all the conventional notions of representation of nature, as to the trivial actualism of the Dutch schools. He seems to have always been haunted with the idea that significant realism must pervade every part of his work, and recognized the principle, which is all that remains of pre-Raphaelism as a system, that the surroundings in which any event occurred are those which should accompany its representation. His picture of Manfred on the Jungfrau, painted in 1840, was an attempt to get out of the studio into the open air. In 1848 began the pre-Raphaelite movement, for which Brown had done much to clear the way, and in it he took his place as an earnest worker, indifferent to the position assigned him by the public. The public indeed The public indeed never has accorded, and perhaps never will accord him his true place, owing to the difficulty of estimating that of a man who enters so largely into the work of his contemporaries at the expense often of his own, and whose artistic powers are so peculiarly balanced and rounded that it is sometimes difficult to decide what his forte is. As a designer he has not the facility or intense imaginative quality of Rossetti, he has not the executive power of Millais, or the intense realism of Holman Hunt; yet no painter in the new movement has so large a combination of powers as he, and, I may safely say, no painter in England has impressed on his work so strong and robust an individuality, or such manly and simple dramatic sentiment. If he has not the vigor

and abandon in action of Maclise, he is more just and natural, more theatrical; and if he is less noteworthy than some of the brotherhood for executive excellence, no one of them equals him in comprehensive unity and a thoughtful consideration of the meaning to be evolved from every accessory; and no English painter except Hogarth has so carefully followed the proprie ties of accessory and circumstance throughout, no matter at what cost of the attractiveness of his pictures. Here the old Cromwellian spirit came out,-no idol of conventionalism, no consecrated falsehood of art, no servile imitation of misunderstood greatness, entered his studio or existed in his repertory,-iconoclast he was of them all. An Englishman among Englishmen whose idiosyncrasy no seductions could abate. A stern, puritanical adherence to truth as he understands it, to art as he feels it, without regard either to precedent or public opinion, suggests the Protector on canvas and accords with what one finds in the man.

To sustain successfully an aim like this demands studies as varied and profound as most of the sciences, and in this respect Brown stands alone amongst his English compeers. His picture of William the Conqueror with his men bringing the dead body of Harold is so severely true to the costume and accessories of the time as to make it an archæological authority.

But a large picture of Chaucer at the Court of Edward Third contains perhaps the boldest and longest step in reform of art, in the direction in which Brown moved, which has been made by any of his contemporaries. It was commenced in 1845, and was, as the painter says of it, "the first in which he endeavored to carry out the notion, long before conceived, of treating the light and shade absolutely as it exists at any one moment, instead of approximately or in generalized style." The figures are life-size, mostly seated in a softened sunshine. Chaucer, reading with a declamatory action, stands before the old king, at whose right is Alice Perrers," a cause of scandal to the court," as the painter remarks in the printed catalogue of his pictures, "such as, repeating itself at intervals in history with remarkable similarity from David downwards, seems to argue that the untimely death of a hero may be not altogether so deplorable an event;' John of Gaunt listens in full armor, and his pages and horse wait him; Edward the Black Prince, wasted with sickness and then in his fortieth year, leans on the lap of his wife

Joanna; Gower is painted in a hood, with a courtier criticising the reading; and other mediæval personages fill up the composition. This, with all its admirable antiquarian knowledge and powerful drawing, betrays how great was the effort required to carry out on so large a scale (life size), without any aids from conventionalities, the severe naturalism which was the artist's intention, and gives at first sight an impression of weakness in general effect which does not belong to it when we come to compare it with nature's self; but as a first important attempt to establish an unrecognized if not new canon of art the picture holds its place in English art history.

Alone, so far as a distinct recognition of the necessity of an art reformation is concerned, and unique, as an expression in art of the best type of the progressive Englishman, Brown labored preparing the way for a new art by study, by sincere labor, and a resolute assault on all the difficulties which the apathy and ignorance of the public taste threw in his way. If historical parallels were ever complete, I should call him the Erasmus of that reformation of which Rossetti was the Luther. But Brown had none of the timidity of Erasmus in his logic;-he faced truth with all its consequences, and never bowed his head to what he considered an expedient; he wielded his cudgel as an Englishman of the olden kind, tough, uncompromising, and full of common sense. Always ready to give a reason for the truth in him, and as ready to instruct, to assist, and help to a position all who labored in what he considered the true spirit, he may be said to enter more largely into the English art of the day than any other man now living.

In his artistic constitution he is one of the few men who, like Da Vinci, suffer from a too great completeness,-a general develop ment prevents his having attracted the regard which a man always wins who is distinguished by a single eminent quality. "The admirable Crichton" of his sphere, his universality itself prevents him from obtaining the position which the public fancy accords to a specialist, and his balanced ability has never excited the enthusiasm which weaker, but more intense because one-sided, painters have obtained. If Rossetti was the imagination of the pre-Raphaelite movement, Brown was its logic and its common sense, and these are qualities which win confidence, not enthusiasm.

In the catalogue of an exhibition of his

works held in 1865 (he never exhibits in the general exhibitions) there are occasional comments on art and his own works which show his leading ideas in a curiously clear way, as throwing a side-light on them; there are many other painters to whom we should have been grateful for a similar service. In cataloguing one of his earlier portraits, he says: "Compared with the head of Mr. Madox and the other five works of the same period in this collection it looks as if painted by another hand, and that of a beginner; those, on the contrary, appear to realize their aim as well as the style permits. Chiefly on account of this peculiarity I have thought it interesting to include it in this collection. To those who value facile completeness and handling above painstaking research into nature, the change must appear inexplicable and provoking. Even to myself, at this distance of time, this instinctive turning back to get round by another road seems remarkable. But in reality it was only the inevitable result of the want of principle, or rather conflict of many jarring principles, under which the student had to begin in those days. Wishing to substitute simple imitation for scenic effectiveness, and purity of natural color for scholastic depth of tone, I found no better way of doing so than to paint what I called a Holbein of the nineteenth century. I might perhaps have done so more effectively, but stepping backwards is stumbling work at best."

In a similar commentary on another portrait in his collection, I find a most just critique on English portrait art :—

66

Compared with the works of the old masters, portrait-painting in England has sunk to a low level. Emperors and kings delighted in former times to be painted by Titian and the greatest historical artists; now it is considered indispensable (I don't know why) to sit to none but portrait-painters in the most restricted sense. These work to orthodox sizes, ridiculously large for the quantity of artistic matter contained, and have fixed scales of charges in proportion to size, the canvas, at least, being of satisfactory proportions. This system has proved suicidal. People have become ashamed to be painted, and photography has taken the place of portraiture. But a revival must ere long take place. Photography is but the assistant (saving the artist and sitter time) of portrait-painting, which can never exist but by the effort and will of genius. In France, Ingres and Delaroche have painted the finest contemporary portraits; in England, the late

William Dyce might have, perhaps, in particular cases, has done so. As it is, the few likenesses of any interest produced of late have been the accidental works of historical painters. Of course, only people of great wealth and importance can either afford or hope to obtain such work, but the few instances where it could exist would be sufficent to set an example. The professed portrait painter, now becoming extinct, would be enabled to return from photography to a more simple and artistic style of picture than hitherto in vogue, and, on rational sized canvases, and assisted by photography, now the natural handmaiden of portraiture, we might hope to see a school arise interesting in itself."

It will be evident that to such a man work means occupation of all his faculties, without losing sight of other artistic qualities. Brown enters the category of great designers, whose pictures never witness avoidance of difficulties, or make-shifts of easy picture-making. Art is to him an intellectual occupation, demanding and receiving his whole mind and enthusiasm. He never seeks the easy problems which the academy walls show so many solutions of. In his explanation of the picture of the "Death of Sir Tristram," he says:—

"In this work, which I offer to the public more as one of action and passion than of high finish, I have designedly sought to reproduce something of the clearness and cheerfulness of color of the old illuminations. As these, from the inexperience of the painters, are almost without light and shade, I have represented the scene as passing in a room lighted from four sides at once; by this means the shadows are much neutralized, and some of the appearance of medieval art retained, without forgetting what we owe to truth and eternal nature. So far it has been my intention to make this particular work look (as people term it) medieval,' but no further. In the small picture of the Prisoner of Chillon I have in the same way been in evitably biased by the character of the Lutheran artists of the renaissance, quite a change from mediævalism, but not with a view either to imitation or to neglect of truth; were I to paint a Greek subject, I could not but act upon the same principle."

Like all artists of this texture of thought, he pushes towards universality of subject and motive. Landscape, portraiture, historical, genre, illustration, are supplemented by designs for glass windows, carved furniture, paper-hangings. Pen and ink, water-color,

pastel, chalks, and oil receive with equal sincerity his attention.

But the line in which Brown's painting has received most just and intelligent appreciation is that in which he has executed his "Last of England," and "Work." These are, in the truest and noblest sense, historical works. The former represents a young couple on board an emigrant ship at the moment of taking leave of England. Looking backward, not in retreat but in lingering longing, they see the land slip away; silently, almost tearfully, feeding their hearts on what represents to them all of known happiness, and for the moment forgetting all that was miserable there. They are of the pure, better middle-class type of Englishmen, painted as none but a man of the type could paint them. Around them are the types of other classes: the family of a green grocer, a vaurien shaking his fist at the land he would curse, but blesses, leaving it; another, drunken, would join if his tongue served him. The accessories are such as all sea-going men know,the preparations for a long voyage. The catalogue says of it: "This picture, begun in 1852, was finished more than nine years ago. To insure the peculiar look of light all round, which objects have on a dull day at sea, it was painted for the most part in the open air on dull days, and when the flesh was being painted, on cold days. Absolutely without regard to the art of any period or country, I have tried to render this scene as it would appear. The minuteness of detail which would be visible under such conditions of broad daylight, I have thought necessary to imitate, as bringing the pathos of the subject more home to the beholder."

"Work," the painter's most important picture, is, without being an imitation of Hogarth in any respect of externals, more in the spirit of the great English painter than any picture painted since he died. The ostensible subject is a group of navvies at work excavating in one of the London suburbs. Into the picture are introduced, however, types of all the workers and nonworkers. A wretched vagabond looks on in idle curiosity; at the side, gazing with listless mood, are two grave thinkers, whose originals are easily known to be Carlyle and Maurice, the apostle of muscular Christianity; beyond are types of the wealthy passing by, en route perhaps from one pleasure to another, or may be from one pain to a worse one; a lady distributing tracts, of whom the artist philosophically remarks, en passant-" this well-intentioned lady has

perhaps never reflected that excavators may have notions to the effect that ladies might be benefited by receiving tracts containing navvies' ideas;" dirty and ragged children nestling around their motherly elder sister, she only ten or twelve years old; a policeman severely down on an orange-girl, whose basket's contents he scatters rudely over the ground; lookers-on, enlisted for the moment in the labors going forward, fill up the composition.

It is a picture true, earnest, and of the most radical humanitarianism, the genuine outburst of the indignant reveries of a man who not only sees the "vanity of vanities," but has a bitter, rankling consciousness of the real root of all this vanity and the misuse of humanity which grows out of it;-a painted poem in which are satire, genial philanthropy, and the saddened reflection of a man who knows mankind, and is none the happier

for his knowledge; the minor tone of feeling of one in whose mind no detail of art or life comes without a lesson-who cannot be gay and dazzling for the weight of the thought which a large and catholic love of his kind imposes on him.

As might be expected from what I have said, Brown is as a teacher of art quite alone in the ranks of English painters-not in the quick and shallow sense of a lesson given at one guinea an hour, but as a genuine master able to give a reason for his teaching. In this as in all other matters he is indifferent to secondary and personal gains, and is more willing to give than to receive; his life is logical with the principles of his art, and his art is constantly more and more ennobled by an earnest and progressive life, carrying into maturity the same earnestness of purpose and sincerity of convictions which lived in his earlier enthusiasms.

PERHAPS the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically. I cannot but regret that the Poet of the Breakfast Table, who appears to have an uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like to say yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of "Sir Cœur de Lion Plantagenet in the muttonchop whiskers and the plain gray suit." A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing after Montaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality in others Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this country. In whist there are some men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take it that this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the few remaining unap- | propriated ideas and analogies in the world, is one of them.

No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were required to dress in a suit of chainarmor and wear iron-pots on their heads, they would be as ridiculous as most tragedy-actors on the stage. The pit which recognizes Snooks in his tin breast-plate and helmet laughs at him, and Snooks himself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragedian comes on, shining in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouths the grandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes, the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned love of the traditionary drama not to titter.

VOL. IV.-II

If this sort of acting, which is supposed to have come down to us from the Elizabethan age, and which culminated in the school of the Keans, Kembles, and Siddons', ever had any fidelity to life, it must have been in a society as artificial as the prose of Sir Philip Sidney. That anybody ever believed in it is difficult to think, especially when we read what privileges the fine beaux and gallants of the town took behind the scenes and on the stage in the golden days of the drama. When a part of the audience sat on the stage, and gentlemen lounged or reeled across it in the midst of a play to speak to acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could not have been very strong.

Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett as Falstaff, may actually seem to be the character assumed by virtue of a transforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that getting into a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habits and associations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruity and ridiculousness of most of our modern acting. Whether what is called the "legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, but the advocates of it appear to think that the theater was sometime cast in a mould, once for all, and is good for all times and peoples, like the propositions of Euclid. To our eyes the legitimate drama of to-day is the one in which