IMAGINARY PORTRAITS.* Ise reading or reviewing a book of Mr.
Pater's, it is as well to bear in mind Mr. Pater's own definition of the aim of asethetie criticism, with one of the objects of which, "artistic and accom. plished forms of human life," this new book deals:—
" The teethed° critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has to do, all works of art and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces, producing pleasurable sensations, each of a
more or lees peculiar and unique kind To him, the picture,
the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book are valuable for their virtues, as we say in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem ; for the property each has of affecting one with a special, unique
impression of pleasure And the fanotion of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyse, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure."
In these books, then, with their wonderful charm of style, and often of thought too, we are to look for impressions, not convic- tions. The aesthetic heathenism of Studies in the Renaissance, with all its so-called Hellenism, its " exquisite faintness," its "worship of the body," its "morality which is all sympathy," and so forth, is hardly to be found, it is true, in the grave dignity of Marine; and the signs of it in Imaginary Portraits are few and far between. Mr. Pater's "impressions" have become more natural, more honest, and have almost entirely lost what one might have called their affectation. His style is always beautiful in its quietness ; his colours, faint as ever, are clearer and purer than of old ; we oan now read his books without longing to dash cold water over them and ourselves, and to call Dr. Johnson to the rescue.
On the whole, Imaginary Portraits, though not equal to Marius in power and charm, will certainly not discredit Mr. Pater's name as a writer and a critic. The " portraits " are four in number, and it does not seem at first as if they could all lay claim to being imaginary, for the first name on the list is Watteau. We are not able to discover that the other three originals of these "portraits " ever really existed ; they seem to be types ; and in the illustration of these, many meanings and fancies are suggested, more than a reviewer can venture to attempt finding out.
The portrait of " A Prince of Court Painters " is painted, and most exquisitely, in the journal of a woman of his native town, Valenciennes, whose hopele'ss, lifelong affection for him is tenderly touched, for she paints her own portrait as well as that of Antony Watteau. The few facts known of Watteau's life are expanded into this beautiful sketch, which -to us has more charm, though perhaps less power, than any other in the book. The "dark-haired youth," with "large, unquiet eyes," goes away to seek his fortune in Paris in 1702, leaving his old father and mother in their dull stone house. Often, in the following years, he comes back to Valenciennes, and this friend of his youth, the daughter of the sculptor who encouraged his early taste for art, keeps a sort of journal of his advance, his ambitions, his achievements. The new manner of painting puzzles her very much, till in one of Antony's visits he "has taken it into his kind head to paint and decorate our chief salon." And then the old, dark, heavy room becomes dainty, aerial, pale- rose, four spaces of it to be filled with "fantasies" of the Four Seasons. New arm-chairs of Antony's devising are to come from
Paris :--
"Oar old silver candlesticks look well on the chimney-piece. Odd, faint-coloured flowers fill coquettishly the little empty spaces here and there, like ghosts of nosegays left by visitors long ago, which paled thus, sympathetically, at the decease of their old owners He has completed the ovals—the Four Seasons. Oh ! the summer-hlre grace, the freedom and softness of the `Summer,'—a hayfield such as we visited to-day, bat boundless, and with touches of level Italian architecture in the hot, white, elusive distance, and wreaths of flowers, fairy hayrakea and the like, suspended from tree to tree, with that wonderful lightness which is one of the charms of his work. I can understand through this, at last, what it is he enjoys, what he selects by preference from all that various world we pass oar lives in."
As time goes on, with a sad heart, Antony's friend understands him and his work better and better. He is restless, melancholy, scornful, discontented, in the midst of all his fashion and fame ; yet these things are necessary, they are everything to him. Her own poor likeness which he began, he leaves unfinished; yet she finds some satisfaction in a theory of her own, that Antony "paints that delicate life of Paris so excellently, with so much spirit, partly because, after all, he looks down upon it or despises it." All the journal is equally charming ; and one almost feels
• Imaginary Portraits. By Walter Pater, M.A. London Macmillan and Co. 1887.
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