Ariadne Florentina Part 14

In all cases, it is equally vain, if you think of their style first. But know their purpose, and then, their way of speaking is worth thinking of. These apparently unfinished and certainly unfilled outlines of the Florentine,--clumsy work, as Vasari thought them,--as Mr. Otley and most of our English amateurs still think them,--are these good or bad engraving?

You may ask now, comprehending their motive, with some hope of answering or being answered rightly. And the answer is, They are the finest gravers' work ever done yet by human hand. You may teach, by process of discipline and of years, any youth of good artistic capacity to engrave a plate in the modern manner; but only the n.o.blest pa.s.sion, and the tenderest patience, will ever engrave one line like these of Sandro Botticelli.

225. Pa.s.sion, and patience! Nay, even these you may have to-day in England, and yet both be in vain. Only a few years ago, in one of our northern iron-foundries, a workman of intense power and natural art-faculty set himself to learn engraving;--made his own tools; gave all the spare hours of his laborious life to learn their use; learnt it; and engraved a plate which, in manipulation, no professional engraver would be ashamed of. He engraved his blast furnace, and the casting of a beam of a steam engine. This, to him, was the power of G.o.d,--it was his life. No greater earnestness was ever given by man to promulgate a Gospel. Nevertheless, the engraving is absolutely worthless. The blast furnace _is not_ the power of G.o.d; and the life of the strong spirit was as much consumed in the flames of it, as ever driven slave's by the burden and heat of the day.

How cruel to say so, if he yet lives, you think! No, my friends; the cruelty will be in you, and the guilt, if, having been brought here to learn that G.o.d is your Light, you yet leave the blast furnace to be the only light of England.

226. It has been, as I said in the note above (- 200), with extreme pain that I have hitherto limited my notice of our own great engraver and moralist, to the points in which the disadvantages of English art-teaching made him inferior to his trained Florentine rival. But, that these disadvantages were powerless to arrest or ign.o.bly depress him;--that however failing in grace and scholars.h.i.+p, he should never fail in truth or vitality; and that the precision of his unerring hand[BF]--his inevitable eye--and his rightly judging heart--should place him in the first rank of the great artists not of England only, but of all the world and of all time:--that _this_ was possible to him, was simply because he lived a _country_ life. Bewick himself, Botticelli himself, Apelles himself, and twenty times Apelles, condemned to slavery in the h.e.l.l-fire of the iron furnace, could have done--NOTHING. Absolute paralysis of all high human faculty _must_ result from labor near fire. The poor engraver of the piston-rod had faculties--not like Bewick's, for if he had had those, he never would have endured the degradation; but a.s.suredly, (I know this by his work,) faculties high enough to have made him one of the most accomplished figure painters of his age. And they are scorched out of him, as the sap from the gra.s.s in the oven: while on his Northumberland hill-sides, Bewick grew into as stately life as their strongest pine.

227. And therefore, in words of his, telling consummate and unchanging truth concerning the life, honor, and happiness of England, and bearing directly on the points of difference between cla.s.s and cla.s.s which I have not dwelt on without need, I will bring these lectures to a close.

"I have always, through life, been of opinion that there is no business of any kind that can be compared to that of a man who farms his own land. It appears to me that every earthly pleasure, with health, is within his reach. But numbers of these men (the old statesmen) were grossly ignorant, and in exact proportion to that ignorance they were sure to be offensively proud. This led them to attempt appearing above their station, which hastened them on to their ruin; but, indeed, this disposition and this kind of conduct invariably leads to such results.

There were many of these lairds on Tyneside; as well as many who held their lands on the tenure of 'suit and service,' and were nearly on the same level as the lairds. Some of the latter lost their lands (not fairly, I think) in a way they could not help; many of the former, by their misdirected pride and folly, were driven into towns, to slide away into nothingness, and to sink into oblivion, while their 'ha' houses'

(halls), that ought to have remained in their families from generation to generation, have moldered away. I have always felt extremely grieved to see the ancient mansions of many of the country gentlemen, from somewhat similar causes, meet with a similar fate. The gentry should, in an especial manner, prove by their conduct that they are guarded against showing any symptom of foolish pride; at the same time that they soar above every meanness, and that their conduct is guided by truth, integrity, and patriotism. If they wish the people to partake with them in these good qualities, they must set them the example, without which no real respect can ever be paid to them. Gentlemen ought never to forget the respectable station they hold in society, and that they are the natural guardians of public morals and may with propriety be considered as the head and the heart of the country, while 'a bold peasantry' are, in truth, the arms, the sinews, and the strength of the same; but when these last are degraded, they soon become dispirited and mean, and often dishonest and useless."

"This singular and worthy man[BG] was perhaps the most invaluable acquaintance and friend I ever met with. His moral lectures and advice to me formed a most important succedaneum to those imparted by my parents. His wise remarks, his detestation of vice, his industry, and his temperance, crowned with a most lively and cheerful disposition, altogether made him appear to me as one of the best of characters. In his workshop I often spent my winter evenings. This was also the case with a number of young men who might be considered as his pupils; many of whom, I have no doubt, he directed into the paths of truth and integrity, and who revered his memory through life. He rose early to work, lay down when he felt weary, and rose again when refreshed. His diet was of the simplest kind; and he ate when hungry, and drank when dry, without paying regard to meal-times. By steadily pursuing this mode of life he was enabled to acc.u.mulate sums of money--from ten to thirty pounds. This enabled him to get books, of an entertaining and moral tendency, printed and circulated at a cheap rate. His great object was, by every possible means, to promote honorable feelings in the minds of youth, and to prepare them for becoming good members of society. I have often discovered that he did not overlook ingenious mechanics, whose misfortunes--perhaps mismanagement--had led them to a lodging in Newgate. To these he directed his compa.s.sionate eye, and for the deserving (in his estimation), he paid their debt, and set them at liberty. He felt hurt at seeing the hands of an ingenious man tied up in prison, where they were of no use either to himself or to the community.

This worthy man had been educated for a priest; but he would say to me, 'Of a "trouth," Thomas, I did not like their ways.' So he gave up the thoughts of being a priest, and bent his way from Aberdeen to Edinburgh, where he engaged himself to Allan Ramsay, the poet, then a bookseller at the latter place, in whose service he was both shopman and bookbinder.

From Edinburgh he came to Newcastle. Gilbert had had a liberal education bestowed upon him. He had read a great deal, and had reflected upon what he had read. This, with his retentive memory, enabled him to be a pleasant and communicative companion. I lived in habits of intimacy with him to the end of his life; and, when he died, I, with others of his friends, attended his remains to the grave at the Ballast Hills."

And what graving on the sacred cliffs of Egypt ever honored them, as that gra.s.s-dimmed furrow does the mounds of our Northern land?

FOOTNOTES:

[AS] The world was not then ready for Le Pere Hyacinthe;--but the real gist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only l.u.s.ted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them--and too foolishly believed by us--to have been a shameful person.

Of his true life, and the colors given to it, we will try to learn something tenable, before we end our work in Florence.

[AT] I insert supplementary notes, when of importance, in the text of the lecture, for the convenience of the general reader.

[AU] Mr. Charles F. Murray.

[AV] Some notice of this picture is given at the beginning of my third Morning in Florence, 'Before the Soldan.'

[AW] I am bitterly sorry for the pain which my partial references to the man whom of all English artists whose histories I have read, I most esteem, have given to one remaining member of his family. I hope my meaning may be better understood after she has seen the close of this lecture.

[AX] Read Ezekiel xviii.

[AY] See also the account by Dr. Woltmann of the picture of the Triumph of Riches. 'Holbein and his Time,' p. 352.

[AZ] These words are engraved in the plate, as spoken by the Virgin.

[BA] Cosimo Rosselli, especially chosen by the Pope for his gay coloring.

[BB] I am not certain of their order at this distance of time.

[BC] Callimachus, 'Delos,' 304, etc.

[BD] In the Old King's Arms Hotel, Lancaster.

[BE] A manufacturer wrote to me the other day, "We don't _want_ to make smoke!" Who said they did?--a hired murderer does not want to commit murder, but does it for sufficient motive. (Even our s.h.i.+powners don't want to drown their sailors; they will only do it for sufficient motive.) If the dirty creatures _did_ want to make smoke, there would be more excuse for them: and that they are not clever enough to consume it, is no praise to them. A man who can't help his hiccough leaves the room: why do they not leave the England they pollute?

[BF] I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's, since the fifteenth century, except Holbein's and Turner's. I have been greatly surprised lately by the exquisite water-color work in some of Stothard's smaller vignettes; but he cannot set the line like Turner or Bewick.

[BG] Gilbert Gray, bookbinder. I have to correct the inaccurate--and very harmfully inaccurate, expression which I used of Bewick, in Love's Meinie (- 3), 'a printer's lad at Newcastle.' His first master was a goldsmith and engraver, else he could never have been an artist. I am very heartily glad to make this correction, which establishes another link of relation between Bewick and Botticelli; but my error was partly caused by the impression which the above description of his "most invaluable friend" made on me, when I first read it.

Much else that I meant to correct, or promised to explain, in this lecture, must be deferred to the Appendix; the superiority of the Tuscan to the Greek Aphrodite I may perhaps, even at last, leave the reader to admit or deny as he pleases, having more important matters of debate on hand. But as I mean only to play with Proserpina during the spring, I will here briefly antic.i.p.ate a statement I mean in the Appendix to enforce, namely, of the extreme value of colored copies by hand, of paintings whose excellence greatly consists in color, as auxiliary to engravings of them. The prices now given without hesitation for nearly worthless original drawings by fifth-rate artists, would obtain for the misguided buyers, in something like a proportion of ten to one, most precious copies of drawings which can only be represented at all in engraving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonment of their finest purposes. I feel this so strongly that I have given my best attention, during upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfect fidelity in rendering the work of Turner; and having now succeeded in enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas, facsimiles which I must sign with my own name and his, in the very work of them, to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes, I can obtain no custom for him, and am obliged to leave him to make his bread by any power of captivation his original sketches may possess in the eyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in Rome, but is content with black and white renderings of great English art; though there is scarcely one cultivated English gentleman or lady who has not been twenty times in the Vatican, for once that they have been in the National Gallery.

NOTES.

228. I. The following letter, from one of my most faithful readers, corrects an important piece of misinterpretation in the text. The waving of the reins must be only in sign of the fluctuation of heat round the Sun's own chariot:--

"Spring Field, Ambleside, "February 11, 1875.

"Dear Mr. Ruskin,--Your fifth lecture on Engraving I have to hand.

"Sandro intended those wavy lines meeting under the Sun's right[BH]

hand, (Plate V.) primarily, no doubt, to represent the four ends of the four reins dangling from the Sun's hand. The flames and rays are seen to continue to radiate from the platform of the chariot between and beyond these ends of the reins, and over the knee. He may have wanted to acknowledge that the warmth of the earth was Apollo's, by making these ends of the reins spread out separately and wave, and thereby inclose a form like a flame. But I cannot think it.

"Believe me, "Ever yours truly, "CHAS. WM. SMITH."

II. I meant to keep labyrinthine matters for my Appendix; but the following most useful by-words from Mr. Tyrwhitt had better be read at once:--

"In the matter of Cretan Labyrinth, as connected by Virgil with the Ludus Trojae, or equestrian game of winding and turning, continued in England from twelfth century; and having for last relic the maze[BI]

called 'Troy Town,' at Troy Farm, near Somerton, Oxfords.h.i.+re, which itself resembles the circular labyrinth on a coin of Cnossus in Fors Clavigera. (Letter 23, p. 12.)

"The connecting quotation from Virg., aen., V. 588, is as follows:

'Ut quondam Creta fertur Labyrinthus in alta Parietibus textum caecis iter, ancipitemque Mille viis habuisse dolum, qua signa sequendi Falleret indeprensus et inremeabilis error.

Haud alio Teucrun nati vestigia cursu Impediunt, texuntque f.a.gas et proelia ludo, Delphinum similes.'"

Labyrinth of Ariadne, as cut on the Downs by shepherds from time immemorial,--

Shakespeare, 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' Act ii., sc. 2:

"_Oberon._ The nine-men's morris[BJ] is filled up with mud; And the quaint mazes in the wanton green By lack of tread are undistinguishable."

The following pa.s.sage, 'Merchant of Venice,' Act iii., sc. 2, confuses (to all appearance) the Athenian tribute to Crete, with the story of Hesione: and may point to general confusion in the Elizabethan mind about the myths:

"_Portia._ ... with much more love Than young Alcides, when he did reduce The virgin-tribute paid by howling Troy To the sea monster."[BK]

Theseus is the Attic Hercules, however; and Troy may have been a sort of house of call for mythical monsters, in the view of midland shepherds.

FOOTNOTES: