ROYAL PATRONAGE.
IT is hard to decide whether Royal patronage is or is not of benefit to the patronised department of thought or effort. Historians have always affirmed the former, and have numbered his patronage of such-and-such an art 'or science or beneficial pursuit among the Monarch's claims to affection Or renown; but their praise is rarely accompanied by any exactitude of detail, and sometimes resolves itself into mere surprise at a Sovereign's courthey to one who brought him neither victory nor provinces, the truth being all the while that the ruler was only unexpectedly pleasant to one who gave him pleasure, or who, especially in architecture, carried out his ideas. It would seem, no doubt, to be true that within the State Serfices the favour and attention of the Monarch— especially in a true Monarchy, wherein favour implies promo- tion—do act as a powerful stimulus to exertion. An army or a navy is almost sure to be the better for a King's appre- ciation. He has little motive in those Services for unworthy favouritism, and therefore; if he is at all competent, picks out good men. The energetic crowd into the favoured Service, and as the favour of the Monarch carries that of .the multi- tude, it is stimulated and made hopeful and inventive by general appreciation. Louis XIV. could not, of course, create men of genius, but he and his Court drew many such men from obscurity into the public service, and gave them their fair chance. The Navy in Germany. would be a dif- ferent Service were it neglected by William II., even the shipbuilders feeling the effect of his cordial appreciation, and running great risks of disrepute as well as loss to earn his approval by surpassing the remainder of the world. The sense of favour, in fact, produces willing effort, and willing effort can in all State Departments, and many departments of -ordinary life, produce the difference between failure and success. We need not, indeed, limit the operation of Royal favour quite so narrowly. The King's favour may nourish an art. It very often, if not always, guides popular favour, and that means a large flow of money in the direc- tion which he favours, and a certain easiness in acquiring fame ; and both these advantages stimulate effort. A music- loving King produces a music-loving people, that par- ticular taste finding the grand obstacle to perfection, which is indifference, removed out of its way, and the number of those who possess it and of those who can feed it becoming strangely multiplied. They are not more numerous, but they are all at work, and visible. The latent ability which exists everywhere becomes patent ability, and if the Monarch is in any way a true connoisseur a high standard is developed, and here and there is reached. Pericles, who had for a time the position of a Monarch, could not have created artists ; but he could, and did, secure to artists who satisfied his taste, then probably the best in the world of powerful men, their opportunity, and the general recognition without which even creative genius cannot yield permanent results. Beethoven born among Chinese, if such a. miracle were think- able, could not have produced fine music, or if he had the world would have known nothing of its production. There is- a subtle flattery in interesting a King, and the pleasure of that flattery gives a confidence which is one of the few conditions of originality. It is like the response of the audience which positively wakes new powers in the orator, by encouraging him to give his mind its swing, instead of para- lysing him with fear that his best things, half seen by him- self as his thought quivers over them, will not be,understood. It can hardly be denied, therefore, that. Royal patronage does stimulate, and that when it is widely diffused an active- minded King may seem to raise the whole intellectual condi- tion of his countrymen. We could not say this has occurred in Germany under the present reign, because in certain departments of thought and action there has been distinct retrogression ; but it is true that in many. others William II. has seemed to vitalise the community. Soldiers, sailors, ship- builders, architects, the men who apply science, and above all the men of business, seem more alive, and indeed are more alive, becaude of his earnest attention to their pursuits, and his efforts, which are probably sincere, to pick from among them for distinction those who reach the highest standard. The people move with a sort of enthusiasm, as of men under recognised leadership,- instead of as an apathetic and un- remarking crowd. On the other hand, outside the Services Royal patronage often stupefies. Kings, by the conditions of their position, become conceited, demand flattering deferences as a right, and discourage, if they cannot punish, differen.ces of opinion. They favour. .enly the. excellence which seems to themselves excellent, and the effect when they are powerful is to make all artists more or less suppress their own spontaneities, and with them much of their distinctive force. The poet becomes courtly, the thinker cautious, the painter almost subservient. (Read Titian's letters to Philip II., and remember the kind of picture he often painted for his mighty but penurious patron.) Take, indeed, the recent instance of Signor Leoncavallo. It is, of course, a stimulus to the Italian composer that a German Emperor should order an opera from him, but can any one believe that he would spontaneously have chosen an obscure incident in German -history, and have devoted the leisure of two years to learning German annals and the characters of Margraves then obscure P _ Song—and music is, or should' be, song in a universal languagedoes not reach perfection under stress of drudgery like that, and though " The Hero of Berlin," or whatever it is to be called, may perhaps be a good opera, it will hardly be the great one the composer might have produced had he been left to the inspiration of his own unbegotten ideas. The effect of Royal patronage, we take it, is a certain dull sameness, occasionally no doubt a meritorious, sameness, as in the time of Louis XIV., but one in which genius has some extra difficulty in breaking upwards through the ice. We admit, of course, an exception or two. The favour of Augustus may have developed instead of repressing the genius. of .the " wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man," but are we_ sure that if released from the shadow of that mighty tree Virgil might not have poured out thoughts yet loftier in yet more mellifluous measures P So grand was his genius that the lines in which he most directly flattered his despotic patron have in them something of inspiration, and have often been quoted to prove that Virgil was one of the two pagans to whom the true God gave something of the spirit granted to the Prophets ; but still we none of us know what fear of Augustus, or if you will, gratitude to Augustus, may have suppressed. Literature, we cannot but think, being of all the arts, save perhaps music, that which derives most glow from spontaneity, is better without too much favour from Kings, even though, what seldom happens, Kings are competent to judge. It seldom happens, we say, for their role in life is to be men of action, and even their thoughts must flow towards the concrete. One can under- stand Alexander's devotion to Homer, but what would he have thought of Coleridge or of Shelley ?
Is, then, the whole world, the foolish, confused, jangling world which seems occasionally to lack the power of even recognising thought, a better patron for literature than the King, who may be cultivated and must be experienced in the thoughts of many men P Yes, for the world only pronounces its opinion after the work has been produced, and though we habitually talk of the certain existence at some time and somewhere of mute, inglorious Miltons, no one has ever dis- covered the " Allegro " or " Penseroso " which, on the theory, they must have produced in vain.
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