting a sovereign from any 
 newly elected Associate or R.A. They wait at 
 Burlington House till the announcement is 
 made, and then race to the hapless artist's 
 house. The one who arrives first receives the 
 money. They have of late been much troubled 
 at the long distances they have had to run, 
 and they look with disfavour on the election of 
 artists who live at Hampstead or at Bedford 
 
LONDON MODELS 
 
 103 
 
 Park, for it is considered a point of honour not 
 to employ the underground railway, omnibuses, 
 or any artificial means of locomotion. The race 
 is to the swift. 
 
 Besides the professional posers of the studio 
 there are posers of the Row, the posers at 
 afternoon teas, the posers in politics, and the 
 circus posers. All four classes are delightful, 
 but only the last class is ever really decorative. 
 Acrobats and gymnasts can give the young 
 painter infinite suggestions, for they bring into 
 their art an element of swiftness of motion and 
 of constant change that the studio model neces- 
 sary lacks. What is interesting in these * slaves 
 of the ring' is that with them Beauty is an 
 unconscious result not a conscious aim, the result 
 in fact of the mathematical calculation of curves 
 and distances, of absolute precision of eye, 
 of the scientific knowledge of the equilibrium 
 of forces, and of perfect physical training. A 
 good acrobat is always graceful, though grace is 
 never his object ; he is graceful because he does 
 what he has to do in the best way in which it 
 can be done — graceful because he is natural. 
 If an ancient Greek were to come to life now, 
 which considering the probable severity of his 
 criticisms would be rather trying to our conceit, 
 he would be found far oftener at the circus than 
 at the theatre. A good circus is an oasis of 
 
104 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 Hellenism in a world that reads too much to be 
 wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful. If it 
 were not for the running-ground at Eton, the 
 towing-path at Oxford, the Thames swimming- 
 baths, and the yearly circuses, humanity would 
 forget the plastic perfection of its own form, 
 and degenerate into a race of short-sighted pro- 
 fessors and spectacled precieuses. Not that the 
 circus proprietors are, as a rule, conscious of 
 their high mission. Do they not bore us with 
 the haute ecole , and weary us with Shakespearean 
 clowns ? Still, at least, they give us acrobats, 
 and the acrobat is an artist. The mere fact that 
 he never speaks to the audience shows how well 
 he appreciates the great truth that the aim of 
 art is not to reveal personality but to please. 
 The clown may be blatant, but the acrobat is 
 always beautiful. He is an interesting com- 
 bination of the spirit of Greek sculpture with 
 the spangles of the modern costumier. He has 
 even had his niche in the novels of our age, and 
 if Manette Salomon be the unmasking of the 
 model, Les Freres Zemganno is the apotheosis 
 of the acrobat. 
 
 As regards the influence of the ordinary model 
 on our English school of painting, it cannot be 
 said that it is altogether good. It is, of course, 
 an advantage for the young artist sitting in his 
 studio to be able to isolate f a little corner of 
 
LONDON MODELS 
 
 105 
 
 life/ as the French say, from disturbing sur- 
 roundings, and to study it under certain effects 
 of light and shade. But this very isolation leads 
 often to mere mannerism in the painter, and 
 robs him of that broad acceptance of the general 
 facts of life which is the very essence of art. 
 Model-painting, in a word, while it may be the 
 condition of art, is not by any means its aim. 
 It is simply practice, not perfection. Its use 
 trains the eye and the hand of the painter, its 
 abuse produces in his work an effect of mere 
 posing and prettiness. It is the secret of much 
 of the artificiality of modern art, this constant 
 posing of pretty people, and w hen art becomes 
 artificial it becomes monotonous. Outside the 
 little world of the studio, with its draperies and 
 its bric-a-brac , lies the world of life w r ith its 
 infinite, its Shakespearean variety. We must, 
 however, distinguish between the two kinds of 
 models, those who sit for the figure and those 
 who sit for the costume. The study of the first 
 is always excellent, but the costume-model is 
 becoming rather wearisome in modern pictures. 
 It is really of very little use to dress up a London 
 girl in Greek draperies and to paint her as a 
 goddess. The robe may be the robe of Athens, 
 but the face is usually the face of Brompton. 
 Now and then, it is true, one comes across a 
 model whose face is an exquisite anachronism. 
 
106 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 and who looks lovely and natural in the dress of 
 any century but her own. This, however, is 
 rather rare. As a rule models are absolutely 
 de notre siecle, and should be painted as such. 
 Unfortunately they are not, and, as a conse- 
 quence, we are shown every year a series of 
 scenes from fancy dress balls which are called 
 historical pictures, but are little more than 
 mediocre representations of modern people mas- 
 querading. In France they are wiser. The 
 French painter uses the model simply for 
 study ; for the finished picture he goes direct 
 to life. 
 
 However, we must not blame the sitters for 
 the shortcomings of the artists. The English 
 models are a well-behaved and hard-working 
 class, and if they are more interested in artists 
 than in art, a large section of the public is in 
 the same condition, and most of our modern 
 exhibitions seem to justify its choice. 
 
LA SAINTE COURTIS ANE ; 
 
 OR, THE WOMAN COVERED WITH JEWEI.S 
 
 The scene represents a corner of a valley in the Thebaid. 
 On the right hand of the stage is a cavern . In front of the 
 cavern stands a great crucifix . 
 
 On the left [sand dunes]. 
 
 The sky is blue like the inside of a cup of lapis lazuli . The 
 hills are of red sand. Here and there on the hills there are 
 clumps of thorns. 
 
 First Man. Who is she ? She makes me afraid. 
 She has a purple cloak and her hair is like 
 threads of gold. I think she must be the 
 daughter of the Emperor. I have heard 
 the boatmen say that the Emperor has a 
 daughter who wears a cloak of purple. 
 Second Man. She has birds' wings upon her 
 sandals, and her tunic is of the colour of 
 green corn. It is like corn in spring when 
 she stands still. It is like young corn 
 troubled by the shadows of hawks when 
 she moves. The pearls on her tunic are 
 like many moons. 
 
 First Man. They are like the moons one sees 
 
 107 
 
108 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 in the water when the wind blows from 
 the hills. 
 
 Second Man. I think she is one of the gods. I 
 think she comes from Nubia. 
 
 First Man. I am sure she is the daughter of 
 the Emperor. Her nails are stained with 
 henna. They are like the petals of a rose. 
 She has come here to weep for Adonis. 
 
 Second Man. She is one of the gods. I do not 
 know why she has left her temple. The 
 gods should not leave their temples. If she 
 speaks to us let us not answer and she will 
 pass by. 
 
 First Man. She will not speak to us. She is 
 the daughter of the Emperor. 
 
 Myrrhina. Dwells he not here., the beautiful 
 young hermit, he who will not look on the 
 face of woman ? 
 
 First Man. Of a truth it is here the hermit 
 dwells. 
 
 Myrrhina. Why will he not look on the face of 
 woman ? 
 
 Second Man. We do not know. 
 
 Myrrhina. Why do ye yourselves not look at 
 me ? 
 
 First Man. You are covered with bright stones, 
 and you dazzle our eyes. 
 
 Second Man. Fie who looks at the sun becomes 
 blind. You are too bright to look at. It is 
 
LA SAINTE COURTISANE 
 
 109 
 
 not wise to look at things that are very 
 bright. Many of the priests in the temples 
 are blind, and have slaves to lead them. 
 
 Myrrhina. Where does he dwell, the beautiful 
 young hermit who will not look on the face 
 of woman ? Has he a house of reeds or a 
 house of burnt clay or does he lie on the 
 hillside? Or does he make his bed in the 
 rushes ? 
 
 First Man. He dwells in that cavern yonder. 
 
 Myrrhina. What a curious place to dwell in. 
 
 First Man. Of old a centaur lived there. When 
 the hermit came the centaur gave a shrill 
 cry, wept and lamented, and galloped away. 
 
 Second Man. No. It was a white unicorn 
 who lived in the cave. When it saw the 
 hermit coming the unicorn knelt down and 
 worshipped him. Many people saw it wor- 
 shipping him. 
 
 First Man. I have talked with people who 
 saw it. 
 
 Second Man. Some say he was a hewer of wood 
 and worked for hire. But that may not 
 be true. 
 
 Myrrhina. What gods then do ye worship ? Or 
 do ye worship any gods ? There are those 
 who have no gods to worship. The philo- 
 
110 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 sopliers who wear long beards and brown 
 cloaks have no gods to worship. They 
 wrangle with each other in the porticoes. 
 The [ ] laugh at them. 
 
 First Man. We worship seven gods. We may 
 not tell their names. It is a very dangerous 
 thing to tell the names of the gods. No 
 one should ever tell the name of his god. 
 Even the priests who praise the gods all 
 day long, and eat of their food with them, 
 do not call them by their right names. 
 
 Myrrhina. Where are these gods ye worship ? 
 
 First Man. We hide them in the folds of our 
 tunics. We do not show them to any one. 
 If we showed them to any one they might 
 leave us. 
 
 Myrrhina. Where did ye meet with them ? 
 
 First Man. They were given to us by an em- 
 balmer of the dead who had found them in 
 a tomb. We served him for seven years. 
 
 Myrrhina. The dead are terrible. I am afraid 
 of Death. 
 
 First Man. Death is not a god. He is only the 
 servant of the gods. 
 
 Myrrhina. He is the only god I am afraid of. 
 Ye have seen many of the gods ? 
 
 First Man. We have seen many of them. One 
 sees them chiefly at night time. They pass 
 one by very swiftly. Once we saw some of 
 
LA SAINTE COURTISANE 
 
 111 
 
 the gods at daybreak. They were walking 
 across a plain. 
 
 Myrrhina. Once as I was passing through the 
 market place I heard a sophist from Cilicia 
 say that there is only one God. He said it 
 before many people. 
 
 First Man. That cannot be true. We have our- 
 selves seen many, though we are but 
 common men and of no account. When I 
 saw them I hid myself in a bush. They did 
 me no harm. 
 
 Myrrhina. Tell me more about the beautiful 
 young hermit. Talk to me about the 
 beautiful young hermit who will not look on 
 the face of woman. What is the story of 
 his days ? What mode of life has he ? 
 
 First Man. We do not understand you. 
 
 Myrrhina. What does he do, the beautiful 
 young hermit ? Does he sow or reap ? 
 Does he plant a garden or catch fish in a 
 net ? Does he weave linen on a loom ? 
 Does he set his hand to the wooden plough 
 and walk behind the oxen ? 
 
 Second Man. He being a very holy man does 
 nothing. We are common men and of no 
 account. We toil all day long in the sun. 
 Sometimes the ground is very hard. 
 
 Myrrhina. Do the birds of the air feed him ? 
 
112 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 Do the jackals share their booty with 
 him ? 
 
 First Man. Every evening we bring him food. 
 We do not think that the birds of the air 
 feed him. 
 
 Myrrhina. Why do you feed him ? What profit 
 have ye in so doing ? 
 
 Second Man. He is a very holy man. One of 
 the gods whom he has offended has made 
 him mad. We think he has offended the 
 moon. 
 
 Myrrhina. Go and tell him that one who has 
 come from Alexandria desires to speak with 
 him. 
 
 First Man. We dare not tell him. This hour 
 he is praying to his God. We pray 
 thee to pardon us for not doing thy 
 bidding. 
 
 xMyrrhina. Are ye afraid of him ? 
 
 First Man. We are afraid of him. 
 
 Myrrhina. Why are ye afraid of him ? 
 
 First Man. We do not know. 
 
 Myrrhina. What is his name ? 
 
 First Man. The voice that speaks to him at 
 night time in the cavern calls to him by the 
 name of Honorius. It was also by the name 
 of Honorius that the three lepers who 
 passed by once called to him. We think 
 that his name is Honorius. 
 
LA SAINTE COURTISANE 113 
 
 Myrrhina. Why did the three lepers call to 
 him ? 
 
 First Man. That he might heal them. 
 
 Myrrhina. Did he heal them. 
 
 Second Man. No. They had committed some 
 sin : it was for that reason they were lepers. 
 Their hands and faces were like salt. One 
 of them wore a mask of linen. He was a 
 king's son. 
 
 Myrrhina. What is the voice that speaks to 
 him at night time in his cave ? 
 
 First Man. We do not know whose voice it is. 
 W T e think it is the voice of his God. For 
 we have seen no man enter his cavern nor 
 any come forth from it. 
 
 Myrrhina. Honorius. 
 
 Honorius (from within). Who calls Honorius? 
 
 Myrrhina. Come forth, Honorius. 
 
 My chamber is ceiled with cedar and 
 odorous with myrrh. The pillars of my bed 
 are of cedar and the hangings are of purple. 
 My bed is strewn with purple and the steps 
 are of silver. The hangings are sewn with 
 silver pomegranates and the steps that are 
 of silver are strewn with saffron and with 
 myrrh. My lovers hang garlands round the 
 pillars of my house. At night time they 
 H 
 
il4 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 come with the flute players and the players 
 of the harp. They woo me with apples and 
 and on the pavement of my courtyard they 
 write my name in wine. 
 
 From the uttermost parts of the world 
 my lovers come to me. The kings of the 
 earth come to me and bring me presents. 
 
 When the Emperor of Byzantium heard 
 of me he left his porphyry chamber and set 
 sail in his galleys. His slaves bare no 
 torches that none might know of his 
 coming. When the King of Cyprus heard 
 of me he sent me ambassadors. The two 
 Kings of Libya who are brothers brought 
 me gifts of amber. 
 
 I took the minion of Caesar from Caesar 
 and made him my playfellow. He came to 
 me at night in a litter. He was pale as a 
 narcissus, and his body was like honey. 
 
 The son of the Praefect slew himself in 
 my honour, and the Tetrarch of Cilicia 
 scourged himself for my pleasure before my 
 slaves. 
 
 The King of Hierapolis who is a priest 
 and a robber set carpets for me to walk on. 
 
 Sometimes I sit in the circus and the 
 gladiators fight beneath me. Once a 
 Thracian who was my lover was caught in 
 the net. I gave the signal for him to die 
 
LA SAINTE COURTISANE 
 
 115 
 
 and the whole theatre applauded. Some- 
 times I pass through the gymnasium and 
 watch the young men wrestling or in the 
 race. Their bodies are bright with oil and 
 and their brows are wreathed with willow 
 sprays and with myrtle. They stamp their 
 feet on the sand when they wrestle and 
 when they run the sand follows them like 
 a little cloud. He at whom I smile leaves 
 his companions and follows me to my home. 
 At other times I go down to the harbour 
 and watch the merchants unloading their 
 vessels. Those that come from Tyre have 
 cloaks of silk and earrings of emerald. 
 Those that come from Massilia have cloaks 
 of fine wool and earrings of brass. When 
 they see me coming they stand on the 
 prows of their ships and call to me, but I 
 do not answer them. I go to the little 
 taverns where the sailors lie all day long 
 drinking black wine and playing with dice 
 and I sit down with them. 
 
 I made the Prince my slave, and his slave 
 who was a Tyrian I made my Lord for the 
 space of a moon. 
 
 I put a figured ring on his finger and 
 brought him to my house. I have wonder- 
 ful things in my house. 
 
 The dust of the desert lies on your hair 
 
116 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 and your feet are scratched with thorns 
 and your body is scorched by the sun. 
 Come with me, Honorius, and I will clothe 
 you in a tunic of silk. I will smear your 
 body with myrrh and pour spikenard on 
 your hair. I will clothe you in hyacinth 
 and put honey in your mouth. Love 
 
 Honorius. There is no love but the love of God. 
 
 Myrrhina. Who is He whose love is greater 
 than that of mortal men ? 
 
 Honorius. It is He whom thou seest on the 
 cross, Myrrhina. He is the Son of God 
 and was born of a virgin. Three wise men 
 who were kings brought Him offerings, and 
 the shepherds who were lying on the hills 
 were wakened by a great light. 
 
 The Sibyls knew of His coming. The 
 groves and the oracles spake of Him. 
 David and the prophets announced Him. 
 There is no love like the love of God nor 
 any love that can be compared to it. 
 
 The body is vile, Myrrhina. God will 
 raise thee up with a new body which will 
 not know corruption, and thou wilt dwell 
 in the Courts of the Lord and see Him 
 whose hair is like fine wool and whose feet 
 are of brass. 
 
 Myrrhina. The beauty . . . 
 
 Honorius. The beauty of the soul increases till 
 
LA SAINTE COURT I SANE 
 
 117 
 
 it can see God. Therefore, Myrrhina, re- 
 pent of thy sins. The robber who was 
 crucified beside Him He brought into 
 Paradise. [Exit. 
 
 Myrrhina. How strangely he spake to me. 
 And with what scorn did he regard me. 
 I wonder why he spake to me so strangely. 
 
 Honorius. Myrrhina, the scales have fallen from 
 my eyes and I see now clearly what I did 
 not see before. Take me to Alexandria 
 and let me taste of the seven sins. 
 
 Myrrhina. Do not mock me, Honorius, nor 
 speak to me with such bitter words. For 
 I have repented of my sins and I am 
 seeking a cavern in this desert where I 
 too may dwell so that my soul may become 
 worthy to see God. 
 
 Honorius. The sun is setting, Myrrhina. Come 
 with me to Alexandria. 
 
 Myrrhina. I will not go to Alexandria. 
 
 Honorius. Farewell, Myrrhina. 
 
 Myrrhina. Honorius, farewell. No, no, do not 
 go. 
 
 I have cursed my beauty for what it has 
 done, and cursed the wonder of my body 
 for the evil that it has brought upon you. 
 
 Lord, this man brought me to Thy feet. 
 
118 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 He told me of Thy coming upon earth, and 
 of the wonder of Thy birth, and the great 
 wonder of Thy death also. By him, O 
 Lord, Thou wast revealed to me. 
 
 Honorius. You talk as a child, Myrrhina, and 
 without knowledge. Loosen your hands. 
 Why didst thou come to this valley in thy 
 beauty ? 
 
 Myrrhina. The God whom thou worshippest 
 led me here that I might repent of my 
 iniquities and know Him as the Lord. 
 
 Honorius. Why didst thou tempt me with 
 words ? 
 
 Myrrhina. That thou shouldst see Sin in its 
 painted mask and look on Death in its robe 
 of Shame. 
 
L’ENVOI 
 
 An introduction to Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf by Rennell 
 Rodd, published by J. M. Stoddart and Co., Philadelphia, 
 1882. 
 
 'tfONGST the many young men in England 
 
 who are seeking along with me to con- 
 tinue and to perfect the English Renaissance — 
 jeunes guerriers du drapeau romantique, as Gautier 
 would have called us — there is none whose love 
 of art is more flawless and fervent,, whose artistic 
 sense of beauty is more subtle and more delicate 
 — none, indeed, who is dearer to myself — than 
 the young poet whose verses I have brought 
 with me to America ; verses full of sweet sadness, 
 and yet full of joy; for the most joyous poet is 
 not he who sows the desolate highways of this 
 world with the barren seed of laughter, but he 
 who makes his sorrow most musical, this indeed 
 being the meaning of joy in art — that incom- 
 municable element of artistic delight which, in 
 poetry, for instance, comes from what Keats 
 called ‘ sensuous life of verse/ the element of 
 song in the singing, made so pleasurable to us 
 by that wonder of motion which often has its 
 origin in mere musical impulse, and in painting 
 
120 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 is to be sought for, from the subject never, but 
 from the pictorial charm only — the scheme and 
 symphony of the colour, the satisfying beauty of 
 the design : so that the ultimate expression of 
 our artistic movement in painting has been, not 
 in the spiritual vision of the Pre-Raphaelites, for 
 all their marvel of Greek legend and their 
 mystery of Italian song, but in the work of such 
 men as Whistler and Albert Moore, who have 
 raised design and colour to the ideal level of 
 poetry and music. For the quality of their 
 exquisite painting comes from the mere inventive 
 and creative handling of line and colour, from a 
 certain form and choice of beautiful workmanship, 
 which, rejecting all literary reminiscence and all 
 metaphysical idea, is in itself entirely satisfying 
 to the aesthetic sense — is, as the Greeks would 
 say, an end in itself ; the effect of their work 
 being like the effect given to us by music ; for 
 music is the art in which form and matter are 
 always one — the art whose subject cannot be 
 separated from the method of its expression; 
 the art which most completely realizes for us the 
 artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all 
 the other arts are constantly aspiring. 
 
 Now, this increased sense of the absolutely 
 satisfying value of beautiful workmanship, this 
 recognition of the primary importance of the 
 sensuous element in art, this love of art for art's 
 
L’ENVOI 
 
 121 
 
 sake, is the point in which we of the younger 
 school have made a departure from the teaching 
 of Mr. Ruskin, — a departure definite and different 
 and decisive. 
 
 Master indeed of the knowledge of all noble 
 living and of the wisdom of all spiritual things 
 will he be to us ever, seeing that it was he who 
 by the magic of his presence and the music of his 
 lips taught us at Oxford that enthusiasm for beauty 
 which is the secret of Hellenism, and that desire 
 for creation which is the secret of life, and filled 
 some of us, at least, with the lofty and passionate 
 ambition to go forth into far and fair lands with 
 some message for the nations and some mission 
 for the world, and yet in his art criticism, his 
 estimate of the joyous element of art, his whole 
 method of approaching art, we are no longer 
 with him; for the keystone to his aesthetic 
 system is ethical always. He would judge of a 
 picture by the amount of noble moral ideas it 
 expresses ; but to us the channels by which all 
 noble work in painting can touch, and does 
 touch, the soul are not those of truths of life 
 or metaphysical truths. To him perfection of 
 workmanship seems but the symbol of pride, 
 and incompleteness of technical resource the 
 image of an imagination too limitless to find 
 within the limits of form its complete expression, 
 or of love too simple not to stammer in its 
 
122 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 tale. But to us the rule of art is not the 
 rule of morals. In an ethical system, indeed, of 
 any gentle mercy good intentions will, one is 
 fain to fancy, have their recognition ; but of 
 those that would enter the serene House of 
 Beauty the question that we ask is not what 
 they had ever meant to do, but what they 
 have done. Their pathetic intentions are of no 
 value to us, but their realized creations only. 
 Pour moi je prefere les poetes qui font des vers , les 
 medecins qui sackent guerir , les peintres qui sachent 
 peindre. 
 
 Nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be 
 dreaming of what it symbolises, but rather loving 
 it for what it is. Indeed, the transcendental 
 spirit is alien to the spirit of art. The meta- 
 physical mind of Asia may create for itself the 
 monstrous and many-breasted idol, but to the 
 Greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct 
 with spiritual life which conforms most closely 
 to the perfect facts of physical life also. Nor, in 
 its primary aspect, has a painting, for instance, 
 any more spiritual message or meaning for us 
 than a blue tile from the wall of Damascus, or a 
 Hitzen vase. It is a beautifully coloured sur- 
 face, nothing more, and affects us by no 
 suggestion stolen from philosophy, no pathos 
 pilfered from literature, no feeling filched from 
 a poet, but by its own incommunicable artistic 
 
L’ENVOI 
 
 123 
 
 essence — by that selection of truth which we 
 call style, and that relation of v&lues which is 
 the draughtsmanship of painting, by the whole 
 quality of the workmanship, the arabesque of 
 the design, the splendour of the colour, for these 
 things are enough to stir the most divine and 
 remote of the chords which make music in our 
 soul, and colour, indeed, is of itself a mystical 
 presence on things, and tone a kind of senti- 
 ment ... all these poems aim, as I said, at 
 producing a purely artistic effect, and have the 
 rare and exquisite quality that belongs to work 
 of that kind ; and I feel that the entire sub- 
 ordination in our aesthetic movement of all 
 merely emotional and intellectual motives to the 
 vital informing poetic principle is the surest sign 
 of our strength. 
 
 But it is not enough that a work of art should 
 conform to the aesthetic demands of the age : 
 there should be also about it, if it is to give us 
 any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct 
 individuality. Whatever work we have in the 
 nineteenth century must rest on the two poles 
 of personality and perfection. And so in this 
 little volume, by separating the earlier and more 
 simple work from the work that is later and 
 stronger and possesses increased technical power 
 and more artistic vision, one might weave these 
 disconnected poems, these stray and scattered 
 
124 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 threads, into one fiery-coloured strand of life, 
 noting first a boy’s mere gladness of being 
 young, with all its simple joy in field and flower, 
 in sunlight and in song, and then the bitterness 
 of sudden sorrow at the ending by Death of one 
 of the brief and beautiful friendships of one’s 
 youth, with all those unanswered longings and 
 questionings unsatisfied by which we vex, so 
 uselessly, the marble face of death ; the artistic 
 contrast between the discontented incomplete- 
 ness of the spirit and the complete perfection 
 of the style that expresses it forming the chief 
 element of the aesthetic charm of these particular 
 poems ; — and then the birth of Love, and all the 
 wonder and the fear and the perilous delight 
 of one on whose boyish brows the little wings 
 of love have beaten for the first time ; and the 
 love-songs, so dainty and delicate, little swallow- 
 flights of music, and full of such fragrance and 
 freedom that they might all be sung in the 
 open air and across moving water ; and then 
 autumn, coming with its choirless woods and 
 odorous decay and ruined loveliness, Love lying 
 dead ; and the sense of the mere pity of it. 
 
 One might stop there, for from a young poet 
 one should ask for no deeper chords of life than 
 those that love and friendship make eternal for 
 us ; and the best poems in the volume belong 
 clearly to a later time, a time when these real 
 
L’ENVOI 
 
 125 
 
 experiences become absorbed and gathered up 
 into a form which seems from such real experi- 
 ences to be the most alien and the most remote ; 
 when the simple expression of joy or sorrow 
 suffices no longer, and lives rather in the stateli- 
 ness of the cadenced metre, in the music and 
 colour of the linked words, than in any direct 
 utterance ; lives, one might say, in the perfec- 
 tion of the form more than in the pathos of the 
 feeling. And yet, after the broken music of 
 love and the burial of love in the autumn woods, 
 we can trace that wandering among strange 
 people, and in lands unknown to us, by which 
 we try so pathetically to heal the hurts of the 
 life we know, and that pure and passionate 
 devotion to Art which one gets when the harsh 
 reality of life has too suddenly wounded one, 
 and is with discontent or sorrow marring one's 
 youth, just as often, I think, as one gets it 
 from any natural joy of living; and that curious 
 intensity of vision by which, in moments of 
 overmastering sadness and despair ungovernable, 
 artistic things will live in one's memory with a 
 vivid realism caught from the life which they 
 help one to forget — an old grey tomb in Flanders 
 with a strange legend on it, making one think 
 how, perhaps, passion does live on after death ; 
 a necklace of blue and amber beads and a broken 
 mirror found in a girl's grave at Rome, a marble 
 
126 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 image of a boy habited like Eros, and with the 
 pathetic tradition of a great king's sorrow linger- 
 ing about it like a purple shadow, — over all these 
 the tired spirit broods with that calm and certain 
 joy that one gets when one has found something 
 that the ages never dull and the world cannot 
 harm ; and with it comes that desire of Greek 
 things which is often an artistic method of ex- 
 pressing one's desire for perfection ; and that 
 longing for the old dead days which is so modern, 
 so incomplete, so touching, being, in a way, the 
 inverted torch of Hope, which burns the hand 
 it should guide ; and for many things a little 
 sadness, and for all things a great love ; and 
 lastly, in the pinewood by the sea, once more 
 the quick and vital pulse of joyous youth leaping 
 and laughing in every line, the frank and fear- 
 less freedom of wave and wind waking into fire 
 life's burnt-out ashes and into song the silent 
 lips of pain, — how clearly one seems to see it all, 
 the long colonnade of pines with sea and sky 
 peeping in here and there like a flitting of silver ; 
 the open place in the green, deep heart of the 
 wood with the little moss-grown altar to the 
 old Italian god in it ; and the flowers all about, 
 cyclamen in the shadowy places, and the stars 
 of the white narcissus lying like snow-flakes over 
 the grass, where the quick, bright-eyed lizard 
 starts by the stone, and the snake lies coiled 
 
1/ ENVOI 
 
 127 
 
 lazily in the sun on the hot sand, and overhead 
 the gossamer floats from the branches like thin, 
 tremulous threads of gold, — the scene is so per- 
 fect for its motive, for surely here, if anywhere, 
 the real gladness of life might be revealed to 
 one’s youth — the gladness that comes, not from 
 the rejection, but from the absorption, of 
 all passion, and is like that serene calm that 
 dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, and 
 which despair and sorrow cannot touch, but 
 intensify only. 
 
 In some such way as this we could gather up 
 these strewn and scattered petals of song into 
 one perfect rose of life, and yet, perhaps, in so 
 doing, we might be missing the true quality of 
 the poems ; one’s real life is so often the life 
 that one does not lead ; and beautiful poems, 
 like threads of beautiful silks, may be woven 
 into many patterns and to suit many designs, 
 all wonderful and all different : and romantic 
 poetry, too, is essentially the poetry of impres- 
 sions, being like that latest school of painting, 
 the school of Whistler and Albert Moore, in its 
 choice of situation as opposed to subject; in its 
 dealing with the exceptions rather than with 
 the types of life ; in its brief intensity ; in what 
 one might call its fiery-coloured momentariness, 
 it being indeed the momentary situations of life, 
 the momentary aspects of nature, which poetry 
 
128 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 and painting now seek to render for us. Sin- 
 cerity and constancy will the artist, indeed, have 
 always ; but sincerity in art is merely that plastic 
 perfection of execution without which a poem or a 
 painting, however noble its sentiment or human 
 its origin, is but wasted and unreal work, and the 
 constancy of the artist cannot be to any definite 
 rule or system of living, but to that principle 
 of beauty only through which the inconstant 
 shadows of his life are in their most fleeting 
 moment arrested and made permanent. He will 
 not, for instance, in intellectual matters acquiesce 
 in that facile orthodoxy of our day which is so 
 reasonable and so artistically uninteresting, nor 
 yet will he desire that fiery faith of the antique 
 time which, while it intensified, yet limited the 
 vision ; still less will he allow the calm of his 
 culture to be marred by the discordant despair 
 of doubt or the sadness of a sterile scepticism ; 
 for the Valley Perilous, where ignorant armies 
 clash by night, is no resting-place meet for her 
 to whom the gods have assigned the clear upland, 
 the serene height, and the sunlit air, — rather 
 will he be always curiously testing new forms 
 of belief, tinging his nature with the sentiment 
 that still lingers about some beautiful creeds, 
 and searching for experience itself, and not for; 
 the fruits of experience ; when he has got its 
 secret, he will leave without regret much that 
 
L’ ENVOI 
 
 129 
 
 was once very precious to him. ‘ I am always 
 insincere/ says Emerson somewhere, ‘as know- 
 ing that there are other moods ' : ‘ Les emotions' 
 wrote Theophile Gautier once in a review of 
 Arsene Houssaye, ‘ Les emotions , ne se ressemblent 
 pas, mais etre emu — voila l important ' 
 
 Now, this is the secret of the art of the 
 modern romantic school, and gives one the 
 right keynote for its apprehension ; but the 
 real quality of all work which, like Mr. Rodd’s, 
 aims, as I said, at a purely artistic effect, cannot 
 be described in terms of intellectual criticism ; 
 it is too intangible for that. One can perhaps 
 convey it best in terms of the other arts, and 
 by reference to them ; and, indeed, some of 
 these poems are as iridescent and as exquisite 
 as a lovely fragment of Venetian glass ; others 
 as delicate in perfect workmanship and as single 
 in natural motive as an etching by Whistler is, 
 or one of those beautiful little Greek figures 
 which in the olive woods round Tanagra men 
 can still find, with the faint gilding and the 
 fading crimson not yet fled from hair and lips 
 and raiment ; and many of them seem like one 
 of Corot's twilights just passing into music; for 
 not merely in visible colour, but in sentiment 
 also — which is the colour of poetry — may there 
 be a kind of tone. 
 
 But I think that the best likeness to the 
 
 I 
 
130 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 quality of this young poet's work I ever saw 
 was in the landscape by the Loire. We were 
 staying once, he and I, at Amboise, that little 
 village with its grey slate roofs and steep 
 streets and gaunt, grim gateway, where the 
 quiet cottages nestle like white pigeons into 
 the sombre clefts of the great bastioned rock, 
 and the stately Renaissance houses stand silent 
 and apart — very desolate now, but with some 
 memory of the old days still lingering about 
 the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved 
 doorways, with their grotesque animals, and 
 laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, 
 all reminding one of a people who could not 
 think life real till they had made it fantastic. 
 And above the village, and beyond the bend 
 of the river, we used to go in the afternoon, and 
 sketch from one of the big barges that bring 
 the wine in autumn and the wood in winter 
 down to the sea, or lie in the long grass and 
 make plans pour la gloire, et pour ennuyer les 
 Philistins, or wander along the low, sedgy banks, 
 * matching our reeds in sportive rivalry/ as 
 comrades used in the old Sicilian days ; and 
 the land was an ordinary land enough, and 
 bare, too, when one thought of Italy, and 
 how the oleanders were robing the hillsides by 
 Genoa in scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with 
 its purple every valley from Florence to Rome ; 
 
L’ENVOI 
 
 131 
 
 for there was not much real beauty, perhaps, 
 in it, only long, white dusty roads and straight 
 rows of formal poplars ; but, now and then, 
 some little breaking gleam of broken light 
 would lend to the grey field and the silent 
 barn a secret and a mystery that were hardly 
 their own, would transfigure for one exquisite 
 moment the peasants passing down through the 
 vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill, 
 would tip the willows with silver and touch the 
 river into gold ; and the wonder of the effect, 
 with the strange simplicity of the material, 
 always seemed to me to be a little like the 
 quality of these the verses of my friend. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL 
 CRITICISM 1 
 
 IY 
 
 I T is evident that here Thucydides is ready to 
 admit the variety of manifestations which 
 externa] causes bring about in their workings 
 on the uniform character of the nature of man. 
 YeC after all is said; these are perhaps but very 
 general statements : the ordinary effects of peace 
 and war are dwelt on, but there is no real analysis 
 of the immediate causes and general laws of the 
 phenomena of life, nor does Thucydides seem to 
 recognize the truth that if humanity proceeds in 
 circles, the circles are always widening. 
 
 Perhaps we may say that with him the philo- 
 sophy of history is partly in the metaphysical 
 
 1 The first portion of this essay is given at the end of the 
 volume containing Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other 
 Prose Pieces. Recently the remainder of the original manu- 
 script has been discovered, and is here published for the first 
 time. It was written for the Chancellor’s English Essay 
 Prize at Oxford in 1879, the subject being ‘Historical Criti- 
 cism among the Ancients.’ The prize was not awarded. To 
 Professor J. W. Mackail thanks are due for revising the 
 proofs. 
 
 132 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 133 
 
 stage, and see, in the progress of this idea from 
 Herodotus to Polybius, the exemplification of the 
 Comtian law of the three stages of thought, the 
 theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific : 
 for truly out of the vagueness of theological 
 mysticism this conception which we call the 
 Philosophy of History was raised to a scientific 
 principle, according to which the past was ex- 
 plained and the future predicted by reference 
 to general laws. 
 
 Now, just as the earliest account of the nature 
 of the progress of humanity is to be found in 
 Plato, so in him we find the first explicit attempt 
 to found a universal philosophy of history upon 
 wide rational grounds. Having created an ideally 
 perfect state, the philosopher proceeds to give an 
 elaborate theory of the complex causes which 
 produce revolutions, of the moral effects of vari- 
 ous forms of government and education, of the 
 rise of the criminal classes and their connection 
 with pauperism, and, in a word, to create history 
 by the deductive method and to proceed from 
 a priori psychological principles to discover the 
 governing laws of the apparent chaos of political 
 life. 
 
 There have been many attempts since Plato 
 to deduce from a single philosophical principle 
 all the phenomena which experience subsequently 
 verifies for us. Fichte thought he could predict 
 
134 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 the world-plan from the idea of universal time. 
 Hegel dreamed he had found the key to the 
 mysteries of life in the development of freedom, 
 and Krause in the categories of being. But the 
 one scientific basis on which the true philosophy 
 of history must rest is the complete knowledge 
 of the laws of human nature in all its wants, its 
 aspirations, its powers and its tendencies : and 
 this great truth, which Thucydides may be said 
 in some measure to have apprehended, was given 
 to us first by Plato. 
 
 Now, it cannot be accurately said of this philo- 
 sopher that either his philosophy or his history is 
 entirely and simply a priori. On est de son siecle 
 meme quand on y proteste , and so we find in him 
 continual references to the Spartan mode of life, 
 the Pythagorean system, the general character- 
 istics of Greek tyrannies and Greek democracies. 
 For while, in his account of the method of forming 
 an ideal state, he says that the political artist is 
 indeed to fix his gaze on the sun of abstract truth 
 in the heavens of the pure reason, but is some- 
 times to turn to the realization of the ideals on 
 earth : yet, after all, the general character of the 
 Platonic method, which is what we are specially 
 concerned with, is essentially deductive and 
 a priori. And he himself, in the building up of 
 his Nephelococcygia, certainly starts with a 
 KaOapos 7rtva£, making a clean sweep of all his- 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 135 
 
 tory and all experience ; and it was essentially 
 as an a priori theorist that he is criticized by 
 Aristotle, as we shall see later. 
 
 To proceed to closer details regarding the 
 actual scheme of the laws of political revolutions 
 as drawn out by Plato, we must first note that 
 the primary cause of the decay of the ideal state 
 is the general principle, common to the vegetable 
 and animal worlds as well as to the world of 
 history, that all created things are fated to decay 
 — a principle which, though expressed in the 
 terms of a mere metaphysical abstraction, is yet 
 perhaps in its essence scientific. For we too 
 must hold that a continuous redistribution of 
 matter and motion is the inevitable result of the 
 normal persistence of Force, and that perfect 
 equilibrium is as impossible in politics as it 
 certainly is in physics. 
 
 The secondary causes which mar the perfec- 
 tion of the Platonic * city of the sun ’ are to be 
 found in the intellectual decay of the race con- 
 sequent on injudicious marriages and in the 
 Philistine elevation of physical achievements 
 over mental culture ; while the hierarchical suc- 
 cession of Timocracy and Oligarchy, Democracy 
 and Tyranny, is dwelt on at great length and its 
 causes analysed in a very dramatic and psycho- 
 logical manner, if not in that sanctioned by the 
 actual order of history. 
 
136 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 And indeed it is apparent at first sight that 
 the Platonic succession of states represents rather 
 the succession of ideas in the philosophic mind 
 than any historical succession of time. 
 
 Aristotle meets the whole simply by an appeal 
 to facts. If the theory of the periodic decay of 
 all created things, he urges, be scientific, it must 
 be universal, and so true of all the other states 
 as well as of the ideal. Besides, a state usually 
 changes into its contrary and not to the form 
 next to it ; so the ideal state would not change 
 into Timocracy ; while Oligarchy, more often 
 than Tyranny, succeeds Democracy. Plato, be- 
 sides, says nothing of what a Tyranny would 
 change to. According to the cycle theory it 
 ought to pass into the ideal state again, but as a 
 fact one Tyranny is changed into another as at 
 Sicyon, or into a Democracy as at Syracuse, or 
 into an Aristocracy as at Carthage. The example 
 of Sicily, too, shows that an Oligarchy is often 
 followed by a Tyranny, as at Leontini and Gela. 
 Besides, it is absurd to represent greed as the 
 chief motive of decay, or to talk of avarice as the 
 root of Oligarchy, when in nearly all true oligar- 
 chies money-making is forbidden by law. And 
 finally the Platonic theory neglects the different 
 kinds of democracies and of tyrannies. 
 
 Now nothing can be more important than this 
 passage in Aristotle’s Politics (v. 12.), which may 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 137 
 
 be said to mark an era in the evolution of his- 
 torical criticism. For there is nothing on which 
 Aristotle insists so strongly as that the general- 
 izations from facts ought to be added to the data 
 of the a priori method — a principle which we 
 know to be true not merely of deductive specu- 
 lative politics but of physics also : for are not 
 the residual phenomena of chemists a valuable 
 source of improvement in theory ? 
 
 His own method is essentially historical though 
 by no means empirical. On the contrary, this 
 far-seeing thinker, rightly styled il maestro di 
 color che sanno, may be said to have apprehended 
 clearly that the true method is neither exclu- 
 sively empirical nor exclusively speculative, but 
 rather a union of both in the process called 
 Analysis or the Interpretation of Facts, which 
 has been defined as the application to facts of 
 such general conceptions as may fix the important 
 characteristics of the phenomena, and present 
 them permanently in their true relations. He 
 too was the first to point out, what even in our 
 own day is incompletely appreciated, that nature, 
 including the development of man, is not full of 
 incoherent episodes like a bad tragedy, that 
 inconsistency and anomaly are as impossible in 
 the moral as they are in the physical world, and 
 that where the superficial observer thinks he 
 sees a revolution the philosophical critic discerns 
 
138 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 merely the gradual and rational evolution of the 
 inevitable results of certain antecedents. 
 
 And while admitting the necessity of a psycho- 
 logical basis for the philosophy of history, he 
 added to it the important truth that man, to be 
 apprehended in his proper position in the universe 
 as well as in his natural powers, must be studied 
 from below in the hierarchical progression of 
 higher function from the lower forms of life. 
 The important maxim, that to obtain a clear 
 conception of anything we must ' study it in its 
 growth from the very beginning’ is formally set 
 down in the opening of the Politics , where, in- 
 deed, we shall find the other characteristic feat- 
 ures of the modern Evolutionary theory, such as 
 the * Differentiation of Function ’ and the f Sur- 
 vival of the Fittest’ explicitly set forth. 
 
 What a valuable step this was in the improve- 
 ment of the method of historical criticism it is 
 needless to point out. By it, one may say, the 
 true thread was given to guide one’s steps through 
 the bewildering labyrinth of facts. For history 
 (to use terms with which Aristotle has made us 
 familiar) may be looked at from two essentially 
 different standpoints; either as a work, of art 
 whose reAos or final cause is external to it and 
 imposed on it from without; or as an organism 
 containing the law of its own development in 
 itself, and working out its perfection merely by 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 139 
 
 the fact of being what it is. Now, if we adopt 
 the former, which we may style the theological 
 view, we shall be in continual danger of tripping 
 into the pitfall of some a priori conclusion — that 
 bourne from which, it has been truly said, no 
 traveller ever returns. 
 
 The latter is the only scientific theory and was 
 apprehended in its fulness by Aristotle, whose 
 application of the inductive method to history, 
 and whose employment of the evolutionary theory 
 of humanity, show that he was conscious that the 
 philosophy of history is nothing separate from 
 the facts of history but is contained in them, and 
 that the rational law of the complex phenomena 
 of life, like the ideal in the world of thought, is 
 to be reached through the facts, not superimposed 
 on them — Kara. 7roAAcor not 7rapa 7roAAa. 
 
 And finally, in estimating the enormous debt 
 which the science of historical criticism owes to 
 Aristotle, we must not pass over his attitude to- 
 wards those two great difficulties in the forma- 
 tion of a philosophy of history on which I have 
 touched above. I mean the assertion of extra- 
 natural interference with the normal develop- 
 ment of the world and of the incalculable influence 
 exercised by the power of free will. 
 
 Now, as regards the former, he may be said to 
 have neglected it entirely, The special acts of 
 providence proceeding from God’s immediate 
 
140 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 government of the world, which Herodotus saw 
 as mighty landmarks in history, would have been 
 to him essentially disturbing elements in that 
 universal reign of law, the extent of whose 
 limitless empire he of all the great thinkers of 
 antiquity was the first explicitly to recognize. 
 
 Standing aloof from the popular religion as 
 well as from the deeper conceptions of Hero- 
 dotus and the Tragic School, he no longer 
 thought of God as of one with fair limbs and 
 treacherous face haunting wood and glade, nor 
 would he see in him a jealous judge continually 
 interfering in the world’s history to bring the 
 wicked to punishment and the proud to a fall. 
 God to him was the incarnation of the pure 
 Intellect, a being whose activity was the con- 
 templation of his own perfection, one whom 
 Philosophy might imitate but whom prayers 
 could never move, to the sublime indifference of 
 whose passionless wisdom what were the sons of 
 men, their desires or their sins? While, as re- 
 gards the other difficulty and the formation of a 
 philosophy of history, the conflict of free will 
 with general laws appears first in Greek thought 
 in the usual theological form in which all great 
 ideas seem to be cradled at their birth. 
 
 It was such legends as those of CEdipus and 
 Adrastus, exemplifying the struggles of indi- 
 vidual humanity against the overpowering force 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 141 
 
 of circumstances and necessity, which gave to 
 the early Greeks those same lessons which we 
 of modern days draw, in somewhat less artistic 
 fashion, from the study of statistics and the laws 
 of physiology. 
 
 In Aristotle, of course, there is no trace of 
 supernatural influence. The Furies, which drive 
 their victim into sin first and then punishment, 
 are no longer f viper-tressed goddesses with eyes 
 and mouth aflame/ but those evil thoughts which 
 harbour within the impure soul. In this, as in 
 all other points, to arrive at Aristotle is to reach 
 the pure atmosphere of scientific and modern 
 thought. 
 
 But while he rejected pure necessitarianism in 
 its crude form as essentially a reductio ad absurdum 
 of life, he was fully conscious of the fact that the 
 will is not a mysterious and ultimate unit of 
 force beyond which we cannot go and whose 
 special characteristic is inconsistency, but a cer- 
 tain creative attitude of the mind which is, from 
 the first, continually influenced by habits, educa- 
 tion and circumstance ; so absolutely modifiable, 
 in a word, that the good and the bad man alike 
 seem to lose the power of free will ; for the one 
 is morally unable to sin, the other physically 
 incapacitated for reformation. 
 
 And of the influence of climate and tempera- 
 ture in forming the nature of man (a conception 
 
142 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 perhaps pressed too far in modern days when 
 the ‘race theory' is supposed to be a sufficient 
 explanation of the Hindoo, and the latitude and 
 longitude of a country the best guide to its 
 morals 1 ) Aristotle is completely unaware. I do 
 not allude to such smaller points as the oligar- 
 chical tendencies of a horse-breeding country 
 and the democratic influence of the proximity of 
 the sea (important though they are for the con- 
 sideration of Greek history), but rather to those 
 wider views in the seventh book of his Politics, 
 where he attributes the happy union in the Greek 
 character of intellectual attainments with the 
 spirit of progress to the temperate climate they 
 enjoyed, and points out how the extreme cold of 
 the north dulls the mental faculties of its inhabi- 
 tants and renders them incapable of social or- 
 ganization or extended empire ; while to the 
 enervating heat of eastern countries was due 
 that want of spirit and bravery which then, as 
 now, was the characteristic of the population in 
 that quarter of the globe. 
 
 Thucydides has shown the casual connection 
 between political revolutions and the fertility of 
 the soil, but goes a step farther and points out 
 
 1 Cousin errs a good deal in this respect. To say, as he 
 did, * Give me the latitude and the longitude of a country, 
 its rivers and its mountains, and I will deduce the race,’ is 
 surely a glaring exaggeration. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 143 
 
 the psychological influences on a people’s char- 
 acter exercised by the various extremes of climate 
 — in both cases the first appearance of a most 
 valuable form of historical criticism. 
 
 To the development of Dialectic, as to God, 
 intervals of time are of no account. From Plato 
 and Aristotle we pass direct to Polybius. 
 
 The progress of thought from the philosopher 
 of the Academe to the Arcadian historian may 
 be best illustrated by a comparison of the method 
 by which each of the three writers, whom I have 
 selected as the highest expression of the ration- 
 alism of his respective age, attained to his ideal 
 state : for the latter conception may be in a 
 measure regarded as representing the most spiri- 
 tual principle which they could discern in history. 
 
 Now, Plato created his on a priori principles : 
 Aristotle formed his by an analysis of existing 
 constitutions ; Polybius found his realized for 
 him in the actual world of fact. Aristotle criti- 
 cized the deductive speculations of Plato by 
 means of inductive negative instances, but Poly- 
 bius will not take the ‘Cloud City’ of the Republic 
 into account at all. He compares it to an athlete 
 who has never run on ‘ Constitution Hill/ to a 
 statue so beautiful that it is entirely removed 
 from the ordinary conditions of humanity, and 
 consequently from the canons of criticism. 
 
 The Roman state had attained in his eyes, 
 
144 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 by means of the mutual counteraction of three 
 opposing forces , 1 that stable equilibrium in poli- 
 tics which was the ideal of all the theoretical 
 writers of antiquity. And in connection with 
 this point it will be convenient to notice here 
 how much truth there is contained in the accusa- 
 tion so often brought against the ancients that 
 they knew nothing of the idea of Progress, for 
 the meaning of many of their speculations will 
 be hidden from us if we do not try and compre- 
 hend first what their aim was, and secondly why 
 it was so. 
 
 Now, like all wide generalities, this statement 
 is at least inaccurate. The prayer of Plato’s 
 ideal city — aya 6tov d/xetvous, /cat (o</>eAi/zah' 
 cJ<£eAi fJLiorepovs del roi>s eKyovovs ylyvecrOai, might 
 be written as a text over the door of the last 
 Temple to Humanity raised by the disciples of 
 Fourier and Saint-Simon, but it is certainly true 
 that their ideal principle was order and perman- 
 ence, not indefinite progress. For, setting aside 
 the artistic prejudices which would have led the 
 Greeks to reject this idea of unlimited improve- 
 ment, we may note that the modern conception 
 of progress rests partly on the new enthusiasm 
 and worship of humanity, partly on the splendid 
 hopes of material improvements in civilization 
 
 1 The monarchical, aristocratical, and democratic elements 
 of the Roman constitution are referred to. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 145 
 
 which applied science has held out to us, two 
 influences from which ancient Greek thought 
 seems to have been strangely free. For the 
 Greeks marred the perfect humanism of the 
 great men whom they worshipped, by imputing 
 to them divinity and its supernatural powers ; 
 while their science was eminently speculative 
 and often almost mystic in its character, aiming 
 at culture and not utility, at higher spirituality 
 and more intense reverence for law, rather than 
 at the increased facilities of locomotion and the 
 cheap production of common things about which 
 our modern scientific school ceases not to boast. 
 And lastly, and perhaps chiefly, we must re- 
 member that the ‘ plague spot of all Greek 
 states/ as one of their own writers has called it, 
 was the terrible insecurity to life and property 
 which resulted from the factions and revolutions 
 which ceased not to trouble Greece at all times, 
 raising a spirit of fanaticism such as religion 
 raised in the middle ages of Europe. 
 
 These considerations, then, w T ill enable us to 
 understand first how it was that, radical and 
 unscrupulous reformers as the Greek political 
 theorists were, yet, their end once attained, no 
 modern conservatives raised such outcry against 
 the slightest innovation. Even acknowledged 
 improvements in such things as the games of 
 children or the modes of music were regarded 
 K 
 
146 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 by them with feelings of extreme apprehension 
 as the herald of the drapeau rouge of reform. 
 And secondly, it will show us how it was that 
 Polybius found his ideal in the commonwealth 
 of Rome, and Aristotle, like Mr. Bright, in the 
 middle classes. Polybius, however, is not con- 
 tent merely with pointing out his ideal state, 
 but enters at considerable length into the ques- 
 tion of those general laws whose consideration 
 forms the chief essential of the philosophy of 
 history. 
 
 He starts by accepting the general principle 
 that all things are fated to decay (which I 
 noticed in the case of Plato), and that ‘as iron 
 produces rust and as wood breeds the animals 
 that destroy it, so every state has in it the seeds 
 of its own corruption.' He is not, however, 
 content to rest there, but proceeds to deal with 
 the more immediate causes of revolutions, which 
 he says are twofold in nature, either external or 
 internal. Now, the former, depending as they 
 do on the synchronous conjunction of other 
 events outside the sphere of scientific estimation, 
 are from their very character incalculable ; but 
 the latter, though assuming many forms, always 
 result from the over-great preponderance of any 
 single element to the detriment of the others, 
 the rational law lying at the base of all varieties 
 of political changes being that stability can result 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 147 
 
 only from the statical equilibrium produced by 
 the counteraction of opposing parts, since the 
 more simple a constitution is the more it is in- 
 secure. Plato had pointed out before how the 
 extreme liberty of a democracy always resulted 
 in despotism, but Polybius analyses the law and 
 shows the scientific principles on which it rests. 
 
 The doctrine of the instability of pure consti- 
 tutions forms an important era in the philosophy 
 of history. Its special applicability to the politics 
 of our own day has been illustrated in the rise of 
 the great Napoleon, when the French state had 
 lost those divisions of caste and prejudice, of 
 landed aristocracy and moneyed interest, insti- 
 tutions in which the vulgar see only barriers to 
 Liberty but which are indeed the only possible 
 defences against the coming of that periodic 
 Sirius of politics, the rrpavvos £k 7rpo(TTaTu<rjs 
 
 There is a principle which Tocqueville never 
 wearies of explaining, and which has been sub- 
 sumed by Mr. Herbert Spencer under that 
 general law common to all organic bodies which 
 we call the Instability of the Homogeneous. 
 The various manifestations of this law, as shown 
 in the normal, regular revolutions and evolutions 
 of the different forms of government, 1 are ex- 
 
 1 Polybius, vi. 9, glvttj TroXireiCov clvclkijkXojo'is, avrr) (frijcreus 
 otKovofiLa. 
 
143 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 pounded with great clearness by Polybius, who 
 claimed for his theory in the Thucydidean spirit, 
 that it is a Krrj/jLa cs det, not a mere dyomayxa es 
 to 7ra/oayp7}/za, and that a knowledge of it will 
 enable the impartial observer 1 to discover at 
 any time what period of its constitutional evolu- 
 tion any particular state has already reached and 
 into what form it will be next differentiated, 
 though possibly the exact time of the changes 
 may be more or less uncertain. 2 
 
 Now in this necessarily incomplete account of 
 the laws of political revolutions as expounded by 
 Polybius enough perhaps has been said to show 
 what is his true position in the rational develop- 
 ment of the ‘Idea’ which I have called the 
 Philosophy of History, because it is the unifying 
 of history. Seen darkly as it is through the 
 glass of religion in the pages of Herodotus, more 
 metaphysical than scientific with Thucydides, 
 Plato strove to seize it by the eagle-flight of 
 speculation, to reach it with the eager grasp of 
 a soul impatient of those slower and surer 
 inductive methods which Aristotle, in his 
 trenchant criticism of his great master, showed 
 were more brillant than any vague theory, if 
 the test of brilliancy is truth. 
 
 1 %w/ns opyrjs t} (pdovov ttolov/icvos tt]v airodei^iv. 
 
 2 The various stages are <nJ<rra<ns, av^rjais, atc^r), /JLera- 
 {3o\rj is Toti/J.TraXw. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 149 
 
 What then is the position of Polybius ? Does 
 any new method remain for him ? Polybius was 
 one of those many men who are born too late to 
 be original. To Thucydides belongs the honour 
 of being the first in the history of Greek thought 
 to discern the supreme calm of law and order 
 underlying the fitful storms of life, and Plato 
 and Aristotle each represents a great new prin- 
 ciple. To Polybius belongs the office — how 
 noble an office he made it his writings show — 
 of making more explicit the ideas which were 
 implicit in his predecessors, of showing that 
 they were of wider applicability and perhaps of 
 deeper meaning than they had seemed before, 
 of examining with more minuteness the laws 
 which they had discovered, and finally of pointing 
 out more clearly than any one had done the 
 range of science and the means it offered for 
 analysing the present and predicting what was 
 to come. His office thus was to gather up what 
 they had left, to give their principles new life 
 by a wider application. 
 
 Polybius ends this great diapason of Greek 
 thought. When the philosophy of history 
 appears next, as in Plutarch's tract on ‘ Why 
 God's anger is delayed,' the pendulum of thought 
 had swung back to where it began. His theory 
 was introduced to the Romans under the cultured 
 style of Cicero, and was welcomed by them as 
 
150 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 the philosophical panegyric of their state. The 
 last notice of it in Latin literature is in the 
 pages of Tacitus, who alludes to the stable 
 polity formed out of these elements as a con- 
 stitution easier to commend than to produce and 
 in no case lasting. Yet Polybius had seen the 
 future with no uncertain eye, and had prophesied 
 the rise of the Empire from the unbalanced 
 power of the ochlocracy fifty years and more 
 before there was joy in the Julian household 
 over the birth of that boy who, borne to power 
 as the champion of the people, died wearing the 
 purple of a king. 
 
 No attitude of historical criticism is more 
 important than the means by which the ancients 
 attained to the philosophy of history. The 
 principle of heredity can be exemplified in 
 literature as well as in organic life : Aristotle, 
 Plato and Polybius are the lineal ancestors of 
 Fichte and Hegel, of Vico and Cousin, of 
 Montesquieu and Tocqueville. 
 
 As my aim is not to give an account of 
 historians but to point out those great thinkers 
 whose methods have furthered the advance of 
 this spirit of historical criticism, I shall pass over 
 those annalists and chroniclers who intervened 
 between Thucydides and Polybius. Yet perhaps 
 it may serve to throw new light on the real 
 nature of this spirit and its intimate connection 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 151 
 
 with all other forms of advanced thought if I 
 give some estimate of the character and rise of 
 those many influences prejudicial to the scientific 
 study of history which cause such a wide gap 
 between these two historians. 
 
 Foremost among these is the growing influence 
 of rhetoric and the Isocratean school, which 
 seems to have regarded history as an arena for 
 the display of either pathos or paradoxes, not a 
 scientific investigation into laws. 
 
 The new age is the age of style. The same 
 spirit of exclusive attention to form which made 
 Euripides often, like Swinburne, prefer music to 
 meaning and melody to morality, which gave to 
 the later Greek statues that refined effeminacy, 
 that overstrained gracefulness of attitude, was 
 felt in the sphere of history. The rules laid 
 down for historical composition are those relating 
 to the aesthetic value of digressions, the legality 
 of employing more than one metaphor in the 
 same sentence, and the like ; and historians 
 are ranked not by their power of estimating 
 evidence but by the goodness of the Greek 
 they write. 
 
 I must note also the important influence on 
 literature exercised by Alexander the Great ; 
 for while his travels encouraged the more 
 accurate research of geography, the very splen- 
 dour of his achievements seems to have brought 
 
152 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 history again into the sphere of romance. The 
 appearance of all great men in the world is 
 followed invariably by the rise of that mytho- 
 poeic spirit and that tendency to look for the 
 marvellous, which is so fatal to true historical 
 criticism. An Alexander, a Napoleon, a Francis 
 of Assisi and a Mahomet are thought to be 
 outside the limiting conditions of rational law, 
 just as comets were supposed to be not very 
 long ago. While the founding of that city 
 of Alexandria, in which Western and Eastern 
 thought met with such strange result to both, 
 diverted the critical tendencies of the Greek 
 spirit into questions of grammar, philology and 
 the like, the narrow, artificial atmosphere of 
 that University town (as we may call it) was 
 fatal to the development of that independent 
 and speculative spirit of research which strikes 
 out new methods of inquiry, of which historical 
 criticism is one. 
 
 The Alexandrines combined a great love of 
 learning with an ignorance of the true principles 
 of research, an enthusiastic spirit for accumu- 
 lating materials with a wonderful incapacity 
 to use them. Not among the hot sands of 
 Egypt, or the Sophists of Athens, but from the 
 very heart of Greece rises the man of genius on 
 whose influence in the evolution of the philo- 
 sophy of history I have a short time ago dwelt. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 153 
 
 Born in the serene and pure air of the clear 
 uplands of Arcadia, Polybius may be said to 
 reproduce in his work the character of the place 
 which gave him birth. For, of all the historians 
 — I do not say of antiquity but of all time — none 
 is more rationalistic than he, none more free 
 from any belief in the f visions and omens, the 
 monstrous legends, the grovelling superstitions 
 and unmanly craving for the supernatural * (Seicri- 
 Saifiovias ayevvois Kal Teparctas yvvaiKwSovs x ) 
 which he is compelled to notice himself as the 
 characteristics of some of the historians who 
 preceded him. Fortunate in the land which 
 bore him, he was no less blessed in the wondrous 
 time of his birth. For, representing in himself 
 the spiritual supremacy of the Greek intellect 
 and allied in bonds of chivalrous friendship to 
 the world-conqueror of his day, he seems led as 
 it were by the hand of fate e to comprehend/ as 
 has been said, f more clearly than the Romans 
 themselves the historical position of Rome/ and 
 to discern with greater insight than all other 
 men could those two great resultants of ancient 
 civilization, the material empire of the city of 
 the seven hills, and the intellectual sovereignty 
 of Hellas. 
 
 Before his own day, he says , 2 the events of the 
 
 1 Polybius, xii. 24. 
 
 2 Polybius, i. 4, viii. 4, specially ; and really passim. 
 
154 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 world were unconnected and separate and the 
 histories confined to particular countries. Now, 
 for the first time the universal empire of the 
 Romans rendered a universal history possible . 1 
 This, then, is the august motive of his work : to 
 trace the gradual rise of this Italian city from 
 the days when the first legion crossed the 
 narrow strait of Messina and landed on the 
 fertile fields of Sicily to the time when Corinth 
 in the East and Carthage in the West fell before 
 the resistless wave of empire and the eagles of 
 Rome passed on the wings of universal victory 
 from Calpe and the Pillars of Hercules to Syria 
 and the Nile. At the same time he recognized 
 that the scheme of Rome’s empire was worked 
 out under the aegis of God’s will . 2 For, as one 
 of the Middle Age scribes most truly says, the 
 tvx 7 ) °f Polybius is that power which we 
 Christians call God ; the second aim, as one 
 may call it, of his history is to point out the 
 rational and human and natural causes which 
 brought this result, distinguishing, as we should 
 say, between God’s mediate and immediate 
 government of the world. 
 
 With any direct intervention of God in the 
 normal development of Man, he will have 
 nothing to do : still less with any idea of chance 
 as a factor in the phenomena of life. Chance 
 1 He makes one exception. 2 Polybius, viii. 4. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 155 
 
 and miracles, he says, are mere expressions for 
 our ignorance of rational causes. The spirit of 
 rationalism which we recognized in Herodotus 
 as a vague uncertain attitude and which appears 
 in Thucydides as a consistent attitude of mind 
 never argued about or even explained, is by 
 Polybius analysed and formulated as the great 
 instrument of historical research. 
 
 Herodotus, while believing on principle in the 
 supernatural, yet was sceptical at times. Thucy- 
 dides simply ignored the supernatural. He did 
 not discuss it, but he annihilated it by explaining 
 history without it. Polybius enters at length 
 into the whole question and explains its origin 
 and the method of treating it. Herodotus 
 would have believed in Scipio’s dream. Thucy- 
 dides would have ignored it entirely. Polybius 
 explains it. He is the culmination of the 
 rational progression of Dialectic. ‘ Nothing/ he 
 says, c shows a foolish mind more than the 
 attempt to account for any phenomena on the 
 principle of chance or supernatural intervention. 
 History is a search for rational causes, and 
 there is nothing in the world — even those pheno- 
 mena which seem to us the most remote from 
 law and improbable — which is not the logical 
 and inevitable result of certain rational ante 
 cedents/ 
 
 Some things, of course, are to be rejected a 
 
156 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 priori without entering into the subject: ‘As 
 regards such miracles/ he says/ ‘as that on a 
 certain statue of Artemis rain or snow never 
 falls though the statue stands in the open air, 
 or that those who enter God's shrine in Arcadia 
 lose their natural shadows, I cannot really be 
 expected to argue upon the subject. For these 
 things are not only utterly improbable but 
 absolutely impossible/ 
 
 * For us to argue reasonably on an acknow- 
 ledged absurdity is as vain a task as trying to 
 catch water in a sieve ; it is really to admit the 
 possibility of the supernatural, which is the very 
 point at issue/ 
 
 What Polybius felt was that to admit the 
 possibility of a miracle is to annihilate the 
 possibility of history: for just as scientific and 
 chemical experiments would be either impossible 
 or useless if exposed to the chance of continued 
 interference on the part of some foreign body, 
 so the laws and principles which govern history, 
 the causes of phenomena, the evolution of pro- 
 gress, the whole science, in a word, of man’s 
 dealings with his own race and with nature, will 
 remain a sealed book to him who admits the 
 possibility of extra-natural interference. 
 
 The stories of miracles, then, are to be re- 
 jected on a priori rational grounds, but in the 
 1 Polybius, xvi. 12. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 157 
 
 case of events which we know to have happened 
 the scientific historian will not rest till he 
 has discovered their natural causes which, for 
 instance, in the case of the wonderful rise of 
 the Roman Empire — the most marvellous thing, 
 Polybius says, which God ever brought about 1 — 
 are to be found in the excellence of their con- 
 stitution (rr; tt)s 7roAiT€tas), the wisdom 
 
 of their advisers, the splendid military arrange- 
 ments, and their superstition (rr^ dcto-iSai/Aon'ct). 
 For while Polybius regarded the revealed re- 
 ligion as, of course, objective reality of truth, 2 
 he laid great stress on its moral subjective 
 influence, going, in one passage on the subject, 
 even so far as almost to excuse the introduction 
 of the supernatural in very small quantities into 
 history on account of the extremely good effect 
 it would have on pious people. 
 
 But perhaps there is no passage in the whole 
 of ancient and modern history which breathes 
 such a manly and splendid spirit of rationalism 
 as one preserved to us in the Vatican — strange 
 resting-place for it ! — in which he treats of the 
 
 1 Polybius, viii. 4 : to Trapabo^oTCLTOV KaO' ij/Jids Zpyov 
 7} tux V cweriXetre ; tovto d’eari to iravTa ra y viopi^bfieva 
 pibpr] tt)s oUovfievrjs vtto fiLav a pxw Ka ' L SvvaaTelav ayayeiv, 
 6 irpbTepov oi>x eupLcnceTai yeyovbs. 
 
 2 Polybius resembled Gibbon in many respects. Like him 
 he held that all religions were to the philosopher equally false, 
 to the vulgar equally true, to the statesman equally useful. 
 
158 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 terrible decay of population which has fallen on 
 his native land in his own day, and which by 
 the general orthodox public was regarded as a 
 special judgment of God, sending childlessness 
 on women as a punishment for the sins of the 
 people. For it was a disaster quite without 
 parallel in the history of the land, and entirely 
 unforeseen by any of its political-economy 
 writers who, on the contrary, were always 
 anticipating that danger would arise from an 
 excess of population overrunning its means of 
 subsistence, and becoming unmanageable through 
 its size. Polybius, how'ever, will have nothing 
 to do with either priest or worker of miracles in 
 this matter. He will not even seek that e sacred 
 Heart of Greece/ Delphi, Apollo’s shrine, whose 
 inspiration even Thucydides admitted and before 
 whose wisdom Socrates bowed. How foolish, he 
 says, were the man who on this matter would 
 pray to God. We must search for the rational 
 causes, and the causes are seen to be clear, and 
 the method of prevention also. He then proceeds 
 to notice how all this arose from the general 
 reluctance to marriage and to bearing the 
 expense of educating a large family which 
 resulted from the carelessness and avarice of 
 the men of his day, and he explains on entirely 
 rational principles the whole of this apparently 
 supernatural judgment. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 159 
 
 Now, it is to be borne in mind that while his 
 rejection of miracles as violation of inviolable 
 laws is entirely a priori — for, discussion of such 
 a matter is, of course, impossible for a rational 
 thinker — yet his rejection of supernatural inter- 
 vention rests entirely on the scientific grounds 
 of the necessity of looking for natural causes. 
 And he is quite logical in maintaining his 
 position on these principles. For, where it is 
 either difficult or impossible to assign any 
 rational cause for phenomena, or to discover 
 their laws, he acquiesces reluctantly in the 
 alternative of admitting some extra-natural 
 interference which his essentially scientific 
 method of treating the matter has logically 
 forced on him, approving, for instance, of 
 prayers for rain, on the express ground that 
 the laws of meteorology had not yet been 
 ascertained. He would, of course, have been 
 the first to welcome our modern discoveries 
 in the matter. The passage in question is in 
 every way one of the most interesting in his 
 whole work, not, of course, as signifying any 
 inclination on his part to acquiesce in the super- 
 natural, but because it shows how essentially 
 logical and rational his method of argument was, 
 and how candid and fair his mind. 
 
 Having now examined Polybius’s attitude 
 towards the supernatural and the general ideas 
 
160 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 which guided his research, I will proceed to 
 examine the method he pursued in his scientific 
 investigation of the complex phenomena of life. 
 For, as I have said before in the course of this 
 essay, what is important in all great writers is 
 not so much the results they arrive at as the 
 methods they pursue. The increased knowledge 
 of facts may alter any conclusion in history as in 
 physical science, and the canons of speculative 
 historical credibility must be acknowledged to 
 appeal rather to that subjective attitude of mind 
 which we call the historic sense than to any 
 formulated objective rules. But a scientific 
 method is a gain for all time, and the true if 
 not the only progress of historical criticism con- 
 sists in the improvement of the instruments of 
 research. 
 
 Now first, as regards his conception of history, 
 I have already pointed out that it was to him 
 essentially a search for causes, a problem to be 
 solved, not a picture to be painted, a scientific 
 investigation into laws and tendencies, not a 
 mere romantic account of startling incident 
 and wondrous adventure. Thucydides, in the 
 opening of his great work, had sounded the first 
 note of the scientific conception of history. 
 ‘ The absence of romance in my pages/ he says, 
 f will, I fear, detract somewhat from its value, 
 but I have written my work not to be the 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 101 
 
 exploit of a passing hour but as the possession of 
 all time/ 1 Polybius follows with words almost 
 entirely similar. If, he says, we banish from 
 history the consideration of causes, methods and 
 motives (to S ta rt, kcu i rws, kcu t'ivos ycxpiy), and 
 refuse to consider how far the result of anything 
 is its rational consequent, what is left is a mere 
 ayiDVLcrfjLa , not a a, an oratorical essay which 
 
 may give pleasure for the moment, but which 
 is entirely without any scientific value for the 
 explanation of the future. Elsewhere he says 
 that ‘ history robbed of the exposition of its 
 causes and laws is a profitless thing, though it 
 may allure a fool/ And all through his history 
 the same point is put forward and exemplified 
 in every fashion. 
 
 So far for the conception of history. Now 
 for the groundwork. As regards the character 
 of the phenomena to be selected by the scientific 
 investigator, Aristotle had laid down the general 
 formula that nature should be studied in her nor- 
 mal manifestations. Polybius, true to his character 
 of applying explicitly the principles implicit in 
 the work of others, follows out the doctrine of 
 Aristotle, and lays particular stress on the 
 rational and undisturbed character of the de- 
 
 1 Cf. Polybius, xii. 25, \ey ofxevov to yeyovos xpvxa- 
 
 ycoyei fi£v y a >0eXe? 8’ov8tv‘ irpocrTeddarjs dbrijs airias £ yKapiros 
 i i laropias ylyveTau XPV GL ^’ 
 
 L 
 
162 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 velopment of the Roman constitution as affording 
 special facilities for the discovery of the laws of 
 its progress. Political revolutions result from 
 causes either external or internal. The former 
 are mere disturbing forces which lie outside the 
 sphere of scientific calculation. It is the latter 
 which are important for the establishing of 
 principles and the elucidation of the sequences 
 of rational evolution. 
 
 He thus may be said to have anticipated one 
 of the most important truths of the modern 
 methods of investigation: I mean that principle 
 which lays down that just as the study of 
 physiology should precede the study of path- 
 ology, just as the laws of disease are best 
 discovered by the phenomena presented in 
 health, so the method of arriving at all great 
 social and political truths is by the investiga- 
 tion of those cases where development has been 
 normal, rational and undisturbed. 
 
 The critical canon that the more a people has 
 been interfered with, the more difficult it 
 becomes to generalize the laws of its progress 
 and to analyse the separate forces of its civiliza- 
 tion, is one the validity of which is now 
 generally recognized by those who pretend to 
 a scientific treatment of all history : and while 
 we have seen that Aristotle anticipated it in a 
 general formula, to Polybius belongs the honour 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1G3 
 
 of being the first to apply it explicitly in the 
 sphere of history. 
 
 I have shown how to this great scientific 
 historian the motive of his work was essentially 
 the search for causes ; and true to his analytical 
 spirit he is careful to examine what a cause 
 really is and in what part of the antecedents 
 of any consequent it is to be looked for. To 
 give an illustration : As regards the origin of the 
 war with Perseus, some assigned as causes the 
 expulsion of Abrupolis by Perseus, the expedi- 
 tion of the latter to Delphi, the plot against 
 Eumenes and the seizure of the ambassadors in 
 Boeotia ; of these incidents the two former, 
 Polybius points out, were merely the pretexts, 
 the two latter merely the occasions of the war. 
 The war was really a legacy left to Perseus by 
 his father, who was determined to fight it 
 out with Rome . 1 
 
 Here as elsewhere he is not originating any 
 new idea. Thucydides had pointed out the differ- 
 ence between the real and the alleged cause, and 
 the Aristotelian dictum about revolutions, ov i repl 
 /UK piov a\\ 3 £k puKpajv, draws the distinction 
 between cause and occasion with the brilliancy 
 of an epigram. But the explicit and rational 
 investigation of the difference between a ma, 
 dp\r) and irpofyacris was reserved for Polybius. 
 
 1 Polybius, xxii. 22 . 
 
1G4 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 No canon of historical criticism can be said to 
 be of more real value than that involved in this 
 distinction, and the overlooking of it has filled 
 our histories with the contemptible accounts of 
 the intrigues of courtiers and of kings and the 
 petty plottings of backstairs influence — par- 
 ticulars interesting, no doubt, to those who 
 would ascribe the Reformation to Anne Boleyn’s 
 pretty face, the Persian war to the influence of 
 a doctor or a curtain-lecture from Atossa, or the 
 French Revolution to Madame de Maintenon, 
 but without any value for those who aim at any 
 scientific treatment of history. 
 
 But the question of method, to which I am 
 compelled always to return, is not yet exhausted. 
 There is another aspect in which it may be 
 regarded, and I shall now proceed to treat 
 of it. 
 
 One of the greatest difficulties with which the 
 modern historian has to contend is the enormous 
 complexity of the facts which come under his 
 notice : D’ Alembert’s suggestion that at the end 
 of every century a selection of facts should be 
 made and the rest burned (if it was really 
 intended seriously) could not, of course, be enter- 
 tained for a moment. A problem loses all its 
 value when it becomes simplified, and the world 
 would be all the poorer if the Sybil of History 
 burned her volumes. Besides, as Gibbon pointed 
 out, 'a Montesquieu will detect in the most 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 165 
 
 insignificant fact relations which the vulgar 
 overlook.’ 
 
 Nor can the scientific investigator of history 
 isolate the particular elements, which he desires 
 to examine, from disturbing and extraneous 
 causes, as the experimental chemist can do 
 (though sometimes, as in the case of lunatic 
 asylums and prisons, he is enabled to observe 
 phenomena in a certain degree of isolation). 
 So he is compelled either to use the deductive 
 mode of arguing from general laws or to employ 
 the method of abstraction which gives a fictitious 
 isolation to phenomena never so isolated in 
 actual existence. And this is exactly what 
 Polybius has done as well as Thucydides. For, 
 as has been well remarked, there is in the works 
 of these two writers a certain plastic unity of 
 type and motive ; whatever they write is pene- 
 trated through and through with a specific 
 quality, a singleness and concentration of purpose, 
 which we may contrast with the more compre- 
 hensive width as manifested not merely in the 
 modern mind, but also in Herodotus. Thucy- 
 dides, regarding society as influenced entirely 
 by political motives, took no account of forces of 
 a different nature, and consequently his results, 
 like those of most modern political economists, 
 have to be modified largely 1 before they come 
 
 1 I mean particularly as regards his sweeping denunciation 
 of the complete moral decadence of Greek society during the 
 
166 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 to correspond with what we know was the 
 actual state of fact. Similarly, Polybius will 
 deal only with those forces which tended to 
 bring the civilized world under the dominion of 
 Rome (ix. 1), and in the Thucydidean spirit 
 points out the want of picturesqueness and 
 romance in his pages which is the result of the 
 abstract method (to /xoroeiScs crwra^em), 
 being careful also to tell us that his rejection of 
 all other forces is essentially deliberate and the 
 result of a preconceived theory and by no means 
 due to carelessness of any kind. 
 
 Now, of the general value of the abstract 
 method and the legality of its employment in 
 the sphere of history, this is perhaps not the 
 suitable occasion for any discussion. It is, 
 however, in all ways worthy of note that 
 Polybius is not merely conscious of, but dwells 
 with particular weight on, the fact which is 
 usually urged as the strongest objection to the 
 employment of the abstract method — I mean 
 the conception of a society as a sort of human 
 organism whose parts are indissolubly connected 
 with one another and all affected when one 
 
 Peloponnesian War which, from what remains to us of 
 Athenian literature, we know must have been completely 
 exaggerated. Or, rather, he is looking at men merely in 
 their political dealings : and in politics the man who is 
 personally honourable and refined will not scruple to do 
 anything for his party. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 167 
 
 member is in any way agitated. This conception 
 of the organic nature of society appears first in 
 Plato and Aristotle, who apply it to cities. 
 Polybius, as his wont is, expands it to be a general 
 characteristic of all history. It is an idea of the 
 very highest importance, especially to a man like 
 Polybius whose thoughts are continually turned 
 towards the essential unity of history and the 
 impossibility of isolation. 
 
 Farther, as regards the particular method of 
 investigating that group of phenomena obtained 
 for him by the abstract method, he will adopt, 
 he tells us, neither the purely deductive nor the 
 purely inductive mode but the union of both. 
 In other words, he formally adopts that method 
 of analysis upon the importance of which I have 
 dwelt before. 
 
 And lastly, while, without doubt, enormous 
 simplicity in the elements under consideration 
 is the result of the employment of the abstract 
 method, even within the limit thus obtained a 
 certain selection must be made, and a selection 
 involves a theory. For the facts of life cannot be 
 tabulated with as great an ease as the colours of 
 birds and insects can be tabulated. Now, Polybius 
 points out that those phenomena particularly are 
 to be dwelt on which may serve as a TrapaSeiypa 
 or sample, and show the character of the ten- 
 dencies of the age as clearly as ‘a single drop from 
 
168 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 a full cask will be enough to disclose the nature 
 of the whole contents/ This recognition of the 
 importance of single facts, not in themselves but 
 because of the spirit they represent, is extremely 
 scientific ; for we know that from the single 
 bone, or tooth even, the anatomist can recreate 
 entirely the skeleton of the primeval horse, and 
 the botanist tell the character of the flora and 
 fauna of a district from a single specimen. 
 
 Regarding truth as f the most divine thing in 
 Nature/ the very c eye and light of history with- 
 out which it moves a blind thing/ Polybius 
 spared no pains in the acquisition of historical 
 materials or in the study of the sciences of 
 politics and war, which he considered were so 
 essential to the training of the scientific his- 
 torian, and the labour he took is mirrored in 
 the many ways in which he criticizes other 
 authorities. 
 
 There is something, as a rule, slightly con- 
 temptible about ancient criticism. The modern 
 idea of the critic as the interpreter, the ex- 
 pounder of the beauty and excellence of the 
 work he selects, seems quite unknown. No- 
 thing can be more captious or unfair, for 
 instance, than the method by which Aristotle 
 criticized the ideal state of Plato in his ethical 
 works, and the passages quoted by Polybius 
 from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 169 
 
 deserved the punning name given to him. But 
 in Polybius there is, I think, little of that bitter- 
 ness and pettiness of spirit which characterizes 
 most other writers, and an incidental story he 
 tells of his relations with one of the historians 
 whom he criticized show s that he was a man of 
 great courtesy and refinement of taste — as, in- 
 deed, befitted one who had lived always in the 
 society of those who w r ere of great and noble 
 birth. 
 
 Now, as regards the character of the canons 
 by which he criticizes the w orks of other authors, 
 in the majority of cases he employs simply his 
 own geographical and military knowledge, show- 
 ing, for instance, the impossibility in the accounts 
 given of Nabis’s march from Sparta simply by 
 his acquaintance with the spots in question ; or 
 the inconsistency of those of the battle of Issus ; 
 or of the accounts given by Ephorus of the 
 battles of Leuctra and Mantinea. In the latter 
 case he says, if any one will take the trouble to 
 measure out the ground of the site of the battle 
 and then test the manoeuvres given, he will find 
 how inaccurate the accounts are. 
 
 In other cases he appeals to public documents, 
 the importance of which he was ahvays foremost 
 in recognizing ; showing, for instance, by a docu- 
 ment in the public archives of Rhodes how 
 inaccurate were the accounts given of the battle 
 
170 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 of Lade by Zeno and Antisthenes. Or he ap- 
 peals to psychological probability,, rejecting, for 
 instance, the scandalous stories told of Philip of 
 Macedon, simply from the king’s general great- 
 ness of character, and arguing that a boy so well 
 educated and so respectably connected as Demo- 
 chares (xii. 14) could never have been guilty of 
 that of which evil rumour accused him. 
 
 But the chief object of his literary censure is 
 Timaeus, who had been so unsparing of his strict- 
 ures on others. The general point which he 
 makes against him, impugning his accuracy as a 
 historian, is that he derived his knowledge of 
 history not from the dangerous perils of a life of 
 action but in the secure indolence of a narrow 
 scholastic life. There is, indeed, no point on 
 which he is so vehement as this. e A history/ he 
 says, f written in a library gives as lifeless and as 
 inaccurate a picture of history as a painting 
 which is copied not from a living animal but 
 from a stuffed one.’ 
 
 There is more difference, he says in another 
 place, between the history of an eye-witness and 
 that of one whose knowledge comes from books, 
 than there is between the scenes of real life and 
 the fictitious landscapes of theatrical scenery. 
 Besides this, he enters into somewhat elaborate 
 detailed criticism of passages where he thought 
 Timaeus was following a wrong method and per- 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 171 
 
 verting truth, passages which it will be worth 
 while to examine in detail. 
 
 Timaeus, from the fact of there being a Roman 
 custom to shoot a war-horse on a stated day, 
 argued back to the Trojan origin of that people. 
 Polybius, on the other hand, points out that the 
 inference is quite unwarrantable, because horse- 
 sacrifices are ordinary institutions common to all 
 barbarous tribes. Timaeus here, as was so com- 
 mon with Greek writers, is arguing back from 
 some custom of the present to an historical event 
 in the past. Polybius really is employing the 
 comparative method, showing how the custom 
 was an ordinary step in the civilization of every 
 early people. 
 
 In another place, 1 he shows how illogical is 
 the scepticism of Timaeus as regards the exist- 
 ence of the Bull of Phalaris simply by appealing 
 to the statue of the Bull, which was still to be 
 seen in Carthage ; pointing out how impossible 
 it was, on any other theory except that it be- 
 longed to Phalaris, to account for the presence 
 in Carthage of a bull of this peculiar character 
 with a door between his shoulders. But one of 
 the great points which he uses against this Sicilian 
 historian is in reference to the question of the origin 
 of the Locrian colony. In accordance with the 
 received tradition on the subject, Aristotle had 
 1 Polybius, xii. 25. 
 
172 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 represented the Locrian colony as founded by 
 some Parthenidae or slaves’ children, as they were 
 called, a statement which seems to have roused 
 the indignation of Timaeus, who went to a good 
 deal of trouble to confute this theory. He does 
 so on the following grounds : — 
 
 First of all, he points out that in the ancient 
 days the Greeks had no slaves at all, so the 
 mention of them in the matter is an anachron- 
 ism ; and next he declares that he was shown in 
 the Greek city of Locris certain ancient inscrip- 
 tions in which their relation to the Italian city 
 was expressed in terms of the position between 
 parent and child, which showed also that mutual 
 rights of citizenship were accorded to each city. 
 Besides this, he appeals to various questions of 
 improbability as regards their international re- 
 lationship, on which Polybius takes diametrically 
 opposite grounds which hardly call for discussion. 
 And in favour of his own view he urges two 
 points more : first, that the Lacedaemonians being 
 allowed furlough for the purpose of seeing their 
 wives at home, it was unlikely that the Locrians 
 should not have had the same privilege ; and 
 next, that the Italian Locrians knew nothing of 
 the Aristotelian version and had, on the contrary, 
 very severe laws against adulterers, runaway 
 slaves and the like. Now, most of these ques- 
 tions rest on mere probability, which is always 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 173 
 
 such a subjective canon that an appeal to it is 
 rarely conclusive. I would note, however, as 
 regards the inscriptions which, if genuine, would 
 of course have settled the matter, that Polybius 
 looks on them as a mere invention on the part 
 of Timaeus, who, he remarks, gives no details 
 about them, though, as a rule, he is so over- 
 anxious to give chapter and verse for everything. 
 A somewhat more interesting point is that 
 where he attacks Timaeus for the introduction 
 of fictitious speeches into his narrative ; for on 
 this point Polybius seems to be far in advance 
 of the opinions held by literary men on the 
 subject not merely in his own day, but for 
 centuries after. 
 
 Herodotus had introduced speeches avowedly 
 dramatic and fictitious. Thucydides states clearly 
 that, where he was unable to find out what people 
 really said, he put down what they ought to have 
 said. Sallust alludes, it is true, to the fact of the 
 speech he puts into the mouth of the tribune 
 Memmius being essentially genuine, but the 
 speeches given in the senate on the occasion 
 of the Catilinarian conspiracy are very different 
 from the same orations as they appear in Cicero. 
 Livy makes his ancient Romans wrangle and 
 chop logic with all the subtlety of a Hortensius 
 or a Scaevola. And even in later days, when 
 shorthand reporters attended the debates of the 
 
174 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 senate and a Daily Navs was published in Rome, 
 we find that one of the most celebrated speeches 
 in Tacitus (that in which the Emperor Claudius 
 gives the Gauls their freedom) is shown, by an 
 inscription discovered recently at Lugdunum, to 
 be entirely fabulous. 
 
 Upon the other hand, it must be borne in 
 mind that these speeches were not intended to 
 deceive ; they were regarded merely as a certain 
 dramatic element which it was allowable to 
 introduce into history for the purpose of giving 
 more life and reality to the narration, and were 
 to be criticized, not as we should, by arguing 
 how in an age before shorthand was known 
 such a report was possible or how, in the failure 
 of written documents, tradition could bring 
 down such an accurate verbal account, but by 
 the higher test of their psychological probability 
 as regards the persons in whose mouths they 
 are placed. An ancient historian in answer to 
 modern criticism would say, probably, that these 
 fictitious speeches were in reality more truthful 
 than the actual ones, just as Aristotle claimed 
 for poetry a higher degree of truth in com- 
 parison to history. The whole point is inter- 
 esting as showing how far in advance of his age 
 Polybius may be said to have been. 
 
 The last scientific historian, it is possible to 
 gather from his writings what he considered 
 
TIIE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 175 
 
 were the characteristics of the ideal writer of 
 history ; and no small light will be thrown on 
 the progress of historical criticism if we strive 
 to collect and analyse what in Polybius are 
 more or less scattered expressions. The ideal 
 historian must be contemporary with the events 
 he describes, or removed from them by one 
 generation only. Where it is possible, he is to 
 be an eye-witness of what he writes of ; where 
 that is out of his power he is to test all tradi- 
 tions and stories carefully and not to be ready 
 to accept what is plausible in place of what is 
 true. He is to be no bookworm living aloof 
 from the experiences of the world in the artificial 
 isolation of a university town, but a politician, 
 a soldier, and a traveller, a man not merely of 
 thought but of action, one who can do great 
 things as well as write of them, who in the 
 sphere of history could be what Byron and 
 iEschylus were in the sphere of poetry, at once 
 le chantre et le heros. 
 
 He is to keep before his eyes the fact that 
 chance is merely a synonym for our ignorance ; 
 that the reign of law pervades the domain of 
 history as much as it does that of political 
 science. He is to accustom himself to look on 
 all occasions for rational and natural causes. 
 And while he is to recognize the practical utility 
 of the supernatural, in an educational point of 
 
176 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 view, he is not himself to indulge in such 
 intellectual beating of the air as to admit the 
 possibility of the violation of inviolable laws, 
 or to argue in a sphere wherein argument is 
 a priori annihilated. He is to be free from 
 all bias towards friend and country ; he is to 
 be courteous and gentle in criticism ; he is 
 not to regard history as a mere opportunity 
 for splendid and tragic writing ; nor is he to 
 falsify truth for the sake of a paradox or an 
 epigram. 
 
 While acknowledging the importance of par- 
 ticular facts as samples of higher truths, he is 
 to take a broad and general view of humanity. 
 He is to deal with the whole race and with the 
 world, not with particular tribes or separate 
 countries. He is to bear in mind that the 
 world is really an organism wherein no one 
 part can be moved without the others being 
 affected also. He is to distinguish between 
 cause and occasion, between the influence of 
 general laws and particular fancies, and he is 
 to remember that the greatest lessons of the 
 world are contained in history and that it is 
 the historian's duty to manifest them so as to 
 save nations from following those unwise policies 
 which always lead to dishonour and ruin, and to 
 teach individuals to apprehend by the intel- 
 lectual culture of history those truths which 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 177 
 
 else they would have to learn in the bitter 
 school of experience. 
 
 Now, as regards his theory of the necessity 
 of the historian's being contemporary with the 
 events he describes, so far as the historian 
 is a mere narrator the remark is undoubtedly 
 true. But to appreciate the harmony and 
 rational position of the facts of a great epoch, 
 to discover its laws, the causes which produced 
 it and the effects which it generates, the 
 scene must be viewed from a certain height 
 and distance to be completely apprehended. 
 A thoroughly contemporary historian such as 
 Lord Clarendon or Thucydides is in reality 
 part of the history he criticizes ; and, in the 
 case of such contemporary historians as Fabius 
 and Philistus, Polybius is compelled to acknow- 
 ledge that they are misled by patriotic and 
 other considerations. Against Polybius himself 
 no such accusation can be made. He indeed 
 of all men is able, as from some lofty tower, 
 to discern the whole tendency of the ancient 
 world, the triumph of Roman institutions and 
 of Greek thought which is the last message of 
 the old world and, in a more spiritual sense, has 
 become the Gospel of the new. 
 
 One thing indeed he did not see, or if he saw 
 it, he thought but little of it — how from the 
 East there was spreading over the world, as a 
 M 
 
178 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 wave spreads, a spiritual inroad of new religions 
 from the time when the Pessinuntine mother of 
 the gods, a shapeless mass of stone, was brought 
 to the eternal city by her holiest citizen, to the 
 day when the ship Castor and Pollux stood in at 
 Puteoli, and St. Paul turned his face towards 
 martyrdom and victory at Rome. Polybius was 
 able to predict, from his knowledge of the 
 causes of revolutions and the tendencies of the 
 various forms of governments, the uprising of 
 that democratic tone of thought which, as soon 
 as a seed is sown in the murder of the Gracchi 
 and the exile of Marius, culminated as all demo- 
 cratic movements do culminate, in the supreme 
 authority of one man, the lordship of the world 
 under the world’s rightful lord, Caius Julius 
 Caesar. This, indeed, he saw in no uncertain 
 way. But the turning of all men’s hearts to 
 the East, the first glimmering of that splendid 
 dawn which broke over the hills of Galilee and 
 flooded the earth like wine, was hidden from 
 his eyes. 
 
 There are many points in the description of 
 the ideal historian which one may compare to 
 the picture which Plato has given us of the ideal 
 philosopher. They are both ‘ spectators of all 
 time and all existence.’ Nothing is contemptible 
 in their eyes, for all things have a meaning, and 
 they both walk in august reasonableness before 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 179 
 
 all men, conscious of the workings of God yet 
 free from all terror of mendicant priest or 
 vagrant miracle-worker. But the parallel ends 
 here. For the one stands aloof from the world- 
 storm of sleet and hail, his eyes fixed on distant 
 and sunlit heights, loving knowledge for the 
 sake of knowledge and wisdom for the joy of 
 wisdom, while the other is an eager actor in the 
 world ever seeking to apply his knowledge to 
 useful things. Both equally desire truth, but 
 the one because of its utility, the other for its 
 beauty. The historian regards it as the rational 
 principle of all true history, and no more. To 
 the other it comes as an all-pervading and 
 mystic enthusiasm, * like the desire of strong 
 wine, the craving of ambition, the passionate 
 love of what is beautiful.’ 
 
 Still, though we miss in the historian those 
 higher and more spiritual qualities which the 
 philosopher of the Academe alone of all men 
 possessed, we must not blind ourselves to the 
 merits of that great rationalist who seems to 
 have anticipated the very latest words of modern 
 science. Nor yet is he to be regarded merely 
 in the narrow light in which he is estimated by 
 most modem critics, as the explicit champion 
 of rationalism and nothing more. For he is 
 connected with another idea, the course of 
 which is as the course of that great river of his 
 
180 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 native Arcadia which, springing from some arid 
 and sun-bleached rock, gathers strength and 
 beauty as it flows till it reaches the asphodel 
 meadows of Olympia and the light and laughter 
 of Ionian waters. 
 
 For in him we can discern the first notes of 
 that great cult of the seven-hilled city which 
 made Virgil write his epic and Livy his history, 
 which found in Dante its highest exponent, 
 which dreamed of an Empire where the Emperor 
 would care for the bodies and the Pope for the 
 souls of men, and so has passed into the 
 conception of God’s spiritual empire and the 
 universal brotherhood of man and widened into 
 the huge ocean of universal thought as the 
 Peneus loses itself in the sea. 
 
 Polybius is the last scientific historian of 
 Greece. The writer who seems fittingly to 
 complete the progress of thought is a writer 
 of biographies only. I will not here touch on 
 Plutarch’s employment of the inductive method 
 as shown in his constant use of inscription and 
 statue, of public document and building and 
 the like, because they involve no new method. 
 It is his attitude towards miracles of which I 
 desire to treat. 
 
 Plutarch is philosophic enough to see that in 
 the sense of a violation of the laws of nature a 
 miracle is impossible. It is absurd, he says, to 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 181 
 
 imagine that the statue of a saint can speak, 
 and that an inanimate object not possessing the 
 vocal organs should be able to utter an articu- 
 late sound. Upon the other hand, he protests 
 against science imagining that, by explaining 
 the natural causes of things, it has explained 
 away their transcendental meaning. ‘When the 
 tears on the cheek of some holy statue have been 
 analysed into the moisture which certain tem- 
 peratures produce on wood and marble, it yet 
 by no means follows that they were not a sign 
 of grief and mourning set there by God Himself/ 
 When Lampon saw in the prodigy of the one- 
 horned ram the omen of the supreme rule of 
 Pericles, and when Anaxagoras showed that 
 the abnormal development was the rational 
 resultant of the peculiar formation of the skull, 
 the dreamer and the man of science were 
 both right ; it was the business of the latter to 
 consider how the prodigy came about, of the 
 former to show why it was so formed and what 
 it so portended. The progression of thought is 
 exemplified in all particulars. Herodotus had 
 a glimmering sense of the impossibility of a 
 violation of nature. Thucydides ignored the 
 supernatural. Polybius rationalized it. Plutarch 
 raises it to its mystical heights again, though he 
 bases it on law. In a word, Plutarch felt that 
 while science brings the supernatural down to 
 
182 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 the natural, jet ultimately all that is natural 
 is really supernatural. To him, as to many of 
 our own day, religion was that transcendental 
 attitude of the mind which, contemplating a 
 world resting on inviolable law, is yet comforted 
 and seeks to worship God not in the violation 
 but in the fulfilment of nature. 
 
 It may seem paradoxical to quote in connec- 
 tion with the priest of Chaeronea such a pure 
 rationalist as Mr. Herbert Spencer ; yet when 
 we read as the last message of modern science 
 that f when the equation of life has been reduced 
 to its lowest terms the symbols are symbols still/ 
 mere signs, that is, of that unknown reality which 
 underlies all matter and all spirit, we may feel 
 how over the wide strait of centuries thought 
 calls to thought and how Plutarch has a higher 
 position than is usually claimed for him in the 
 progress of the Greek intellect. 
 
 And, indeed, it seems that not merely the 
 importance of Plutarch himself but also that of 
 the land of his birth in the evolution of Greek 
 civilization has been passed over by modern 
 critics. To us, indeed, the bare rock to which 
 the Parthenon serves as a crown, and which 
 lies between Colonus and Attica’s violet hills, 
 will always be the holiest spot in the land of 
 Greece : and Delphi will come next, and then 
 the meadows of Eurotas where that noble people 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 183 
 
 lived who represented in Hellenic thought the 
 reaction of the law of duty against the law of 
 beauty, the opposition of conduct to culture. 
 Yet, as one stands on the crytc ttyj oSos of 
 Cithaeron and looks out on the great double 
 plain of Bceotia, the enormous importance of 
 the division of Hellas comes to one's mind with 
 great force. To the north is Orchomenus and 
 the Minyan treasure-house, seat of those mer- 
 chant princes of Phoenicia who brought to Greece 
 the knowledge of letters and the art of working 
 in gold. Thebes is at our feet with the gloom 
 of the terrible legends of Greek tragedy still 
 lingering about it, the birthplace of Pindar, 
 the nurse of Epaminondas and the Sacred 
 Band. 
 
 And from out of the plain where f Mars loved 
 to dance,' rises the Muses' haunt, Helicon, by 
 whose silver streams Corinna and Hesiod sang. 
 While far away under the white aegis of those 
 snow-capped mountains lies Chaeronea and the 
 Lion plain where with vain chivalry the Greeks 
 strove to check Macedon first and afterwards 
 Rome ; Chaeronea, where in the Martinmas 
 summer of Greek civilization Plutarch rose from 
 the drear waste of a dying religion as the after- 
 math rises when the mowers think they have 
 left the field bare. 
 
 Greek philosophy began and ended in scepti- 
 
184 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 cism : the first and the last word of Greek history 
 was Faith. 
 
 Splendid thus in its death, like winter sunsets, 
 the Greek religion passed away into the horror 
 of night. For the Cimmerian darkness was at 
 hand, and when the schools of Athens were 
 closed and the statue of Athena broken, the 
 Greek spirit passed from the gods and the 
 history of its own land to the subtleties of de- 
 fining the doctrine of the Trinity and the 
 mystical attempts to bring Plato into harmony 
 with Christ and to reconcile Gethsemane and 
 the Sermon on the Mount with the Athenian 
 prison and the discussion in the woods of Colonus. 
 The Greek spirit slept for wellnigh a thousand 
 years. When it woke again, like Antaeus it had 
 gathered strength from the earth where it lay, 
 like Apollo it had lost none of its divinity through 
 its long servitude. 
 
 In the history of Roman thought we nowhere 
 find any of those characteristics of the Greek 
 Illumination which I have pointed out are the 
 necessary concomitants of the rise of historical 
 criticism. The conservative respect for tradition 
 which made the Roman people delight in the 
 ritual and formulas of law, and is as apparent in 
 their politics as in their religion, was fatal to 
 any rise of that spirit of revolt against authority 
 the importance of which, as a factor in intel- 
 lectual progress, we have already seen. 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 185 
 
 The whitened tables of the Pontifices pre- 
 served carefully the records of the eclipses and 
 other atmospherical phenomena, and what we 
 call the art of verifying dates was known to them 
 at an early time ; but there was no spontaneous 
 rise of physical science to suggest by its analogies 
 of law and order a new method of research, nor 
 any natural springing up of the questioning spirit 
 of philosophy with its unification of all pheno- 
 mena and all knowledge. At the very time 
 when the whole tide of Eastern superstition was 
 sweeping into the heart of the Capitol the Senate 
 banished the Greek philosophers from Rome. 
 And of the three systems which did at length 
 take some root in the city those of Zeno and 
 Epicurus were merely used as the rule for the 
 ordering of life, while the dogmatic scepticism 
 of Carneades, by its very principles, annihilated 
 the possibility of argument and encouraged a 
 perfect indifference to research. 
 
 Nor were the Romans ever fortunate enough 
 like the Greeks to have to face the incubus of any 
 dogmatic system of legends and myths, the im- 
 moralities and absurdities of which might excite 
 a revolutionary outbreak of sceptical criticism. 
 For the Roman religion became as it were crys- 
 tallized and isolated from progress at an early 
 period of its evolution. Their gods remained 
 mere abstractions of commonplace virtues or 
 uninteresting personifications of the useful things 
 
186 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 of life. The old primitive creed was indeed 
 always upheld as a state institution on account 
 of the enormous facilities it offered for cheating 
 in politics, but as a spiritual system of belief it 
 was unanimously rejected at a very early period 
 both by the common people and the educated 
 classes, for the sensible reason that it was so ex- 
 tremely dull. The former took refuge in the 
 mystic sensualities of the worship of Isis, the 
 latter in the Stoical rules of life. The Romans 
 classified their gods carefully in their order of 
 precedence, analysed their genealogies in the 
 laborious spirit of modern heraldry, fenced them 
 round with a ritual as intricate as their law, but 
 never quite cared enough about them to believe 
 in them. So it was of no account with them 
 when the philosophers announced that Minerva 
 was merely memory. She had never been much 
 else. Nor did they protest when Lucretius dared 
 to say of Ceres and of Liber that they were only 
 the corn of the field and the fruit of the vine. 
 For they had never mourned for the daughter 
 of Demeter in the asphodel meadows of Sicily, 
 nor traversed the glades of Cithaeron with fawn- 
 skin and with spear. 
 
 This brief sketch of the condition of Roman 
 thought will serve to prepare us for the almost 
 total want of scientific historical criticism which 
 we shall discern in their literature, and has, be- 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 187 
 
 sides, afforded fresh corroborations of the con- 
 ditions essential to the rise of this spirit, and of 
 the modes of thought which it reflects and in 
 which it is always to be found. Roman historical 
 composition had its origin in the pontifical 
 college of ecclesiastical lawyers, and preserved 
 to its close the uncritical spirit which char- 
 acterized its fountain-head. It possessed from 
 the outset a most voluminous collection of 
 the materials of history, which, however, pro- 
 duced merely antiquarians, not historians. It 
 is so hard to use facts, so easy to accumulate 
 them. 
 
 Wearied of the dull monotony of the pontifical 
 annals, which dwelt on little else but the rise 
 and fall in provisions and the eclipses of the sun, 
 Cato wrote out a history with his own hand for 
 the instruction of his child, to which he gave the 
 name of Origines, and before his time some 
 aristocratic families had written histories in 
 Greek much in the same spirit in which the 
 Germans of the eighteenth century used French 
 as the literary language. But the first regular 
 Roman historian is Sallust. Between the ex- 
 travagant eulogies passed on this author by 
 the French (such as De Closset), and Dr. 
 Mommsen's view of him as merely a political 
 pamphleteer, it is perhaps difficult to reach the 
 via media of unbiassed appreciation. He has, at 
 
188 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 any rate, the credit of being a purely rationalistic 
 historian, perhaps the only one in Roman litera- 
 ture. Cicero had a good many qualifications for 
 a scientific historian, and (as he usually did) 
 thought very highly of his own powers. On 
 passages of ancient legend, however, he is rather 
 unsatisfactory, for while he is too sensible to 
 believe them he is too patriotic to reject them. 
 And this is really the attitude of Livy, who 
 claims for early Roman legend a certain uncriti- 
 cal homage from the rest of the subject world. 
 His view in his history is that it is not worth 
 while to examine the truth of these stories. 
 
 In his hands the history of Rome unrolls 
 before our eyes like some gorgeous tapestry, 
 where victory succeeds victory, where triumph 
 treads on the heels of triumph, and the line of 
 heroes seems never to end. It is not till we pass 
 behind the canvas and see the slight means by 
 which the effect is produced that we apprehend 
 the fact that like most picturesque writers Livy 
 is an indifferent critic. As regards his attitude 
 towards the credibility of early Roman history 
 he is quite as conscious as we are of its mythical 
 and unsound nature. He will not, for instance, 
 decide whether the Horatii were Albans or 
 Romans ; who was the first dictator ; how many 
 tribunes there were, and the like. His method, 
 as a rule, is merely to mention all the accounts 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 189 
 
 and sometimes to decide in favour of the most 
 probable, but usually not to decide at all. No 
 canons of historical criticism will ever discover 
 whether the Roman women interviewed the 
 mother of Coriolanus of their own accord or at 
 the suggestion of the senate ; whether Remus 
 was killed for jumping over his brother s wall 
 or because they quarrelled about birds ; whether 
 the ambassadors found Cincinnatus ploughing 
 or only mending a hedge. Livy suspends his 
 judgment over these important facts and history 
 when questioned on their truth is dumb. If he 
 does select between two historians he chooses 
 the one who is nearer to the facts he describes. 
 But he is no critic, only a conscientious writer. 
 It is mere vain waste to dwell on his critical 
 powers, for they do not exist. 
 
 In the case of Tacitus imagination has taken 
 the place of history. The past lives again in his 
 pages, but through no laborious criticism ; rather 
 through a dramatic and psychological faculty 
 which he specially possessed. 
 
 In the philosophy of history he has no belief. 
 He can never make up his mind what to believe 
 as regards God’s government of the world. 
 There is no method in him and none elsewhere 
 in Roman literature. 
 
 Nations may not have missions but they cer- 
 
190 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 tainly have functions. And the function of 
 ancient Italy was not merely to give us what 
 is statical in our institutions and rational in our 
 law, but to blend into one elemental creed the 
 spiritual aspirations of Aryan and of Semite. 
 Italy was not a pioneer in intellectual progress, 
 nor a motive power in the evolution of thought. 
 The owl of the goddess of Wisdom traversed 
 over the whole land and found nowhere a 
 resting-place. The dove, which is the bird of 
 Christ, flew straight to the city of Rome and 
 the new reign began. It was the fashion of 
 early Italian painters to represent in mediaeval 
 costume the soldiers who watched over the 
 tomb of Christ, and this, which was the result of 
 the frank anachronism of all true art, may serve 
 to us as an allegory. For it was in vain that the 
 Middle Ages strove to guard the buried spirit of 
 progress. When the dawn of the Greek spirit 
 arose, the sepulchre was empty, the grave- 
 clothes laid aside. Humanity had risen from 
 the dead. 
 
 The study of Greek, it has been well said, 
 implies the birth of criticism, comparison and 
 research. At the opening of that education 
 of modern by ancient thought which we call 
 the Renaissance, it was the words of Aristotle 
 which sent Columbus sailing to the New World, 
 while a fragment of Pythagorean astronomy set 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 191 
 
 Copernicus thinking on that train of reasoning 
 which has revolutionized the whole position of 
 our planet in the universe. Then it was seen 
 that the only meaning of progress is a return 
 to Greek modes of thought. The monkish 
 hymns which obscured the pages of Greek 
 manuscripts were blotted out, the splendours 
 of a new method were unfolded to the world, 
 and out of the melancholy sea of medievalism 
 rose the free spirit of man in all that splendour 
 of glad adolescence, when the bodily powers 
 seem quickened by a new vitality, when the eye 
 sees more clearly than its wont and the mind 
 apprehends what was beforetime hidden from 
 it. To herald the opening of the sixteenth 
 century, from the little Venetian printing press 
 came forth all the great authors of antiquity, 
 each bearing on the title-page the words ”A\8os 
 6 Mavovnos 'Pco/xatos kou QiXeWrjv ; words which 
 may serve to remind us with what wondrous 
 prescience Polybius saw the world's fate when 
 he foretold the material sovereignty of Roman 
 institutions and exemplified in himself the intel- 
 lectual empire of Greece. 
 
 The course of the study of the spirit of 
 historical criticism has not been a profitless in- 
 vestigation into modes and forms of thought now 
 antiquated and of no account. The only spirit 
 which is entirely removed from us is the 
 
192 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 mediaeval ; the Greek spirit is essentially 
 modern. The introduction of the comparative 
 method of research which has forced history 
 to disclose its secrets belongs in a measure to 
 us. Ours, too, is a more scientific knowledge 
 of philology and the method of survival. Nor 
 did the ancients know anything of the doctrine 
 of averages or of crucial instances, both of which 
 methods have proved of such importance in 
 modern criticism, the one adding a most im- 
 portant proof of the statical elements of history, 
 and exemplifying the influences of all physical 
 surroundings on the life of man ; the other, as 
 in the single instance of the Moulin Quignon 
 skull, serving to create a whole new science of 
 prehistoric archaeology and to bring us back to 
 a time when man was coeval with the stone 
 age, the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. 
 But, except these, we have added no new 
 canon or method to the science of historical 
 criticism. Across the drear waste of a thousand 
 years the Greek and the modern spirit join 
 hands. 
 
 In the torch race which the Greek boys ran 
 from the Cerameician field of death to the home 
 of the goddess of Wisdom, not merely he who 
 first reached the goal but he also who first 
 started with the torch aflame received a prize. 
 In the Lampadephoria of civilization and free 
 
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM 193 
 
 thought let us not forget to render due meed 
 of honour to those who first lit that sacred 
 flame, the increasing splendour of which lights 
 our footsteps to the far-off' divine event of the 
 attainment of perfect truth. 
 
 N 
 
SENTENTIAE 
 
 ( Extracted from Miscellaneous Articles) 
 
 ESCRIPTIONS of music are generally. 
 
 perhaps, more or less failures, for music 
 is a matter of individual feeling, and the beauties 
 and lessons that one draws from hearing lovely 
 sounds are mainly personal, and depend to a 
 large extent on one’s own state of mind and 
 culture. 
 
 Burne-Jones and Holman Hunt are probably 
 the greatest masters of colour that we have ever 
 had in England, with the single exception of 
 Turner, but their styles differ widely. To draw 
 a rough distinction, Holman Hunt studies and 
 reproduces the colours of natural objects, and 
 deals with historical subjects, or scenes of real 
 life, mostly from the East, touched occasionally 
 with a certain fancifulness, as in the Shadoiv of 
 the Cross. Burne-Jones, on the contrary, is a 
 dreamer in the land of mythology, a seer of 
 fairy visions, a symbolical painter. He is an 
 imaginative colourist too, knowing that all colour 
 
SENTENTIAE 
 
 195 
 
 is no mere delightful quality of natural things, 
 but a ‘ spirit upon them by which they become 
 expressive to the spirit/ as Mr. Pater says. 
 Watts's power, on the other hand, lies in his 
 great originative and imaginative genius, and he 
 reminds us of .ZEschylus or Michael Angelo in 
 the startling vividness of his conceptions. Al- 
 though these three painters differ much in aim 
 and in result, they yet are one in their faith, 
 and love, and reverence, the three golden keys 
 to the gate of the House Beautiful. 
 
 This dull land of England, with its short 
 summer, its dreary rains and fogs, its mining 
 districts and factories, and vile deification of 
 machinery, has yet produced very great masters 
 of art, men with a subtle sense and love of what 
 is beautiful, original, and noble in imagination. 
 
 I am beginning to quarrel generally with most 
 modern scene-painting. A scene is primarily a 
 decorative background for the actors, and should 
 always be kept subordinate, first to the players, 
 their dress, gesture, and action ; and secondly, to 
 the fundamental principle of decorative art, 
 which is not to imitate but to suggest nature. 
 If the landscape is given its full realistic value, 
 the value of the figures to which it serves as a 
 background is impaired and often lost, and so 
 
196 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 the painted hangings of the Elizabethan age 
 were a far more artistic, and so a far more 
 rational form of scenery than most modern 
 scene-painting is. One must either, like Titian, 
 make the landscape subordinate to the figures, 
 or, like Claude, the figures subordinate to the 
 landscape ; for if we desire realistic acting we 
 cannot have realistic scene-painting. 
 
 With regard to the value of beautiful sur- 
 roundings I differ entirely from Mr. Whistler. 
 An artist is not an isolated fact; he is the re- 
 sultant of a certain milieu and a certain entourage , 
 and can no more be born of a nation that is 
 devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can 
 grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a 
 thistle. That an artist will find beauty in ugli- 
 ness, le beau dans V horrible, is now a common- 
 place of the schools, the argot of the atelier , 
 but I strongly deny that charming people should 
 be condemned to live with magenta ottomans 
 and Albert-blue curtains in their rooms in order 
 that some painter may observe the side-lights on 
 the one and the values of the other. Nor do I 
 accept the dictum that only a painter is a judge 
 of painting. I say that only an artist is a judge 
 of art ; there is a wide difference. As long as a 
 painter is a painter merely, he should not be 
 allowed to talk of anything but mediums and 
 
SENTENTIAE 
 
 197 
 
 megilp, and on those subjects should be com- 
 pelled to hold his tongue ; it is only when he 
 becomes an artist that the secret laws of artistic 
 creation are revealed to him. For there are not 
 many arts, but one art merely — poem, picture 
 and Parthenon, sonnet and statue — all are in 
 their essence the same, and he who knows one 
 knows all. But the poet is the supreme artist, 
 for he is the master of colour and of form, and 
 the real musician besides, and is lord over all 
 life and all arts ; and so to the poet beyond all 
 others are these mysteries known ; to Edgar 
 Allan Poe and to Baudelaire, not to Benjamin 
 West and Paul Delaroche. 
 
 There is nothing of which the ordinary English 
 painter needs more to be reminded than that 
 the true artist does not wait for life to be made 
 picturesque for him, but sees life under pictur- 
 esque conditions always — under conditions, that 
 is to say, which are at once new and delightful. 
 
 Were we able to carry our chiaroscuro about 
 with us, as we do our umbrellas, all would be 
 well ; but this being impossible, I hardly think 
 that pretty and delightful people will continue to 
 wear a style of dress as ugly as it is useless and 
 as meaningless as it is monstrous, even on the 
 chance of such a master as Mr. Whistler spiritual- 
 izing them into a symphony or refining them 
 
198 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 into a mist. For the arts are made for life, and 
 not life for the arts. 
 
 I have always been of opinion that consistency 
 is the last refuge of the unimaginative. 
 
 Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’clock, the Apocrypha 
 though it be for the people, yet remains from 
 this time as the Bible for the painter, the 
 masterpiece of masterpieces, the song of songs. 
 It is true he has pronounced the panegyric 
 of the Philistine, but I fancy Ariel praising 
 Caliban for a jest: and, in that he has read the 
 Commination Service over the critics, let all men 
 thank him, the critics themselves, indeed, most 
 of all, for he has now relieved them from the 
 necessity of a tedious existence. Mr. Whistler 
 seems to me to stand almost alone. Indeed, 
 among all our public speakers I know but few 
 who can combine so felicitously as he does the 
 mirth and malice of Puck with the style of the 
 minor prophets. 
 
 The true unity of the arts is to be found, not 
 in any resemblance of one art to another, but in 
 the fact that to the really artistic nature all the 
 arts have the same message and speak the same 
 language though with different tongues. No 
 amount of daubing on a cellar wall will make a 
 man understand the mystery of Michael Angelo’s 
 Sybils, nor is it necessary to write a blank verse 
 
SENTENTIAE 
 
 199 
 
 drama before one can appreciate the beauty of 
 Hamlet. It is essential that an art critic should 
 have a nature receptive of beautiful impressions, 
 and sufficient intuition to recognize style when 
 he meets with it, and truth when it is shown to 
 him ; but, if he does not possess these qualities, 
 a reckless career of water-colour painting will 
 not give them to him, for, if from the incom- 
 petent critic all things be hidden, to the bad 
 painter nothing shall be revealed. 
 
 In treating bookbinding as an imaginative, 
 expressive human art we must confess that we 
 think that Mr. Sanderson made something of an 
 error. Bookbinding is essentially decorative, and 
 good decoration is far more often suggested by 
 material and mode of work than by any desire 
 on the part of the designer to tell us of his 
 joy in the world. Hence it comes that good 
 decoration is always traditional. Where it is the 
 expression of the individual it is usually either 
 false or capricious. These handicrafts are not 
 primarily expressive arts ; they are impressive 
 arts. If a man has any message for the world 
 he will not deliver it in a material that always 
 suggests and always conditions its own decora- 
 tion. The beauty of bookbinding is abstract 
 decorative beauty. It is not, in the first instance, 
 a mode of expression for a man’s soul. Indeed, 
 
200 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 the danger of all these lofty claims for handicraft 
 is simply that they show a desire to give crafts 
 the province and motive of arts such as poetry, 
 painting and sculpture. Such province and such 
 motive they have not got. Their aim is different. 
 Between the arts that aim at annihilating their 
 material and the arts that aim at glorifying it 
 there is a wide gulf. 
 
 Like Mr. Morris, Mr. Walter Crane quite 
 underrates the art of Japan, and looks on the 
 Japanese as naturalists and not as decorative 
 artists. It is true that they are often pictorial, 
 but by the exquisite finesse of their touch, the 
 brilliancy and beauty of their colour, their 
 perfect knowledge of how to make a space 
 decorative without decorating it (a point on 
 which Mr. Crane said nothing, though it is one 
 of the most important things in decoration), 
 and by their keen instinct of where to place 
 a thing, the Japanese are decorative artists of 
 a high order. 
 
 The English public, as a mass, takes no 
 interest in a work of art until it is told that 
 the work in question is immoral. 
 
 As regards grammar, I hold that, in prose at 
 any rate, correctness should always be subor- 
 dinate to artistic effect and musical cadence. 
 
SENTENTIAE 
 
 201 
 
 Romantic art deals with the exception and 
 with the individual. Good people, belonging 
 as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace, 
 type, are artistically uninteresting. Bad people 
 are, from the point of view of art, fascinating 
 studies. They represent colour, variety and 
 strangeness. Good people exasperate one's 
 reason ; bad people stir one's imagination. 
 
 Puritanism is never so offensive and destructive 
 as when it deals with art matters. 
 
 I write because it gives me the greatest pos- 
 sible artistic pleasure to write. If my work 
 pleases the few I am gratified. If it does not, 
 it causes me no pain. As for the mob, I have 
 no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too 
 easy. 
 
 An artist has no ethical sympathies at all. 
 Virtue and wickedness are to him simply what 
 the colours on his palette are to the painter. 
 They are no more and they are no less. He 
 sees that by their means a certain artistic effect 
 can be produced and he produces it. Iago may 
 be morally horrible and Imogen stainlessly pure. 
 Shakespeare, as Keats said, had as much delight 
 in creating the one as he had in creating the 
 other. 
 
202 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 I thoroughly agree that it is a pity that 
 Goethe never had an opportunity of reading 
 Dorian Gray . I feel quite certain that he would 
 have been delighted by it, and I only hope that 
 some ghostly publisher is even now distributing 
 shadowy copies in the Elysian fields, and that 
 the cover of Gautier’s copy is powdered with 
 gilt asphodels. 
 
 The chief merit of Madame Bovary is not the 
 moral lesson that can be found in it, any more 
 than the chief merit of SalammbS is its archae- 
 ology ; but Flaubert was perfectly right in ex- 
 posing the ignorance of those who called the 
 one immoral and the other inaccurate ; and not 
 merely was he right in the ordinary sense of the 
 word, but he was artistically right, which is 
 everything. The critic has to educate the 
 public ; the artist has to educate the critic. 
 
 It is a sad thing, but one wearies even of 
 praise. 
 
 The kiosk is a delightful object, and, when 
 illuminated at night from within, as lovely as 
 a fantastic Chinese lantern, especially when the 
 transparent advertisements are from the clever 
 pencil of M. Cheret. In London we have 
 merely the ill-clad newsvendor, whose voice, in 
 spite of the admirable efforts of the Royal 
 
SENTENTIAE 
 
 203 
 
 College of Music to make England a really 
 musical nation, is always out of tune, and whose 
 rags, badly designed and badly worn, merely 
 emphasize a painful note of uncomely misery, 
 without conveying that impression of pictur- 
 esqueness which is the only thing that makes 
 the poverty of others at all bearable. 
 
 Mamilius is as entirely delightful as Caliban 
 is entirely detestable, but neither the standard 
 of Mamilius nor the standard of Caliban is my 
 standard. No artist recognizes any standard of 
 beauty but that which is suggested by his own 
 temperament. The artist seeks to realize, in a 
 certain material, his immaterial idea of beauty, 
 and thus to transform an idea into an ideal. 
 That is the way an artist makes things. That 
 is why an artist makes things. The artist has 
 no other object in making things. 
 
 I hold that the stage is to a play no more 
 than a picture-frame is to a painting, and that 
 the actable value of a play has nothing what- 
 soever to do with its value as a work of art. 
 In this century, in England, to take an obvious 
 example, we have had only two great plays — 
 one is Shelley’s Cenci, the other Mr. Swinburne’s 
 Atalanta in Calydon , and neither of them is in 
 any sense of the word an actable play. Indeed, 
 
204 
 
 ART AND DECORATION 
 
 the mere suggestion that stage representation 
 is any test of a work of art is quite ridiculous. 
 In the production of Browning's plays, for in- 
 stance, in London and at Oxford, what was being 
 tested was obviously the capacity of the modern 
 stage to represent, in any adequate measure or 
 degree, works of introspective method and 
 strange or sterile psychology. But the artistic 
 value of Strafford or In a Balcony was settled 
 when Robert Browning wrote their last lines. 
 It is not by the mimes that the muses are to be 
 judged. 
 
 To be conventional is to be a comedian. To 
 act a particular part, however, is a very different 
 thing, and a very difficult thing as well. The 
 actor’s aim is, or should be, to convert his own 
 accidental personality into the real and essential 
 personality of the character he is called upon to 
 personate, whatever that character may be ; or 
 perhaps I should say that there are two schools 
 of action — the school of those who attain their 
 effect by exaggeration of personality, and the 
 school of those who attain it by suppression. 
 
 There are many advantages in puppets. They 
 never argue. They have no crude views about 
 art. They have no private lives. We are never 
 bothered by accounts of their virtues, or bored 
 by recitals of their vices ; and when they are out 
 
SENTENTIAE 
 
 205 
 
 of an engagement they never do good in public 
 or save people from drowning, nor do they speak 
 more than is set down for them. They recognize 
 the presiding intellect of the dramatist, and 
 have never been known to ask for their parts to 
 be written up. They are admirably docile, and 
 have no personalities at all. I saw lately, in 
 Paris, a performance by certain puppets of 
 Shakespeare’s Tempest , in M. Maurice Boucher’s 
 translation. Miranda was the mirage of Miranda, 
 because an artist had so fashioned her; and 
 Ariel was true Ariel, because so had she been 
 made. Their gestures were quite sufficient, and 
 the words that seemed to come from their little 
 lips were spoken by poets who had beautiful 
 voices. It was a delightful performance, and I 
 remember it still with delight, though Miranda 
 took no notice of the flowers I sent her after the 
 curtain fell. 
 
 Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves 
 in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is 
 no less perfect than the last. 
 
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 

 
 
 

 
 
THE WORKS OF 
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 M ESSRS. METHUEN beg to announce 
 that they have nearly completed the 
 publication of a uniform edition, in 
 fifteen volumes, of the chief works of Oscar Wilde. 
 This edition is founded on the limited edition 
 recently issued by Messrs. Methuen, and now out 
 of print, but it does not contain some of the special 
 material which made that edition complete, and 
 which will never again be issued. 
 
 The present edition has been reset and printed 
 from new type in a charming and handy form, 
 fcap. 8vo, and is published at 6s. 6d. net each volume. 
 The volumes are sold separately. 
 
 On the other side will be found a specimen 
 
 page. 
 
The Books are : 
 
 I. LORD ARTHUR SAVILE’S CRIME, THE POR- 
 
 TRAIT OF MR. W. H., AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 II. THE DUCHESS OF PADUA. 
 
 III. POEMS (including ‘The Sphinx,’ ‘The Ballad of 
 
 Reading Gaol,’ and Uncollected Pieces). 
 
 IV. LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN. 
 
 V. A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE. 
 
 VI. AN IDEAL HUSBAND. 
 
 VII. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. 
 
 VIII. A HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES. 
 
 IX. INTENTIONS. 
 
 X. DE PROFUNDIS AND PRISON LETTERS. 
 
 XI. ESSAYS (‘Historical Criticism,’ ‘English Renais- 
 sance,’ ‘London Models,’ ‘Poems in Prose’). 
 
 XII. SALOME, A FLORENTINE TRAGEDY, LA SAINTE 
 COURTISANE. 
 
 XIII. A CRITIC IN PALL MALL. 
 
 XIV. SELECTED PROSE. 
 
 XV. ART AND DECORATION. (In the Press.) 
 
LORD ARTHUR SAVILE’S CRIME 
 
 51 
 
 Lord Arthur seized the letter from her hand. 
 It ran as follows : — 
 
 The Deanery, Chichester, 
 
 27 th May . 
 
 My Dearest Aunt, 
 
 Thank you so much for the flannel for the 
 Dorcas Society, and also for the gingham. I 
 quite agree with you that it is nonsense their 
 wanting to wear pretty things, but everybody is 
 so Radical and irreligious nowadays, that it is 
 difficult to make them see that they should not 
 try and dress like the upper classes. I am sure 
 I don't know what we are coming to. As papa 
 has often said in his sermons, we live in an age 
 of unbelief. 
 
 We have had great fun over a clock that an 
 unknown admirer sent papa last Thursday. It 
 arrived in a wooden box from London, carriage 
 paid ; and papa feels it must have been sent by 
 some one who had read his remarkable sermon, 
 ‘ Is Licence Liberty ? ' for on the top of the clock 
 was a figure of a woman, with what papa said 
 was the cap of Liberty on her head. I didn't 
 think it very becoming myself, but papa said it 
 was historical, so I suppose it is all right. Parker 
 unpacked it, and papa put it on the mantelpiece 
 in the library, and we were all sitting there on 
 Friday morning, when just as the clock struck 
 
 {Specimen Page ] 
 
ORDER FORM 
 
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 in Fifteen Volumes , Fcap. 8 vo, 6s. 6^. net each vol . 
 Please send me 
 
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