The Crown of Wild Olive
we have constructed an enormous and costly edifice, which, in claiming
educational influence over the whole London populace, and middle class,
is verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century,--the Crystal
Palace.
54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly discovered
style of architecture, greater than any hitherto known,--our best
popular writers, in their enthusiasm, describing it as an edifice of
Fairyland. You are nevertheless to observe that this novel production of
fairy enchantment is destitute of every kind of sculpture, except the
bosses produced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the Duomo of
Pisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its capitals,
inlaid colour designs of its facade, embossed panels of its baptistery
font, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, contained the germ of a
school of sculpture which was to maintain, through a subsequent period
of four hundred years, the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the
world in description of Form, and expression of Thought.
55. Now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the vast
discrepancy in the character of these two buildings.
In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa, was a colossal image of
Christ, in coloured mosaic, bearing to the temple, as nearly as
possible, the relation which the statue of Athena bore to the Parthenon;
and in the same manner, concentrating the imagination of the Pisan on
the attributes of the God in whom he believed.
In precisely the same position with respect to the nave of the building,
but of larger size, as proportioned to the three or four times greater
scale of the whole, a colossal piece of sculpture was placed by English
designers, at the extremity of the Crystal Palace, in preparation for
their solemnities in honour of the birthday of Christ, in December, 1867
or 1868.
That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a pantomime, some
twelve feet high from brow to chin, which face, being moved by the
mechanism which is our pride, every half minute opened its mouth from
ear to ear, showed its teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of these
periodical seasons of expression being increased and explained by the
illuminated inscription underneath "Here we are again."
56. When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that the mind of the
English populace is to be addressed, in the principal Sacred Festival of
its year, by sculpture such as this, I need scarcely point out to you
that the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence by
collecting within this building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kind
of art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it are
continually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it
together) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past
work, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Christians,
miscoloured, misplaced, and misinterpreted;[117] here thrust into
unseemly corners, and there mortised together into mere confusion of
heterogeneous obstacle; pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable in
weariness, until any kind of relief is sought from it in steam
wheelbarrows or cheap toy-shops; and most of all in beer and meat, the
corks and the bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp deal
flooring of the English Fairy Palace.
57. But you will probably think me unjust in assuming that a building
prepared only for the amusement of the people can typically represent
the architecture or sculpture of modern England. You may urge, that I
ought rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is
executed in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper
classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I could not now
criticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because I
have not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general.
I will, however, in some points, tell you the facts by anticipation.
58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture; but portrait sculpture,
which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, even when produced by
men of genius;--nor does it in the least require men of genius to
produce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts
of painting; but any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can
carve a satisfactory bust.
59. Of our powers in historical sculpture, I am, without question, just,
in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments we have erected to our
two greatest heroes by sea and land; namely, the Nelson Column, and the
statue of the Duke of Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, I
hope, think me severe,--certainly, whatever you may think me, I am using
only the most temperate language, in saying of both these monuments,
that they are absolutely devoid of high sculptural merit. But, consider
how much is involved in the fact thus dispassionately stated, respecting
the two monuments in the principal places of our capital, to our two
greatest heroes.
60. Remember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetual
study and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand years
past: especially, we have the best sculpture of Greece, for example of
bodily perfection; the best of Rome, for example of character in
portraiture; the best of Florence, for example of romantic passion: we
have unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we have
the most perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human and
comparative; and, we have bribes for the reward of success, large, in
the proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared with those offered
to the artists of any other period. And with all these advantages, and
the stimulus also of fame carried instantly by the press to the remotest
corners of Europe, the best efforts we can make, on the grandest of
occasions, result in work which it is impossible in any one particular
to praise.
Now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the negation of the
faculty of sculpture this implies in the national mind! What measures
can be assigned to the gulf of incapacity, which can deliberately
swallow up in the gorge of it the teaching and example of three thousand
years, and produce as the result of that instruction, what it is
courteous to call "nothing?"
61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive, on the evidence presented
by our historical sculpture. To complete the measure of ourselves, we
must endeavour to estimate the rank of the two opposite schools of
sculpture employed by us in the nominal service of religion, and in the
actual service of vice.
I am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of Christ, nor of
any scene related in the New Testament, produced by us within the last
three hundred years, which has possessed even superficial merit enough
to attract public attention.
Whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art which we learn,
more or less apishly, from the French schools, and employ, but too
gladly, in manufacturing articles for the amusement of the luxurious
classes, must be ranked as one of the chief instruments used by joyful
fiends and angry fates, for the ruin of our civilization.
If, after I have set before you the nature and principles of true
sculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you reconsider these
facts,--(which you will then at once recognize as such),--you will find
that they absolutely justify my assertion that the state of sculpture in
modern England, as compared with that of the great Ancients, is
literally one of corrupt and dishonourable death, as opposed to bright
and fameful life.
62. And now, will you bear with me, while I tell you finally why this is
so?
The cause with which you are personally concerned is your own frivolity;
though essentially this is not your fault, but that of the system of
your early training. But the fact remains the same, that here, in
Oxford, you, a chosen body of English youth, in no wise care for the
history of your country, for its present dangers, or its present duties.
You still, like children of seven or eight years old, are interested
only in bats, balls, and oars: nay, including with you the students of
Germany and France, it is certain that the general body of modern
European youth have their minds occupied more seriously by the sculpture
and painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all the
divinest workmanship and passionate imagination of Greece, Rome, and
Mediaeval Christendom.
63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, and of
worse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms of deadly
Idolatry which are now all but universal in England.
The first of these is the worship of the Eidolon, or Phantasm of Wealth;
worship of which you will find the nature partly examined in the 37th
paragraph of my _Munera Pulveris_; but which is briefly to be defined as
the servile apprehension of an active power in Money, and the submission
to it as the God of our life.
64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly imaginative
faculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the Spirit, in what we
chiefly accept as the ordinance and teaching of Deity; and the
apprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading the Book
whose primal commands we refuse to obey.
No feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more shameful
idolatry, than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the majority
of English religious persons, that the Word of God, by which the heavens
were of old, and the earth, standing out of the water and in the
water,--the Word of God which came to the prophets, and comes still for
ever to all who will hear it, (and to many who will forbear); and which,
called Faithful and True, is to lead forth, in the judgment, the armies
of heaven,--that this "Word of God" may yet be bound at our pleasure in
morocco, and carried about in a young lady's pocket, with tasselled
ribands to mark the passages she most approves of.
65. Gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, and England is
little likely to give the unexampled spectacle, of a country successful
in the noble arts, yet in which the youths were frivolous, the maidens
falsely religious, the men, slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity.
Not from all the marble of the hills of Luni will such a people ever
shape one statue that may stand nobly against the sky; not from all the
treasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they gather, for
their own descendants, any inheritance but shame.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] Glance forward at once to Sec. 75, read it, and return to this.
[114] There is a primary and vulgar sense of "exhibited" in Lucian's
mind; but the higher meaning is involved in it.
[115] In the Greek, "ambrosial." Recollect always that ambrosia, as food
of gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food is
ambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called "ambrosial"
because it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the
23rd Psalm, the stillness of waters.
[116] I have italicised this final promise of blessedness, given by the
noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's 5th Latter-day pamphlet,
throughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition.
[117] "Falsely represented," would be the better expression. In the cast
of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage
of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is
represented by a repetition of casts from one mould, of which the design
itself is entirely conjectural.
LECTURE III.
IMAGINATION.
_November, 1870._
66. The principal object of the preceding lecture (and I choose rather