ERRATA. The reader will have the goodness to make the following corrections: — In the advertisement after concluding chapter, dele "just published." PRE-RAFFAELLITISM. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. THE CASE OPENED, THE EXHIBITION. THE BOOKS.-NATURE OF THE PROPOSED INQUIRY. IF, on going to the Exhibition of our Royal Academy-say in the year 1849, or thereabouts-there met the eye a picture entitled, "Isabel, poor simple Isabel," I presume that no intelligent person would turn away because it was not painted on Greek principles, and did not emulate the pure ideal. It was, in truth, a natural story, told in natural language. A young creature, with money-loving relatives, has "fallen," as we say, "in love" with her brother's clerk; and the picture reveals the consequences. It is a family feast. honoured parents, the comfortable all-approving guests." And there are the lovers. twain, and the loving hound, that takes its place. beside its mistress. And there are the unmistakable B There are the priest, and "the "bitter brothers; one of whom (if I remember right) is giving an ugly kick at the loving dog, that seems to have been really meant for the loving clerk. Such was the scene: and it was given—not in cold portfolio fragments, but fresh and breathing from the very life. With a seeming obtrusion of Plebeianism-an ungovernable love of colour-and an ominous absence of that indispensable shade and shadow which gives to the most magnificent colouring more than half its preciousness, and throws an air of quiet respectability over the lowest efforts of the lowest Dutch, there was yet such pervading evidence of the true dramatic instinct- such embodiment of character- such variety—such genial life, that you may have felt as if making a discovery when you stumbled on it, and been moved to some such remark as I have myself recorded in another place, *"If that picture is not the most faultless, it is beyond all comparison the most promising, in the Exhibition." One of the vices of Picture Galleries is their juxtaposition—sometimes without a decent interval—of heterogeneous, perhaps of the most discordant objects. We must open therefore, incontinent, another chapter of casualties, and appeal to feelings of a holier and deeper cast. It shall be taken for granted that you have devoutly pondered, though you can never fathom, that most mysterious of all mysteries, the incarnation of * Lecture on Art, p. 84. |