English
education
tends to produce this result.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v24 - Sta to Tal
[like the sky
On to die six deaths! I would give a golden leaf glistening
Rather than that his love should come to me Teura.
There are but seven times for love and eight for death.
I am ill, aweary, fretting at the love that is given me.
I would rather die than return it.
## p. 14398 (#592) ##########################################
14398
TAHITIAN LITERATURE
SONG FOR THE CROWNING OF POMARE
THE
he sky flashes like a torch that is thrown.
It is the welcome of the surroundings.
Tahiti trembles.
It is the coming of thy king from Hawiri,
Wearing his girdle of scarlet feathers.
Welcome Pomare,
King of many isles.
Thou hast put down
The elder power of Matue.
Thou goest outside of the reefs of Hitiaa.
At Vaiatis is thy house.
Thou wilt go to the shores of Tautira,
But thou wilt long for the murmurs of the Pare.
Thou wilt go and thou wilt find the little pass at Paite;
It is like the seat of Pomare.
Courage, Paite, it is the crowning!
Courage at the power of Pomare!
Pomare is the king who has been turned to light
With the consent of the god.
Courage, Pare, it is the crowning of thy king!
[The above article with the translations are from the informal note-book of
Mr. La Farge. )
## p. 14399 (#593) ##########################################
14399
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
(1828-1893)
BY FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
N
so
EW writers of our time have exercised, not only in France
but outside of France, a greater influence than Taine; and
at first this seems strange, when one considers superficially
the nature of his works. Even though he has written an excellent
(History of English Literature,' and has shown rare powers of mind
in his Origins of Contemporary France,' there are many histories of
the French Revolution, some of which are
based on better information or are no less
eloquent than his; there are some less tedi-
ous to read: and what can we say of Shake-
speare, of Milton, of Dryden, or of Shelley,
that would be new enough, after so much
that others have said, to modify ever
little the thought of a whole generation ?
But let us look a little closer and more
attentively: we ought to join to the His-
tory of English Literature, and Origins of
Contemporary France) a book like “The
Philosophy of Art,' or like the book On
the Intelligence); in these books it is neces- H. A. TAINE
sary to grasp, in the midst of the diversity
of subjects, the points in common. And one then sees how true it
is that more than a treatise on the matter in hand, and over and
above being a history of the French Revolution or an analysis of the
power of comprehension, all these works are applications, examples, or
illustrations,” of a method conceived as universal or universally
applicable, having for its object to separate the principles of critical
judgment from the variations of individual opinion. It is this that
makes the greatness of Taine's work, and it is this that explains his
far-reaching influence. It is this, no less, that is meant by those
who profess to see in him not a “critic," nor a “historian,” but a
philosopher. And finally, it is from this point of view, at once
very general and very particular, that he must be seen to be appre-
ciated at his true worth.
## p. 14400 (#594) ##########################################
14400
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
Taine's life was uneventful. Born at Vouziers, in the Ardennes
mountains, in 1828; entered at the École Normale of Paris in 1848; a
provincial professor, obliged to send in his resignation on account of
his independent spirit and freedom of thought; professor of æsthet-
ics and the history of art at the École des Beaux-Arts; indifferent to
outside affairs and superior to most of the vanities that beset man-
kind, - Taine is of that small number of writers who live solely in
order to think, and who, according to Flaubert's phrase, have seen
in their surroundings, in history, or even in the universe itself, only
“what could contribute to the perfecting personally of their intelli-
gence. ” It is moreover entirely unnecessary, in tracing a portrait of
him that shall resemble him, to linger over useless details, or to re-
publish trivial anecdotes concerning him which contain nothing char-
acteristic, and would not help us to know him better. We should go
directly to the point, and keep in view solely that which, together
with his literary gift, was of unique interest in him, -I mean the
evolution of his thought.
Apparently there was something disconcerting in it, and it is
even a sufficiently curious fact, that in his last years he counted
among his adversaries some of his most ardent admirers of former
times, and on the other hand among his supporters those very ones
against whom his first works were employed somewhat like a machine
of war. Nay more, in his (Origins of Contemporary France,' when,
after showing at the outset — and according to his expression, that
the abuses of the old order of things had made the France of 1789
uninhabitable, he had next assailed with still more violence the
religion of the Revolution and of the Napoleonic idolatry, it may be
said that he would have turned against him the entire thinking
world of France, if two things had not protected him: the brilliance
of his talent and his evident sincerity. It was not he, however, who
had changed! No more was it his adversaries nor his admirers, nor
even the trend of ideas or the spirit of the times. But in going to
the bottom of his first principles he had himself seen unexpected
results developing from them; and in contact with the better-known
reality, these principles in their turn bending and modifying them-
selves, but not undergoing a fundamental change. What resemblance
is there between the acorn and the oak, between a grain and a stalk
of wheat, between the worm and the chrysalis ? And yet one pro-
ceeds from the other. And can we say that they are not the same?
His first ambition, summed up in a celebrated phrase become
almost proverbial, —“Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and
sugar,"— had been to communicate to the sciences called moral and
political that absolute certainty which, like all the scholars and phi-
losophers of his generation, he was accustomed to attribute to the
## p. 14401 (#595) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14401
zun.
physical or natural sciences; and in fact, this is what he tried to do
in his essay on La Fontaine and his Fables' (1855), in his essay on
Titus Livius (1856), in his Historical and Critical Essays (1856-58),
and above all in his History of English Literature (1863). Start-
ing with the principle that Moral things, like physical things, have
appendages and conditions,” he proposed to determine them and to
show (the examples are his own) that between a yoke-elm hedge
of Versailles, a decree of Colbert, and a tragedy of Racine, there are
relations that enable us to recognize in them so many manifestations,
not involuntary but yet unconscious, of the same general state of
mind. To-day nothing seems simpler, or rather more commonplace.
Scarcely less so appears the analysis that he has given of the ele-
ments or factors of that state of mind: the Race, the Environment,
the Moment. We all admit that between the Merry Wives of
Windsor) and (Tartuffe) there is an initial and fundamental differ-
ence; which means that Shakespeare was an Englishman who wrote
for English people, and Molière a Frenchman who wrote for French
people. We are equally able to conceive without the least difficulty
that the court of Louis XIV. did not in all points resemble that
of Elizabeth, and that consequently the pleasures of an Essex and a
Leicester were differently ordered from those of a Guiche and a Lau-
And finally, we have no difficulty in understanding that to all
these differences must be added still another; namely, that of the
moment, or of the change that takes place from one century or from
one generation to another in the general civilization of the world.
It is not possible to reason before and after Descartes in the same
way; and the discoveries or inventions of Newton have fundamentally
modified the very substance of the human intellect. If it happened
that some dilettanti doubted this, still it is precisely what Taine has
demonstrated with an abundance of illustrations, a wealth of knowl-
edge,— literary, historical, philosophical, scientific, - with an incom-
parable vigor and brilliancy of style. If he has invented” nothing,
in the somewhat rough sense in which this word is used elsewhere,
and if the theory of environments for example goes back at least to
Hippocrates, he has set the seal of talent on inventions that had not
yet received it; he has popularized them, made them familiar even
to those who do not understand them; and so mingled them with the
current of ideas that they have become anonymous, and to-day we
must make an effort of history and of justice if we would restore to
him what may be called their literary paternity.
How is it then that in their time they stirred up so much oppo-
sition and from so many sides ? For while recognizing the worth of
the writer, there was about 1860 an almost universal protest against
the philosopher. One reproached him for his pantheism, another for
XXIV-901
## p. 14402 (#596) ##########################################
14402
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
his materialism, a third for his fatalism. The French Academy,
intimidated by he public outcry, dared not crown the “History of
English Literature. ' The saying was now applied to Taine which
is employed in France against all innovators; namely, that what-
ever was true in his doctrine was not new, and whatever was found
to be new in it was false. ) A turbulent and blundering prelate,
Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, made himself conspicu-
ous by the violence of his attacks, one might call them invectives.
The last representatives of official ecclesiasticism, whom also Taine
had treated with great severity, several years before, in his book on
“The French Philosophers’ (1857), made up a chorus, so to speak, with
the archbishop. And finally, for nothing more than having wished
to give literary criticism a basis less fragile and above all less fuc-
tuating than individual impression, or because he tried, as we said,
to determine the conditions of objective critical judgment, Taine was
classed in the camp of dangerous spirits” and “freethinkers. ” A
little more and he would have been accused of bringing on the de-
struction of society. What then had he said other or more than what
we have just said, and how had it been understood ?
The truth is that in all times, threatened interests are apt to
deceive themselves in their choice of defensive weapons, - and for-
tunately! for after all, what would become of us if all conquerors
were as able to keep as to capture ? — but they are rarely deceived as
to the bearing of the attacks that are directed against them. And
in truth I do not think that at this epoch Taine had yet pronounced
the enlightening word, nor had he yet perceived all the consequences
of his doctrine - and we shall soon see why: but his adversaries had
perfectly understood that thenceforth his design was to “solder the
moral sciences to the natural sciences,” — or, to use a better word, to
identify them; and if his attitude in the presence of the products
of the human intellect) was not that of a materialist, they did not
err in taking it for that of a naturalist. Let the naturalist study
the tiger or the sheep, he is equally unbiased and feels the same
kind of interest in either case; and the first step in his science is to
forget that man is the tiger's lamb. No more does he change his
habit of mind, still less his method, when instead of the rose or the
violet it is belladonna or digitalis that he studies. In like manner
proceeded the author of the History of English Literature. He
excluded from his research every consideration of an æsthetic or
moral order, retaining only what he saw in it that was natural
or physical. He delivered, properly speaking, no judgment upon
Othello, nor upon (Hamlet,' and still less upon Shakespeare; he
expressed no personal opinion whatever, nor indeed any opinion at
all. In fact, it is not an opinion to believe that two and two make
(
(
## p. 14403 (#597) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14403
a
four, and that a ruminant and a carnivorous animal have not the
same kind of teeth. He analyzed only; he resolved combinations of
forces into their elements. He classified feelings and ideas, as
series of ethers or alcohols is made. Before a canvas of Rembrandt
or a sculpture of Donatello he made an abstraction of art emotion or
moral sentiment. His intellect alone was occupied with it. And
what was the result of this method, if it did not, as in natural his-
tory, reduce to the same level all the products of the human intel-
lect”? This is the meaning of the phrase, “Vice and virtue are
products like vitriol and sugar. ” Just as sugar and vitriol contain
nothing irreducible by chemical analysis, so neither vice nor virtue
contains anything inaccessible to ideological analysis. This Taine's
adversaries thoroughly understood; and if we would find the reasons
for their exasperation against him, we need only consider what was
the scope of the affirmation.
In fact, since for at least six thousand years the destiny of the
human species has differed profoundly from that of all the other
animal species, what principle would serve as a basis for applying to
the study of mankind the same processes that are applied in that of
the animal creation ? Here is a very simple question to which no
one has yet given a satisfactory answer: “The mistake of all moral-
ists,” Spinoza had said in his “Ethics,' “is to consider man in nature
as an empire within an empire;” and such precisely is the opinion
of Taine, as well as of all those who confound the history of nature
and that of humanity. But they have never proved that they had
the right to confound them; and when they have shown, what is not
difficult to understand, that we form a part of nature, they forget, on
the other hand, that we are excepted from nature by all the charac-
teristics that constitute the normal definition of humanity. To be a
man is precisely not to be a brute; and better still, that which we
call nature in the animal is imperfection, vice, or crime in the man.
« Vitium hominis natura pecoris” (The depravity of man is the nature
of the herd).
This is the first point: now for the second. Suppose we should
succeed in reducing ourselves completely to what is absolutely ani-
mal in us; suppose our industries to be only a prolongation of the
industry of the bee or of the ant, and our very languages a continu-
ation of the beast's cry or the bird's song: our arts and our literatures
would always be human things, uniquely, purely human, and conse-
quently things not to be reasoned about independently and outside
of the emotion that they offer to our sensibility; since that emotion
is not merely their object, but also their excuse for being and their
historical origin. There is no natural architecture or painting:
these are the invention of man,- human in their principle, human in
(
## p. 14404 (#598) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14404
their development, human in their object. Let us put it still more
strongly: If some day humanity should disappear altogether, the
material of science would exist exactly as before. The worlds would
continue to roll through space, and the eternal geometry, impossible
to be conceived by us, would continue no less to obey its own laws.
But what would become of art ? and if there is no doubt that the
very notion of it would be blotted out with humanity, what is that
method which, the better to study its dependences and conditions,"
begins by abstracting it, isolating it, and as it were severing it from
the most evident, the straitest and strictest of those dependences ?
This is just what Taine, who was a sincere and loyal spirit, could
scarcely fail sooner or later to perceive. He had just been appointed
professor of Æsthetics and of the History of Art at the École des
Beaux-Arts; and to rise to the height of his task, by completing his
art education, this man who formerly had been fed only on Greek
and Latin had begun by visiting the museums of Italy. This was a
revelation to him; proof of which may be found in the pages, them-
selves so full of color, of his Journey to Italy' (1866). But above
all, his very method had in this way been utterly transformed. He
perceived the impossibility of being ideological in painting, and con-
sequently of treating in the same manner a geological crust and a
masterpiece of art. Behold an impossibility. A poor writer — a writer
who writes badly, incorrectly, tediously, pretentiously, with no feel-
ing either for art or for the genius of his language — can say things
true, things useful, things profound; and we know examples of such
writers. But one does not think in colors; and what sort of a painter
is it who can neither draw nor paint, and what can we say is left of
such a painter ? Natural history and physiology have no hold here,
but talent is indispensable. A critical judgment, then, can only be
delivered by expressing certain preferences; and the history of art is
essentially qualitative. Taine knew this, or rather he succumbed to
it; and from year to year, in the four works which have since been
united under the common title of “The Philosophy of Art,' he was
observed to relinquish the naturalist's impartiality which he had
affected till then, and re-establish against himself the reality of that
æsthetic criterion that he had so energetically denied.
In this regard, the Philosophy of Art,' which is not the best-
known portion of his work, is not the least interesting, nor the least
characteristic. In it he is far from abandoning his theory of the
Race, the Milieu, the Moment; on the contrary, his theory of Greek
architecture and Dutch painting ought to be reckoned among the num-
ber of his most admirable generalizations. No more did he relinquish
the aid of natural history; on the contrary, he has nowhere more
skillfully drawn support from Cuvier, from Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
## p. 14405 (#599) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14405
from Darwin. It was even yet upon the basis of natural history,
upon the principles of the permanence of characteristics and of the
convergence of effects, that he tried to found his classifications. But
after all that, when he reached his conclusion, truth was too strong
for him; and the supreme criterion by which he thought that the
value of a work should be judged, was what he himself called the
«degree of beneficence of its character. ” So much had not been
asked of him: and here it may be observed that none of those French
philosophers whom he had so ridiculed had said more nor as much;
neither Théodore Jouffroy, nor Victor Cousin himself in his famous
book — 'Of the True, of the Beautiful, of the Good. They had
simply arrived at analogous conclusions by wholly different roads.
Have I any need to show that the beneficence of the characteristic is
a human criterion if ever there was one,- purely human,- I should
say almost sociological ? But it is perhaps more important to note
that there was no contradiction in the evolution of Taine's thought.
He had simply and consistently recognized that art, being made for
man and by man, cannot be studied as we study natural objects;
which are not at all our work, and concerning which the Christian,
the spiritualist, in fact everybody, can very well say or believe that
they were made for us — but not the naturalist.
Nevertheless, while the thought of Taine was thus developing
itself, certain of his disciples adhered closely to his Critical and
Historical Essays,' and drew from them the theory of literary nat-
uralism. This is not the place to set it forth, still less to discuss it.
But the important thing to note is, that the disciples were right in
believing that they were applying the principle of the master; and
on his side the master was no more in error than they, when he
protested that those were not his principles. He had gone beyond
them, but he had surely taught them; and just this was the whole
of the misunderstanding. His followers had stopped half-way from
the summit that their master had toiled to reach. They stayed
where they were, while he continued his journey. One last step
remained for him to take; and this he accomplished by devoting his
last years to the Origins of Contemporary France (1875-1894), and
particularly in writing his Old Régime' and the first volume of his
Revolution. '
It is commonly said, apropos of this, that the events of 1870, and
above all those of 1871, were a kind of crisis for Taine, — depriving
him of his former lucidity of impressions, and taking away at the
same stroke his liberty of judgment. This may be: but on the one
hand, nothing is less certain; and on the other, in spite of all that
could be said, there is no more opposition or contradiction between
the author of the Origins of Contemporary France, and that of the
## p. 14406 (#600) ##########################################
14406
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
Philosophy of Art,' than between the author of the Philosophy
of Art and that of the History of English Literature. We read-
ily accuse a writer of contradicting himself when we fail to perceive
the reason of the progress of his ideas; and to reproach him for
defective logic, it suffices us that his own has a wider scope than
ours. In fact, the Origins of Contemporary France is clearly the
work of the same systematic and vigorous mind as the “Critical and
Historical Essays. But just as in passing from the history of ideas
to the history of works, Taine had recognized the necessity of an
æsthetic criterion, so also he was obliged to recognize, in passing
from the history of works to the history of deeds, the necessity of a
moral criterion. There lay all the difference: and yet again, to make
sure that there is no contradiction, we have only to recall what was
the principal object of his inquiry; namely, “On what grounds can
a critical judgment be formed ? ” and to extract this certainty from
the variations and caprices of individual opinions.
I am far from sharing, for my part, the opinions of Taine regard-
ing the French Revolution; and I think that on the whole, if he has
ruthlessly and profitably set before us naked, as it were, some of its
worst excesses as well as its most essential characteristics, he has
nevertheless judged it imperfectly. He has taken into consideration
neither the generosity of its first transport, nor the tragic circum-
stances in the midst of which it was forced to develop, nor the
fecundity of some of the ideas that have spread from it through the
world. He has judged Napoleon no better. This is because he was
without what is called in France the “military fibre. ” And finally
I think that he has imperfectly judged contemporary France. For
while he has carefully pointed out some of the faults that are unhap-
pily ours, he has scarcely accounted to the race for other qualities
which are nevertheless also its own,-its endurance, its flexibility, its
spirit of order and economy; I will even say its wisdom, and that
underlying good sense which from age to age, and for so many
years now, have repaired the errors of our governments.
But from the point of view that I have chosen, I have no need
of dwelling upon the particular opinions of Taine; and not having
expressed my own upon his Shakespeare or upon his Rubens, I shall
not express them upon his Napoleon. I merely say that in attempt-
ing history he has been compelled to see that men cannot be treated
like abstractions, and that to speak truth the moral sciences are
decidedly not natural sciences. He has been obliged to admit to
himself that the verities here were constituted after another order,
and could not be reached by the same means. In his endeavor to
explain, in some of the most beautiful pages he ever wrote, the gen-
esis, the slow and successive formation, the laborious formation, of
## p. 14407 (#601) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14407
(
>
.
the ideas of conscience and of honor, he was unable to find either
a physical basis » or an animal origin” for them. He became
equally aware that there were no beautiful crimes nor beautiful
monsters, as he had believed in the days of his youth; and he felt
that to affect, in the presence of the massacres of September or of
the Reign of Terror, the serene indifference of the chemist in his lab-
oratory, was not to serve the cause of science, but to betray that of
humanity. And as he was accused of contradicting himself in this
point, I well know that he yielded to the weakness of recording, in
some sort, his old and his new principles. « This volume, like those
that have preceded it,” he wrote in 1884, in the Preface to the third
volume of his Revolution,' «is written only for the lovers of moral
zoology, for the naturalists of the intellect,
and not for the
public, which has taken its stand and made up its mind concern-
ing the Revolution. ” Only he forgot to tell us what a naturalist of
the intellect” is, and what above all is moral zoology. ” He might
as well have spoken of immaterial physics”! But he deceived him-
self strangely if he did not believe that he had written for the
public,” and with the purpose of changing our preconceived opinion
(parti pris), whatever it was, toward the Revolution, or of trying
to substitute his own for it. Why did he not simply say that the
more closely he studied human acts, the better he saw their dis-
tinguishing and original character; that without abandoning any of
his former principles, he had simply bent their first rigidity to the
exigencies of the successive problems that he had studied; and that
after cruelly ridiculing at the outset the subordination of all ques-
tions to the moral question, he had himself gone over to that side ?
If this was an avowal that cost him little, perhaps, it is neverthe-
less the philosophical significance of his Origins of Contemporary
France,' and it is the last limit of the evolution of his thought.
It is moreover in this way that the unity of his system and the
extent of his influence are explicable. No, I repeat that he did not
contradict himself at all, if his object was to determine what might
be called the concrete conditions of objective knowledge; and such
indeed was his object, or at least, the result of his work. In liter-
ature first, then in art, and finally in history, he wished to set a
foundation for the certainty; and — let us reiterate it - "separate the
reality of things from the fluctuations of individual opinion. ” If all
the world agree in placing Shakespeare above Addison, Coriolanus)
or Julius Cæsar' above Cato,' and all the world prefers the meth-
ods of government of Henry IV. to those of Robespierre, there are
reasons for it which are not merely sentimental, but positive; and
out of the midst of school or party controversy, Taine desired to
draw the evidence of them and an incontestable formula for them.
## p. 14408 (#602) ##########################################
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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
And in truth, he himself yielded more than once to the attraction of
the subject he chose at first only as material for experiments. So it
sometimes happens that a naturalist lingers in admiration over an
animal he meant only to dissect. Taine likewise forgot his theories
at times in the presence of Raphael and Michael Angelo, of Rem-
brandt or of Rubens, and he even forgot that he was a theorist. But
neither is his History of English Literature properly speaking, a
history of English literature, nor his Origins of Contemporary France)
a history of the Revolution: they are only a demonstration of the
objectivity of the critical judgment by means of the history of the
Revolution or of English literature.
To feel convinced of this, it is enough to read those of his works
that I have not yet mentioned: his Essay on Titus Livius,' his
Journey to the Pyrenees,' his Thomas Graindorge,' his Notes on
England,' or his Note-Books of Travel. Not only does he never
lose sight in them of his principal object, but in all that he sees or
in all that is told him, he notes or retains only what is in accordance
with his critical preoccupations. A landscape to him is not a land-
scape, but a milieu; and a characteristic custom is not a characteris-
tic custom for him, but a commentary on the race.
In the museums
of Italy as in the streets of London, he sees only permanences of
qualities” or “convergences of effects. ” If it happens that he be-
comes interested in the spectacle of things, he repents of it and
recovers himself. Facts are for him only materials; and they have
value in his eyes only in so far as they enter into the construction
of his edifice. And doubtless this is why not only the English do not
admit the truth of his Notes on England, but the French still less
the truth of those that he set down in his Note-Books of Travel. '
On the other hand, here is the very reason for the range and
depth of his influence, if in all that we have just said of him we
need change only a few words in order to say it of an Auguste
Comte, of a Hegel, or of a Spinoza. These are great names, I am
well aware! But when I consider what before Taine were those ideas
that he has marked with the seal of his literary genius, so hard at
tiines, but so vigorous; when I recall in what a nebulous state, so to
speak, they floated in the mind; and when I see to what degree they
now form the substance of contemporary thought, — their merit, that
cannot be contested, is to have recreated methods; and though there
are other merits in the history of thought, there are none greater.
There lay his honor, and there rests his claim to glory. He has re-
newed the methods of criticism. It is this that the future will not forget.
One can discuss the value of his opinions, literary, æsthetic, historical;
one can refuse to take him for guide, - combat him, refute him per-
haps; and one may prefer to his manner of writing, so powerful and
## p. 14409 (#603) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14409
manner
C
so telling, often charged with too many colors, and generally too
emphatic, the
of such-and-such of his contemporaries, –
the treacherous charm of Sainte-Beuve, the fleeting grace of Renan:
but no one more than he is certain of having made an epoch”; and
to grasp the full meaning of this phrase, it suffices to reckon, in the
history of the literatures, how many there are to whom it can be
applied!
f. forunching
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ENGLISH MIND
From Notes on England)
THE
HE interior of an English head may not unaptly be likened
to one of Murray's Handbooks, which contains many facts
and few ideas; a quantity of useful and precise informa-
tion, short statistical abridgments, numerous figures, correct and
detailed maps, brief and dry historical notices, moral and profit-
able counsels in the guise of a preface, - no view of the subject
as a whole, none of the literary graces, - a simple collection of
well-authenticated documents, a convenient memorandum for per-
sonal guidance during a journey. A Frenchman requires that
everything and every piece of writing should be cast in a pleas.
ing form; an Englishman is satisfied if the substance be useful.
A Frenchman loves ideas in and for themselves; an Englishman
employs them as instruments of mnemonics or of prevision. . . .
The impression produced is the same if we consider in turn
the journals, the reviews, and the oratory of the two nations.
The special correspondent of an English journal is a sort of
photographer who forwards proofs taken on the spot; these are
published untouched. Sometimes indeed there are discrepancies
between the arguments in the leading articles and the statements
in the letter. The latter are always extremely lengthy and de-
tailed: a Frenchman would abridge and lighten them; they leave
on him a feeling of weariness: the whole is a jumble; it is a
badly hewn and unwieldy block. The editor of a French journal
is bound to help his correspondent, to select from his materials
what is essential, to pick out from the heap the three or four
## p. 14410 (#604) ##########################################
14410
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
notable anecdotes, and to sum up the whole in a clear idea,
embodied in a telling phrase. Nor is the difference less percepti-
ble if their great quarterlies and our reviews are contrasted. An
article in ours, even an article on science or political economy,
must possess an exordium, a peroration, a plan; every one in
the Revue des Deux Mondes commences with an exposition of
general ideas. With them, facts, figures, and technical details
predominate: their articles are exceedingly heavy, excepting in
the hands of a Macaulay; they are excellent quarries filled with
solid but unshapen stones, requiring additional workmanship in
order to fit them for general use. Moreover, in Parliament and
public meetings, English eloquence is hampered by documents,
while French eloquence evaporates in theories.
English education tends to produce this result. . . . Recently,
however, new discoveries and Continental methods of education
have gained entrance: still, even at this day, the system of edu-
cation is better fitted for strengthening than for expanding the
mind; graduates leave the universities as they leave a course of
gymnastics, bringing away with them no conception whatever of
man or the world. Besides, there is one ready-made, and very
acceptable, which a young man has no difficulty in adopting:
In France no fixed limit bounds his thoughts: the Constitution,
ten times altered, has no authority; the religion is that of the
Middle Ages; the old forms are in discredit, the new are merely
chalked out. From the age of sixteen he is assailed by doubt;
he oscillates: if he has any brains, his inost pressing need is to
construct for himself a body of convictions, or at least of opin-
ions. In England the mold is prepared; the religion is almost
rational, and the Constitution excellent; awakening intelligence
there finds the broad lines of future beliefs already traced. The
necessity for erecting a complete habitation is not felt; the
utmost that appears wanting relates to the enlargement of a
Gothic window, the cleansing of a cellar, the repair of a stair-
case. English intellect, being less unsettled, less excited, is less
active, because it has not skepticism for a spur.
Through all channels, open from infancy to the close of life,
exact information flows into an English head as into a reservoir.
But the proximity of these waters does not yet suffice to explain
their abundance: there is a slope which invites them, an innate
disposition peculiar to the race, - to wit, the liking for facts, the
love of experiment, the instinct of induction, the longing for cer-
titude. Whoever has studied their literature and their philosophy,
## p. 14411 (#605) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14411
from Shakespeare and Bacon to the present day, knows that this
inclination is hereditary, and appertains to the very character of
their minds; that it is bound up with their manner of compre-
hending truth. According to them the tree must be judged by
its fruit, and speculation proved by practice; they do not value
a truth unless it evokes useful applications. Beyond practical
truths lie only vain chimeras. Such is man's condition: a re-
stricted sphere, capable of enlargement, but always walled in; a
sphere within which knowledge must be acquired, not for its own
sake, but in order to act,— science itself being valuable only to
the office which verifies it and for the purpose which it serves.
That being granted, it appears to me that the ordinary fur-
nishing of an English head becomes discernible. As well as I
can judge, an educated Englishman possesses a stock of facts
three or four times in excess of that possessed by a Frenchman
of corresponding position,- at least in all that relates to language,
geography, political and economical truths, and the personal im-
pressions gained in foreign parts by contact with men and living
objects. On the other hand, it frequently happens that the Eng-
lishman turns his big trunk to less account than the Frenchman
does his little bag. This is perceptible in many books and
reviews; the English writer, though very well informed, being
limited in his range.
Nothing is rarer among them than free
and full play of the soaring and expanding intellect. Determined
to be prudent, they drag their car along the ground over the
beaten track; with two or three exceptions, not one now makes
readers think. More than once, when in England, after having
conversed with a man, I was surprised at his store of knowledge,
alike varied and sound, and also to find him so deficient in ideas.
At this moment I can recall five or six who were so largely
endowed as to be entitled to take general views. They paused,
however, half-way, arriving at no definite conclusion. They did
not even experience a desire to co-ordinate their knowledge in a
sort of system: they possessed only partial and isolated ideas;
they did not feel either the inclination or the power to connect
them together under a philosophical conception. Their language
bears the best witness to this, it being extremely difficult to
translate somewhat lofty abstractions into English. Compared
with French, and above all with German, it is what Latin is to
Greek.
Their library of words is wanting in an entire
row of compartments, — namely, the upper ones; they have no
ideas wherewith to fill them.
## p. 14412 (#606) ##########################################
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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
TYPICAL ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN
From Notes on England
Since my
A
.
T BOTTOM the essential thing in a country is man.
arrival I have made a collection of types, and I class them
with those I had collected last year.
Arranged in
groups, the following are those which have struck me most:
First, the robust individual, largely and solidly built, the fine
colossus, at times six feet high and broad in proportion. This is
very common among soldiers, notably among the Life Guards, a
select body of men. Their countenance is fresh and blooming,
their flesh magnificent; it might be supposed they had been
chosen for an exhibition of human products, like picked prize
beets and cauliflowers. They have a fund of good-humor, some-
times of good-nature, generally of awkwardness.
In point
of mass they are monuments; but there may be too much of
a good thing, and movement is so essential to matter! Other
monuments, rather less tall, but even fresher and more varnished,
are the servants of a great house. They wear white cravats
with large faultless bows, scarlet or canary-colored knee-breeches;
they are magnificent in shape and amplitude — their calves espe-
cially are enormous. . . . The coachmen are prodigiously broad-
shouldered and well developed: how many yards of cloth must
be required to clothe such figures ? These are the favorites of
creation, the best fed, the most easy-going, all chosen and picked
in order to act as specimens of the nation's physique.
There is the same athletic and full-fleshed type among the
gentlemen; I know four or five specimens among my acquaint-
ances. Sometimes the excess of feeding adds a variety. This
was true of a certain gentleman in my railway carriage on the
Derby day: large ruddy features, with flabby and pendent cheeks,
large red whiskers, blue eyes without expression, an enormous
trunk in a short light jacket, noisy respiration; his blood gave
a tinge of pink to his hands, his neck, his temple, and even
underneath his hair: when he compressed his eyelids, his physi-
ognomy was as disquieting and heavy as that seen in the por-
traits of Henry VIII. ; when in repose, in presence of this mass
of flesh, one thought of a beast for the butcher, and quietly com-
puted twenty stone of meat. Toward fifty, owing to the effect of
the same diet seasoned with port wine, the figure and the face
are spoiled, the teeth protrude, the physiognomy is distorted, and
they turn to horrible and tragical caricature.
## p. 14413 (#607) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14413
The last variety is seen among the common people, where
spirits take the place of port, among other places in the low
streets which border the Thames: several apoplectic and swollen
faces, whereof the scarlet hue turns almost to black; worn-out,
blood-shot eyes like raw lobsters; the brute brutalized. Lessen
the quantity of blood and fat, while retaining the same bone and
structure, and increasing the countrified look; large and wild
beard and mustache, tangled hair, rolling eyes, truculent muzzle,
big knotted hands — this is the primitive Teuton issuing from his
woods: after the portly animal, after the overfed animal, comes
the fierce animal, the English bull.
All this is rare enough; these are the extremes of type. Much
more common is the laboring animal: the great bony body, full of
protuberances and projections, not well set up, ungainly, clumsy,
slightly automatic, but of strong build, and as capable of resist-
ance as of effort. It is not less common among gentlemen, clergy-
men, the liberal professions, than among the people.
Place in this powerful frame of bones and muscles the lucid,
calm, active intelligence developed by special education, or by
complete education, and you will have the fine variety of the
same type: the serious, capable man, worthy of commanding, in
whom during the hour of need one may and one ought to place
confidence, who will accomplish difficult tasks. In spick-span
new clothes, in too light a dress, the disparity between the habit
and its wearer is not far from being grotesque. But fancy him
on the bridge of a vessel, in battle,- or simply in a counting-
house at the head of twenty clerks, on the bench and pronoun-
cing decisions, governing fortunes or lives, he will be beautiful,
morally beautiful. This body can contain the soul without suc-
cumbing
Many of the women have the same power of growth and
structure, more frequently indeed than in France; out of every
ten young girls one is admirable, and upon five or six a natural-
ist painter would look with pleasure. On horseback especially, and
in full gallop, they are amazons; not only by their skill and the
firmness of their seat, but on account of their figure and their
health. In their presence one thinks of the natural form of life,
Grecian and gymnastic. Yesterday one of them in a drawing-
room, tall, with well-developed bust and shoulders, blooming
cheeks, active, and without too much expression, seemed to me
to be made to live in the avenues of a park, or in the great hall
of a castle, like her sister the antique statue, in the free air of
## p. 14414 (#608) ##########################################
14414
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
the mountains, or under the portico of a temple upon the sea-
shore; neither the one nor the other could breathe in our small
Parisian dwellings. The mauve silk of the dress follows the
form from the neck to the hips, descends and spreads forth like
a lustrous wave: in order to depict her as a goddess it would
require the palette of Rubens, his rosy red spread over a tint of
milk, his large masses of flesh fixed by one dash of the brush;
only here the contour is more severe, and the head is nobler.
Yet, even when the physiognomy and the form are common-
place the whole satisfies the mind: a solid bony structure, and
upon it healthy flesh, constitute what is essential in a living
creature.
There are two probable causes: the one, which is of a special
character, - the hereditary conformation of the race; the other,
which is the custom of open-air living and bodily exercise. A
review spoke recently about the rude, unfeeling health which
slightly startles delicate foreign ladies, and attributes it to riding
on horseback and the long walks which English ladies take in
the country. To these advantages are joined several inconven-
iences: the fair complexion is easily and quickly spoilt; in the
case of many young ladies, the nose reddens early; they have
too many children, and this deteriorates them.
You marry a
blonde, slender, and clear-complexioned woman: ten years after-
wards you will perhaps have at your side a housekeeper, a nurse,
a sitting hen. I have in my mind two or three of these matrons,
broad, stiff, and destitute of ideas; red face, eyes the color of
blue china, huge white teeth — forming the tricolor flag. In other
cases the type becomes exaggerated: one sees extraordinary
asparagus-sticks planted in spreading dresses. Moreover, two out
of every three have their feet shod with stout masculine boots;
and as to the long projecting teeth, it is impossible to train one-
self to endure them. Is this a cause, or an effect, of the carniv-
orous régime? The too ornate and badly adjusted dress completes
these disparities. It consists of violet or dark-crimson silks,
of grass-green flowered gowns, blue sashes, jewelry — the whole
employed sometimes to caparison gigantic jades who recall dis-
charged heavy-cavalry horses, sometimes vast well-hooped butts
which burst in spite of their hoops. Of this cast was a lady
in Hyde Park one of these days, on horseback, followed by her
She was fifty-five, had several chins, the rest in pro-
portion, an imperious and haughty mien; the whole shook at the
slightest trot, and it was hard not to laugh.
a
groom.
## p. 14415 (#609) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14415
THE RACE CHARACTERS EXPRESSED IN ART
From (Art in the Netherlands. ) Copyright 1870, by Leypoldt & Holt
LET
us consider the common characteristics of the Germanic
race, and the differences by which it is opposed to the
Latin race. Physically we find a whiter and softer skin,
generally speaking; blue eyes, often of a porcelain or pale hue,
paler as you approach the north, and sometimes glassy in Hol-
land; hair of a flaxy blond, and with children, almost white.
The body is generally large, but thick-set or burly, heavy and
inelegant. In a similar manner the features are apt to be irreg-
ular; especially in Holland, where they are flabby, with project-
ing cheek-bones and strongly marked jaws. They lack, in short,
sculptural nobleness and delicacy. You will rarely find the feat-
ures regular, like the numerous pretty faces of Toulouse and Bor-
deaux, or like the spirited and handsome heads which abound in
the vicinity of Rome and Florence. You will much oftener find
exaggerated features, incoherent combinations of form and tones,
curious fleshy protuberances, so many natural caricatures. Taking
them for works of art, living forms testify to a clumsy and fan-
tastic hand through their more incorrect and weaker drawing.
Observe now this body in action, and you will find its ani-
mal faculties and necessities of a grosser kind than among the
Latins: matter and mass seem to predominate over motion and
spirit; it is voracious and even carnivorous. Compare the appe-
tite of an Englishman, or even a Hollander, with that of a
Frenchman or an Italian: those among you who have visited the
countries can call to mind the public dinner-tables,-- and the
quantities of food, especially meat, tranquilly swallowed several
times a day by a citizen of London, Rotterdam, or Antwerp. In
English novels people are always lunching; the most sentimental
heroine, at the end of the third volume, having consumed an
infinite number of buttered muffins, cups of tea, bits of chicken,
and sandwiches. The climate contributes to this: in the fogs of
the North, people could not sustain themselves, like a peasant of
the Latin race, on a bowl of soup or a piece of bread flavored
with garlic, or on a plate of macaroni. For the same reason the
German is fond of potent beverages.
Enter, in Amsterdam, one of these little shops, garnished with
polished casks, where glass after glass is swallowed of white,
## p. 14416 (#610) ##########################################
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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
yellow, green, and brown brandy, strengthened with pepper and
pimento. Place yourself at nine o'clock in the evening in a
Brussels brewery, near a dark wooden table, around which the
hawkers of crabs, salted rolls, and hard-boiled eggs circulate:
observe the people quietly seated there, each one intent on him-
self; sometimes in couples, but generally silent, smoking, eating,
and drinking bumpers of beer, which they now and then warm
up with a glass of spirits: you can understand sympathetically
the strong sensation of heat and animal plenitude they feel in
their speechless solitude, in proportion as superabundant solid
and liquid nourishment renews in them the living substance, and
as the whole body partakes in the gratification of the satisfied
stomach.
One point more of their exterior remains to be shown, which
especially strikes people of southern climes, and that is the slug-
gishness and torpidity of their impressions and movements.
Many a time have I passed before a shop-window to contemplate
some rosy, placid, and candid face,-a mediæval madonna making
up the fashions.
It is the very reverse of this in our land and
in Italy, where the grisette's eyes seem to be gossiping with the
chairs for lack of something better, and where a thought, the
moment it is born, translates itself into gesture. In Germanic
lands the channels of sensation and expression seem to be ob-
structed: delicacy, impulsiveness, and readiness of action, appear
impossible; a southerner has to exclaim at their awkwardness
and lack of adroitness.
In brief, the human animal of this race is more passive and
more gross than the other. One is tempted to regard him as
inferior on comparing him with the Italian or southern French-
man, so temperate, so quick intellectually, who is naturally apt
in expression, in chatting and in pantomime, possessing taste and
attaining to elegance; and who without effort, like the Proven-
çals of the twelfth and the Florentines of the fourteenth cen-
tury, become cultivated, civilized, and accomplished at the first
attempt.
This same
reason and this same good sense establish and
maintain amongst them diverse descriptions of social engagements,
and first the conjugal bond.
But very lately, a wealthy
and noble Hollander named to me several young ladies of his
family who had no desire to see the great Exposition, and who
remained at home whilst their husbands and brothers visited
.
## p. 14417 (#611) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14417
>
Paris. A disposition so calm and so sedentary diffuses much
happiness throughout domestic life; in the repose of curiosity
and of desire, the ascendency of pure ideas is much greater;
the constant presence of the same person not being wearisome,
the memory of plighted faith, the sentiment of duty and of self-
respect, easily prevails against temptations which elsewhere tri-
umph because they are elsewhere more powerful.
I can say as much of other descriptions of association, and
especially of the free assemblage. This, practically, is a very
difficult thing To make the machine work regularly without
obstruction, those who compose it must have calm nerves and be
governed by the end in view. One is expected to be patient in
a meeting,” to allow himself to be contradicted and even vili
fied, await his turn for speaking, reply with moderation, and sub-
mit twenty times in succession to the same argument enlivened
with figures and documentary facts. It will not answer to fling
aside the newspaper the moment its political interest flags, nor
take up politics for the pleasure of discussion and speech-making,
nor excite insurrections against officials the moment they become
distasteful, which is the fashion in Spain and elsewhere. You
yourselves have some knowledge of a country where the gov-
ernment has been overthrown because inactive and because the
nation felt ennui. Among Germanic populations, people meet
together not to talk but to act: politics is a matter to be wisely
managed; they bring to bear on it the spirit of business: speech
is simply a means, while the effect, however remote, is the end in
view. They subordinate themselves to this end, and are full of
deference for the persons who represent it. How unique! Here
the governed respect the governing; if the latter prove objection-
able they are resisted, but legally and patiently; if institutions
prove defective, they are gradually reformed without being dis-
rupted. Germanic countries are the patrimony of free parlia-
mentary rule. . To act in a body, no one person oppressing
another, is a wholly Germanic talent, and one which gives them
such an empire over matter; through patience and reflection they
conform to the laws of physical and human nature, and instead
of opposing them profit by them.
If now from action we turn to speculation, - that is to say, to
the mode of conceiving and figuring the world, — we shall find
the same imprint of this thoughtful and slightly sensualistic
genius. The Latins show a decided taste for the external and
XXIV-902
## p. 14418 (#612) ##########################################
14418
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
decorative aspect of things, for a pompous display feeding the
senses and vanity, for logical order, outward symmetry, and pleas-
ing arrangement,-in short, for form. The Germanic people, on
,
the contrary, have rather inclined to the inward order of things,
to truth itself, - in fact, to the fundamental. Their instinct leads
them to avoid being seduced by appearances, to remove mystery,
to seize the hidden even when repugnant and sorrowful, and not
to eliminate or withhold any detail, even when vulgar and un-
sightly. Among the many products of this instinct, there are
two which place it in full light through the strongly marked con-
trast in each of form and substance; namely, literature and reli-
gion. The literatures of Latin populations are classic, and nearly
or remotely allied to Greek poesy, Roman eloquence, the Italian
Renaissance, and the age of Louis XIV. ; they refine and ennoble,
they embellish and prune, they systematize and give proportion.
Their latest masterpiece is the drama of Racine, who is the
painter of princely ways, court proprieties, social paragons, and
cultivated natures; the master of an oratorical style, skillful com-
position, and literary elegance. The Germanic literatures, on the
contrary, are romantic: their primitive source is the Edda' and
the ancient sagas of the north; their greatest masterpiece is the
drama of Shakespeare, - that is to say, the crude and complete
representation of actual life, with all its atrocious, ignoble, and
commonplace details, its sublime and brutal instincts, the entire
outgrowth of human character displayed before us, now in a
familiar style bordering on the trivial, and now poetic even to
lyricism, always independent of rule, incoherent, excessive, but of
an incomparable force, and filling our souls with the warm and
palpitating passion of which it is the outcry.
This race, thus endowed, has received various imprints, accord-
ing to the various conditions of its abiding-place. Sow a number
of seeds of the same vegetable species in different soils, under
various temperatures, and let them germinate, grow, bear fruit
and reproduce themselves indefinitely, each on its own soil, and
each will adapt itself to its soil, producing several varieties of the
same species so much the more distinct as the contrast is greater
between the diverse climates. Such is the experience of the
Germanic race in the Netherlands. Ten centuries of habitation
have done their work: the end of the Middle Ages shows us
that in addition to its innate character, there is an acquired char.
acter.
## p. 14419 (#613) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14419
(
>
The country is an outflow of mighty waters, which, as they
reach it, become sluggish and remain stagnant for want of a fall.
Dig a hole anywhere and water comes. Examine the landscapes
of Van der Neer and you will obtain some idea of the vast slug-
gish streams, which, on approaching the sea, become a league
wide, and lie asleep, wallowing in their beds like some huge,
flat, slimy fish, turbid and feebly glimmering with scaly reflec-
tions. The plain is oftentimes below their level, and it is only
protected by levées of earth. You feel as if some of them were
going to give way; a mist is constantly rising from their sur-
faces, and at night a dense fog envelops all things in a bluish
humidity. Follow them down to the sea, and here a second and
more violent inundation, arising from the daily tides, completes
the work of the first. The northern ocean is hostile to man.
Look at the Estacade of Ruysdael, and imagine the frequent
tempests casting up ruddy waves and monstrous foaming billows
on the low, flat band of earth, already half submerged by the
enlargement of the rivers.
Here there had to be good sound heads, a capacity to sub-
ject sensation to thought, to endure patiently ennui and fatigue,
to accept privation and labor in view of a remote end, - in short,
a Germanic race; meaning by this, men organized to co-operate
together, to toil, to struggle, to begin over and over again and
ameliorate unceasingly, to dike streams, to oppose tides, to drain
the soil, to turn wind, water, flats, and argillaceous mud to
account, to build canals, ships, and mills, to make brick, raise
cattle, and organize various manufacturing and commercial
enterprises. The difficulty being very great, the mind was
absorbed in overcoming it; and turned wholly in this direction,
was diverted from other things. To subsist, to obtain shelter,
food, and raiment, to protect themselves against cold and damp,
to accumulate stores and lay up wealth, left the settlers no time
to think of other matters: the mind got to be wholly positive
and practical.
Compared with other nations of the same stock, and with a
genius no less practical, the denizen of the Netherlands appears
better balanced and more capable of being content. We do not
see in him the violent passions, the militant disposition, the over-
strained will, the bulldog instincts, the sombre and grandiose
pride, which three permanent conquests and the secular establish-
ment of political strife have implanted in the English; nor that
7
## p. 14420 (#614) ##########################################
14420
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
restless and exaggerated desire for action which a dry atmo-
sphere, sudden changes from heat to cold, a surplus electricity,
have implanted in the Americans of the United States. He lives
in a moist and equable climate: one which relaxes the nerves
and develops the lymphatic temperament, which moderates the
insurrections, explosions, and impetuosity of the spirit; soothing
the asperities of passion, and diverting the character to the side
of sensuality and good-humor.
All circumstances, moral and physical, their geographical and
political state, the past and the present, combine to one end, -
namely, the development of one faculty and one tendency at the
expense of the rest, shrewd management and temperate emotions,
a practical understanding and limited desires; they comprehend
the amelioration of outward things, and this accomplished they
crave no more.
Consider their work: its perfection and lacunæ indicate at
once the limits and the power of their intellect. The profound
philosophy which is so natural in Germany, and the elevated
poetry which flourishes in England, they lack. They fail to
overlook material things and positive interests in order to yield
to pure speculation, to follow the temerities of logic, to attenuate
the delicacy of analysis, and to bury themselves in the depths of
abstraction. They ignore that spiritual turmoil, those eruptions
of suppressed feeling, which give to style a tragic accent; and
that vagabond fancy, those exquisite and sublime reveries, which
outside of life's vulgarities reveal a new universe.
They
are epicureans as well as gourmands in the matter of comfortable
living; regularly, calmly, without heat or enthusiasm, they glean
up every pleasing harmony of savor, sound, color, and form that
arises out of their prosperity and abundance, like tulips on a
heap of compost. All this produces good sense somewhat limited,
and happiness somewhat gross.
Such, in this country, is the human plant; we have now to
examine its art, which is the flower. Among all the branches of
the Germanic trunk, this plant alone has produced a complete
flower; the art which develops so happily and so naturally
in the Netherlands proves abortive with the other Germanic
nations, for the reason that this glorious privilege emanates from
the national character as we have just set it forth.
To comprehend and love painting requires an eye sensitive to
forms and to colors, and without education or apprenticeship, one
a
## p. 14421 (#615) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14421
.
which takes pleasure in the juxtaposition of tones, and is delicate
in the matter of optical sensations; the man who would be a
painter must be capable of losing himself in viewing the rich
consonance of red and green, in watching the diminution of light
as it is transformed into darkness, and in detecting the subtle
hues of silks and satins, which according to their breaks, recesses,
and depths of fold, assume opaline tints, vague luminous gleams,
and imperceptible shades of blue. The eye is epicurean like the
palate, and painting is an exquisite feast served up to it. For
this reason it is that Germany and England have had no great
pictorial art. In Germany the too great domination of abstract
ideas has left no room for the sensuousness of the eye.
One of the leading merits of this art is the excellence and
delicacy of its coloring. This is owing to the education of the
eye, which in Flanders and in Holland is peculiar.
Here,
as at Venice, nature has made man a colorist. Observe the differ-
ent aspect of things according as you are in a dry country, like
Provence and the neighborhood of Florence, or on a wet plain
like the Netherlands. In the dry country the line predominates,
and at once attracts attention: the mountains cut sharp against
the sky, with their stories of architecture of a grand and noble
style; all objects projecting upward in the limpid air in varied
prominence. Here the low horizon is without interest, and the
contours of objects are softened, blended, and blurred out by the
imperceptible vapor with which the atmosphere is always filled;
that which predominates is the spot. A cow pasturing, a roof in
the centre of a field, a man leaning on a parapet, appear as one
tone among other tones. The object emerges: it does not start
suddenly out of its surroundings as if punched out; you are
struck by its modeling, - that is to say, by the different degrees
of advancing luminousness, and the diverse gradations of melting
color, which transform its general tint into a relief, and give to
the eye a sensation of thickness. You would have to pass many
days in this country in order to appreciate the subordination of
the line to the spot. A bluish or gray vapor is constantly rising
from the canals, the rivers, the sea, and from the saturated soil; a
universal haze forms a soft gauze over objects, even in the finest
weather. Flying scuds, like thin, half-torn white drapery, float
over the meadows night and morning. I have repeatedly stood
on the quays of the Scheldt contemplating the broad, pallid, and
slightly rippled water, on which float the dark hulks. The river
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an
shines; and on its flat surface the hazy light reflects here and
there unsteady scintillations. Clouds ascend constantly around the
horizon; their pale, leaden hue and their motionless files sug-
gesting an army of spectres,- the spectres of the humid soil,
like so many phantoms, always revived and bringing back the
eternal showers. Towards the setting sun they become ruddy;
while their corpulent masses, trellised all over with gold, remind
one of the damascene copes, the brocaded simarres, and the em-
broidered silks, with which Jordaens and Rubens envelop their
bleeding martyrs and their sorrowful Madonnas. Quite low down
on the sky the sun seems enormous blaze subsiding into
smoke. On reaching Amsterdam or Ostend the impression again
deepens; both sea and sky have no form; the fog and inter-
posed showers leave nothing to remember but colors. The water
changes in hue every half-hour — now of a pale wine tinge, now
of a chalky whiteness, now yellow like softened mortar, now
black like liquid soot, and sometimes of a sombre purple striped
with dashes of green. After a few days' experience you find
that in such a nature, only gradations, contrasts, and harmonies-
in short, only the value of tones is of any importance.
You have seen the seed, the plant, and the flower. A race
with a genius totally opposed to that of the Latin peoples makes
for itself, after and alongside of them, its place in the world.
Among the numerous nations of this race, one there is in which
a special territory and climate develop a particular character
predisposing it to art and to a certain phase of art. Painting is
born with it, lasts, becomes complete; and the physical milieu sur-
rounding it, like the national genius which founds it, gives to
and imposes on its subjects its types and its coloring. We find
four distinct periods in the pictorial art of the Netherlands; and
through a remarkable coincidence, each corresponds to a distinct
historic period. Here, as everywhere, art translates life; the talent
and taste of the painter change at the same time, and in the
same sense as the habits and sentiments of the public.
The first period of art lasts about a century and a half (1400–
1530). It issues from a renaissance; that is to say, from a great
development of prosperity, wealth, and intellect. Here, as in Italy,
the cities at an early period are flourishing, and almost free.
In these swarming hives an abundance of food and habits
of personal activity maintain courage, turbulence, audacity, and
even insolence, — all excesses of brutal and boundless energy;
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14423
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these weavers were men, and when we encounter men we may
expect soon to encounter the arts.
At the end of the fourteenth century Flanders, with Italy, is
the most industrious, the wealthiest, the most flourishing coun-
try in Europe.
A Flemish renaissance underneath Christian ideas, - such in
effect is the twofold nature of art under Hubert and John Van
Eyck, Roger Van der Weyde, Hemling, and Quintin Matsys; and
from these two characteristics proceed all the others. On the
one hand, artists take interest in actual life; their figures are
no longer symbols like the illuminations of ancient missals, nor
purified spirits like the Madonnas of the school of Cologne, but
living beings and bodies. They attend to anatomy, the perspect-
ive is exact, the minutest details are rendered of stuffs, of archi.
