It is impossible to have things done without doing them. This seems a truism; and yet what is more common than to suppose that we shall find things done, merely by wishing it? To put the will for the deed is as usual in practice as it is contrary to common sense. There is, in fact, no absurdity, no contradiction, of which the will is not capable. This is, I think, more remarkable in the English than in any other people, in whom (to judge by what I discover in myself) the will bears great and disproportioned sway. We will a thing: we contemplate the end intensely, and think it done, neglecting the necessary means to accomplish it. The strong tendency of the mind towards it, the internal effort it makes to give being to the object of its idolatry, seems an adequate cause to produce the effect, and in a manner identified with it. This is more particularly the case in what relates to the fine arts, and will account for some phenomena of the national character. The English school is distinguished by what are called Ébauches, rude, violent attempts at effect, and a total inattention to the details or delicacy of finishing. Now this, I think, proceeds, not exactly from grossness of perception, but from the wilfulness of our character; our desire to have things our own way, without any trouble or distraction of purpose. An object strikes us: we see and feel the whole effect. We wish to produce a likeness of it; but we want to transfer this impression to the canvas as it is conveyed to us, simultaneously and intuitively, that is, to stamp it there at a blow, or otherwise we turn away with impatience and disgust, as if the means were an obstacle to the end, and every attention to the mechanical part of art were a deviation from our original purpose. We thus degenerate, after repeated failures, into a slovenly style of art; and that which was at first an undisciplined and irregular impulse becomes a habit, and then a theory. It seems strange that the love of the end should produce aversion to the means—but so it is; neither is it altogether unnatural. That which we are struck with, which we are enamoured of, is the general appearance and result; and it would certainly be most desirable to produce the effect in the same manner by a mere word or wish, if it were possible, without entering into any mechanical drudgery or minuteness of detail or dexterity of execution, which though they are essential and component parts of the work do not enter into our thoughts, and form no part of our contemplation. We may find it necessary, on a cool calculation to go through and learn these, but in so doing we only submit to necessity, and they are still a diversion to and a suspension of our purpose for the time, at least, unless practice gives that facility which almost identifies the two together, or makes the process an unconscious one. The end thus devours up the means, or our eagerness for the one, where it is strong and unchecked, is in proportion to our impatience of the other. We view an object at a distance that excites an inclination to visit it, which we do after many tedious steps and intricate ways; but if we could fly, we should never walk. The mind, however, has wings, though the body has not, and it is this that produces the contradiction in question. The first and strongest impulse of the mind is to produce any work at once and by the most energetic means; but as this cannot always be done, we should not neglect other more mechanical ones, but that delusions of passion overrule the convictions of the understanding, and what we strongly wish we fancy to be possible and true. We are full of the effect we intend to produce, and imagine we have produced it, in spite of the evidence of our senses, and the suggestions of our friends. In fact, after a number of fruitless efforts and violent throes to produce an effect which we passionately long for, it seems all injustice not to have produced it; if we have not commanded success, we have done more, we have deserved it; we have copied nature or Titian in the spirit in which they ought to be copied, and we see them before us in our mind’s eye; there is the look, the expression, the something or other which we chiefly aim at, and thus we persist and make fifty excuses to deceive ourselves and confirm our errors; or if the light breaks upon us through all the disguises of sophistry and self-love, it is so painful that we shut our eyes to it; the greater the mortification the more violent the effort to throw it off; and thus we stick to our determination, and end where we began. What makes me think that this is the process of our minds, and not merely rusticity or want of apprehension, is, that you will see an English artist admiring and thrown into raptures by the tucker of Titian’s mistress, made up of an infinite number of little folds, but if he attempts to copy it, he proceeds to omit all these details, and dash it off by a single smear of his brush. This is not ignorance, or even laziness, but what is called jumping at a conclusion. It is, in a word, all overweening purpose. He sees the details, the varieties, and their effects, and he admires them; but he sees them with a glance of his eye, and as a wilful man must have his way, he would reproduce them by a single dash of the pencil. The mixing his colours, the putting in and out, the giving his attention to a minute break, or softening in the particular lights and shades, is a mechanical and everlasting operation, very different from the delight he feels in contemplating the effect of all this when properly and finely done. Such details are foreign to his refined taste, and some doubts arise in his mind in the midst of his gratitude and his raptures, as to how Titian could resolve upon the drudgery of going through them, and whether it was not done by extreme facility of hand, and a sort of trick, abridging the mechanical labour. No one wrote or talked more enthusiastically about Titian’s harmony of colouring than the late Mr. Barry, yet his own colouring was dead and dry; and if he had copied a Titian, he would have made it a mere splash, leaving out all that caused his wonder or admiration, after his English, or rather Irish fashion. We not only grudge the labour of beginning, but we give up, for the same reason, when we are near touching the goal of success; and to save a few last touches, leave a work unfinished, and an object unattained. The immediate process, the daily gradual improvement, the completion of parts giving us no pleasure, we strain at the whole result; we wish to have it done, and in our anxiety to have it off our hands, say it will do, and lose the benefit of all our labour by grudging a little pains, and not commanding a little patience. In a day or two, suppose a copy of a fine Titian would be as complete as we could make it: the prospect of this so enchants us that we skip the intermediate days, see no great use in going on with it, fancy that we may spoil it, and in order to have the job done, take it home with us, when we immediately see our error, and spend the rest of our lives in repenting that we did not finish it properly at the time. We see the whole nature of a picture at once; we only do a part: Hinc illÆ lachrymÆ. A French artist, on the contrary, has none of this uneasy, anxious feeling; of this desire to grasp the whole of his subject, and anticipate his good fortune at a blow; of this massing and concentrating principle. He takes the thing more easily and rationally. Suppose he undertakes to copy a picture, he looks at it and copies it bit by bit. He does not set off headlong without knowing where he is going, or plunge into all sorts of difficulties and absurdities, from impatience to begin and thinking that ‘no sooner said than done’; but takes time to consider, lays his plans, gets in his outline and his distances, and lays a foundation before he attempts a superstructure which he may have to pull to pieces again. He looks before he leaps, which is contrary to the true blindfold English principle; and I should think that we had invented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of the neglect of it. He does not make the picture all black or all white, because one part of it is so, and because he cannot alter an idea he has once got into his head, and must always run into extremes, but varies from green to red, from orange tawney to yellow, from grey to brown, according as they vary in the original: he sees no inconsistency or forfeiture of a principle in this, but a great deal of right reason, and indeed an absolute necessity, if he wishes to succeed in what he is about. This is the last thing an Englishman thinks of: he only wants to have his own way, though it ends in defeat and ruin: he sets about a thing which he had little prospect of accomplishing, and if he finds he can do it, gives it over and leaves the matter short of success, which is too agreeable an idea for him to indulge in. The French artist proceeds bit by bit. He takes one part, a hand, a piece of drapery, a part of the background, and finishes it carefully; then another, and so on to the end. He does not, from a childish impatience, when he is near the conclusion, destroy the effect of the whole by leaving some one part eminently defective, nor fly from what he is about to something else that catches his eye, neglecting the one and spoiling the other. He is constrained by mastery, by the mastery of common sense and pleasurable feeling. He is in no hurry to finish, for he has a satisfaction in the work, and touches and retouches, perhaps a single head, day after day and week after week, without repining, uneasiness, or apparent progress. The very lightness and indifference of his feelings renders him patient and laborious: an Englishman, whatever he is about or undertakes is as if he was carrying a heavy load that oppresses both his body and mind, and which he is anxious to throw down. A Frenchman’s hopes or fears are not excited to that pitch of intolerable agony that compels him, in mere compassion to himself to bring the question to a speedy issue, even to the loss of his object; he is calm, easy, and indifferent, and can take his time and make the most of his advantages with impunity. Pleased with himself, he is pleased with whatever occupies his attention nearly alike. It is the same to him whether he paints an angel or a joint-stool; it is the same to him whether it is landscape or history; it is he who paints it, that is sufficient. Nothing puts him out of conceit with his work, for nothing puts him out of conceit with himself. This self-complacency produces admirable patience and docility in certain particulars, besides charity and toleration towards others. I remember a ludicrous instance of this deliberate process, in a young French artist who was copying the Titian’s Mistress, in the Louvre, some twenty years ago. After getting it in chalk-lines, one would think he would have been attracted to the face, that heaven of beauty which makes a sunshine in the shady place, or to some part of the poetry of the picture; instead of which he began to finish a square he had marked out in the right-hand corner of the picture. He set to work like a cabinetmaker or an engraver, and seemed to have no sympathy with the soul of the picture. Indeed, to a Frenchman there is no distinction between the great and little, the pleasurable and the painful; the utmost he arrives at a conception of is the indifferent and the light. Another young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven weeks (I think it was) daily employed in making a blacklead pencil drawing of a small Leonardo; he sat cross-legged on a rail to do it, kept his hat on, rose up, went to the fire to warm himself, talked constantly of the excellence of the different masters—Titian for colour, Raphael for expression, Poussin for composition—all being alike to him, provided there was a word to express it, for all he thought about was his own harangue; and, having consulted some friend on his progress, he returned to ‘perfectionate,’ as he called it, his copy. This would drive an Englishman mad or stupid. The perseverance and the indifference, the labour without impulse, the attention to the parts in succession, and disregard of the whole together, are to him absolutely inconceivable. A Frenchman only exists in his present sensations, and provided he is left free to these as they arise, he cares about nothing farther, looking neither backward nor forward. With all this affectation and artifice, there is on this account a kind of simplicity and nature about them, after all. They lend themselves to the impression before them with good humour and good will, making it neither better nor worse than it is. The English overdo or underdo everything, and are either drunk or in despair. I do not speak of all Frenchmen or of all Englishmen, but of the most characteristic specimens of each class. The extreme slowness and methodical regularity of the French has arisen out of this indifference, and even frivolity (their usually-supposed natural character), for owing to it their laborious minuteness costs them nothing; they have no strong impulses or ardent longings that urge them to the violation of rules, or hurry them away with a subject and with the interest belonging to it. Everything is matter of calculation, and measured beforehand, in order to assist their fluttering and their feebleness. When they get beyond the literal and the formal, and attempt the impressive and the grand, as in David’s and Girardot’s pictures, defend us from sublimity heaped on insipidity and petit-maÎtreism. You see a Frenchman in the Louvre copying the finest pictures, standing on one leg, with his hat on; or after copying a Raphael, thinking David much finer, more truly one of themselves, more a combination of the Greek sculptor and the French posture-master. Even if a French artist fails, he is not disconcerted; there is something else he excels in: if he cannot paint, he can dance! If an Englishman, save the mark! fails in anything, he thinks he can do nothing; enraged at the mention of his ability to do anything else, and at any consolation offered to him, he banishes all other thought but of his disappointment, and discarding hope from his breast, neither eats nor sleeps (it is well if he does not cut his throat), will not attend to any other thing in which he before took an interest and pride, and is in despair till he recovers his good opinion of himself in the point in which he has been disgraced, though, from his very anxiety and disorder of mind, he is incapacitated from applying to the only means of doing so, as much as if he were drunk with liquor, instead of with pride and passion. The character I have here drawn of an Englishman I am clear about, for it is the character of myself, and, I am sorry to add, no exaggerated one. As my object is to paint the varieties of human nature, and as I can have it best from myself, I will confess a weakness. I lately tried to copy a Titian (after many years’ want of practice), in order to give a friend in England some idea of the picture. I floundered on for several days, but failed, as might be expected. My sky became overcast. Everything seemed of the colour of the paint I used. Nature was one great daub. I had no feeling left but a sense of want of power, and of an abortive struggle to do what I could not do. I was ashamed of being seen to look at the picture with admiration, as if I had no right to do so. I was ashamed even to have written or spoken about the picture or about art at all: it seemed a piece of presumption or affectation in me, whose whole notions and refinements on the subject ended in an inexcusable daub. Why did I think of attempting such a thing heedlessly, of exposing my presumption and incapacity? It was blotting from my memory, covering with a dark veil, all that I remembered of those pictures formerly, my hopes when young, my regrets since; it was wresting from me one of the consolations of my life and of my declining years. I was even afraid to walk out by the barrier of Neuilly, or to recall to memory that I had ever seen the picture; all was turned to bitterness and gall: to feel anything but a sense of my own helplessness and absurdity seemed a want of sincerity, a mockery and a piece of injustice. The only comfort I had was in the excess of pain I felt; this was at least some distinction: I was not insensible on that side. No Frenchman, I thought, would regret the not copying a Titian so much as I did, or so far show the same value for it. Besides, I had copied this identical picture very well formerly. If ever I got out of this scrape, I had received a lesson, at least, not to run the same risk of gratuitous vexation again, or even to attempt what was uncertain and unnecessary.

It is the same in love and in literature. A man makes love without thinking of the chances of success, his own disabilities, or the character of his mistress; that is, without connecting means with ends, and consulting only his own will and passion. The author sets about writing history, with the full intention of rendering all documents, dates, and facts secondary to his own opinion and will. In business it is not altogether the same; for interest acts obviously as a counterpoise to caprice and will, and is the moving principle; nor is it so in war, for then the spirit of contradiction does everything, and an Englishman will go to the devil rather than give up to any odds. Courage is pure will without regard to consequences, and this the English have in perfection. Again, poetry is our element, for the essence of poetry is will and passion. The French poetry is detail and verbiage. I have thus shown why the English fail, as a people, in the Fine Arts, namely, because with them the end absorbs the means. I have mentioned Barry as an individual instance. No man spoke or wrote with more gusto about painting, and yet no one painted with less. His pictures were dry and coarse, and wanted all that his description of those of others contained. For instance, he speaks of the dull, dead, watery look in the Medusa’s head of Leonardo, which conveys a perfect idea of it: if he had copied it, you would never have suspected anything of the kind. Again, he has, I believe, somewhere spoken of the uneasy effect of the tucker of the Titian’s Mistress, bursting with the full treasures it contains. What a daub he would have made of it! He is like a person admiring the grace of a fine rope-dancer; placed on the rope himself his head turns, and he falls: or like a man admiring fine horsemanship; set him upon a horse, and he tumbles over on the other side. Why was this? His mind was essentially ardent and discursive, not sensitive or observing; and though the immediate object acted as a stimulus to his imagination, it was only as it does to a poet’s, that is, as a link in the chain of association, as suggesting other strong feelings and ideas, and not for its intrinsic beauty or hidden details. He had not the painter’s eye though he had the painter’s knowledge. There is as great a difference in this respect as between the telescope and microscope. People in general see objects only to distinguish them in practice and by name; to know that a hat is a hat, that a chair is not a table, that John is not William; and there are painters (particularly of history) in England who look no farther. They cannot finish anything, or go over a head twice; the first view is all they would arrive at; nor can they reduce their impressions to their component parts without losing the spirit. The effect of this is grossness and want of force; for in reality the component parts cannot be separated from the whole. Such people have no pleasure in the exercise of their art as such: it is all to astonish or to get money that they follow it; or if they are thrown out of it, they regret it only as a bankrupt does a business which was a livelihood to him. Barry did not live, like Titian, in the taste of colours; they were not a pabulum to his sense; he did not hold green, blue, red, and yellow as the precious darlings of his eye. They did not therefore sink into his mind, or nourish and enrich it with the sense of beauty, though he knew enough of them to furnish hints and topics of discourse. If he had had the most beautiful object in nature before him in his painting-room in the Adelphi, he would have neglected it, after a moment’s burst of admiration, to talk of his last composition, or to scrawl some new and vast design. Art was nothing to him, or if anything, merely a stalking-horse to his ambition and display of intellectual power in general; and therefore he neglected it to daub huge allegories, or cabal with the Academy, where the violence of his will or the extent of his views found ample scope. As a painter he was valuable merely as a draughtsman, in that part of the art which may be reduced to lines and precepts, or positive measurement. There is neither colour, nor expression, nor delicacy, nor beauty, in his works.

1827.