BOOKS.

SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES.*

THIS book cannot be considered a final Life of the great painter, for in a final work we expect critical analysis and

generalisation. But if the last word has not been said, and the summing up for the jury of time is as yet unpronounced, we have a book which is of very great interest. Lady Burne- Jones writes from a standpoint of knowledge and sympathy impossible to any one else, and we can but admire the skill with which she has arranged the material. The narrative is full, but never confused, and the characters of the men and women who pass through the pages are drawn with rare ease and distinctness.

Burne-Jones was born in Birmingham in 1833. His mother survived his birth but a week. His father is described as a dreamy man, intensely devoted to his wife, and later on to his child. He was a carver and gilder, and lived at

11 Bennett's Hill, the front ground-floor room being the show- room where picture and mirror frames were to be seen. King Edward's School at Birmingham was divided into two divisions, the commercial and classical, and it was the former that Burne-Jones entered at the age of eleven. Later on he was transferred to the classical division, with the intention of going to Oxford and of entering the Church. It was at school that Burne-Jones first showed the remarkable capacity he possessed for making lasting friendships. Two fellow-scholars who remained lifelong friends may be mentioned,—Canon Dixon and Mr. Cornell Price. The second of these two eventually became Head-Master of the Westward Ho ! School, and is familiar to us as " the bead" in Mr. Kipling's Stalky and Co. When Burne-Jones went to Oxford new friendships were made, and among these the most important must be reckoned that with William Morris. It is difficult to estimate the importance, not only for the two men themselves, but for English art and taste, of the close communion of these friends, a communion which lasted for forty-three years, and was only broken by the death of Morris.

At Oxford the air was full of the High Church movement,

and the future artist was greatly attracted by the new spirit. Later on difficulties arose, and Lady Burne-Jones says :— "Deep reflection followed, and the ground on which he had hitherto stood so firmly began to fail. Mr. Price speaks of the religions perplexity that Edward went through this year as being nothing less than an agony. At one time in his distress he was all but ready to silence questioning and accept the tenets of the elder Church en, bloc; at another he went for counsel to Newman's old friend and disciple, Charles Marriott, the learned and saintly vicar of St. Mary's This interview gave some relief, but the whole-hearted, enthusiastic, and unenquiring days were gone."

Many years later, when the designs were being made for the mosaics in the American church in Rome, we get this state- ment of the artist's view of his relation to Christianity :— " There are only two sides of Christianity for which I am fitted by bhe spirit that designs in me—the carol part and the mystical part. I could not do without Mediaeval Christianity. The central idea of it and all that it has gathered to itself made the Europe I exist in. The enthusiasm and the devotion, the learning and the art, the humanity and the romance, the self- denial and splendid achievement that the human race can never be deprived of, except by a cataclysm that would all but destroy man himself—all belong to it."

The following account of the funeral of Browning in West- minster Abbey is so characteristic that it must be quoted :—

" No candles, no incense, no copes, no nothing that was nice. My dear, now they have got these churches they don't know what to do with them—placards all about saying ' Seats for the press," Mourners'—all about. And the procession so poor and sorry I A canon 4 feet high next one of 9 feet high—surplice, red hood like trousers down the back—you know them all. I would have given something for a banner or two, and much I would have given if a chorister had come out of the triforium and rent the air with a trumpet. How flat these English are—most people are. And when the coffin, covered with a pall, is carried by six men it looks like a big beetle. And what Paul said was partly so glorious • Memorials of Edward Burne-.Tones. By G. B.-J. 2 vols. London i Macmillan and Co. We. net.] that it is the last word that need be said, and partly so poor and flat that I wondered that any one could take the pains to say it. But I spent the time looking at the roof and its graining and diapered walls, and wanted a service one day in praise of the church, and wondered who had built it and why his name was forgotten, and thought how only the church mattered at all, and I wanted to push people, and wasn't in a holy frame of mind I assure you. Why couldn't they leave him in Royal Venice? "

On another occasion we find the artist exclaiming :—"A pity it is I was not born in the Middle Ages. People would then have known how to use me—now they don't know what on earth to do with me." And again :—" We have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge and can't have our garden of Eden any more—cannot paint with the same innocency that was once possible." This love of the Middle Ages brought with it a natural hatred of the Renaissance, and caused Burne-Jones to say :—" Cursed be its memory from its first abortion to its last—which at its present rate will be about the time of the Day of Judgment, when the fire shall burn it up and its worthless memory." But when this painter of the old age strayed into modern times was illustrating Chaucer for the Kelmscott Press we find him saying :—" I wonder, if Chaucer were alive now, or is aware of what is going on, whether he'd be satisfied with my pictures to his book, or whether he'd prefer impressionist ones. I don't trust him." Here we perceive that Burne-Jones was at times conscious that the great men of the past he so passionately admired were in their own time modern, and had little regard for what went before

them. From such states of mind we can well believe what was the impression first produced on Burne-Jones when he found the Morte Darthur in a bookseller's shop at Oxford. Ever afterwards the book was for him a sacred thing, and with its spirit his Celtic soul was united.

The key to the inner mind of Burne-Jones was the desire to escape into a world of visionary beauty, and a comparative lack of interest in things that did not produce a dreamy impression of loveliness. To look the other way, actually and figuratively, was the mental attitude of Burne-Jones when ugly things presented themselves ; and in reading this book we are often reminded of the stories told by the pupils of Ingres, who recorded that " M. Ingres se detourna la tote " when ugliness came in his way. As an instance of this frame of mind we may mention Burne-Jones's attitude

towards The Pilgrim's Progress. He bad not become acquainted with it in childhood, and could not be induced to read it later because "such names as `Mr, Envy' and Mr. Despondency' he said he could not tolerate," In 1885, when the Irish question became very prominent, Burne-Jones, being an ardent sympathiser. with Ireland, left off taking in English newspapers and subscribed to Galignani.

Rossetti was undoubtedly the man whose influence had the greatest effect on the younger painter. Such ex- pressions as " my glorious Gabriel " show the feeling he had for him. Lady Burne-Jones gives most interesting accounts of the friendship between the two men, and also gives a pleasant impression of the personality of Mrs. Rossetti, and recounts the circumstances of her tragic death from an overdose of laudanum. After the death of his wife Rossetti altered considerably, and those characteristics which darkened his genius in his later years began to show themselves. The intercourse between the two friends became less close, but Burne-Jones never lost his admiration for his "glorious Gabriel." Another friendship productive of lasting results was the one with Ruskin. The writer of the Memoir gives a delightful account of a tour in Italy which she and her husband took with Ruskin, whose guests they were. In what way could a wealthy lover of art spend his money better than in taking a young painter to Italy for the first time ? Burne-Jones began by being a whole-hearted believer in Ruskin; but later he found out the essential difference between a critic and an artist, especially as regards the beauty of the human form. The disillusionment came over Michel- angelo, whom, with Botticelli and Mantegna, Burne-Jones ardently admired.

The glimpses we get of Ruskin are interesting, as they reveal a side of his nature not so often shown. Apparently during their travels in Italy and at other times he was subject to deep depression and melancholy. But we also catch sight - of Ruskin in happier moods, dancing quadrilles with the young ladies at a girls' school. Or, again, when he takes his friends to the Christy Minstrels' entertainment, and is received there as an honoured patron, and things are added to the programme especially for him. Through his intercourse with Ruskin, Burne-Jones became a witness in the Whistler trial,—that ridiculous affair when a British jury was called upon to decide which view was right in matters of aesthetic difference. The evidence of Burne- Jones turned entirely upon finish ; and, indeed, on other occasions he lays stress on finish being almost the first essential of painting. But he never seems to have been con- scious that other people might feel finish a vain thing, if in attaining it the structural aspect of the figure and the building up of planes were lost sight of.

Side by side in Burne-Jones with the dreaminess and mystical feeling there ran a stream of fun and laughter which never ceased from childhood to old age. Sometimes in his letters it breaks out in the shape of humorous drawings full of whimsical character and life. This capacity for mirth must always be taken into account in any estimate of the man.

In parting from these memorials we must express our gratitude at having presented for us a character of such interest and charm. Nor must we forget to mention the rare skill with which these volumes have been written, in which the interest never flags.