Without understanding why, the first glance at
it told me that the painter was a genius; a
man the hem of whose garment one would be
proud to touch; something far superior to
ordinary humanity; a demigod. And yet I
have often looked at Rubens’s picture in the
Louvre, and at our own Rape of the Sabines,
and it would never have occurred to me (if I
had not been told), that the painter was a great
master. Yet Maule tells me that if I admired
the real beauties of the Descent, I could not
fail to see those of all other Rubenses; while
to me it seems utterly incredible that the
two Rubenses I have mentioned should have
been painted by the same man. It is evident
that a great picture has a double power of
pleasing, one appreciable only by the cognoscenti,
the other adapted to the comprehension
of the vulgar; and why should we not
enjoy what has been provided for the gratification
of our coarser tastes?

Then there is sculpture. Why should not
people be allowed to like marble drapery? Why
tell them that the effect of a veiled figure is
produced by a mere trick, and that they must
not admire it? The poor honest folks have
been yawning over naked stone men and
women—trying to see the ideal—all their lives,
and have failed. Statues have pleased them in
a conservatory, because the gleaming white has
brought out the green of the orange-trees, but
in no other manner. And then they go to
Windsor chapel and see the group to the memory
of the Princess Charlotte; or they come
across some such composition as the Reading
Girl, and for the first time get hold of a bit of
sculpture they can comprehend, and which
gives them real pleasure. Short-lived is their
triumph. Some blow-fly of an art-critic is
certain to taint their enjoyment. “Pretty in
its way. A piece of mechanical work carefully
executed; but, my dear fellow, that is
not Art.” Well, but what is? The Laocoon,
doubtless. What percentage of educated
travellers can derive pleasure from
looking at that? Perhaps if we had casts of
works of art which we can understand, dispersed
more generally throughout our public
gardens and institutions, we might, in a few
generations, be educated up to the higher
branches. At present, with very few exceptions,
the English people are in the position of
a boy attending a lecture on mechanics who has
not read algebra.

People, again, who admire the most intellectual
poetry, never will allow those who
prefer an inferior style to rest in peace. It
was a common custom some years ago, and
may be still, for debating societies to argue
upon Byron’s pretensions to be called a poet.
Yet that was in the true spirit of the Art
Tyrant. Thousands of Byron’s fellow countrymen
might find an artistic want satisfied by
his poetry; they never cared for Milton or
Pope; they never thought they liked poetry
at all, until Byron came in their way, and
suited them. Now, because another order of
poetry suits the critic better, why should he
spoil the only intellectual delight the Byron
lovers have, by perpetually uncovering their
idol’s clay feet? They listen to the troublesome
critic because he is cleverer and better
up in the subject than they are, and he
abuses his power. The critic himself probably
thought Lara the noblest effort of poetical
genius in the language, when he was seventeen.
If his taste prefer at a later period Shelley,
Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, or Tennyson,
that is no reason for turning up his nose at his
old friend.

But musical tyrants are the worst tyrants,
and their slaves are beyond measure the most
numerous. Almost every young lady learns
music, and a very large number of young men who
are fond of the society of young ladies, study it
too, in order to ingratiate themselves. All these
people might receive pleasure instead of pain
from their pursuits, if it were not for the Art
Tyranny which forces them to neglect what
they like, for something else which a conventional
rule asserts that they ought to like. No
doubt a man with a refined classical taste gets
a very high and intense pleasure out of classical
music; but then the ear he has been blessed
with, is a very different organ to the ears of the
unhappy thousands of his slaves and imitators,
who are too vain to own the inferiority of their
drums. For me, I own fairly that I loathe
good music. I wish I liked it; I wish I liked
everything. But I don’t like it.

As for talking in a depreciatory tone of that
which is too high for my attainment, I repudiate
such vain folly, which is the affectation
of ignorance. The fact is a sad one,
that I am so utterly devoid of musical taste, that
if I modestly allude to a favourite tune or performer,
my classical friends laugh scornfully.
And yet a cunning violin or violoncello player can
draw the tears to my eyes; some combinations
of sounds fill me with awe; others make me long
to dance or sing; others to fight; others
plunge me into melancholy but pleasing reveries
of the past. But nothing which the tyrant
artists admit to be music, has this effect upon
me; only what they condemn as trash. The
Christy Minstrels raise me to paradise; a Sonata
in F sends me to the antipodes thereof. Home,
Sweet Home, is charming; but the variations
upon it excite within me the germs of a canine
howl. Why am I a degraded wretch because
my drums are so organised? Do not call what
I like to listen to, music; call it sweet sound;
only let me have it in peace, and do not
attempt to force upon me what gives me pain
in place of what affords me the keenest pleasure.
When I heard Mademoiselle Schneider
sing Dites lui, I was distracted by conflicting
desires to worship her, eat her, and hear
her go on for ever. Offenbach, whom the
Art Tyrants would roast at a slow fire if they
could, has supplied a want in my life; I feel a
personal gratitude to the man who has given me
such true and lasting pleasure. Lasting, because
in hours of weariness and depression his airs