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fashion of early Italian painters to represent in mediaeval costume

the soldiers who watched over the tomb of Christ; and this; which

was the result of the frank anachronism of all true art; may serve

to us as an allegory。  For it was in vain that the Middle Ages

strove to guard the buried spirit of progress。  When the dawn of

the Greek spirit arose; the sepulchre was empty; the grave…clothes

laid aside。  Humanity had risen from the dead。



The study of Greek; it has been well said; implies the birth of

criticism; comparison and research。  At the opening of that

education of modern by ancient thought which we call the

Renaissance; it was the words of Aristotle which sent Columbus

sailing to the New World; while a fragment of Pythagorean astronomy

set Copernicus thinking on that train of reasoning which has

revolutionised the whole position of our planet in the universe。

Then it was seen that the only meaning of progress is a return to

Greek modes of thought。  The monkish hymns which obscured the pages

of Greek manuscripts were blotted out; the splendours of a new

method were unfolded to the world; and out of the melancholy sea of

mediaevalism rose the free spirit of man in all that splendour of

glad adolescence; when the bodily powers seem quickened by a new

vitality; when the eye sees more clearly than its wont and the mind

apprehends what was beforetime hidden from it。  To herald the

opening of the sixteenth century; from the little Venetian printing

press came forth all the great authors of antiquity; each bearing

on the title…page the words 'Greek text which cannot be

reproduced'; words which may serve to remind us with what wondrous

prescience Polybius saw the world's fate when he foretold the

material sovereignty of Roman institutions and exemplified in

himself the intellectual empire of Greece。



The course of the study of the spirit of historical criticism has

not been a profitless investigation into modes and forms of thought

now antiquated and of no account。  The only spirit which is

entirely removed from us is the mediaeval; the Greek spirit is

essentially modern。  The introduction of the comparative method of

research which has forced history to disclose its secrets belongs

in a measure to us。  Ours; too; is a more scientific knowledge of

philology and the method of survival。  Nor did the ancients know

anything of the doctrine of averages or of crucial instances; both

of which methods have proved of such importance in modern

criticism; the one adding a most important proof of the statical

elements of history; and exemplifying the influences of all

physical surroundings on the life of man; the other; as in the

single instance of the Moulin Quignon skull; serving to create a

whole new science of prehistoric archaeology and to bring us back

to a time when man was coeval with the stone age; the mammoth and

the woolly rhinoceros。  But; except these; we have added no new

canon or method to the science of historical criticism。  Across the

drear waste of a thousand years the Greek and the modern spirit

join hands。



In the torch race which the Greek boys ran from the Cerameician

field of death to the home of the goddess of Wisdom; not merely he

who first reached the goal but he also who first started with the

torch aflame received a prize。  In the Lampadephoria of

civilisation and free thought let us not forget to render due meed

of honour to those who first lit that sacred flame; the increasing

splendour of which lights our footsteps to the far…off divine event

of the attainment of perfect truth。









THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE OF ART









AMONG the many debts which we owe to the supreme aesthetic faculty

of Goethe is that he was the first to teach us to define beauty in

terms the most concrete possible; to realise it; I mean; always in

its special manifestations。  So; in the lecture which I have the

honour to deliver before you; I will not try to give you any

abstract definition of beauty … any such universal formula for it

as was sought for by the philosophy of the eighteenth century …

still less to communicate to you that which in its essence is

incommunicable; the virtue by which a particular picture or poem

affects us with a unique and special joy; but rather to point out

to you the general ideas which characterise the great English

Renaissance of Art in this century; to discover their source; as

far as that is possible; and to estimate their future as far as

that is possible。



I call it our English Renaissance because it is indeed a sort of

new birth of the spirit of man; like the great Italian Renaissance

of the fifteenth century; in its desire for a more gracious and

comely way of life; its passion for physical beauty; its exclusive

attention to form; its seeking for new subjects for poetry; new

forms of art; new intellectual and imaginative enjoyments:  and I

call it our romantic movement because it is our most recent

expression of beauty。



It has been described as a mere revival of Greek modes of thought;

and again as a mere revival of mediaeval feeling。  Rather I would

say that to these forms of the human spirit it has added whatever

of artistic value the intricacy and complexity and experience of

modern life can give:  taking from the one its clearness of vision

and its sustained calm; from the other its variety of expression

and the mystery of its vision。  For what; as Goethe said; is the

study of the ancients but a return to the real world (for that is

what they did); and what; said Mazzini; is mediaevalism but

individuality?



It is really from the union of Hellenism; in its breadth; its

sanity of purpose; its calm possession of beauty; with the

adventive; the intensified individualism; the passionate colour of

the romantic spirit; that springs the art of the nineteenth century

in England; as from the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy sprang

the beautiful boy Euphorion。



Such expressions as 'classical' and 'romantic' are; it is true;

often apt to become the mere catchwords of schools。  We must always

remember that art has only one sentence to utter:  there is for her

only one high law; the law of form or harmony … yet between the

classical and romantic spirit we may say that there lies this

difference at least; that the one deals with the type and the other

with the exception。  In the work produced under the modern romantic

spirit it is no longer the permanent; the essential truths of life

that are treated of; it is the momentary situation of the one; the

momentary aspect of the other that art seeks to render。  In

sculpture; which is the type of one spirit; the subject

predominates over the situation; in painting; which is the type of

the other; the situation predominates over the subject。



There are two spirits; then:  the Hellenic spirit and the spirit of

romance may be taken as forming the essential elements of our

conscious intellectual tradition; of our permanent standard of

taste。  As regards their origin; in art as in politics there is but

one origin for all revolutions; a desire on the part of man for a

nobler form of life; for a freer method and opportunity of

expression。  Yet; I think that in estimating the sensuous and

intellectual spirit which presides over our English Renaissance;

any attempt to isolate it in any way from in the progress and

movement and social life of the age that has produced it would be

to rob it of its true vitality; possibly to mistake its true

meaning。  And in disengaging from the pursuits and passions of this

crowded modern world those passions and pursuits which have to do

with art and the love of art; we must take into account many great

events of history which seem to be the most opposed to any such

artistic feeling。



Alien then from any wild; political passion; or from the harsh

voice of a rude people in revolt; as our English Renaissance must

seem; in its passionate cult of pure beauty; its flawless devotion

to form; its exclusive and sensitive nature; it is to the French

Revolution that we must look for the most primary factor of its

production; the first condition of its birth:  that great

Revolution of which we are all the children though the voices of

some of us be often loud against it; that Revolution to which at a

time when even such spirits as Coleridge and Wordsworth lost heart

in England; noble messages of love blown across seas came from your

young Republic。



It is true that our modern sense of the continuity of history has

shown us that neither in politics nor in nature are there

revolutions ever but evolutions only; and that the prelude to that

wild storm which swept over France in 1789 and made every king in

Europe tremble for his throne; was first sounded in literature

years before the Bastille fell and the Palace was taken。  The way

for those red scenes by Seine and Loire was paved by that critic

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