1853-1854.

Acquaintance with R. W. Mackay.—His learning and accomplishments.—His principal pursuit.—His qualities as a writer.—Value of the artistic element in literature.—C. R. Leslie, R. A.—Robinson the line-engraver.—The Constable family.—Mistaken admiration for minute detail.—Projected journey to Egypt.—Mr. Ruskin.—Bonomi.—Samuel Sharpe.—Tennyson.

My lodgings were at Maida Hill, and I soon became personally acquainted with a writer whom I knew already by correspondence, Mr. R. W. Mackay, author of "The Progress of the Intellect."

Mr. Mackay was for many years a kind friend of mine. An incident occurred long afterwards which put an end to this friendship. I made some reference to him in a review that was not intended to be unkind or depreciatory in any way, as I always felt a deep respect for Mr. Mackay, but unhappily he saw it in another light, and so it ended our intercourse. In 1853, and for long afterwards, there was nothing to foreshadow a rupture of this kind, and I am still able to write of my old friend as if he had always remained so.

Mr. Mackay was primarily a scholar and secondarily an artist. He had been educated at Cambridge, and being gifted with an extraordinary memory, he accumulated learning in very abundant stores. As to his memory, it is said that he once accepted a challenge to recite a thousand lines of Virgil, and did it without error. He had a good practical knowledge of French and German. He possessed a large collection of water-color sketches made during his travels in Italy and elsewhere, work of a kind that an amateur might judiciously practise, as there was no false finish about them. They recalled scenes that had interested him either by their natural beauty, which he appreciated, or by association with classical literature.

I hardly like to use the word "gentleman," because it is employed in so many different senses, but I never knew anybody who realized my conception of that ideal more perfectly than Mr. Mackay. In him, as Prince Leopold said of another, all culture and all refinement met. He was extremely simple in all his ways, and averse to every kind of vanity and ostentation. He had a sufficient fortune for a refined life, and did not care for any kind of wasteful extravagance. All belonging to him was simple and in good taste. He did not see very much society; that which he did see included several men and women of distinguished ability.

Mr. Mackay's chief pursuit was one to which I would never have devoted laborious years—theology on the negative side. His idea was that the liberation of thought could only be accomplished by going painfully over the whole theological ground and explaining every belief and phase of belief historically and rationally. My opinion was, and is, that all this trouble is superfluous. The true liberation must come from the enlargement of the mind by wider and more accurate views of the natural universe. As this takes place, the mediaeval beliefs must drop away of themselves, and we now see that this process is actually in operation. So far from devoting a life to the refutation of theological error, I would not bestow upon such an unnecessary and thankless toil the labor of a week or a day.

The habit of study and reflection had done Mr. Mackay some harm in one respect; it had withdrawn him too much from commonplace reality. He always seemed to be moving in a dream, and to recall himself to the actual world by an effort. This is a result of excessive culture that I have observed in other cases. My conclusion is that all the culture in the world, all the learning, all the literary skill and taste put together, are not so well worth having as the keen and clear sense of present reality that common folks have by nature.

Mr. Mackay was a laborious and careful writer, and he had a good style of its kind, though it was more remarkable for strength and soundness than for vivacity and ease. It was too much of one texture to be attractive, and so he never became a popular author. Of course the heterodoxy of Mr. Mackay's opinions was one great cause of his failure to catch the public ear in England, but even that difficulty can be got over by a great literary artist. He tried to do his best, as to literary form, but he never condescended to write for the market in any way, and used to maintain that if a book was to be profitable it must be written for the market.

I do not quite agree with this opinion. I should say, rather, that literature resembles painting in being one of the fine arts, and that when a book, like a picture, is a fine work of art, it has a great chance of being a commercial success.

Renan's books have been very successful literary speculations, because Renan is a first-rate artist. Mackay would have been a better artist in literature if he had not been so much overpowered by the immense masses of his materials.

Amongst the new friends I gained at Mr. Mackay's house was C. R. Leslie, the painter. I was charmed with him from the first, and retain to this day the liveliest recollection of his exquisitely urbane manners, and even of the tones of his voice. Leslie was a man of unquestionable genius, but entirely free from the tendency to despise other people, which so often accompanies genius. On first meeting with him I took him for a clergyman, and told him of it later. He felt rather flattered than otherwise by the mistake, and I have no doubt that his modest nature would at once refer to points on which the average clergyman would probably be his superior. Some artists are lost in admiration of their own works, so that the way to please them is to praise what they have done themselves; but the way to please Leslie was to praise what Constable had done. His admiration for Constable was quite as strong a passion as Mr. Ruskin's admiration of Turner, though it did not express itself in such perfervid language. I might at that time have become Constable's pupil, indirectly. Leslie would have educated me in the art of that master. I had nothing to do but work by myself, copying studies and pictures by Constable in a studio of my own within a short distance of Leslie's house, and he would have come to me often to advise. Robinson, the eminent line-engraver, strongly urged me to put myself under Leslie's direction, and this, I believe, was the Academician's kind, indirect way of offering it. On the other hand, I did not wish to hurt Pettitt by leaving him, and Constable's choice of quiet rural subjects was to me, at that time, uninteresting. I disliked tame scenery, not having as yet the artistic perceptions which are needed for the appreciation of it.

Leslie introduced me to Constable's family, who were very kind, and they showed me all the sketches of his that remained in their possession. My love for precise and definite drawing made me unable to see the real merits of those studies, though I was not much mistaken in thinking that drawing of the quality I then cared for was not to be found in them. Constable was essentially what the French understand by the word paysagiste; that is, an artist who studies the every-day aspects of common nature broadly. He would have done me much good at that time, if I had felt interested in him, but the lover of the Western Highlands could not bring himself to care for the fields and hedgerows about Flatford. Pettitt, at any rate, loved our Lake District and Wales. Again, though I had a hearty and just admiration for Leslie's unrivalled power of painting expression in the faces of ladies and gentlemen in drawing-rooms, I had never seen any landscape by him except tame backgrounds, which seemed to me quite secondary, as they were.

I had at that time a mistaken belief (derived originally from Mr. Ruskin and confirmed by Mr. Pettitt) that there was something essentially meritorious in bestowing great labor on a work of art. It is well for an artist to be habitually industrious, because that increases his skill, but it is a matter of indifference whether this or that picture has cost much or little labor, provided that the artist has clearly expressed what he desired. Mr. Robinson, the line-engraver, gave me a good lesson on this subject. We were looking at a drawing by Millais in Indian ink which was penned all over in minute hatchings. I was full of admiration for the industry of the artist, but Robinson thought it labor thrown away. I met Mr. Ruskin personally one evening, and we examined a water-color by John Lewis which was on a table-desk. The drawing was fortunately glazed, for as Mr. Ruskin was holding the candle over it the composite dropped on the glass. He pointed out the minute beauties of a camel's eye, which was painted so carefully that even the hairs of the eyelash were given, and the reflections on the mirror of the eye. This praise of minute detail was at that time only too much in accordance with my own taste. I had an intense admiration for such feats of skilled industry as the wonderful lattices that Lewis used to paint with the eastern sunshine streaming through them on a variety of different surfaces. I met John Lewis himself. He was a fine-looking man, with a beard which at that time was of the purest silvery white. I afterwards had the advantage of a little correspondence with Lewis. He wrote well, and expressed his opinions about art-work very clearly in his letters. They amounted chiefly to this: Work always as much from nature as possible, and give all the care you can.

At that time I had a settled scheme for going to travel and work in Egypt, and it would have been better for me than Scotland on account of the greater sameness of the effects. I mentioned this project to Mr. Ruskin, who said that he avoided travelling in countries where he could not be sure of ordinary comforts, such as a white table-cloth and a clean knife and fork; still, he would put up with a great deal of inconvenience to be near a mountain. Talking of Turner's paintings in comparison with his water-colors, he said he would rather have half the drawings than all the oil pictures. He compared a drawing of Nemi with an oil picture that we could see at the same time, two works almost of the same date, and gave reasons for preferring the water-color.

My Egyptian scheme brought me into relations with Bonomi, who at that time was a famous traveller. Bartlett, the artist-traveller, whose works had been very widely spread abroad by engraving, told me that when he was ill of a fever at Baalbec he was nursed by a sheik who wore a beard and rode an Arab horse. This sheik spoke English, and was, in fact, Bonomi, who had adopted the manners of the wandering Arabs, and would have remained amongst them if his English friends had not persuaded him to return.

Bonomi was one of the liveliest little men I ever met. I feel almost guilty of a fraud with regard to him, for his amiability towards me was due in great part to his belief of my statement that I was going to Egypt; yet I never went there, and shall certainly not go now. My only excuse is that I sincerely believed the same statement myself. He said that the effects of color and light in Egypt at morning and evening were perfectly inconceivable. He recommended me to travel, not on the Nile itself, but on the bank with camels, as that gave a greatly superior view, both of the country and the river.

Mr. Samuel Sharpe was a charming, straightforward old gentleman, who said what he thought, without any feeble concession to other people's opinions. He did not share the prevalent enthusiasm for Turner, which was of course in great part factitious, as many of the people who praised Turner so warmly then had laughed at his pictures a few years before. Mr. Sharpe thought that Turner was an unsafe guide for a young landscape-painter to imitate. It is remarkable, as a matter of fact, how little practical influence Turner has had upon the progress of landscape art. Another and a stronger proof of the independence of Mr. Sharpe's judgment was his opinion about England and Russia. He did not think it necessary to oppose Russia's progress towards Constantinople by force, but thought there was room enough for the two empires without collision. If Mr. Sharpe's opinion had prevailed, there would have been no Crimean War, but he and those who thought with him were very much isolated at that time.

I met at his house a cousin of Miss Martineau, who told us some good stories, especially about Tennyson. On this a brother of our host said that he was once travelling when he met with a party of tourists, among whom he recognized the Laureate. "Who is that gentleman?" said they. "He has been the life and soul of our party, and we cannot get a clue to his name, for he has baffled us in every way, tearing it off his luggage and out of the book he was reading." Mr. Sharpe betrayed the secret, not much to the Laureate's satisfaction. When travelling in Scotland some time afterwards I myself met with Tennyson, so a tourist kindly explained who he was in these words: "That's Alfred Tennyson, the American poet."

Such is fame!