RUSEINESE.
MR. RUSKIN has just written a letter to the School of Art in connection with the Liverpool Mechanics' Institute, which shows so much of the higher side of his mind that we may venture to speak of his excellencies and deficiencies as a public instructor without running the risk to which literary critics are too often exposed, of looking down on men who are never fairly understood by the mere understanding. He writes, indeed, in that slightly vitae strain which is habitual to him, when he inimates that English Art cannot flourish unless England goes to war for Poland. But still, though the passionate personal feeling he expresses on this . subject is certainly exaggerated, there is a real substance in his thoughts which he has not recently been very careful to show in those foolish disquisitions on political economy, and latterly on the gold question. Ho speaks in his usual unchastened language of the " horror and shame with which I regard the political position, taken, or rather sunk into, by England in her foreign relations— especially in the affairs of Italy and Poland ;" and says at the end of his letter, " I like war as ill as most people—so ill that I would not spend twenty millions a year in making machines for it, neither my holidays and pocket-money in playing at it; yet I would have the country go to war, with haste, in a good quarrel ; and, which is, perhaps, eccentric in me, rather in another's quarrel than in her own. We say of ourselves, complacently, that we will not go to war for an idea ; but the phrase interpreted means only that we will go to war for a bale of goods, but not for justice or for mercy ; and I would ask you to favour me so far as to read this letter to the students at your meeting, and say to them that I heartily wish them well ; but for the present I am too sad to be of any service to them ; that our wars in China and Japan are not likely to furnish good subjects for historical pictures; that 'ideas' happen, unfortunately, to be, in art, the principal things, and that a country which will not fight for its ideas is not likely to have anything worth painting." We are not quite so sure about Japan ; but Mr. Ruskin had not heard of Kagosima, or he might have had something to say about Art in that direction, though not, perhaps. of Art flattering to England. He means to say, and we think truly, that any state of the public mind which is indisposed to sacrifice much in order to realize its highest practical convictions, will also be found incon- sistent with any keen desire to see its thoughts realized in Art. The same earnestness which "projects " the popular faith into visible symbols and expressive attitudes in Art, will equally seek to project it into characteristic actions expressing the nation's faith in politics. If we care little to give a tangible form to our sympa- thies and our conscientious convictions in political life, it is not likely that we shall care much to write them with distinct out- line and laborious accuracy in permanent works of Art. The in- difference which benumbs our political life must certainly benumb also our historical Art ; for it is one and the same passion for embodiment, that is, for bringing inward thoughts out of the vague and abstract form into the definite and visible,—out of the life of the soul only, into the life of the body also,—which, on the practical side, makes a nation risk much in a great cause, and on the artistic side makes it desire to see that great cause expressed in great works of Art. The crust of indolence, or languor, or selfishness, or mere false shame and intellectual poco- curantism, which makes the nation shrug its shoulders over Poland and say, " Very sorry, but no English interest is involved," will also deaden the nation's wish for Art, since the latter can never spring from selfish interest, but must originate in that pure enthusiasm which is always striving to bore its way through the crust or shell of a dead conservative habit. Whatever induces a people to throw cold water on its highest convictions of right and wrong as " visionary," will obviously enough damp the faculty of vision in which the higher artists live. The plastic force which moulds the political clay of nations in to grand purposes, and the physical clay of countries into grand forms, is of one and the same origin. You cannot get into a habit of tame acquiescence in the monstrous poverty of political life, without infecting artists with the same indisposition to conquer their natural inertia in what we may call the expressive life. If we cease to express our life in the most natural and practical way, we shall certainly cease to express it also in the intellectual and symbolic way.
Such we take to be Mr. Ruskin's meaning in this new piece of Ruskinese,—and we think it is, on the whole, though extrava- gantly expressed, sound and good. Nor are we, perhaps, so very far from Mr. Ruskin in his belief that we are, as a nation, guilty of some conscious dereliction of duty in refusing to risk peace for so holy and otherwise hopeless a cause as that of Poland. If it were not for a jealousy of France which hardens our heart against any other feeling, we do not doubt that the whole nation would long ago have put almost an angry veto on the Russian iniquities. But when Mr. Ruskin entirely ignores the infinite danger of a general policy of interference, and professes his pre- ference for fighting " in another's quarrel rather than in our own," —regardless of everything but the disinterestedness of the senti- ment, and altogether forgetting how dangerous, and often wrong, it is to guarantee the liberty of an untried people, he gives us a fresh instance of the fault of Ruskinese thought and language which it is worth while to examine. The chief vice of Ruskinese consists, we think, in the want of will as well as of power to keep true thoughts within their legitimate boundaries,—in a certain fascination even for trespassing, or letting ideas trespass where they have no sort of business. Mr. Ruskin's ideas are all wild horses, which run with him fast and far wherever they will, and generally, therefore, where no one else can see any fitness in their career. In fact, he proclaims his creed most truculently, just where he is conscious that it has least concern. Mr. Ruskin has a sort of belief in the divine right of rhapsody, and if he can but get into full swing, evidently imagines that he is sinning against the Holy Spirit in drawing rein anywhere till the rhapsody has worked itself off. He would think it profane to question the applicability of any of his enthusiastic ideas to any subject into which they chose to take him. The spirit of this prophet is cer- tainly not subject to the prophet.
To specify more particularly,—the error of thought and error of style which his artistic wilfulness produces, and which is sometimes so nauseating, in spite of his really great powers, to cultivated men, the true Ruskinese vice of thought and speech,—is an effort to force the expressiveness which properly belongs to art, and to some departments of nature, into science and every department of nature. Hence, he is constantly guilty of the same sort of blunder from a different motive, as sentimental people who wish to be expressive when they have nothing to express. Look at him, for example, butting tete baissee at the narrow little exact science of political economy, and trying to toss it bodily into the air. What is his quarrel with it ? Not that its hypotheses are only partially true, which everybody knows,—but that, so far as they are accepted, they shut out the expressive side of art, and refuse to be beautiful allegories and moral truths. Accordingly, he wishes to drive such a science from the earth, and to substitute all sorts of visionary fancies in its place which present human nature in a more exalted pose. When he tells us that the Greek legend of Charybdis swallowing and vomiting forth again periodically the waters of the dangerous strait, was meant to impress on the Greeks typically the twin dangers of under and over production—Scarcity and Glut, —or that " every sale of labour" is "not sale but Betrayal, and the purchase-money is a part of that typical thirty pieces of silver which bought, first, the greatest of labours and afterwards the Burial-field of the stranger,"—conscientious culture turns away with real sickness from an effort to force on us expressiveness so violent and futile. There is in such attempts as this a kind of aesthetic dissoluteness, a rabid yearning to erase the natural boundaries of different intellectual provinces, and indulge the craving for expression in a sort of insatiable licentious rapture,—which posi- tively turns the stomach of even Mr. Ruskin's sincerest admirers. He has but a dim sense of the truth that Art could not be what it is to man, were there not very large provinces of life in which we ought not to act ourselves out at all, in which expression is not the rule of human nature, and yet others, again, in which reticence is the rule of human nature. But for the business and prudential provinces of life, the artistic ones would have little charm. The one are the foil to the other. Look at Italy, the true country of high Art and of perfect expression,—how marked is the parallel development of the strongest repressive social and political faculties,—of the most excessive repression. The same country which produces Michael Angelo and Raffael produces Machiavelli and Cavour. And we have no doubt that it was the strong repressive forces of the Roman Catholic Church, keeping a perfectly tyrannie sway over the hearts and yearnings of men, which gave the won- derful spur to Catholic Art. Not improbably the equally stern craft of the Florentine and Venetian oligarchies tended directly to foster the rich splendour of Florentine and Venetian Art. Without great restraints on many departments of life the passion for ex- pression would not grow with such marvellous force,—and it is not uncommon to find, even in the individual character of the highest order of artists, some compensating stint,—like Turner's avarice,—for the prodigality of expression which they pour out on canvas.
Mr. Ruskin is apparently ignorant of the true law of parsimony in human life which restricts the expressive side of it pretty closely, and so he vexes the sincerest admirers of his great services and his true genius by pouring forth a flux of nonsense which would go to show that a drain of bullion has a moral significance, and that the "short exchange on Paris" should represent an intentional abrupt- ness or incivility to the French. The Ruskinese of his present letter is very much less pronounced ; indeed, we appreciate his meaning, and partly sympathize with it. Still, it remains Rus- kinese to say, as he does say, that we should go to war with more confidence for other nations than for ourselves, because we can be sure of the purity of the motive. Perhaps so. But if no wars had been waged at all which arose from impure motives, though a great many would be struck off the list of human calamities, a vast number that were great calamities would remain. War is not, as Mr. Ruskin wishes us to think, a proper medium for expressing noble sympathies. It takes a great deal of thought, and calculation, and gauging of the future besides which only genuine statesmen can do, to determine whether it is right to express noble sympathies in that rather violent way. And to this Mr. Ruskin is rather apt to shut his eyes.
Previous page
