1Liber Studiorum. “Interior of a church.” It is worthy of remark that Giorgione and Titian are always delighted to have an opportunity of drawing priests. The English Church may, perhaps, accept it as matter of congratulation that this is the only instance in which Turner drew a clergyman.2I do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with the country, but the first impressive and touching one, after his mind was formed. The earliest sketches I found in the National Collection are at Clifton and Bristol; the next, at Oxford.3“The Tenth Plague of Egypt.”4“Rizpah, the Daughter of Aiah.”
1Liber Studiorum. “Interior of a church.” It is worthy of remark that Giorgione and Titian are always delighted to have an opportunity of drawing priests. The English Church may, perhaps, accept it as matter of congratulation that this is the only instance in which Turner drew a clergyman.
2I do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with the country, but the first impressive and touching one, after his mind was formed. The earliest sketches I found in the National Collection are at Clifton and Bristol; the next, at Oxford.
3“The Tenth Plague of Egypt.”
4“Rizpah, the Daughter of Aiah.”
CHAPTER X.
THE NEREID’S GUARD.
§ 1. Thework of Turner, in its first period, is said in my account of his drawings at the National Gallery to be distinguished by “boldness of handling, generally gloomy tendency of mind, subdued color, and perpetual reference to precedent in composition.” I must refer the reader to those two catalogues1for a more special account of his early modes of technical study. Here we are concerned only with the expression of that gloomy tendency of mind, whose causes we are now better able to understand.
§ 2. It was prevented from overpowering him by his labor. This, continual, and as tranquil in its course as a ploughman’s in the field, by demanding an admirable humility and patience, averted the tragic passion of youth. Full of stern sorrow and fixed purpose, the boy set himself to his labor silently and meekly, like a workman’s child on its first day at the cotton-mill. Without haste, but without relaxation,—accepting all modes and means of progress, however painful or humiliating, he took the burden on his shoulder and began his march. There was nothing so little, but that he noticed it; nothing so great but he began preparations to cope with it. For some time his work is, apparently, feelingless, so patient and mechanical are the first essays. It gains gradually in power and grasp; there is no perceptibleaimat freedom, or at fineness, but the force insensibly becomes swifter, and the touch finer. The color is always dark or subdued.
§ 3. Of the first forty subjects which he exhibited at theRoyal Academy, thirty-one are architectural, and of these twenty-one are of elaborate Gothic architecture (Peterborough cathedral, Lincoln cathedral, Malmesbury abbey, Tintern abbey, &c.). I look upon the discipline given to his hand by these formal drawings as of the highest importance. His mind was also gradually led by them into a calmer pensiveness.2Education amidst country possessing architectural remains of some noble kind, I believe to be wholly essential to the progress of a landscape artist. The first verses he ever attached to a picture were in 1798. They are from Paradise Lost, and refer to a picture of Morning, on the Coniston Fells:—
“Ye mists and exhalations, that now riseFrom hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,Till the sun paints your fleecy skirts with gold,In honor to the world’s great Author rise.”
“Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise
From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paints your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honor to the world’s great Author rise.”
By glancing over the verses, which in following years3he quotes from Milton, Thompson, and Mallet, it may be seen at once how his mind was set, so far as natural scenes were concerned, on rendering atmospheric effect;—and so far as emotion was to be expressed, how consistently it was melancholy.
He paints, first of heroic or meditative subjects, the Fifth Plague of Egypt; next, the Tenth Plague of Egypt. His first tribute to the memory of Nelson is the “Battle of the Nile,” 1799. I presume an unimportant picture, as his power was not then availably developed. His first classical subject is Narcissus and Echo, in 1805:—
“So melts the youth and languishes away,His beauty withers, and his limbs decay.”
“So melts the youth and languishes away,
His beauty withers, and his limbs decay.”
The year following he summons his whole strength, and paints what we might suppose would be a happier subject, theGarden of the Hesperides. This being the most important picture of the first period, I will analyze it completely.
§ 4. The fable of the Hesperides had, it seems to me, in the Greek mind two distinct meanings; the first referring to natural phenomena, and the second to moral. The natural meaning of it I believe to have been this:—
The Garden of the Hesperides was supposed to exist in the westernmost part of the Cyrenaica; it was generally the expression for the beauty and luxuriant vegetation of the coast of Africa in that district. The centre of the Cyrenaica “is occupied by a moderately elevated table-land, whose edge runs parallel to the coast, to which it sinks down in a succession of terraces, clothed with verdure, intersected by mountain streams running through ravines filled with the richest vegetation; well watered by frequent rains, exposed to the cool sea breeze from the north, and sheltered by the mass of the mountain from the sands and hot winds of the Sahara.”4
The Greek colony of Cyrene itself was founded ten miles from the sea-shore, “in a spot backed by the mountains on the south, and thus sheltered from the fiery blasts of the desert; while at the height of about 1800 feet an inexhaustible spring bursts forth amidst luxuriant vegetation, and pours its waters down to the Mediterranean through a most beautiful ravine.”
The nymphs of the west, or Hesperides, are therefore, I believe, as natural types, the representatives of the soft western winds and sunshine, which were in this district most favorable to vegetation. In this sense they are called daughters of Atlas and Hesperis, the western winds being cooled by the snow of Atlas. The dragon, on the contrary, is the representative of the Sahara wind, or Simoom, which blew over the garden from among the hills on the south, and forbade all advance of cultivation beyond their ridge. Whether this was the physical meaning of the tradition in the Greek mind or not, there can be no doubt of its being Turner’s first interpretation of it. A glance at the picture may determine this: a clear fountain being made the principal object in the foreground,—a bright and strong torrent in the distance,—while the dragon, wrapped in flame and whirlwind, watches from the top of the cliff.
§ 5. But, both in the Greek mind and Turner’s, this natural meaning of the legend was a completely subordinate one. The moral significance of it lay far deeper. In the second, but principal sense, the Hesperides were not daughters of Atlas, nor connected with the winds of the west, but with its splendor. They are properly the nymphs of the sunset, and are the daughters of night, having many brothers and sisters, of whom I shall take Hesiod’s account.
§ 6. “And the Night begat Doom, and short-withering Fate, and Death.
“And begat Sleep, and the company of Dreams, and Censure, and Sorrow.
“And the Hesperides, who keep the golden fruit beyond the mighty Sea.
“And the Destinies, and the Spirits of merciless punishment.
“And Jealousy, and Deceit, and Wanton Love; and Old Age, that fades away; and Strife, whose will endures.”
§ 7. We have not, I think, hitherto quite understood the Greek feeling about those nymphs and their golden apples, coming as a light in the midst of cloud; between Censure, and Sorrow,—and the Destinies. We must look to the precise meaning of Hesiod’s words, in order to get the force of the passage.
“The Night begat Doom;” that is to say, the doom of unforeseen accident—doom essentially of darkness.
“And short-withering Fate.” Ill translated. I cannot do it better. It means especially the sudden fate which brings untimely end to all purpose, and cuts off youth and its promise; called, therefore (the epithet hardly ever leaving it), “black Fate.”
“And Death.” This is the universal, inevitable death, opposed to the interfering, untimely death. These three are named as the elder children. Hesiod pauses, and repeats the word “begat” before going on to number the others.
“And begat Sleep, and the company of Dreams.”
“AndCensure.” “Momus,” the Spirit of Blame—the spirit which desires to blame rather than to praise; false, base, unhelpful, unholy judgment;—ignorant and blind, child of the Night.
“And Sorrow.” Accurately, sorrow of mourning; the sorrow of the night, when no man can work; of the night that falls when what was the light of the eyes is taken from us; lamenting, sightless sorrow, without hope,—child of Night.
“And the Hesperides.” We will come back to these.
“And the Destinies, and the Spirits of Merciless Punishment.” These are the great Fates which have rule over conduct; the first fate spoken of (short-withering) is that which has rule over occurrence. These great Fates are Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Their three powers are—Clotho’s over the clue, the thread, or connecting energy,—that is, the conduct of life; Lachesis’ over the lot—that is to say, the chance which warps, entangles, or bends the course of life. Atropos, inflexible, cuts the thread for ever.
“And Jealousy,” especially the jealousy of Fortune, in balancing all good by evil. The Greeks had a peculiar dread of this form of fate.
“And Deceit, and sensual Love. And Old Age that fades, and Strife that endures;” that is to say, old age, which, growing not in wisdom, is marked only by its failing power—by the gradual gaining of darkness on the faculties, and helplessness on the frame, such age is the forerunner of true death—the child of Night. “And Strife,” the last and the mightiest, the nearest to man of the Night-children—blind leader of the blind.
§ 8. Understanding thus whose sisters they are, let us consider of the Hesperides themselves—spoken of commonly as the “Singing Nymphs.” They are four.
Their names are Æglé,—Brightness; Erytheia,—Blushing; Hestia,—the (spirit of the) Hearth; Arethusa,—the Ministering.
O English reader! hast thou ever heard of these fair and true daughters of Sunset, beyond the mighty sea?
And was it not well to trust to such keepers the guarding of the golden fruit which the earth gave to Juno at her marriage? Not fruit only: fruit on the tree, given by the earth, the great mother, to Juno (female power), at her marriage with Jupiter, orrulingmanly power (distinguished from the tried andagonizingstrength of Hercules). I call Juno, briefly, female power. She is, especially, the goddess presiding over marriage, regarding the woman as the mistress of a household. Vesta (the goddessof the hearth5), with Ceres, and Venus, are variously dominant over marriage, as the fulfilment of love; but Juno is pre-eminently the housewives’ goddess. She, therefore, represents, in her character, whatever good or evil may result from female ambition, or desire of power: and, as to a housewife, the earth presents its golden fruit to her, which she gives to two kinds of guardians. The wealth of the earth, as the source of household peace and plenty, is watched by the singing nymphs—the Hesperides. But, as the source of household sorrow and desolation, it is watched by the Dragon.
We must, therefore, see who the Dragon was, and what kind of dragon.
§ 9. The reader will, perhaps, remember that we traced, in an earlier chapter, the birth of the Gorgons, through Phorcys and Ceto, from Nereus. The youngest child of Phorcys and Ceto is the Dragon of the Hesperides; but this latest descent is not, as in Northern traditions, a sign of fortunateness: on the contrary, the children of Nereus receive gradually more and more terror and power, as they are later born, till this last of the Nereids unites horror and power at their utmost. Observe the gradual change. Nereus himself is said to have been perfectlytrueandgentle.
This is Hesiod’s account of him:—
“And Pontus begat Nereus, simple and true, the oldest of children; but they call him the aged man, in that he is errorless and kind; neither forgets he what is right; but knows all just and gentle counsel.”
§ 10. Now the children of Nereus, like the Hesperides themselves, bear a twofold typical character; one physical, the other moral. In his physical symbolism, Nereus himself is the calm and gentle sea, from which rise, in gradual increase of terror, the clouds and storms. In his moral character, Nereus is the type of the deep, pure, rightly-tempered human mind, from which, in gradual degeneracy, spring the troubling passions.
Keeping this double meaning in view, observe the whole line of descent to the Hesperides’ Dragon. Nereus, by the earth, begets (1) Thaumas (the wonderful), physically, the father of the Rainbow; morally, the type of the enchantments and dangers of imagination. His grandchildren, besides the Rainbow, are the Harpies. 2. Phorcys (Orcus?), physically, the treachery or devouring spirit of the sea; morally, covetousness or malignity of heart. 3. Ceto, physically, the deep places of the sea; morally, secretness of heart, called “fair-cheeked,” because tranquil in outward aspect. 4. Eurybia (wide strength), physically, the flowing, especially the tidal power of the sea (she, by one of the sons of Heaven, becomes the mother of three great Titans, one of whom, Astræus, and the Dawn, are the parents of the four Winds); morally, the healthy passion of the heart. Thus far the children of Nereus.
§ 11. Next, Phorcys and Ceto, in their physical characters (the grasping or devouring of the sea, reaching out over the land and its depth), beget the Clouds and Storms—namely, first, the Graiæ, or soft rain-clouds; then the Gorgons, or storm-clouds; and youngest and last, the Hesperides’ Dragon—Volcanic or earth-storm, associated, in conception, with the Simoom and fiery African winds.
But, in its moral significance, the descent is this. Covetousness, or malignity (Phorcys), and Secretness (Ceto), beget, first, the darkening passions, whose hair is always gray; then the stormy and merciless passions, brazen-winged (the Gorgons), of whom the dominant, Medusa, is ice-cold, turning all who look on her to stone. And, lastly, the consuming (poisonous and volcanic) passions—the “flame-backed dragon,” uniting the powers of poison, and instant destruction. Now, the reader may have heard, perhaps, in other books of Genesis than Hesiod’s, of a dragon being busy about a tree which bore apples, and of crushing the head of that dragon; but seeing how, in the Greek mind, this serpent was descended from the sea, he may, perhaps, be surprised to remember another verse, bearing also on the matter:—“Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters;” and yet more surprised, going on with the Septuagint version, to find where he is being led: “Thou brakest the head of the dragon, and gavest him to be meat to the Ethiopian people.Thou didst tear asunder the strong fountains and the storm-torrents; thou didst dry up the rivers of Etham,πηγὰς καὶ χειμάῤῥους, the Pegasus fountains—Etham on the edge of the wilderness.”
§ 12. Returning then to Hesiod, we find he tells us of the Dragon himself:—“He, in the secret places of the desert land, kept the all-golden apples in his great knots” (coils of rope, or extremities of anything). With which compare Euripides’ report of him:—“And Hercules came to the Hesperian dome, to the singing maidens, plucking the apple fruit from the golden petals; slaying the flame-backed dragon, who twined round and round, kept guard in unapproachable spires” (spirals or whirls, as of a whirlwind-vortex).
Farther, we hear from other scattered syllables of tradition, that this dragon was sleepless, and that he was able to take various tones of human voice.
And we find a later tradition than Hesiod’s calling him a child of Typhon and Echidna. Now Typhon is volcanic storm, generally the evil spirit of tumult.
Echidna (the adder) is a descendant of Medusa. She is a daughter of Chrysaor (the lightning), by Calliröe (the fair flowing), a daughter of Ocean;—that is to say, she joins the intense fatality of the lightning with perfect gentleness. In form she is half-maiden, half-serpent; therefore she is the spirit of all the fatalest evil, veiled in gentleness: or, in one word, treachery;—having dominion over many gentle things;—and chiefly over a kiss, given, indeed, in another garden than that of the Hesperides, yet in relation to keeping of treasure also.
§ 13. Having got this farther clue, let us look who it is whom Dante makes the typical Spirit of Treachery. The eighth or lowest pit of hell is given to its keeping; at the edge of which pit, Virgil casts aropedown for a signal; instantly there rises, as from the sea, “as one returns who hath been down to loose some anchor,” “the fell monster with the deadly sting, who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls, and firm embattled spears; and with his filth taints all the world.”
Think for an instant of another place:—“Sharp stones are under him, he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.” We must yetkeep to Dante, however. Echidna, remember, is half-maiden, half-serpent;—hear what Dante’s Fraud is like:—
“Forthwith that image vile of Fraud appear’d,His head and upper part exposed on land,But laid not on the shore his bestial train.His face the semblance of a just man’s wore,So kind and gracious was its outward cheer;The rest was serpent all: two shaggy clawsReach’d to the armpits; and the back and breast,And either side, were painted o’er with nodesAnd orbits. Colors variegated moreNor Turks nor Tartars e’er on cloth of stateWith interchangeable embroidery wove,Nor spread Arachne o’er her curious loom.As oft-times a light skiff moor’d to the shore,Stands part in water, part upon the land;Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,The beaver settles, watching for his prey;So on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock,Sat perch’d the fiend of evil. In the voidGlancing, his tail upturn’d, its venomous forkWith sting like scorpion’s arm’d.”
“Forthwith that image vile of Fraud appear’d,
His head and upper part exposed on land,
But laid not on the shore his bestial train.
His face the semblance of a just man’s wore,
So kind and gracious was its outward cheer;
The rest was serpent all: two shaggy claws
Reach’d to the armpits; and the back and breast,
And either side, were painted o’er with nodes
And orbits. Colors variegated more
Nor Turks nor Tartars e’er on cloth of state
With interchangeable embroidery wove,
Nor spread Arachne o’er her curious loom.
As oft-times a light skiff moor’d to the shore,
Stands part in water, part upon the land;
Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,
The beaver settles, watching for his prey;
So on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock,
Sat perch’d the fiend of evil. In the void
Glancing, his tail upturn’d, its venomous fork
With sting like scorpion’s arm’d.”
§ 14. You observe throughout this description the leaning on the character of theSeaDragon; a little farther on, his way of flying is told us:—
“As a small vessel backing out from land,Her station quits; so thence the monster loos’d,And, when he felt himself at large, turn’d roundThere, where the breast had been, his fork’d tail.Thus, like an eel, outstretch’d at length he steer’d,Gathering the air up with retractile claws.”
“As a small vessel backing out from land,
Her station quits; so thence the monster loos’d,
And, when he felt himself at large, turn’d round
There, where the breast had been, his fork’d tail.
Thus, like an eel, outstretch’d at length he steer’d,
Gathering the air up with retractile claws.”
And lastly, his name is told us: Geryon. Whereupon, looking back at Hesiod, we find that Geryon is Echidna’s brother. Man-serpent, therefore, in Dante, as Echidna is woman-serpent.
We find next that Geryon lived in the island of Erytheia, (blushing), only another kind of blushing than that of the Hesperid Erytheia. But it is on, also, a western island, and Geryon kept red oxen on it (said to be near the red setting sun); and Hercules kills him, as he does the Hesperian dragon: but in order to be able to reach him, a golden boat is given to Hercules by the Sun, to cross the sea in.
§ 15. We will return to this part of the legend presently, having enough of it now collected to get at the complete idea of the Hesperian dragon, who is, in fine, the “Pluto il gran nemico” of Dante; the demon of all evil passions connected with covetousness; that is to say, essentially of fraud, rage, and gloom. Regarded as the demon of Fraud, he is said to be descended from the viper Echidna, full of deadly cunning, in whirl on whirl; as the demon of consuming Rage, from Phorcys; as the demon of Gloom, from Ceto;—in his watching and melancholy, he is sleepless (compare the Micyllus dialogue of Lucian); breathing whirlwind and fire, he is the destroyer, descended from Typhon as well as Phorcys; having, moreover, with all these, the irresistible strength of his ancestral sea.
§ 16. Now, look at him, as Turner has drawn him (p. 298). I cannot reduce the creature to this scale without losing half his power; his length, especially, seems to diminish more than it should in proportion to his bulk. In the picture he is far in the distance, cresting the mountain; and may be, perhaps, three-quarters of a mile long. The actual length on the canvas is a foot and eight inches; so that it may be judged how much he loses by the reduction, not to speak of my imperfect etching,6and of the loss which, however well he might have been engraved, he would still have sustained, in the impossibility of expressing the lurid color of his armor, alternate bronze and blue.
§ 17. Still, the main points of him are discernible enough; and among all the wonderful things that Turner did in his day, I think this nearly the most wonderful. How far he had really found out for himself the collateral bearings of the Hesperid tradition I know not; but that he had got the main clue of it, and knew who the Dragon was, there can be no doubt; the strange thing is, that his conception of it throughout, down to the minutest detail, fits every one of the circumstances of the Greek traditions. There is, first, the Dragon’s descent from Medusa and Typhon, indicated in the serpent-clouds floating from his head (compare my sketch of the Medusa-cloud, Plate 71); then note the grovelling and ponderous body, ending in a serpent,of which we do not see the end. He drags the weight of it forward by his claws, not being able to lift himself from the ground (“Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell”); then the grip of the claws themselves as if they would clutch (rather than tear) the rock itself into pieces; but chiefly, the designing of the body. Remember, one of the essential characters of the creature, as descended from Medusa, is its coldness and petrifying power; this, in the demon of covetousness, must exist to the utmost; breathing fire, he is yet himself of ice. Now, if I were merely to draw this dragon as white, instead of dark, and take his claws away, his body would become a representation of a greater glacier, so nearly perfect, that I know no published engraving of glacier breaking over a rocky brow so like the truth as this dragon’s shoulders would be, if they were thrown out in light; there being only this difference, that they have the form, but not the fragility of the ice; they are at once ice and iron. “His bones are like solid pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron; by his neesings a light doth shine.”
§ 18. The strange unity of vertebrated action, and of a true bony contour, infinitely varied in every vertebra, with this glacial outline;—together with the adoption of the head of the Ganges crocodile, the fish-eater, to show his sea descent (and this in the year 1806, when hardly a single fossil saurian skeleton existed within Turner’s reach), renders the whole conception one of the most curious exertions of the imaginative intellect with which I am acquainted in the arts.
§ 19. Thus far, then, of the dragon; next, we have to examine the conception of the Goddess of Discord. We must return for a moment to the tradition about Geryon. I cannot yet decipher the meaning of his oxen, said to be fed together with those of Hades; nor of the journey of Hercules, in which, after slaying Geryon, he returns through Europe like a border forager, driving these herds, and led into farther battle in protection or recovery of them. But it seems to me the main drift of the legend cannot be mistaken; viz., that Geryon is the evil spirit of wealth, as arising from commerce; hence, placed as a guardian of isles in the most distant sea, and reached in a golden boat; while the Hesperian dragon is the evil spirit of wealth, as possessed in households; and associated, therefore, with the true householdguardians, or singing nymphs. Hercules (manly labor), slaying both Geryon and Ladon, presents oxen and apples to Juno, who is their proper mistress; but the Goddess of Discord, contriving that one portion of this household wealth shall be ill bestowed by Paris, he, according to Coleridge’s interpretation, choosing pleasure instead of wisdom or power;—there issue from this evil choice the catastrophe of the Trojan war, and the wanderings of Ulysses, which are essentially, both in the Iliad and Odyssey, the troubling of household peace; terminating with the restoration of this peace by repentance and patience; Helen and Penelope seen at last sitting upon their household thrones, in the Hesperian light of age.
§ 20. We have, therefore, to regard Discord, in the Hesperides garden, eminently as the disturber of households, assuming a different aspect from Homer’s wild and fierce discord of war. They are, nevertheless, one and the same power; for she changes her aspect at will. I cannot get at the root of her name, Eris. It seems to me as if it ought to have one in common with Erinnys (Fury); but it means always contention, emulation, or competition, either in mind or in words;—the final work of Eris is essentially “division,” and she is herself always double-minded; shouts two ways at once (in Iliad, xi. 6), and wears a mantle rent in half (Æneid, viii. 702). Homer makes her loud-voiced, and insatiably covetous. This last attribute is, with him, the source of her usual title. She is little when she first is seen, then rises till her head touches heaven. By Virgil she is called mad; and her hair is of serpents, bound with bloody garlands.
§ 21. This is the conception first adopted by Turner, but combined with another which he found in Spenser; only note that there is some confusion in the minds of English poets between Eris (Discord) and Até (Error), who is a daughter of Discord, according to Hesiod. She is properly—mischievous error, tender-footed; for she does not walk on the earth, but on heads of men (Iliad, xix. 92);i.e.not on the solid ground, but on human vain thoughts; therefore, her hair is glittering (Iliad, xix. 126). I think she is mainly the confusion of mind coming of pride, as Eris comes of covetousness; therefore, Homer makes her a daughter of Jove. Spenser, under the name of Até, describes Eris. I have referred to his account of her in my noticeof the Discord on the Ducal palace of Venice (remember the inscription there,Discordia sum, discordans). But the stanzas from which Turner derived his conception of her are these—
“Als, as she double spake, so heard she double,With matchlesse eares deformed and distort,Fild with false rumors and seditious trouble,Bred in assemblies of the vulgar sort,That still are led with every light report:And as her eares, so eke her feet were odde,And much unlike; th’ one long, the other short,And both misplast; that, when th’ one forward yode,The other backe retired and contrárie trode.“Likewise unequall were her handës twaine;That one did reach, the other pusht away;That one did make the other mard againe,And sought to bring all things unto decay;Whereby great riches, gathered manie a day,She in short space did often bring to nought,An their possessours often did dismay:For all her studie was, and all her thoughtHow she might overthrow the thing that Concord wrought.“So much her malice did her might surpas,That even th’ Almightie selfe she did maligne,Because to man so mercifull He was,And unto all His creatures so benigne,Sith she herself was of his grace indigne:For all this worlds faire workmanship she trideUnto his last confusion to bring,And that great golden chaine quite to divide,With which it blessed Concord hath together tide.”
“Als, as she double spake, so heard she double,
With matchlesse eares deformed and distort,
Fild with false rumors and seditious trouble,
Bred in assemblies of the vulgar sort,
That still are led with every light report:
And as her eares, so eke her feet were odde,
And much unlike; th’ one long, the other short,
And both misplast; that, when th’ one forward yode,
The other backe retired and contrárie trode.
“Likewise unequall were her handës twaine;
That one did reach, the other pusht away;
That one did make the other mard againe,
And sought to bring all things unto decay;
Whereby great riches, gathered manie a day,
She in short space did often bring to nought,
An their possessours often did dismay:
For all her studie was, and all her thought
How she might overthrow the thing that Concord wrought.
“So much her malice did her might surpas,
That even th’ Almightie selfe she did maligne,
Because to man so mercifull He was,
And unto all His creatures so benigne,
Sith she herself was of his grace indigne:
For all this worlds faire workmanship she tride
Unto his last confusion to bring,
And that great golden chaine quite to divide,
With which it blessed Concord hath together tide.”
All these circumstances of decrepitude and distortion Turner has followed, through hand and limb, with patient care: he has added one final touch of his own. The nymph who brings the apples to the goddess, offers her one in each hand; and Eris, of the divided mind, cannot choose.
§ 22. One farther circumstance must be noted, in order to complete our understanding of the picture,—the gloom extending, not to the dragon only, but also to the fountain and the tree of golden fruit. The reason of this gloom may be found in two other passages of the authors from which Turner had takenhis conception of Eris—Virgil and Spenser. For though the Hesperides in their own character, as the nymphs of domestic joy, are entirely bright (and the garden always bright around them), yet seen or remembered in sorrow, or in the presence of discord, they deepen distress. Their entirely happy character is given by Euripides:—“The fruit-planted shore of the Hesperides,—songstresses,—where the ruler of the purple lake allows not any more to the sailor his way, assigning the boundary of Heaven, which Atlas holds; where the ambrosial fountains flow, and the fruitful and divine land increases the happiness of the gods.”
But to the thoughts of Dido, in her despair, they recur under another aspect; she remembers their priestess as a great enchantress; whofeeds the dragonand preserves the boughs of the tree; sprinkling moist honey and drowsy poppy; who also has power over ghosts; “and the earth shakes and the forests stoop from the hills at her bidding.”
§ 23. This passage Turner must have known well, from his continual interest in Carthage: but his diminution of the splendor of the old Greek garden was certainly caused chiefly by Spenser’s describing the Hesperides fruit as growing first in the garden of Mammon:—
“There mournfull cypresse grew in greatest store;And trees of bitter gall; and heben sad;Dead sleeping poppy; and black hellebore;Cold coloquintida; and tetra madMortal samnitis; and cicuta bad,With which th’ uniust Atheniens made to dyWise Socrates, who, thereof quaffing glad,Pourd out his life and last philosophy.* * * *“The gardin of Prosèrpina this hight:And in the midst thereof a silver seat,With a thick arber goodly over dight,In which she often usd from open heatHerselfe to shroud, and pleasures to entreat:Next thereunto did grow a goodly tree,With braunches broad dispredd and body great,Clothed with leaves, that none the wood mote see,And loaden all with fruit as thick as it might bee.“Their fruit were golden apples glistring bright,That goodly was their glory to behold;On earth like never grew, ne living wightLike ever saw, but they from hence were sold;For those, which Hercules with conquest boldGot from great Atlas daughters, hence began.* * * *“Here eke that famous golden apple grew,The which emongst the gods false Até threw.”
“There mournfull cypresse grew in greatest store;
And trees of bitter gall; and heben sad;
Dead sleeping poppy; and black hellebore;
Cold coloquintida; and tetra mad
Mortal samnitis; and cicuta bad,
With which th’ uniust Atheniens made to dy
Wise Socrates, who, thereof quaffing glad,
Pourd out his life and last philosophy.
* * * *
“The gardin of Prosèrpina this hight:
And in the midst thereof a silver seat,
With a thick arber goodly over dight,
In which she often usd from open heat
Herselfe to shroud, and pleasures to entreat:
Next thereunto did grow a goodly tree,
With braunches broad dispredd and body great,
Clothed with leaves, that none the wood mote see,
And loaden all with fruit as thick as it might bee.
“Their fruit were golden apples glistring bright,
That goodly was their glory to behold;
On earth like never grew, ne living wight
Like ever saw, but they from hence were sold;
For those, which Hercules with conquest bold
Got from great Atlas daughters, hence began.
* * * *
“Here eke that famous golden apple grew,
The which emongst the gods false Até threw.”
There are two collateral evidences in the picture of Turner’s mind having been partly influenced by this passage. The excessive darkness of the stream,—though one of the Cyrene fountains—to remind us of Cocytus; and the breaking of the bough of the tree by the weight of its apples—not healthily, but as a diseased tree would break.
§ 24. Such then is our English painter’s first great religious picture; and exponent of our English faith. A sad-colored work, not executed in Angelico’s white and gold; nor in Perugino’s crimson and azure; but in a sulphurous hue, as relating to a paradise of smoke. That power, it appears, on the hill-top, is our British Madonna; whom, reverently, the English devotional painter must paint, thus enthroned, with nimbus about the gracious head. Our Madonna,—or our Jupiter on Olympus,—or, perhaps more accurately still, our unknown god, sea-born, with the cliffs, not of Cyrene, but of England, for his altar; and no chance of any Mars’ Hill proclamation concerning him, “whom therefore ye ignorantly worship.”
§ 25. This is no irony. The fact is verily so. The greatest man of our England, in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the strength and hope of his youth, perceives this to be the thing he has to tell us of utmost moment, connected with the spiritual world. In each city and country of past time, the master-minds had to declare the chief worship which lay at the nation’s heart; to define it; adorn it; show the range and authority of it. Thus in Athens, we have the triumph of Pallas; and in Venice the assumption of the Virgin; here, in England, is our great spiritual fact for ever interpreted to us—the Assumption of the Dragon. No St. George any more to be heard of;no more dragon-slaying possible: this child, born on St. George’s Day, can only make manifest the Dragon, not slay him, sea-serpent as he is; whom the English Andromeda, not fearing, takes for her lord. The fairy English Queen once thought to command the waves, but it is the sea-dragon now who commands her valleys; of old the Angel of the Sea ministered to them, but now the Serpent of the Sea; where once flowed their clear springs now spreads the black Cocytus pool; and the fair blooming of the Hesperid meadows fades into ashes beneath the Nereid’s Guard.
Yes, Albert of Nuremberg; the time has at last come. Another nation has arisen in the strength of its Black anger; and another hand has portrayed the spirit of its toil. Crowned with fire, and with the wings of the bat.
1Notes on the Turner Collection at Marlborough House. 1857. Catalogue of the Sketches of J. M. V. Turner exhibited at Marlborough House. 1858.2The regret I expressed in the third volume at Turner’s not having been educated under the influence of Gothic art was, therefore, mistaken; I had not then had access to his earlier studies. Hewaseducated under the influence of Gothic architecture; but, in more advanced life, his mind was warped and weakened by classical architecture. Why he left the one for the other, or how far good influences were mingled with evil in the result of the change, I have not yet been able to determine.3They may be referred to with ease in Boone’s Catalogue of Turner’s Pictures, 1857.4Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Art. “Cyrenaica.”5Her name is also that of the Hesperid nymph; but I give the Hesperid her Greek form of name, to distinguish her from the goddess. The Hesperid Arethusa has the same subordinate relation to Ceres; and Erytheia, to Venus. Æglé signifies especially the spirit of brightness or cheerfulness including even the subordinate idea of household neatness or cleanliness.6It is merely a sketch on the steel, like the illustrations before given of composition; but it marks the points needing note. Perhaps some day I may be able to engrave it of the full size.
1Notes on the Turner Collection at Marlborough House. 1857. Catalogue of the Sketches of J. M. V. Turner exhibited at Marlborough House. 1858.
2The regret I expressed in the third volume at Turner’s not having been educated under the influence of Gothic art was, therefore, mistaken; I had not then had access to his earlier studies. Hewaseducated under the influence of Gothic architecture; but, in more advanced life, his mind was warped and weakened by classical architecture. Why he left the one for the other, or how far good influences were mingled with evil in the result of the change, I have not yet been able to determine.
3They may be referred to with ease in Boone’s Catalogue of Turner’s Pictures, 1857.
4Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Art. “Cyrenaica.”
5Her name is also that of the Hesperid nymph; but I give the Hesperid her Greek form of name, to distinguish her from the goddess. The Hesperid Arethusa has the same subordinate relation to Ceres; and Erytheia, to Venus. Æglé signifies especially the spirit of brightness or cheerfulness including even the subordinate idea of household neatness or cleanliness.
6It is merely a sketch on the steel, like the illustrations before given of composition; but it marks the points needing note. Perhaps some day I may be able to engrave it of the full size.
CHAPTER XI.
THE HESPERID ÆGLÉ.
§ 1. Fiveyears after the Hesperides were painted, another great mythological subject appeared by Turner’s hand. Another dragon—this time not triumphant, but in death-pang; the Python, slain by Apollo.
Not in a garden, this slaying, but in a hollow, among wildest rocks, beside a stagnant pool. Yet, instead of the sombre coloring of the Hesperid hills, strange gleams of blue and gold flit around the mountain peaks, and color the clouds above them.
The picture is at once the type, and the first expression of a great change which was passing in Turner’s mind. A change, which was not clearly manifested in all its results until much later in his life; but in the coloring of this picture are the first signs of it; and in the subject of this picture, its symbol.
§ 2. Had Turner died early, the reputation he would have left, though great and enduring, would have been strangely different from that which ultimately must now attach to his name. He would have been remembered as one of the severest of painters; his iron touch and positive form would have been continually opposed to the delicacy of Claude and richness of Titian; he would have been spoken of, popularly, as a man who had no eye for color. Perhaps here and there a watchful critic might have shown this popular idea to be false; but no conception could have been formed by any one of the man’s real disposition or capacity.
It was only after the year 1820 that these were determinable, and his peculiar work discerned.
§ 3. He had begun by faithful declaration of the sorrow there was in the world. It is now permitted him to see also its beauty. He becomes, separately and without rival, the painter of the loveliness and light of the creation.
Of its loveliness: that which may be beloved in it, the tenderest, kindest, most feminine of its aspects. Of its light: light not merely diffused, but interpreted; light seen pre-eminently in color.
Claude and Cuyp had painted the sunshine, Turner alone the suncolor.
Observe this accurately. Those easily understood effects of afternoon light, gracious and sweet so far as they reach, are produced by the softly warm or yellow rays of the sun falling through mist. They are low in tone, even in nature, and disguise the colors of objects. They are imitable even by persons who have little or no gift of color, if the tones of the picture are kept low and in true harmony, and the reflected lights warm. But they never could be painted by great colorists. The fact of blue and crimson being effaced by yellow and gray, puts such effect at once out of the notice or thought of a colorist, unless he has some special interest in the motive of it. You might as well ask a musician to compose with only three notes, as Titian to paint without crimson and blue. Accordingly the colorists in general, feeling that no other than this yellow sunshine was imitable, refused it, and painted in twilight, when the color was full. Therefore, from the imperfect colorists,—from Cuyp, Claude, Both, Wilson, we get deceptive effect of sunshine; never from the Venetians, from Rubens, Reynolds or Velasquez. From these we get only conventional substitutions for it, Rubens being especially daring1in frankness of symbol.
§ 4. Turner, however, as a landscape painter, had to represent sunshine of one kind or another. He went steadily through the subdued golden chord, and painted Cuyp’s favorite effect, “sun rising through vapor,” for many a weary year. But this was not enough for him. He must paint the sun in his strength, the sun risingnotthrough vapor. If you glance at that Apollo slaying the Python, you will see there is rose color and blue on the clouds, as well as gold; and if then you turn to the Apollo in the Ulysses and Polyphemus—his horses are rising beyond the horizon,—you see he is not “rising throughvapor,” but above it; gaining somewhat of a victory over vapor, it appears.
The old Dutch brewer, with his yellow mist, was a great man and a good guide, but he was not Apollo. He and his dray-horses led the way through the flats, cheerily, for a little time; we have other horses now flaming out “beyond the mighty sea.”
A victory over vapor of many kinds; Python-slaying in general. Look how the Python’s jaws smoke as he falls back between the rocks:—a vaporous serpent! We will see who he was, presently.
The public remonstrated loudly in the cause of Python: “He had been so yellow, quiet, and pleasant a creature; what meant these azure-shafted arrows, this sudden glare into darkness, this Iris message; Thaumantian;—miracle-working; scattering our slumber down in Cocytus?” It meant much, but that was not what they should have first asked about it. They should have asked simply, was it a true message? Were these Thaumantian things so, in the real universe?
It might have been known easily they were. One fair dawn or sunset, obediently beheld, would have set them right; and shown that Turner was indeed the only true speaker concerning such things that ever yet had appeared in the world. They would neither look nor hear;—only shouted continuously, “Perish Apollo. Bring us back Python.”
§ 5. We must understand the real meaning of this cry, for herein rests not merely the question of the great right or wrong in Turner’s life, but the question of the right or wrong of all painting. Nay, on this issue hangs the nobleness of painting as an art altogether, for it is distinctively the art of coloring, not of shaping or relating. Sculptors and poets can do these, the painter’s own work is color.
Thus, then, for the last time, rises the question, what is the true dignity of color? We left that doubt a little while ago among the clouds, wondering what they had been made so scarlet for. Now Turner brings the doubt back to us, unescapable any more. No man, hitherto, had painted the clouds scarlet. Hesperid Æglé, and Erytheia, throned there in the west, fade into the twilights of four thousand years, unconfessed. Here is at last one who confesses them, but is it well? Men say these Hesperidsare sensual goddesses,—traitresses,—that the Graiæ are the only true ones. Nature made the western and the eastern clouds splendid in fallacy. Crimson is impure and vile; let us paint in black if we would be virtuous.
§ 6. Note, with respect to this matter, that the peculiar innovation of Turner was the perfection of the color chord by means ofscarlet. Other painters had rendered the golden tones, and the blue tones, of sky; Titian especially the last, in perfectness. But none had dared to paint, none seem to have seen, the scarlet and purple.
Nor was it only in seeing this color in vividness when it occurred in full light, that Turner differed from preceding painters. His most distinctive innovation as a colorist was his discovery of the scarletshadow. “True, there is a sunshine whose light is golden, and its shadow gray; but there is another sunshine, and that the purest, whose light is white, and its shadow scarlet.” This was the essentially offensive, inconceivable thing, which he could not be believed in. There was some ground for the incredulity, because no color is vivid enough to express the pitch of light of pure white sunshine, so that the color given without the true intensity of lightlooksfalse. Nevertheless, Turner could not but report of the color truly. “I must indeed be lower in the key, but that is no reason why I should be false in the note. Here is sunshine which glows even when subdued; it has not cool shade, but fiery shade.”2This is the glory of sunshine.
§ 7. Now, this scarlet color,—or pure red, intensified by expression of light,—is, of all the three primitive colors, that which is most distinctive. Yellow is of the nature of simple light; blue, connected with simple shade; but red is an entirely abstract color. It is red to which the color-blind are blind, as if to show us that it was not necessary merely for the service or comfort of man, but that there was a special gift or teaching in this color. Observe, farther, that it is this color which the sunbeams take inpassing through theearth’s atmosphere. The rose of dawn and sunset is the hue of the rays passing close over the earth. It is also concentrated in the blood of man.
§ 8. Unforeseen requirements have compelled me to disperse through various works, undertaken between the first and last portions of this essay, the examination of many points respecting color, which I had intended to reserve for this place. I can now only refer the reader to these several passages,3and sum theirimport: which is briefly, that color generally, but chiefly the scarlet, used with the hyssop, in the Levitical law, is the great sanctifying element of visible beauty inseparably connected with purity and life.
I must not enter here into the solemn and far-reaching fields of thought which it would be necessary to traverse, in order to detect the mystical connection between life and love, set forth in that Hebrew system of sacrificial religion to which we may trace most of the received ideas respecting sanctity, consecration, andpurification. This only I must hint to the reader—for his own following out—that if he earnestly examines the original sources from which our heedless popular language respecting the washing away of sins has been borrowed, he will find that the fountainin which sins are indeed to be washed away, is that of love, not of agony.
§ 9. But, without approaching the presence of this deeper meaning of the sign, the reader may rest satisfied with the connection given him directly in written words, between the cloud and its bow. The cloud, or firmament, as we have seen, signifies the ministration of the heavens to man. That ministration may be in judgment or mercy—in the lightning, or the dew. But the bow, or color, of the cloud, signifies always mercy, the sparing of life; such ministry of the heaven, as shall feed and prolong life. And as the sunlight, undivided, is the type of the wisdom and righteousness of God, so divided, and softened into color by means of the fundamental ministry, fitted to every need of man, as to every delight, and becoming one chief source of human beauty, by being made part of the flesh of man;—thus divided, the sunlight is the type of the wisdom of God, becoming sanctification and redemption. Various in work—various in beauty—various in power.
Color is, therefore, in brief terms, the type of love. Hence it is especially connected with the blossoming of the earth; and again, with its fruits; also, with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with the morning and evening of the day, in order to show the waiting of love about the birth and death of man.
§ 10. And now, I think, we may understand, even far away in the Greek mind, the meaning of that contest of Apollo with the Python. It was a far greater contest than that of Hercules with Ladon. Fraud and avarice might be overcome by frankness and force; but this Python was a darker enemy, and could not be subdued but by a greater god. Nor was the conquestslightly esteemed by the victor deity. He took his great name from it thenceforth—his prophetic and sacred name—the Pythian.
It could, therefore, be no merely devouring dragon—no mere wild beast with scales and claws. It must possess some more terrible character to make conquest over it so glorious. Consider the meaning of its name, “THE CORRUPTER.” That Hesperid dragon was a treasure-guardian. This is the treasure-destroyer,—where moth and rust doth corrupt—the worm of eternal decay.
Apollo’s contest with him is the strife of purity with pollution; of life, with forgetfulness; of love, with the grave.
§ 11. I believe this great battle stood, in the Greek mind, for the type of the struggle of youth and manhood with deadly sin—venomous, infectious, irrecoverable sin. In virtue of his victory over this corruption, Apollo becomes thenceforward the guide; the witness; the purifying and helpful God. The other gods help waywardly, whom they choose. But Apollo helps always: he is by name, not only Pythian, the conqueror of death; but Pæan—the healer of the people.
Well did Turner know the meaning of that battle: he has told its tale with fearful distinctness. The Mammon dragon was armed with adamant; but this dragon of decay is a mere colossal worm: wounded, he bursts asunder in the midst,4and melts to pieces, rather than dies, vomiting smoke—a smaller serpent-worm rising out of his blood.
§ 12. Alas, for Turner! This smaller serpent-worm, it seemed, he could not conceive to be slain. In the midst of all the power and beauty of nature, he still saw this death-worm writhing among the weeds. A little thing now, yet enough; you may see it in the foreground of the Bay of Baiæ, which has also in it the story of Apollo and the Sibyl; Apollo giving love; but not youth, nor immortality: you may see it again in the foreground of the Lake Avernus—the Hades lake—which Turner surrounds with delicatest beauty, the Fates dancing in circle; but in front, is the serpent beneath the thistle and the wild thorn. The same Sibyl, Deiphobe, holding the golden bough. I cannot get at the meaning of this legend of the bough; but itwas, assuredly, still connected, in Turner’s mind, with that help from Apollo. He indicated the strength of his feeling at the time when he painted the Python contest, by the drawing exhibited the same year, of the Prayer of Chryses. There the priest is on the beach alone, the sun setting. He prays to it as it descends;—flakes of its sheeted light are borne to him by the melancholy waves, and cast away with sighs upon the sand.
How this sadness came to be persistent over Turner, and to conquer him, we shall see in a little while. It is enough for us to know at present that our most wise and Christian England, with all her appurtenances of school-porch and church-spire, had so disposed her teaching as to leave this somewhat notable child of hers without even cruel Pandora’s gift.
He was without hope.
True daughter of Night, Hesperid Æglé was to him; coming between Censure, and Sorrow,—and the Destinies.
§ 13. What, for us, his work yet may be, I know not. But let not the real nature of it be misunderstood any more.
He is distinctively, as he rises into his own peculiar strength, separating himself from all men who had painted forms of the physical world before,—the painter of the loveliness of nature, with the worm at its root: Rose and cankerworm,—both with his utmost strength; the oneneverseparate from the other.
In which his work was the true image of his own mind.
I would fain have looked last at the rose; but that is not the way Atropos will have it, and there is no pleading with her.
So, therefore, first of the rose.
§ 14. That is to say, of this vision of the loveliness and kindness of Nature, as distinguished from all visions of her ever received by other men. By the Greek, she had been distrusted. She was to him Calypso, the Concealer, Circe, the Sorceress. By the Venetian, she had been dreaded. Her wildernesses were desolate; her shadows stern. By the Fleming, she had been despised; what mattered the heavenly colors to him? But at last, the time comes for her loveliness and kindness to be declared to men. Had they helped Turner, listened to him, believed in him, he had done it wholly for them. But they cried out for Python, and Python came;—came literally as well as spiritually;—all the perfectest beauty and conquest which Turnerwrought is already withered. The cankerworm stood at his right hand, and of all his richest, most precious work, there remains only the shadow. Yet that shadow is more than other men’s sunlight; it is the scarlet shade, shade of the Rose. Wrecked, and faded, and defiled, his work still, in what remains of it, or may remain, is the loveliest ever yet done by man, in imagery of the physical world. Whatsoever is there of fairest, you will find recorded by Turner, and by him alone.
§ 15. I sayyouwill find, not knowing to how few I speak; for in order to find what is fairest, you must delight in what is fair; and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such delight. Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking to be understood;—now I cannot any more; for it seems to me that no one regards them. Wherever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem to have no other desire or hope but to have large houses and to be able to move fast. Every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they defile.5
§ 16. Nevertheless, though not joyfully, or with any hope of being at present heard, I would have tried to enter here into some examination of the right and worthy effect of beauty in Art upon human mind, if I had been myself able to come to demonstrable conclusions. But the question is so complicated with that of the enervating influence of all luxury, that I cannot get it put into any tractable compass. Nay, I have many inquiries to make, many difficult passages of history to examine, before I can determine the just limits of the hope in which I may permit myself to continue to labor in any cause of Art.
Nor is the subject connected with the purpose of this book. I have written it to show that Turner is the greatest landscape painter who ever lived; and this it has sufficiently accomplished. What the final use may be to men, of landscape painting, or of any painting, or of natural beauty, I do not yet know. Thus far, however, Idoknow.
§ 17. Three principal forms of asceticism have existed inthis weak world. Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake (as supposed) of religion; seen chiefly in the middle ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester.
“We do not come here to look at the mountains,” said the Carthusian to me at the Grande Chartreuse. “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” the Austrian generals would say, encamping by the shores of Garda. “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” so the thriving manufacturers tell me, between Rochdale and Halifax.
§ 18. All these asceticisms have their bright, and their dark sides. I myself like the military asceticism best, because it is not so necessarily a refusal of general knowledge as the two others, but leads to acute and marvellous use of mind, and perfect use of body. Nevertheless, none of the three are a healthy or central state of man. There is much to be respected in each, but they are not what we should wish large numbers of men to become. A monk of La Trappe, a French soldier of the Imperial Guard, and a thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and no more than a type, of his class, are all interesting specimens of humanity, but narrow ones,—so narrow that even all the three together would not make a perfect man. Nor does it appear in any way desirable that either of the three classes should extend itself so as to include a majority of the persons in the world, and turn large cities into mere groups of monastery, barracks, or factory. I do not say that it may not be desirable that one city, or one country, sacrificed for the good of the rest, should become a mass of barracks or factories. Perhaps, it may be well that this England should become the furnace of the world; so that the smoke of the island, rising out of the sea, should be seen from a hundred leagues away, as if it were a field of fierce volcanoes; and every kind of sordid, foul, or venomous work which in other countries men dreaded or disdained, it should become England’s duty to do,—becoming thus the off-scourer of the earth, and taking the hyena instead of the lionupon her shield. I do not, for a moment, deny this; but, looking broadly, not at the destiny of England, nor of any country in particular, but of the world, this is certain—that men exclusively occupied either in spiritual reverie, mechanical destruction, or mechanical productiveness, fall below the proper standard of their race, and enter into a lower form of being; and that the true perfection of the race, and, therefore, its power and happiness, are only to be attained by a life which is neither speculative nor productive; but essentially contemplative and protective, which (A) does not lose itself in the monk’s vision or hope, but delights in seeing present and real things as they truly are; which (B) does not mortify itself for the sake of obtaining powers of destruction, but seeks the more easily attainable powers of affection, observance, and protection; which (C), finally, does not mortify itself with a view to productive accumulation, but delights itself in peace, with its appointed portion. So that the things to be desired for man in a healthy state, are that he should not see dreams, but realities; that he should not destroy life, but save it; and that he should be not rich, but content.
§ 19. Towards which last state of contentment, I do not see that the world is at present approximating. There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall “inherit the earth.” Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can inherit anything;6they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.
§ 20. The most helpful and sacred work, therefore, which can at present be done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching must be done) not how “to better themselves,” but how to “satisfy themselves.” It is the curse of every evil nation and evil creature to eat, andnotbe satisfied. The words of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied.And as there is only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger, the bread of justice or righteousness; which hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of Heaven; but hungering after the bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom.
§ 21. And, in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life,—this, at present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life—that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance; not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days: so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or provision,7but wholly of accumulation;—the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure;—therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world.
§ 22. What length and severity of labor may be ultimately found necessary for the procuring of the due comforts of life, I do not know; neither what degree of refinement it is possible to unite with the so-called servile occupations of life: but this I know, that right economy of labor will, as it is understood, assign to each man as much as will be healthy for him, and no more; and that no refinements are desirable which cannot be connected with toil.
I say, first, that due economy of labor will assign to each man the share which is right. Let no technical labor be wasted on things useless or unpleasurable;8and let all physical exertion,so far as possible, be utilized, and it will be found no man need ever work more than is good for him. I believe an immense gain in the bodily health and happiness of the upper classes would follow on their steadily endeavoring, however clumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily take in amusements, definitely serviceable. It would be far better, for instance, that a gentleman should mow his own fields, than ride over other people’s.
§ 23. Again, respecting degrees of possible refinement, Icannot yet speak positively, because no effort has yet been made to teach refined habits to persons of simple life.
The idea of such refinement has been made to appear absurd, partly by the foolish ambition of vulgar persons in low life, but more by the worse than foolish assumption, acted on so often by modern advocates of improvement, that “education” means teaching Latin, or algebra, or music, or drawing, instead of developing or “drawing out” the human soul.
It may not be the least necessary that a peasant should know algebra, or Greek, or drawing. But it may, perhaps, be both possible and expedient that he should be able to arrange his thoughts clearly, to speak his own language intelligibly, to discern between right and wrong, to govern his passions, and to receive such pleasures of ear or sight as his life may render accessible to him. I would not have him taught the science of music; but most assuredly I would have him taught to sing. I would not teach him the science of drawing; but certainly I would teach him to see; without learning a single term of botany, he should know accurately the habits and uses of every leaf and flower in his fields; and unencumbered by any theories of moral or political philosophy, he should help his neighbor, and disdain a bribe.
§ 24. Many most valuable conclusions respecting the degree of nobleness and refinement which may be attained in servile or in rural life may be arrived at by a careful study of the noble writings of Blitzius (Jeremias Gotthelf), which contain a record of Swiss character not less valuable in its fine truth than that which Scott has left of the Scottish. I know no ideal characters of women, whatever their station, more majestic than that of Freneli (in Ulric le Valet de Ferme, and Ulric le Fermier); or of Elise, in the Tour de Jacob; nor any more exquisitely tender and refined than that of Aenneli in the Fromagerie and Aenneli in the Miroir des Paysans.9
§ 25. How far this simple and useful pride, this delicateinnocence, might be adorned, or how far destroyed, by higher intellectual education in letters or the arts, cannot be known without other experience than the charity of men has hitherto enabled us to acquire.
All effort in social improvement is paralyzed, because no one has been bold or clear-sighted enough to put and press home this radical question: “What is indeed the noblest tone and reach of life for men; and how can the possibility of it be extended to the greatest numbers?” It is answered, broadly and rashly, that wealth is good; that knowledge is good; that art is good; that luxury is good. Whereas none of them are good in the abstract, but good only if rightly received. Nor have any steps whatever been yet securely taken,—nor, otherwise than in the resultless rhapsody of moralists,—to ascertain what luxuries and what learning it is either kind to bestow, or wise to desire. This, however, at least we know, shown clearly by the history of all time, that the arts and sciences, ministering to the pride of nations, have invariably hastened their ruin; and this, also, without venturing to say that I know, I nevertheless firmly believe, that the same arts and sciences will tend as distinctly to exalt the strength and quicken the soul of every nation which employs them to increase the comfort of lowly life, and grace with happy intelligence the unambitious courses of honorable toil.
Thus far, then, of the Rose.
§ 26. Last, of the Worm.
I said that Turner painted the labor of men, their sorrow, and their death. This he did nearly in the same tones of mind which prompted Byron’s poem of Childe Harold, and the loveliest result of his art, in the central period of it, was an effort to express on a single canvas the meaning of that poem. It may be now seen, by strange coincidence, associated with two others—Caligula’s Bridge and the Apollo and Sibyl; the one illustrative of the vanity of human labor, the other of the vanity of human life.10He painted these, as I said, in the same tone of mindwhich formed the Childe Harold poem, but with different capacity: Turner’s sense of beauty was perfect; deeper, therefore, far than Byron’s; only that of Keats and Tennyson being comparable with it. And Turner’s love of truth was as stern and patient as Dante’s; so that when over these great capacities come the shadows of despair, the wreck is infinitely sterner and more sorrowful. With no sweet home for his childhood,—friendless in youth,—loveless in manhood,—and hopeless in death, Turner was what Dante might have been, without the “bello ovile,” without Casella, without Beatrice, and without Him who gave them all, and took them all away.
§ 27. I will trace this state of his mind farther, in a little while. Meantime, I want you to note only the result upon his work;—how, through all the remainder of his life, wherever he looked, he saw ruin.
Ruin, and twilight. What was the distinctive effect of light which he introduced, such as no man had painted before? Brightness, indeed, he gave, as we have seen, because it was true and right; but in this he only perfected what others had attempted. His own favorite light is not Æglé, but Hesperid Æglé. Fading of the last rays of sunset. Faint breathing of the sorrow of night.
§ 28. And fading of sunset, note also, on ruin. I cannot but wonder that this difference between Turner’s work and previous art-conception has not been more observed. None of the great early painters draw ruins, except compulsorily. The shattered buildings introduced by them are shattered artificially, like models. There is no real sense of decay; whereas Turner only momentarily dwells on anything else than ruin. Take up the Liber Studiorum, and observe how this feeling of decay and humiliation gives solemnity to all its simplest subjects; even to his view of daily labor. I have marked its tendency in examining the design of the Mill and Lock, but observe its continuance through the book. There is no exultation in thriving city, or mart, or in happy rural toil, or harvest gathering. Only the grinding at the mill, and patient striving with hard conditionsof life. Observe the two disordered and poor farm-yards, cart, and ploughshare, and harrow rotting away; note the pastoral by the brook side, with its neglected stream, and haggard trees, and bridge with the broken rail, and decrepit children—fever-struck—one sitting stupidly by the stagnant stream; the other in rags, and with an old man’s hat on, and lame, leaning on a stick. Then the “Hedging and ditching,” with its bleak sky and blighted trees—hacked, and bitten, and starved by the clay soil into something between trees and firewood; its meanly-faced, sickly laborers—pollard laborers, like the willow trunk they hew; and the slatternly peasant-woman, with worn cloak and battered bonnet—an English Dryad. Then the Water-mill, beyond the fallen steps overgrown with the thistle: itself a ruin, mud-built at first, now propped on both sides;—the planks torn from its cattle-shed; a feeble beam, splintered at the end, set against the dwelling-house from the ruined pier of the watercourse; the old millstone—useless for many a day—half buried in slime, at the bottom of the wall; the listless children, listless dog, and the poor gleaner bringing her single sheaf to be ground. Then the “Peat bog,” with its cold, dark rain, and dangerous labor. And last and chief, the mill in the valley of the Chartreuse. Another than Turner would have painted the convent; but he had no sympathy with the hope, no mercy for the indolence of the monk. He painted the mill in the valley. Precipice overhanging it, and wildness of dark forest round; blind rage and strength of mountain torrent rolled beneath it,—calm sunset above, but fading from the glen, leaving it to its roar of passionate waters and sighing of pine-branches in the night.