On the Old Road Volume I Part 22

"They are frequently employed in the omnibus yards from five o'clock in the morning till twelve at night, so that a fair day's work for a 'horse-keeper' is about eighteen hours. For this enormous labor they receive a guinea per week, which for them means seven, not six, days; though they do contrive to make Sunday an 'off-day' now and then. The ignorance of aught in the world save ''orses and 'buses' which prevails amongst these stablemen is almost incredible. A veteran horse-keeper, who had pa.s.sed his days in an omnibus-yard, was once overheard praising the 'Lus-trated London News with much enthusiasm, as the best periodical in London, 'leastways at the coffee-shop.' When pressed for the reason of his partiality, he confessed it was the 'pickshers' which delighted him. He amused himself during his meal-times by 'counting the images!'"

110. But for the cla.s.ses among whom there is a real demand for educational art, it is highly singular that no systematic use has yet been made of wood-cutting on its own terms; and only here and there, even in the best books, is there an example of what might be done by it.

The frontispieces to the two volumes of Mr. Birch's "Ancient Pottery and Porcelain," and such simpler cuts as that at p. 273 of the first volume, show what might be cheaply done for ill.u.s.tration of archaic cla.s.sical work; two or three volumes of such cuts chosen from the best vases of European collections and ill.u.s.trated by a short and trustworthy commentary, would be to any earnest schoolboy worth a whole library of common books. But his father can give him nothing of the kind--and if the father himself wish to study Greek Art, he must spend something like a hundred pounds to put himself in possession of any sufficiently ill.u.s.trative books of reference. As to any use of such means for representing objects in the round, the plate of the head of Pallas facing p. 168 in the same volume sufficiently shows the hopelessness of setting the modern engraver to such service. Again, in a book like Smith's dictionary of geography, the wood-cuts of coins are at present useful only for comparison and reference. They are absolutely valueless as representations of the art of the coin.

111. Now, supposing that an educated scholar and draughtsman had drawn each of these blocks, and that they had been cut with as much average skill as that employed in the wood-cuts of _Punch_, each of these vignettes of coins might have been an exquisite lesson, both of high Art treatment in the coin, and of beautiful black and white drawing in the representation; and this just as cheaply--nay, more cheaply--than the present common and useless drawing. The things necessary are indeed not small,--nothing less than well educated intellect and feeling in the draughtsmen; but intellect and feeling, as I have often said before now, are always to be had cheap if you go the right way about it--and they cannot otherwise be had for any price. There are quite brains enough, and there is quite sentiment enough, among the gentlemen of England to answer all the purposes of England: but if you so train your youths of the richer cla.s.ses that they shall think it more gentlemanly to scrawl a figure on a bit of note paper, to be presently rolled up to light a cigar with, than to draw one n.o.bly and rightly for the seeing of all men;--and if you practically show your youths, of all cla.s.ses, that they will be held gentlemen, for babbling with a simper in Sunday pulpits; or grinning through, not a horse's, but a hound's, collar, in Sat.u.r.day journals; or dirtily living on the public money in government non-offices:--but that they shall be held less than gentlemen for doing a man's work honestly with a man's right hand--you will of course find that intellect and feeling cannot be had when you want them. But if you like to train some of your best youth into scholarly artists,--men of the temper of Leonardo, of Holbein, of Durer, or of Velasquez, instead of decomposing them into the early efflorescences and putrescences of idle clerks, sharp lawyers, soft curates, and rotten journalists,--you will find that you can always get a good line drawn when you need it, without paying large subscriptions to schools of Art.

112. III. This relation of social character to the possible supply of good Art is still more direct when we include in our survey the ma.s.s of ill.u.s.tration coming under the general head of dramatic caricature--caricature, that is to say, involving right understanding of the true grotesque in human life; caricature of which the worth or harmfulness cannot be estimated, unless we can first somewhat answer the wide question, What is the meaning and worth of English laughter? I say, "of English laughter," because if you can well determine the value of that, you determine the value of the true laughter of all men--the English laugh being the purest and truest in the metal that can be minted. And indeed only Heaven can know what the country owes to it, on the lips of such men as Sydney Smith and Thomas Hood. For indeed the true wit of all countries, but especially English wit (because the openest), must always be essentially on the side of truth--for the nature of wit is one with truth. Sentiment may be false--reasoning false--reverence false---love false,--everything false except wit; that _must_ be true--and even if it is ever harmful, it is as divided against itself--a small truth undermining a mightier.

On the other hand, the spirit of levity, and habit of mockery, are among the chief instruments of final ruin both to individual and nations. I believe no business will ever be rightly done by a laughing Parliament: and that the public perception of vice or of folly which only finds expression in caricature, neither reforms the one, nor instructs the other. No man is fit for much, we know, "who has not a good laugh in him"--but a sad wise valor is the only complexion for a leader; and if there was ever a time for laughing in this dark and hollow world, I do not think it is now. This is a wide subject, and I must follow it in another place; for our present purpose, all that needs to be noted is that, for the expression of true humor, few and imperfect lines are often sufficient, and that in this direction lies the only opening for the serviceable presentation of amateur work to public notice.

113. I have said nothing of lithography, because, with the exception of Samuel Prout's sketches, no work of standard Art-value has ever been produced by it, nor can be: its opaque and gritty texture being wholly offensive to the eye of any well trained artist. Its use in connection with color is, of course, foreign to our present subject. Nor do I take any note of the various current patents for cheap modes of drawing, though they are sometimes to be thanked for rendering possible the publication of sketches like those of the pretty little "Voyage en Zigzag" ("how we spent the summer") published by Longmans--which are full of charming humor, character, and freshness of expression; and might have lost more by the reduction to the severe terms of wood-cutting than they do by the ragged interruptions of line which are an inevitable defect in nearly all these cheap processes. It will be enough, therefore, for all serious purpose, that we confine ourselves to the study of the black line, as produced in steel and wood; and I will endeavor in the next paper[83] to set down some of the technical laws belonging to each mode of its employment.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] _Art Journal_, vol. v., pp. 97-8. April 1866.--ED.

[83] The present paper was, however, the last.--ED.