24 APRIL 1869, Page 14

ART AND OPINION.

[TO THE EDITOR. OF THE "SPECTATOR.")

Sut,—If your powerful article on my very slight little essay in the Contemporary Review makes me look foolish, I may receive that as a proper punishment for the rigidity of my phraseology. Nevertheless, it is true that I expressly said my intention was to be rigid, as rigid as the rule of three, and that, having called the " Canon " a marvel of perfection, and ventured on the paradox that "a perfect artist would be a perfect idiot," I went on to define, as well as I could, the limits within which faith, or belief, could be expressed in art, especially poetry, and the conditions under which (as in hymns, for example), an assumption being granted to b in with, even dogma itself was admissible.

Though my qualifications, or rather qualified applications, of the Canon seem to me to cover the whole of the ground that you can claim, and nearly the whole of what you actually take, I should still Bay that in pure art opinion is inadmissible, as opinion. It may take a place exactly analogous to that of an incident in a story, i.e., it may be recorded as a basis of poetry, but that is all. Faith or belief, too, may be incorporated into art as material of emotion, just as incident may ; but not as opinion stated. The formula of art is I see, or I feel, not I think'. Take up a number of books of poetry and a number of books of philosophy, and what is the most obvious negative characteristic of the former? Surely, the absence of stated opinion. To say that the distinction between opinion stated and opinion involved (or educible) is "intangible," seems to me to be saying that the distinction between the critical and the poetic intelligence and their methods is intangible.

All the passages you quote (except the first, from Wordsworth, which is unpoetic in form, though poetic in intention, and the lines from Mr. Matthew Arnold, which, though harmless, may be described in the same terms) appear to me to be fine poetry ; and they are expressly provided for by certain passages in my paper. For example, "The spiritual suggestions or emotions which seek to express themselves in different creeds lie within the poet's

province Wherever there is [a] faith, the man must express himself in a formula of some sort ; and so long as that formula does not exceed the limits of the emotions from the consolidated force of which it takes it rise, and so long as it is expressed in concrete or artistic form," it is acceptable in poetry. But I think you would agree with me, that Wordsworth is a great hybrid, who too often falls into mere arid dogmatism ; and that the Excursion, for instance, is a most faulty work of art ; for this reason, among others, that ite illustrious author too often introduced into it that which was fit to be said, but unfit to be sung.

I allege that a painter who introduced, upon a hint of Mr. Jowett's, certain disputable features into a portrait of the Apostle Paul, would be introducing matter of opinion into a work of art in violation of the "Canon," as surely as if you were to allege that, because the existence of an external world has been doubted, a painter who represented a beautiful woman would be introducing matter of opinion into his picture. But he would not be doing

unless he could paint her in such a way as to show that he considered her only as a "permanent possibility of sensation." I think your paper contains one small error of fact, when you gay that mine admits that a certain very eccentric opinion might be matter of art. There is no such admission in what I note. On the whole, some of your expressions come so close to some of mine (to, e.g., my sentence, "Everything depends upon the form in which a thing is assimilated ") that I gladly recur to the feeling that only my own rigidity of expression is to blame for an apparent difference of opinion which, if it were real, I should regard as a personal misfortune. Reading through Coleridge for the first time in my life, I observe be Bays what comes very close indeed :—" A poem is that species of composition which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate" [i.e., its determining, conditioning] "object pleasure and truth ; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part." This is really enough for my purpose, if you add a most important qualification, namely, that in my opinion the word pleasure by no means represents the peculiar exaltation (allied to the moral and religious sensibilities) produced by beauty on normally constituted people. Coleridge's subsequent criticisms of Wordsworth's intrusive "biographical" touches are also only another way of saying what I said,—" No matter of contingent truth can, qua contingent truth, be matter of art."

If, or why, it is worth while to say all this over again is another question, which would carry us far into that question of certain modern tendencies which you yourself raise. But I may say that part of the warmth of reception which I should accord to poets like Robert Buchanan (in one vein), Mr. Swinburne (in another), and Mr. William Morris (in a third), is founded upon my feeling that they are leading necessary reactions against those tendencies. More strength to their elbows, and may Mr. William Morris, in particular, refuse to listen to the kind of voice which I heard in one of the Quarterlies, calling upon him to change his note, his, to me, most welcome and delightful note?

One word more. I trouble you with this, not because my own opinions are of any consequence, but because those of the Spectator carry the utmost weight.-1 am, Sir, &c., Ma.rriimw BROWNE.

[Our correspondent attaches far too much value to our authority and too little to his own ; but we confess, after carefully considering his letter, its doctrine appears to us to come to no more than this : that opinion, to become poetical, must be vitally rooted in character, and that directly that vital root is exhibited it loses all its unpoetical effect. If that is all, we agree with him, but think his language misleading.—En. Spectator.]