IV. GLIMPSES OF RECENT BRITISH ART. A DIALOGUE. * * * Englishmen of pith, Sixteen named Thomson and nineteen named Smith.-BYRON. Thomson. Oh-Mr. Smith. How d'ye do? In that good old English salutation everything is included,wealth, health, and family. - How are you? Smith. All well. Everything in order at the old place. Crops good, boys and girls well, and wife, I will say, buxom, blithe, and debonair as you could wish an English matron. Thom. And you have given all your country comforts the go-by to have a look at London? Smith. Not exactly. Business brought me to town, but to-day I am free. London, you know, is on the race-course, - which it may have to itself for me, and I have seized the opportunity for a stroll through the rooms of the Academy. Thom. Indeed. This is fortunate. You know my love of Art? — I, too, had made up my mind to avail myself of the absence of fashion and dilettantism to inspect, with favoring quiet and leisure, the works of the year. Suppose we make a day of it-looking as we talk, and talking as we look ? Smith. Agreed-most heartily. I hold you something of an authority, whereas I know nothing of pictures, and profess no opinion on the subject. I know when I am pleased, and my pleasure is often deep. But there I stop. I have a feeling, even, that I have but a questionable right to the pleasure I experience. I am one of the common crowd, hated and shunned by connoisseurs, and despised by the artists whose pictures they buy. Like the rest I bow to the connoisseurs, and placidly receive what artists condescend to tell me. But with you I am free. Even if you were a connoisseur at all points, which you are not, the indulgence of the friend would vail the terror of the critic. I am a child, of course, but I shan't be startled at the dreadful crest; and you won't hector, will you? I give in, to begin with. I surrender all freedom of judgment, while retaining utmost freedom of impression and remark. I give you a general permission to laugh at me. You may even give me a smart touch with the whip, when I am running fairly off the road. I know nothing of pictures. Thom. Hm!--All remarkably fine. Your modesty is no counterfeit that I know; but let me broadly declare it is a mistake. We shall perhaps contrive to raise you somewhat in your own opinion as a picture critic. In the meantime, what, pray, do you mean by "having no knowledge of painting?" You are fond of Art. You make at least an annual visit to London, to see whatever pictures the year produces. And has not your interest in Art led you to read a little on the subject? Smith. Well, really, you will do me a service if you teach me to cast myself free of that timorousness with which I now think of any picture. But you must take care that a worse thing come not upon me; I should rather be a coward among critics, than a pretender among dunces. You ask what I mean by being ignorant of painting. Well, I could not give you a single rule of perspective, or read you off one of the harmonies of color, or define tone or chiaroscuro. In one word, I am ignorant of the technical part of painting. I cannot paint, and I do not know the rules of painting. Besides, for I shall make a clean breast of it, I have a lurking preference for pictures that are bright, clear, clean, new; and I fancy I might give my money for a school copy with just as much heartiness as if I bore away the real master. Still worse, I have not nearly the due measure of enthusiasm for the said masters. I sigh over my want of raptures on the subject of Rubens's flesh-tint; and when I catch sight of a number of undressed ladies, even though the catalogue calls them Diana and her Nymphs, and even though it be Titian who draws aside the curtain of — of — decency — I am despicably inclined to get out of the way. In short, you must give me up. Thom. Not quite yet. Nor have you told me all you have to tell. There is a positive as well as a negative side. Smith. I have said nearly all that is to the purpose, I think. But you would ask what I have seen and read in connection with Art? There is a little to tell in that direction. Plain folks as we are in the Dell, I cannot pretend to a total ignorance of what is said, seen, and written in the world. There is no excuse now-a-days, even among our fern and heather, for complete ignorance. Why, think of it. I read in the afternoon, at my tea table, the debate of last night in the House. Every rumor which circulates in the London clubs, political, literary, or artistic, finds its way to us in a few hours. I hear to-day of the arrival or production of a new painting: to-morrow I mingle with the throng inspecting it. Half a dozen libraries are ready to supply me with every new work, on Art as on every other subject. I don't see, therefore, what right I have to be inferior in Art-knowledge to townsmen as such. I imagine that I am not so. For many years I have visited all the principal exhibitions, and have taken pleasure in penetrating, as far as I could, into the truth and meaning of the pictures. What with this, and with reading, I have formed a notion, correct or not, of the distinctive ideas which reigned in particular schools, and of the way in which subjects have been treated by particular masters. But all this is beyond the pale of technical knowledge; all this is outside the studio; and I have nothing to plead in arrest of the verdict of artistic barbarism. Thom. Very good. But talking threatens to encroach on looking. We must get at the pictures. As you have said all you can for yourself, however, grant me just another minute to see whether I cannot allege something additional in your favor. There is a little matter which you not ungracefully omit, but which I consider of paramount importance. You know nothing, it appears, of color. You are rather hazy in chiaroscuro, and are apt to lose yourself in golden and silvery tones. You never saw, you might have added, the original Venus de Medicis, nor affected rapture over Leonardo's Supper at Milan. Very sad, indeed! Now I happen to have visited you in that Dell of yours, so sweetly sinking, with its crag and copse, from the general level of the upland. I well remember a walk with you, one fresh, dewy morning, which would have been dull in town, but which in the country only made everything more rural, quiet, country-like. The sky was of course well filled with broken clouds. No other composition of the sky, if I may steal a term from Art and apply it to nature, gives at once transparency of air, pure richness of color, and fine effects of light and shade. There was a moment when the sun beams, which had been peeping and peering for an outlet in the clouds all morning, suddenly streamed through a valley opened for them by the gentle wind, and spread themselves in their countless companies along the faint purple of the hill. The gleam of their golden banners shone clear against the shadow which was still lying dark over the greater part of the mountain. The eyes of both of us were at once on the ridge, which had caught the light; and when I looked at yours, shall I tell you what I saw there? If not exactly a tear, at least a glistening which told that the heart required some kind of overflow. Nor have I forgotten that day, when, like a good, respectable Mr. Smith, you drove me to the markettown in your own gig. It was about the end of July. As we passed along, a cornfield lay by the wayside. Through it the hand of autumn had just begun to sprinkle the gold into which melts the green of summer; and, amidst this golden-green, myriads of poppies waved their crimson flames. "These," you exclaimed, casting a glance in the direction of the poppies, "take a pretty penny out of my pocket, but for two reasons I am happy to pay the price; first, because of the pure delight of the color, and second, because that one sight, to leave out a thousand others, and the emotion it excites, are amply sufficient to annihilate, once for all, the theory of beauty professed and defended by Francis Jeffrey." Smith. Ah, let me interrupt you. Perhaps that was severe on Jeffrey. His dissertation is extremely valuable as a classification of what the beautiful is not. It is a monument ære perennius; only you must turn it upside down! Go on. Thom. Now, of whatever precise value it may be, I think I need not prove that in estimating one's capacity for judg |