DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0041
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
xxxvii
we forgive or overlook the faults of the ancients, it is because
they have dearly earned it.” On the other hand, the cant
of ignorant depreciation has done more harm, has fostered
more self-conceit and more carelessness among our living
artists, than the adulation of certain partisans and admirers:
it has made them, while they worked for money, despise
opinion; and they have helped to deprave the taste they
have in their hearts despised. How seldom have the most
distinguished of the men I have alluded to, painted up to
their own power! “ Ma poiche paga il volgo sciocco”—we
all know the rest.
But better, brighter, times are at hand; let us hope so:
and of one thing let us be assured, that such times will not
come by the vain attempt to pull down the grand old mas-
ters from “ their pride of place,” or by accomplishing this,
if it were possible. True, there has been much nonsense,
pedantic jargon, infinite unmeaning stuff, talked about
them, enough to confound simple-minded people, and make
them doubt whether there be any truth whatever in the
admiration they have for ages excited. I have been asked
more than once whether this was not merely a got-up taste
and nothing in it, after all, but mere cant and verbiage ?
Let it not be believed ! If the great painters, like the
great poets, had not derived their power from on high—if
their art was indeed only a thing of mechanism, of schools,
and styles, and so forth, and had not its elements in our
universal nature—they had not been the wonder, the solace,
the delight of successive ages. They had long ago been
consigned to dust and lumber rooms. If there were not
some principle of truth and life in them, beyond what mere
form and colour could give, they had not remained precious
to us in their ruin and decay. “ They are not good be-
cause they are old, but old because they are good.” If a
person of a candid and cultivated mind, not deficient in
sensibility, is brought before a picture bearing a high
xxxvii
we forgive or overlook the faults of the ancients, it is because
they have dearly earned it.” On the other hand, the cant
of ignorant depreciation has done more harm, has fostered
more self-conceit and more carelessness among our living
artists, than the adulation of certain partisans and admirers:
it has made them, while they worked for money, despise
opinion; and they have helped to deprave the taste they
have in their hearts despised. How seldom have the most
distinguished of the men I have alluded to, painted up to
their own power! “ Ma poiche paga il volgo sciocco”—we
all know the rest.
But better, brighter, times are at hand; let us hope so:
and of one thing let us be assured, that such times will not
come by the vain attempt to pull down the grand old mas-
ters from “ their pride of place,” or by accomplishing this,
if it were possible. True, there has been much nonsense,
pedantic jargon, infinite unmeaning stuff, talked about
them, enough to confound simple-minded people, and make
them doubt whether there be any truth whatever in the
admiration they have for ages excited. I have been asked
more than once whether this was not merely a got-up taste
and nothing in it, after all, but mere cant and verbiage ?
Let it not be believed ! If the great painters, like the
great poets, had not derived their power from on high—if
their art was indeed only a thing of mechanism, of schools,
and styles, and so forth, and had not its elements in our
universal nature—they had not been the wonder, the solace,
the delight of successive ages. They had long ago been
consigned to dust and lumber rooms. If there were not
some principle of truth and life in them, beyond what mere
form and colour could give, they had not remained precious
to us in their ruin and decay. “ They are not good be-
cause they are old, but old because they are good.” If a
person of a candid and cultivated mind, not deficient in
sensibility, is brought before a picture bearing a high