THE QUESTION A VERY BROAD ONE. 293

due and fitting ways, the hand of brotherhood: but let us solemnly pause ere, by abjuring necessary distinctions, or aggravating them by unseemly language, we make the amputation we deprecate, and suggest what an apostle took for an absurdity that precluded argument, "Because I am not the eye or head, therefore I am not of the body."

They

Let these things be weighed and pondered. involve the vital interests of art and architecture. Can it be a moment assumed that they involve no more? With what face can we assert abstract principles in the case of art, while we lack the manliness to carry them out in other things?

With what prospect? Do you expect the inferior workman to know no distinction beyond his own sense of it within the workshop, and to be the slavethe worse than Helot-the moment he steps out into social life? These are questions that will have

an answer.

CHAP. XXVI.

A COLLATERAL CHAPTER OF EVIDENCE.

WORTH,

CARLYLE AND WORDS

It is full time I leave my reader to pronounce the verdict. There is yet, however, a piece of evidence I cannot withhold from him. Pre-Raffaellitism is not quite an original movement. Mr. Ruskin may certainly claim for partisan the author Steele speaks of, who proposed "writing in a perfectly new way, by describing things as they are." Those on the other side might put into the genealogy certain worthies of the school of Rousseau, we read of in De Crecqui, who, for love of "nature," adorned their cheeks with carrots, instead of ringlets. But here is something that deserves grave attention.

*

Those who agree with what I have ventured to say as to the nature of Poetry, will further agree, that it is entitled to a form no less distinct. Those who agree with Mr. Carlyle must be prepared for a corresponding account of the subject; though it is, we all know, his prerogative to out-Herod all the Herods. He told, for instance, a wondering disciple that

"Tennyson wrote in verse because the schoolmaster taught him it was great to do so, and had been thus turned from the true path of a man: that Byron had, in

"Modern Painters," pt. iv. ch. x. § 2.

LANGUAGE OF POETRY — WORDSWORTH. 295

like manner, been turned from his vocation: that Shakspeare had not the good sense to see it would have been better to write on in prose." (Memoir of Margaret Fuller.)

This may have been esoteric teaching: it is the honest consequence of his definition. Let us now look at those "Prefaces" of Wordsworth, to which Mr. Ruskin has made significant reference.

I shall make no apology for interpolating a bracketted sentence, or putting certain words in italics for the avoidance of longer comment.

poet says,

The

"The principal object which I proposed to myself in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them throughout as far as possible, in a selection of language really used by men" (the only difference between Giotto and Wordsworth is, that whilst the latter gives us Goody Blake" and "Peter Bell," the former presents us with "Saint Anna" and "the Virgin Mary;" but both, with equal scrupulosity," from common life") "Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity" (" Achilles' wrath," and "Dido's grief," not being essential or matured passions of humanity), "and speak a plainer language" (than Andromache, Queen Catherine, Margaret of Anjou, or the Prince of Denmark): "because the manners of rural life" (slanderously called boorish) " germinate from those elementary feelings" (exhibiting, of course, their native grace)," and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable" (if we can but proscribe Free Trade, and keep to

natural products); " and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature " (a fact ascertainable by any who will look in at an ordinary on market days). "The language too, of these men is adopted-purified, indeed, from what appears to be its defects-because such men hourly converse with the best objects" (horses, pigs, and poultry), "from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society, and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse" (Wordsworth's words, not mine) "being less under the influence of social vanity" (village society being notoriously free from gossiping), "they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly such a language" (perfect from its very poverty)" is a more permanent and a more philosophical language than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art in proportion as " (depending wholly on sympathy) "they separate themselves from the sympathies of men."

Who can fail to recognise the comparative anatomy of Pre-Raffaellitism? What follows is so precisely Mr. Ruskin's account of Giotto nature and his own repudiation of Idealism, that we seem to be reading things over again reason for reason and word for word.

“There neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition. They both speak to the same organs" (like Æolian harp and bagpipe). "Though the poet is endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm, tenderness, &c., than are supposed to be common among mankind, yet there

cannot be a doubt but that the language this faculty will suggest must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that which is uttered by men in real life under the actual pressure of their passions."

Can there be a doubt of the identity, if not parentage, of the Pre-Raffaellite "hedge-row humanity?"

Let us pity the poet; let us pity his hearers: he is to speak the language of common men; but he cannot speak it, of course, so well. We have thought sometimes of poetic wings; it seems they are for the rest of the species: the poet's glory must be a pair of legs.

. The

"Poets do not write for poets, but for men. poet must descend from his supposed height, and, in order to excite rational sympathy, he must express himself as other men express themselves."

One would think that the reformer had lighted on some cabalistic language; or that it was the poet's special office, not to lift his reader, but to degrade himself. Who can wonder at the encomiums lavished on those pre-eminently poetic lines,—

"My friends, do they now and then send

A look or a thought after me?

or the appearance, in the most ambitious of the illustrative compositions, of such passages as,

"One night; and now my little Bess ?"

or that, instead of,

we have,

Lawrence, of virtuous Father, virtuous Son,"

"Spade with which Wilkinson has dug his lands ?"