ART.

MR. RUSKIN AND THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW."

"We regret to have to shock Mr. Ruskin's faithful followers, many of whom, we have no doubt, are honestly convinced of the intellectual and moral superiority of their idol, by saying 'unkind, wicked things' about him. But when a writer so totally without logic or consistency in his so-called reasonings, and possessed by such abnormal vanity and folly of egotism, has by dint of mere verbal eloquence and phenomenal effrontery (for that is what Mr. Ruskin's assumed intellectual position amounts to) imposed himself on a whole generation as a teacher qualified to lecture de haut en has on the whole circle of life and its greatest artistic and social problems, it is necessary that those who see good ground for refusing credence to his pretensions should express themselves in plain and decisive language."—Edinburgh Review, January, 1S88.

"Feebly and faultf ally, therefore, yet as well as I can do

it under this discouragement, the book is at last done It has been written of necessity. I saw an injustice done, and tried to remedy it. I beard falsehood taught, and was com- pelled to deny it. Nothing else was possible to me. I knew not how little or how much might come of the business, or whether I was fit for it ; but there was the lie full set in front of me, and there was no way round it, but only over it. So that, as the work changed like a tree, it was also rooted like a tree—not where it would, but where need was ; on which, if any fruit grow such as you can like, you are welcome to gather it without thanks ; and so far as it is poor or bitter, it will be your justice to refuse it without reviling."—Joust RUSKIN, preface to last volume of "Modern Painters" (seventeen years after the work was first commenced).

TEE " Review " which strove vainly to crush the author of "Modern Painters" while be was a young and comparatively unknown writer, and which, failing in that attempt, has kept silence upon his demerits during the whole period of his power and reputation, has to-day returned to the attack, emboldened, apparently, by the increasing age and failing strength of the

great writer. Though in our brief space our refutation of this attack must necessarily be imperfect, it will suffice to show both the animus and the incorrectness of statement which characterise the review in question. Some accusations, indeed, we must, from sheer pity, leave unnoticed ; it cannot be necessary at this time of the day to defend Mr. Ruskin's English, and attempt to show that his eloquence is not "sad fustian, out-Heroding Herod," or that his bursts of eloquence are put in at intervals, "like Wagner's grand crescendo trick ;" nor do we care to dwell upon such of the Reviewer's phrases as impute to the great art-critic "unblushing and rampant vanity," "offensiveness of manner," "shallowness and artificiality of feeling," "lack of real conviction," "disregard of truth," and all the stereotyped vocabulary of abuse which throughout this article does duty for argument. Such phrases are but the orna- mental fringe of an Edinburgh Reviewer ; the paint and feathers with which he tricks himself out before he goes in search of his victim's scalp ; let us leave them unheeded, and rather examine the weapons which are, if possible, to bring his adversary to his feet.

Now, the first point on which the Reviewer condemns Mr. Ruskin is this,—that having stated one method of practice for landscape-painters as being the right one, he commends, in the description of a picture by Turner, a method which is "the precise opposite ;" and that, therefore, Mr. Ruskin has no real conviction or care about the subject whatever. If, however, instead of taking the quotations as given in the Edinburgh Review, apart from their context, we turn to "Modern Painters" itself, we find that, so far from the doctrines of the two sentences being in opposition, the one might almost be quoted as a corollary of the other. The first quotation states that all grand style in landscape-painting is based on perfect knowledge, and consists in rendering the specific character of the various objects, and it goes on to say as follows :—

"The true ideal of landscape is precisely the same as that of the human form ; it is the expression of the specific—not the individual, but the specific—characters of every object in their perfection."

In the second quotation, describing the St. Gothard Valley, it is precisely because Turner has grasped the specific quality of the scene that Mr. Raskin claims admiration for his picture. The contradiction of the Reviewer is a wholly imaginary one, and is only rendered plausible by the abstraction of a few words from their context, and their misapplication by the Reviewer. Again, our critic says, in 1846 Mr. Ruskin advised young artists to go to Nature, and reject nothing and select nothing ; therefore he is entirely inconsistent in commending the above-mentioned picture by Turner. What are we to say to such a piece of reasoning as this ? Because I tell a student to learn his grammar, to con- struct his sentences in a certain simple way, am I to be for ever precluded from admiring a passage by Carlyle or a poem by Browning in which the author has, for a specific and worthy purpose, disregarded ordinary rules ?

But the Reviewer does not even stop here ; his next contention is even more surprising. It is this,—that because Ruskin has stated, as above, the necessity of not falsifying the specific character of objects, he thereby debars artists from painting all imaginative subjects, or painting any other matters whatsoever save those which they have actually beheld; and the Reviewer quotes, as a proof of the author's casuistry, the following passage :—" It is always wrong to draw what you don't see. This law is inviolable. But then some people see only things that exist, and others see things that do not exist, or do not exist apparently. And if they really see these non-apparent things they are quite right to draw them."

Now, we should have thought that even a partisan writer could not help acknowledging that the real drift of this quota- tion is simply this,—that imaginative art may be essentially true, and unimaginative art may, in certain cases, be essentially false ; that what you look at, you are to draw rightly or not at all, but that you may look at many more and different things than would be visible to every beholder.

The next point upon which the Reviewer relies is a statement, in opposition to Ruskin, of what, in his own opinion, landscape- painting should be,—a statement which it would be more easy to criticise were it less vague. It is this,—" The great aim of landscape-painting is to create ideal poems- out of the materials and suggestions of Nature." To which we may reply,--' This might with equal truth be said to be- the great aim of figure-painting, or the great aim of litera- ture, or the great aim of music, if it comes to that.' In truth, the Reviewer has here wandered away from his point ; the quota- tion which be wishes to discuss does not refer to the aim, re- garding which, as far as we can see, he seems to have taken his chief ideas from Mr. Ruskin himself, but of-the method, con- cerning which Ruskin's statements to which he objects have been

If Ruskin has said one thing more than another for the last thirty years, it is that the great function of landscape- painting is to express, in the purest and least egoistical manner, "man's delight in God's handiwork ;" he never has said, and no

unbiassed reader of his works could possibly have gathered from them the idea, that the scientific representation of Nature was the right goal at which the landscape-painter should aim. Implicitly and explicitly, in a thousand passages, has he denied

this interpretation of his words ; denied it from the very first moment that critics sought to attribute it to him ; denied it in a thousand passages which leave no doubt of his meaning. Whether he be right or wrong in thinking that only through accurate and minute truth to Nature the highest form of Art can be subsequently attained, may be a question for debate or denial; but that every word in which he refers to accurate representation of detail, implies also a reference to the ideal use of that detail when it is obtained, there can be no doubt whatever :—

"This is the difference between the mere botanist's knowledge of plants, and the great poet's or painter's knowledge of them. The one notes their distinctions for the sake of swelling his herbarium ; the other, that he may render them vehicles of expression and emotion That generalisation, then, is right, true, and noble, which is based on the knowledge of the distinctions and observance of the relations of individual kinds. That generalisation is wrong, false, and contemptible, which is based on ignorance of the one, and disturbance of the other. It is, indeed, no generalisation, but con- fusion and chaos ; it is the generalisation of a defeated army into indistinguishable impotence—the generalisation of the elements of a dead carcass into dust."

It is satisfactory to read that, on the whole, the "Stones of Venice" is "in its general scope a somewhat more reasonable and logical work" than "Modern Painters." The Reviewer's old trick of calling names comes into full play in the passages which follow, and he makes various assertions at variance with Mr. Ruskin's with regard to matters of detail, into which we have not here space to follow him, and which are not, indeed, very germane to the point in any ease. But of his absolutely astounding criticism of the "Elements of Drawing," a few words must be said. Thus, for instance, we are invited to con- sider Mr. Ruskin illogical because he suggests that various

forms of boughs and leaves are useful for furnishing ideas for decoration. " How illogical this is ! " says the Reviewer. "Abstract curves have no reference to physical nature,

but only to geometrical proportion." To which the answer would seem to be justly made in the immortal words of Mrs. Gamp,—" Who's deniging of it, Betsy ?" Who cares twopence whether abstract curves have or have not reference to nature ? You might jest as well say that a man should not eat an orange because the vegetable has no reference to animal life. As a matter of fact, all the most beautiful curves in the world

are natural curves. Has the Edinburgh Reviewer never seen a human being except with his clothes on ? Or marked the tracery of a group of leaves against an evening sky ? Every fine form

of conventional art or ornament which the world has ever seen has been founded upon natural forma—that is to say, upon the

curves of natural objects. How is the Reviewer going to get rid of his Greek egg, and tongue and honeysuckle ornament ? How

about the acanthus and the lotus ? How about the Persian carnation and hyacinth patterns ?

Here is another astounding instance of our critic's logic. In addition to the above reasoning as to uselessness of natural forms for decorative purposes, he says :—" All use of the natural forms as suggestions for curves would be but attempts to conventionalise Nature, and Mr. Ruskin tells us that we should never do that." This is the sort of double error which is enough to make any person who is acquainted with the subject

with which the writer is dealing, want to tear his hair. In the first place, Mr. Ruskin says nothing of the kind : he says very frequently the exact reverse. In the second place, the logical

deduction is entirely erroneous. To use one matter as a suggestion for another, is not necessarily to conventionalise it ; it may not be even to deal with it at all. You may design the curves of a ship's hull from the suggestion of a leaf : but surely this cannot be described as conventionalising the leaf ? This whole passage is a tissue of errors, which we should have to borrow the Reviewer's own language to adequately characterise. Here is another absolutely in- accurate statement : that in "The Two Paths" Mr. Ruskin

asserts no man "would have used conventional when he could get natural ornament." Why, nearly the whole of one essay in "The Two Paths" is devoted to explaining the fact that certain races use nothing but conventional and geometrical forms for their ornament, and to trying to trace the reasons for ,

such a choice on their part ; and in the same book the author draws the most clear distinction between what he calls false and true convention, and actually gives diagrams to show the difference between the two, as he does, for the matter of that, in "Modern Painters" itself. The whole matter is summed up by the Reviewer as proving that, on the subject of ornament, Mr. Ruskin has "absolutely no opinions at all," "asserts one thing at one time, and its direct contrary another, in sheer intellectual dishonesty," and is, indeed, "indifferent to everything except making a smart hit at the moment."* We venture to assert that a more absolutely incorrect statement than this has never been put forward in a respectable Review ; its error is only paralleled by the violence with which it is asserted, and the misleading quotations and logical fallacies with which the author seeks to maintain it.

With these statements, and a few unsubstantiated sneers at the instruction given to students in the "Elements of Drawing," the Reviewer's criticism of what he chooses to call Mr. Ruskin's fallacies comes to an end. The remainder of the article is devoted to an examination of his morality and political economy, into which it is alien to our purpose to enter. Bat at the end of the review we are told, ex cathedra, what was the work that Mr. Ruskin was really fitted to perform, and to which, if he had confined himself, would have received the Reviewer's approbation. It appears that when Mr. Ruskin is not possessed by his literary demon of" abnormal vanity and folly of egotism," but is simply engaged in painting, he produces land- scapes which are, in the Reviewer's opinion, "equal to those of Turner ;" and that his water-colour drawings of architecture, recently exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, are such as "it would not be possible to surpass." The amount and character of the Reviewer's artistic capabilities may well be gauged by the above statement. His gravest misrepresenta- tions have not less foundation ; in fact, his most violent words are not more unjust in censure than the above is mistaken in its praise.