... aussi ne suis-je tenu aux lois faictes contre les meurtriers, pour m'avoir osté ma vie. Charron, in the second chapter of his second book, about its being the fruit of wisdom to hold oneself always prepared for death, writes : La plus volontaire mort est la plus belle. Au reste, je n'offense pas les loix faites contre les larrons, quand j'emporte le mien et je coupe ma bourse. Aussi ne suis-je tenu aux loix faites contre les meurtriers, pour m'avoir osté la vie. The sage theologian of Bordeaux is not, however, the only author who presents a striking resemblance to the philosopher of Périgord. Montaigne says: Ceste mesme piperie que les sens apportent à nostre entendement, ils la reçoivent à leur tour; . . . . ils mentent et se trompent à l'envy. Pascal says: Les sens abusent la raison par de fausses apparences, et cette même piperie qu'ils lui apportent, ils la reçoivent d'elle à leur tour; . . . . ils mentent et se trompent à l'envi." Lady Politic Would-be, in Ben Jonson's Volpone, speaking of the Pastor Fido of Guarini, says that all our English writers Will deign to steal out of this author mainly: There are indeed several curious coincidences in English as in French writers with Montaigne, to which this garrulous lady refers in her haste as thefts. But we hesitate to quote them, lest the reader complain, as the luckless Volpone complained of her ladyship, that he had taken a grasshopper by the wing-an expression for a chatterbox by the way which may be found in Archilochus, with the change, perhaps improvement, of tettix or cicada for grasshopper. Let then this article on coincidences conclude with an impropriation of the sacred words, attributed by Tom Moore to Sir Walter Scott, words which harmonise so well with those of Disraeli the Elder, which opened the subject to the reader in this magazine, and which are not more distinguished for their justice than for their good nature :-" To trace such coincidences is a favourite theme of laborious dulness, because they appear to reduce genius of the higher order to the usual standard of humanity, and of course to bring the author nearer to a level with his critics." 476 Colour in Painting. ONE of our greatest art-critics is fond of telling us that there is no such thing as a vulgar colour, though there are many vulgar ways of arranging colours. Nobody ever objected to the most brilliant crimson, purple, or orange in a gladiolus, a tulip, or a calceolaria. Nobody ever found the hues of sunset gaudy, or thought the rainbow overdone. The iridescence that plays upon the facets of an opal, the inner surface of a pearly nautilus, or the dewy petal of a rose, never struck the most fastidious eye as glaring, in spite of all its changeful wealth of pink and green and violet. Even among human products we have each of us seen some specimens of Indian or Moorish workmanship, on which the brightest pigments known to man were lavished with an unsparing hand, and yet the total effect was not one of vulgarity, but rather of richness and splendour. Like the gorgeous tropical butterflies, they push colour to its furthest admissible extreme, without ever overstepping the limits of perfect good taste. Indeed, it is undeniable that every colour in itself, apart from special relations, is beautiful to the majority of human beings just in proportion as it is pure, intense, massive, and brilliant. Nor do I think that we can doubt the superior æsthetic effect of reds, purples, and oranges over greens, blues, and violets, in the vast majority of cases. Not only do children and uncivilised men prize the pungent hues far more than the retiring ones; but in costume, in festal decoration, and in flower gardens, almost everybody confesses the same natural preference. It is true that many other considerations come in to mask this original tendency of our nature: fashion or a sense of propriety may make us dress in black or grey, rather than in scarlet or pink; the desire for relief may lead us to gaze with greater pleasure on the blue vault of heaven and the restful verdure of the meadows than on obtrusive masses of red and yellow; an educated revulsion from the excessive stimulation of vulgar furniture-with its crimson satin coverings, its wall-paper ablaze with rose-bunches, and its flare of gilt mirror-framesmay lead the artistic few to delight in the quiet repose of solid grey oak, neutral-tinted papers, and delicate shades of mellow green. Yet these exceptional instances cannot blind us to the general love for ruddy hues. Baby in its cradle jumps at a bunch of red rags. Dinah in the canefield makes herself lovely with a red turban. The Central African chief is bribed with yards of red calico. Purple and fine linen are the proverbial adjuncts of ancient rulers, from Tyre to imperial Rome. In our own day, the soldier's red coat proves irresistible alike to the nursemaid in the Park and to her mistress in the ball-room. Indeed, it is a noticeable fact that men condemned to wear the sombre frock-coat of modern life are glad to seize on every opportunity for donning a brighter and more conspicuous garb. Regimental dances, masonic fêtes, Highland games, boating matches, athletic sports, and fancy balls are all eagerly caught at by our handsome, well-made young men as lucky occasions for the display of something finer than the swallow-tail and white tie of every-day gatherings. The subaltern in his uniform, the master of foxhounds in his scarlet coat, and the champion sculler in his striped jersey are all representatives of the healthy primitive love for honest red and yellow. But while we allow that bright colours are in themselves the pleasantest and prettiest of all-for indeed the retiring tints owe most of their beauty to the relief which they afford us from the excessive stimulation of brilliant hues-and while many of us are even beginning to perceive in England that an over-anxious fastidiousness on this point has long deprived us of much innocent pleasure in dress and decorationI think it possible that almost all our painting (viewed as purely imitative in purpose) is still marked by far too much colour, and especially by far too much red, purple, orange, and yellow. I know that to offer any criticism from outside on our artistic public is to stir a nest of hornets, who straightway sally forth to sting the unhappy culprit with many technical phrases and great assumption of obvious superiority. But I must hasten to reassure these irritable gentlemen by stating that I do not propose to deal out any praise or blame in the present paper to any school or person whatsoever. When I speak of over-colouring, I only mean to assert the simple and positive fact that bright hues are to be found in greater proportions on the canvas of painters than in the average everyday scenes of external nature or human life. This preponderance of bright hues is due to the fact that our painting, though to a large extent imitative, has still in part a decorative purpose; and I believe, if we look at the matter from an historical point of view, we shall see reason to conclude that decorative and imitative art were originally one and the same; that in the course of ages they have been gradually separating their functions; but that a complete and final separation has not yet been entirely effected. Whether such a separation will eventually take place in the future is a question at which we can only guess with more or less of probability. I cannot too strongly insist, however, upon the point that my contention is simply historical and not critical. I have no intention of asserting that our painting ought to be one thing rather than another, because I do not know any meaning for the word "ought" in æsthetic matters. I am not anxious to swell the ranks of those dogmatic æstheticians, already too numerous, who are perpetually thrusting upon the public their own likes and dislikes, as though they were eternal and immutable laws of objective nature. I wish only to point out a simple positive principle in the past and present development of art, which can be easily verified by any person who takes the trouble to examine the evidence on his own account. At the same time, I must guard against an opposite misapprehension, into which my words might possibly lead an unwary reader. I have not a grain of sympathy with that modern French school who preach to us incessantly that "morality has no place in art." The insolent assumption that a particular trade or profession can set itself above those universal laws which govern all human actions and products would be ridiculous if it were not so dangerous. Right and wrong mean for the artist exactly what they mean for the rest of the world. A work of art which inspires high and noble and sympathetic sentiments is so far good, however poor may be its technique; while one which inspires low, vulgar, cruel, or anti-social emotions is so far bad, however exquisite may be its handicraft. The hideous apologies which Théophile Gautier poured forth in favour of bull-fighting and gladiatorial exhibitions; the lurid beauty of Gérôme's masterpieces, "alternating between the sanguinary and the sensuous "-these are just as truly bad, in the ethical and only real sense of the word, as the literature and the art of Holywell Street. Even worse, indeed one may say, because their cruelty renders them far more revolting than their licentiousness. From the mere æsthetic standpoint these faults are to be avoided by the highest artist, because the man of refined temperament feels his taste as well as his conscience hurt by them, and the highest art is that which ministers to the most highly-organised natures. So my general statement that right and wrong have no meaning in art must be accepted in the most limited sense; that is to say, in the sense that no absolute æsthetic rule can be set up parallel to the absolute ethical rule which binds us all in every department of life. Having thus secured ourselves against misconception on either hand, let us proceed to the historical investigation of our subject. Painting apparently took its rise long before the discovery of pigments. Almost as soon as man was human, he seems to have employed his nascent faculties in etching rough delineations of his fellows with fragments of bone or chips of flint on any material at once hard enough and loose-textured enough to take a deep scratch. But there is no indication of colouring on these primæval bas-reliefs from the caves of Dordogne, which owe their whole artistic effectiveness to their rough accuracy of imitation. Amongst existing savages, however, colour is almost universally employed upon æsthetic products, though it is often obtained by more primitive devices than that of applied pigment. Sometimes red and yellow feathers are gummed together into a rude human face, whose eyes are supplied by pieces of mother-of-pearl, while the teeth are represented by little nacreous shells. In other cases, bits of coloured pebble or coral are pressed into the service of the artist to beautify the grotesque features of his staring and grinning god. Almost any natural object which exhibits bright permanent hues is prized by the savage on its own account, and is employed by some dexterous shift to enliven his simple works of statuary. Just as he admires the glitter of gold and silver, the fitful gleam of the pearl, the pure tints of the ruby, the sapphire, and the emerald-just as he collects plumes from the ostrich, the parroquet, and the macaw, or gathers cowries, cones, and wentletraps by the sea-shore-just as he treasures up scraps of red coral and glistening teeth of his conquered enemy-so he frankly uses these selfsame materials to decorate the quaint idols which embody his highest ideal of imitative art. So long as the imitation is recognisable, he cares not for appropriateness in the tints he uses, only desiring to produce a brilliant and striking mass of colour which may dazzle and delight the eyes of his uncritical fellow-savage. Wherever the use of pigments is known, we see analogous results. The North American Indians, who have two or three bright primary colours at command, employ them for decoration alone. Their baskets and bows are stained in alternate red and blue; and when they attempt figures or faces they colour them for mere brilliancy of effect, with very little regard to the chromatic proprieties of nature. In the ornamental articles which they manufacture by stitching birch-bark with threads of scraped porcupine quill there is some slight approach to imitative colouring; but even this does not go beyond such broad generalities as a blue flower, red fruit, and greenish-yellow leaves. There is no shading, no variety of tint, nothing but a suggestion of conventional colour applied indiscriminately to every object which can possibly be described as possessing it. For example, in this stage of art, a "red" cow would be painted in brilliant crimson, and a "blue" sea in the deepest indigo. If we watch our own children at from four to nine years old, we shall find that they are still at the same point of artistic development. When they are given a paint-box, they set to work at once upon the nursery pictures, and adorn every little girl with a red frock, every boy with a green coat, and every man with a suit of staring yellow or massive blue. They do not care in the least whether the colours they apply resemble anything they have ever seen in real life: they want to decorate the pictures with the immediate and sensuously-efficient decoration of brilliant pigments. If they make any attempt at imitative colouring, it is in the same rude form as our Indian artist's: they put a patch of scarlet on the cheeks and lips, and they represent blue eyes by a blotch of ultramarine. As for the browns, the greys, the chocolates, the duller greens and yellows of their paint-box, they try them once, vote them "ugly colours," and never use them again. The picture-books which are printed for their use frankly recognise these facts, and present them with brilliantly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, gorgeous flowers and monstrous butterflies, gilded palaces and magnificent furniture to their heart's content. The colours are mostly primary and unshaded; they are applied with no very scrupulous regard to external reality; and they meander somewhat vaguely on |