G. P. Watts. By G. K. Chesterton. (Duckworth and Co.
2s. net.) —This is a brilliant little book which deals with the spirit of the artist rather than with chronologies and catalogues. Mr. Chesterton writes with great wealth of metaphor and epigram, which enlivens the style. At times, however, we long for a page or two of quiet writing, without obviously pointed sayings, by way of change. Mr. Chesterton tells us that we have now lost touch with the great Victorians, who differed from us by their passionate desire to preach. The writer says that now we are as remote from the great minds of the early Victorian era as were the men of the Restoration from those of the Commonwealth. "Just as we can see nothing about Lord Shaftesbury but his hat, they could see nothing about Cromwell but his nose." We, according to Mr. Chesterton, have "courage to play the egoist and courage to play the fool, but we have not the courage to preach." This "courage to preach "is throughout this remarkable study regarded as the special quality of Watts, marking him off from the present time. But is this a real distinction ? Is it not rather the mark of the scarcity of great personalities ? What is Mr. Kipling if not a preacher ? We are wholly in agreement with Mr. Chesterton when he refutes the absurd idea that the imagination of Watts is Celtic. He says : "The essential Celtic spirit in letters and art may, I think, be defined as a sense of the unbearable beauty of things. The essential spirit of Watts may, I think, be much better expressed as a sense of the joyful austerity of things. The dominant passion of the artistic Celt, of Mr. W. B. Yeats, of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, is in the word escape' : escape into a land where oranges grow on plum trees and men can sow what they like and reap what they enjoy. To Watts the very word 'escape' would be horrible, like an obscene word : his ideal is altogether duty and the great wheel." Mr. Chesterton shows such true insight into the motives of the art of Watts, and appreciation of the best things of the master, that we cannot help regretting an error into which he has fallen with regard to the portraits. We are asked to believe that Watts merely treated his sitter as a "hint" upon which an ideal picture was based. Now the painter himself, when he had been talking of the generalisations of form in his ideal works, turned to a portrait upon an easel and said: "Here I trace every individual form with the greatest care as if with a fine point, trying to get the exact appearance of the sitter." We will take leave of this very interesting book, so full of thought and insight, with one more quotation, which shows how well the writer has entered into the spirit of the great artist:—" But this mystery of the human back has again its other side in the strange impression produced on those behind; to walk behind any one along a lane is a thing that, properly speaking, touches the oldest nerve of awe. Watts has realised this as no one in art or letters has realised it in the whole history of the world: it has made him great. There is one possible exception to his monopoly of this magnificent craze. Two thousand years before, in the dark scriptures of a nomad people, it had been said that their prophet saw the immense Creator of all things, but only saw Him from behind. I I do not know whether even Watts would dare to paint that. But it reads like one of his pictures : like the most terrific of all his pictures, which he has kept veiled."
Yorkshire Coast and Moorland Scenes. By Gordon Home. (A. and C. Black. 7s. 8d. net.)—This is a pleasantly written description of some places on the Yorkshire coast. The author has a happy way of introducing old legends and quaint historical facts. There is an account of a merman who was taken and kept for a time, but who escaped, and, as he swam out to sea, bowed to the
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