CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 5453.S3Z53 1892 
 
 Letters of James Smetham, with an introdu 
 
 3 1924 013 551 829 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
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 /■'rii//i a Panitui'^ />v H'nnsclf. 
 
LETTEES 
 
 OF 
 
 JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 SARAH SMETHAM 
 
 ASTD 
 
 WILLIAM DAVIES 
 
 . WITH A PORTRAIT 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YOEK 
 1892 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 -d5 
 
First Edition (Crown Sm) 1891 
 Second Editionl,Glohe 8to) 1892 
 
MEMOIR OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 It is not considered either necessary or desirable to 
 give any long or detailed biography of the writer of 
 the following letters. . They tell their own story 
 through the struggles of an earnest life. The apology 
 for their publication, if any such is needed, may be 
 contained in the fact that of all his numerous corre- 
 spondents scarcely one is known ever to have destroyed 
 a letter he wrote : a circumstance which has made the 
 task of selection rather a difficult one. In the publi- 
 cation of these letters it may be premised that there 
 is no faith broken, no confidence betrayed. For the 
 most part they are the expressions of the life and 
 feelings of the writer, as his pictures were in another 
 form, and claim no closer confidence. Under other 
 conditions, if, for example, the pen instead of the 
 brush had been chosen as his vocation — which might 
 well enough have been the case — a good portion of 
 the matter of them would doubtless have been given 
 forth by that means. Of the letters themselves any 
 extended terms of praise would be misplaced here ; 
 B 
 
2 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 but it seems to me that some of ttem, in their light- 
 ness of touch, airiness, and sportiveness of character, 
 in their quick and visual modes of thought, and their 
 disposition to discern a comic element in the most 
 serious moods and on the darkest occasions — to say 
 nothing of their literary ease and freedom of expres- 
 sion — might be placed amongst the best reputed 
 examples of this kind of ■(vriting. 
 
 James Smetham was born at Pately Bridge, in 
 Yorkshire, on the 9th of September 1821. The 
 account of his origin and early years will be best 
 given by himself in a letter written in answer to a 
 request from Mr. Euskin, dated 16th November 1854. 
 It is as follows : — 
 
 " Dear Sir — It is kind in you to show such an 
 amount of interest in my scribblings, and to express 
 so much sympathy in my pursuits. I fear you over- 
 rate the work, and that my desires and your appro- 
 bation will not be justified by anything worthy of 
 permanent, regard. 
 
 " I have, however, a great love for art and all that 
 concerns it, and have devoted my life to its pursuit ; 
 nor can I resist the opportunity of informing you 
 what has been the course of my history : not so much 
 because I look on it as at all remarkable, but because 
 you are, I am persuaded, capable of understanding 
 without a long explanation why I should find pleasure 
 in telling it at all. 
 
 " Beginning at the beginning, I must inform you 
 
MEMOIE 3 
 
 that I am the son of a Methodist preacher, who spent 
 his life in periods of two or three years in various 
 towns of the kingdom with only one object in view. 
 My iirst awakening to consciousness, as far as I can 
 remember, was in a valley in Yorkshire, outside the 
 garden gate of my father's house, when at the age of 
 two years. I have a distinct remembrance of the 
 ecstasy with which I regarded the distant blueness of 
 the hills and saw the laurels shake in the wind, and 
 felt it lift my hair. Then I remember thinking my 
 elder brother one of the cleverest lads alive, because 
 he drew a horse and a bull-dog in water-colours ; and 
 also at four years of age running away on the nearest 
 heath — that was at Nantwich, in Cheshire — and 
 delighting in the little pools, which were called pits. 
 At eight I recall a moonlit night, when the moonlight 
 had the effect of enchantment on me, and I listened 
 softly to the noises of the night. I took to drawing 
 about the same age with a box of water-colours which 
 ought to have cost fourpence, but which, by my 
 frequent asking the price, the good woman let me 
 have for threepence. That was at Congleton, in 
 Cheshire. From that time I formed the desire and 
 design of becoming a painter, and afterwards never 
 had a thought of being anything else, and made my 
 father promise to let me be one. At eleven, from 
 Leek, in Staffordshire, I went to a boarding-school at 
 Woodhouse Grove, in Yorkshire, where the sons of 
 Methodist preachers are educated, or ought to be; 
 and where I ousht to have learned more than I did. 
 
4 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 There I copied Raphael's cartoons from the Penny 
 Magazine. What time was not consumed in drawing 
 was spent in prowling about the Grove, and slipping 
 away to Calverley Wood, and inventing ghost-stories 
 to fit old Calverley Hall. On leaving school I was 
 articled for five years to E. J. Willson, of Lincoln, 
 a Gothic-architect, who wrote the literary part of 
 Pugin's Examples of Gothic Architectwe. His ofiice 
 was at the Castle, in a round tower; and there I 
 ought to have learned more architecture than I did, 
 but I was always drawing Comuses and Satans and 
 Manfreds. Mr. Willson was very fond of painting, 
 and very kind. He scolded me before my face, and 
 praised me to my fellow-clerk behind my back ; and 
 at length, to effect a compromise, set me to draw 
 all the figures about the Minster. I spent a grand 
 solitary year at this work With a key to myself I 
 poked about every corner at all hours, and twice a 
 day heard the organ-music and the choristers' singing 
 roll about among the arches. I sat on the warm 
 leads of the roof, and looked over the fens, and 
 dreamed and mused hours away there, and then came 
 down over the arches of the choir and drew the 
 angels drumming and fiddling in the spandrils. I 
 made a large and careful drawing of the Last Judg- 
 ment from the south porch, and had a scaffold up to 
 it to measure it. But I fretted my soul because I 
 wanted to be a painter, and at length boldly asked 
 Mr. Willson to cancel my indentures, who said de- 
 cidedly that he would not, and that Dewint, the 
 
MEMOIR 5 
 
 painter, who was coming down shortly, would put 
 that and other foolish notions out of my head ; for 
 painting was precarious, and few excelled in it or 
 could live by it. This he meant, I doubt not, in 
 great kindness. When Dewint came, he said he could 
 sympathise with me, having been in similar circum- 
 stances himself, and advised Mr. Willson to let me 
 go, which he did at the end of three years, my father's 
 approbation having been previously secured by my- 
 self. I was thus thrown on the world by my own act 
 and deed, and with very little practice announced 
 myself in Shropshire as a portrait-painter, getting 
 employment at once ; working when I wanted money, 
 strolling to Buildwas and Wenlock and Haighmond 
 Abbeys, and scrambling to the top of the Wrekin, and 
 wandering in lane and meadow and woodland. I went 
 on after this fashion till 1843, when I came to London 
 and entered as a probationer in the Eoyal Academy, 
 having previously drawn a little while at Gary's. I 
 made no doubt that getting into the Academy I 
 should keep in, and drew, I suppose, carelessly, for at 
 the end of three months I did not get the student's 
 ticket. I went to Jones to see how I ought to have 
 done my work, taking some drawings with me. He 
 told me not to be anxious, for in or out of the Academy 
 I should succeed. I sent in another drawing as pro- 
 bationer, and got in again, intending to look about me 
 more, but was suddenly called away into the country. 
 " I went into the neighbourhood of Bolton Abbey, 
 where my father then resided; and here you will 
 
6 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 
 
 understand me when I speak of the great change 
 which came over my life. The death of my brother 
 (a Wesleyan minister in London) cast a great shade 
 over my wild dreams and extravagant ambitions. I 
 did a great deal for his approbation, and when he had 
 gone my spirit followed him. I perceived that to 
 attain to him was not a matter of fancy or specula- 
 tion, and ' the commandment ' came to me. A com- 
 plete uproar and chaos of my inward life followed, 
 and I fell into the ' slough of despond.' The beauty 
 of nature mocked me, my fancies became ghosts. I 
 felt my discordances with the spiritual universe ; and 
 it was not till my father also died that my soul was 
 stilled and set in order. I had worked on (except for 
 one dreadful period of four months, when I could not 
 work at all, though in perfect health) wearily and 
 painfully ; but now I resumed my pursuits with new 
 zest, and devised the plans of study, some of the 
 results of which you have seen. My views of art 
 were changed in some particulars, and I think 
 enlarged, but I dared no longer strive on my old 
 principles and impulses. A salutary fear shut me 
 up in a happy seclusion, and I could not precipitate 
 myself into the battle of life ; so I went on painting 
 portraits and interspersing them with fancy pictures, 
 gaining money enough to keep me, and then snatch- 
 ing a month or two for study ; now in a large town, 
 now in a little one, now in a remote farm painting 
 the farmer and his family, and roaming in his fields 
 and by the edge of his plantations ; then in London. 
 
MEMOIR 7 
 
 "I exhibited in Liverpool first in 1847; at the 
 Academy in 1851, -2, -3, and -4, but the last two years 
 my best picture was returned and the portraits put in. 
 
 " I ought to mention another feature of my life. 
 While studying I became so impressed with the im- 
 portance of form as an universal language that I was 
 boring all my friends with its utility, and inveigled 
 young men to tea that I might talk myself hoarse in 
 persuading them to draw everything. But they did 
 not profit, and I longed for some sphere where I could 
 advance the cause of drawing as an element of educa- 
 tion, and demonstrate my own theories. My fever 
 was allayed by a request that I would undertake the 
 instruction in drawing of a hundred students, who 
 were in course of training to be teachers, at the 
 Wesleyan Normal School, Westminster. I accepted 
 it ; and for three years one of my happiest duties has 
 been the fulfilment of my task of four hours a week 
 there. I teach model and freehand drawing, and 
 perspective. The staff of teachers then became my 
 circle, the objects of the institution part of my life ; 
 and I completed the connection six months ago by 
 marrying the teacher of one of the practising schools 
 there, who still retains her position. Our united 
 salaries make us for the present independent of paint- 
 ing as a means of livelihood, and I have five days in 
 the week for picture-making. 
 
 " This sums up, I believe, all I need care to tell 
 you of my history. Of my purposes, perhaps, I had 
 better say nothing ; of my works nothing. 
 
.8 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 " There is a passage in the second volume of 
 Modern Painters, p. 136, § 12, ' Theoria the Service of 
 Heaven,' which I have half chanted to myself in many 
 a lonely lane, and which interprets many thoughts I 
 have had. I love Art, and ardently aspire, not 
 after its reputation (I think), but the realisation 
 of its power on my own soul and on the souls of 
 others. 
 
 "I don't complain of want of employment, or any- 
 thing of that sort ; for I have found it easy to earn 
 money when I have set about it, but I have felt the 
 dearth of intercourse on the subject of my occupa- 
 tions, and am pleased with this opportunity of writ- 
 ing to you. With artists generally I have not felt 
 much drawn to associate. In my own associations 
 there is on the part of others little true sympathy 
 with my work. I have to spin everything out of 
 myself ; and yet I would not at all be understood to 
 complain; scarcely, all things considered, to wish 
 that things were otherwise. 
 
 " I have made my letter quite long enough already, 
 and will only reiterate my thanks to you for the 
 kind spirit in which your note was written. — I am, 
 dear sir, sincerely yours, James Smetham." 
 
 This comprehensive survey may be supplemented 
 by a few other particulars. The poetic instinct in his 
 young mind was awakened and nourished by the 
 sweet influences of the country. Years after he 
 wrote: "To-day I remembered, when I was eight 
 
MEMOIE 9 
 
 years old, leaning out of the bedroom window at 
 Congleton in the moonlight, seeing 'the white kine 
 glimmer ' with precisely the same feeling for nature 
 and poetry which has pursued me ever since ; and I 
 remembered this incident and the rapture of it, as if 
 it were last night." His lifelong friend. Dr. Gregory, 
 who was his senior by two years, gives a character- 
 istic anecdote of his first day at school. A game was 
 being played in which certain portions of the play- 
 ground were marked off as "islands." Dr. Gregory, 
 standing on one of these, heard an unaccustomed 
 voice murmur, " One foot on land and one on gea ; to 
 one thing constant never.'' Looking round he saw 
 the new boy, a tall, thin lad of delicate appearance, 
 standing on one foot and playing the other loosely 
 over the line which marked the shore. "From that 
 time," says Dr. Gregory, "our hearts were knit 
 together as the heart of David to Jonathan." 
 
 Although his school advantages were not great, 
 his home atmosphere had been favourable to his 
 intellectual development. His father had a good 
 library, and was a deep, clear, unconventional thinker; 
 whilst his eldest brother possessed a mind of no 
 common order, earnest and refined, brilliant and 
 penetrative. A letter written by him to the subject 
 of this memoir on his entrance into the active world 
 is still preserved, remarkable for its intensity and 
 elevated seriousness. James Smetham had also taken 
 with him to school several literary favourites, amongst 
 which were Macpherson's Ossian, and several volumes 
 
10 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 of that now almost forgotten selection — or rather col- 
 lection, for the compilation was somewhat hetero- 
 geneous — of literary pieces considered best worthy of 
 note at the beginning of the present century, called 
 Elegant Extracts. 
 
 He left school at the early age of fifteen, and was 
 at that time placed under the tutelage of Mr. Willson. 
 Eecalling this period in 1871, he writes : " Though I 
 never gave my mind to architecture, yet I was 
 familiarised in a wonderful pictorial way with it, and 
 got ideas singularly useful for my ultimate purposes. 
 Mr. Willson set me to draw all the sculpture about 
 Lincoln Cathedral, and I passed a year in the Minster, 
 drinking in the grandest impressions of form and 
 light and shade. Ah me!" he exclaims, "great 
 tower of Lincoln, with the white moon shining on 
 thee — ' whiter than my true love's shroud ' — how can 
 I forget thee, and all that thou beholdest 1 peal- 
 ing organ, rolling waves of melody along the roof- 
 trees ! wind, breathing solemnly against the vast 
 chancel window, where the youth gazed with wide 
 eyes through at the horizon ! place of dreams, 
 warm leaden roof of transept or tower, where many a 
 summer hour was dreamed away ! " 
 
 In a fragmentary reminiscence, written about the 
 year 1870, we find the following : " Shade of William 
 Hazlitt, what ■ hours were thine and mine in those 
 early days in the antiquary's study, where the 
 battered helmets and breastplates and long gray 
 swords, eaten into holes by the earthen damps, hung 
 
MEMOIE 1 1 
 
 its walls over the head of the venerable, learned,- 
 kind, large-browed, silver-haired antiquary himself ! 
 There was the library, and in it the London Magazine, 
 and in the magazine Hazlitt's 'Essays on Art.' It 
 is said in books we have read since then, that Hazlitt 
 was a gloomy and rather dangerous -looking man, 
 who seemed as if he were feeling for a dagger. We 
 won't believe it. We will allow him to have been 
 dark and solemn and quiet and Dantesque ; but what 
 was mistaken for sinister and malignant was only a 
 knitting the sober brow of II Penseroso frowning 
 away ' the brood of folly without father bred.' " He 
 adds : "We hesitate to re-read at this distance of 
 time Hazlitt's 'Essays on Painting.' We fear to brush 
 off the exquisite bloom of memory — to wind the dis- 
 enchanting horn which would bring down that lovely 
 castle in the air. Sheltered in that nook by the 
 window, the London Magazine at our elbow, what a 
 deep impress of the romance of painting did we 
 receive ! It has never departed. It was not Hazlitt 
 who sowed the love of painting in our young mind ; 
 for this began long before, when in childish Scotch- 
 plaid skirts we saw that the far-off hills were not 
 green, but an enchanting blue, and wondered why. 
 But it was Hazlitt who, at our own entry into life, 
 sounded the bugle-notes which led the chase among 
 the wizard forests and endless glades of the picture- 
 world. Therefore we fear to send to Mudie's for 
 that delicious book. The Pidwre Galleries of England. 
 If we do, we won't be disenchanted ; time shall not 
 
12 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 rob us of our treasured spoil." Dr. Gregory gives 
 some further particulars of this period. He says, 
 "At Mr. Willson's he corresponded regularly with 
 his elder brother, with whom I was then fellow-tutor 
 at Woodhouse Grove, and his letters were all read to 
 me. He was devoted to and absorbed in his pro- 
 fession as an artist. His residence with Mr. Willson 
 was of immense advantage to him. He met at his 
 table the most select society : artists, architects, and 
 the dlite of the Eoman Catholic clergy, all men of 
 culture, for Mr. Willson was a distinguished member 
 of the Mediaeval Church, and his house was a favour- 
 ite trysting-place for men of genius and rare accom- 
 plishments." 
 
 After leaving Mr. Willson he spent some time at 
 Redditch and Madeley. From the former place he 
 had the opportunity of making many congenial 
 rambles with his early friend Dr. Gregory, who con- 
 tributes these reminiscences : " Whenever duty would 
 permit we used to make long explorations together in 
 the charming Worcestershire and Warwickshire lanes 
 and fields. He saw everything with a painter's eye, 
 and his conversation was stimulative, recreative, and 
 restful. He loved not to argue, but to expatiate. 
 We were both at that time disciples and devotees 
 of Tennyson, whose early poems we studied line by 
 line and word by word, as one might study a Greek 
 play." 
 
 The impression made upon the minds of the 
 friends by the poems of the Laureate at that early 
 
MEMOIR 13 
 
 time may be considered in the light of a discovery, 
 for it was not then the fashion to admire them, as it 
 is now. Indeed, they were scarcely known beyond 
 a restricted literary circle. James Smetham's edition 
 of the Poems was that. of 1843 (bought in that year), 
 in two volumes ; in which, by the way, he made 
 some charming marginal illustrations. I first became 
 acquainted with him in the year 1846, and remember 
 weU his enthusiasm for and enjoyment of the delicate 
 touches and artistic refinement of the early poems of 
 Lord Tennyson. They remained to him an influence 
 during the rest of his life; and perhaps nowhere could 
 the Laureate have found a more faithful treasury of 
 his writings than in this " heart of a friend." Besides 
 appealing to his aesthetic sense they stimulated his 
 artistic faculty, and afforded him subjects for many 
 pictures. He himself alludes to this period in a 
 subsequently written letter : " I remember also a 
 pleasant walk one evening to an old manor-house, 
 which B. Gr. and myself called ' The Moated Grange.' 
 It lay out of all neighbouring sight. It was deserted : 
 
 The broken sheds look'd sad and strange : 
 
 Unlifted was the clinking latcli ; 
 
 Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
 Upon the lonely moated grange. 
 
 There was a moat and an orchard. Water-rats ran 
 about the edge of the moat, and weeds filled the 
 orchard. We went through the place into a large 
 fireless kitchen, where I piped out 'The Mistletoe 
 
14 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 
 
 Bough,' to which the large ingle answered. A 
 broken-down carved chest and table, the head of 
 a carved bedstead, and a tumbling stool or two, 
 were all that filled the void. There was a large, 
 wide, oaken, ornamented Elizabethan staircase, 
 with a gate which swung between it and the great 
 landing." 
 
 In the month of October 1843 he went to London, 
 and acting on the advice of John Phillip, R.A., and 
 Marshall Claxton, made his admission drawing for 
 the Academy at Gary's. His drawing — "The Young 
 Apollo" — admitted him as probationer. He, how- 
 ever, broke ofi' his attendance there either for want of 
 present means or for other reasons. At this time he 
 painted a little picture, which he called " The Brook- 
 side.'' It was exhibited at Liverpool, then, perhaps, 
 ranking foremost amongst provincial exhibitions. It 
 was thus described and spoken of in a review of the 
 time : " A gem : not the less beautiful and valuable 
 because of its smallness. The attitude, anatomy, and 
 expression of the boy, who is throwing back his head 
 in joyful anticipation of the cool luxury of the brook, 
 are without exception amongst the most exquisite 
 traits of character we have ever beheld. It is a work 
 full of beauty.'' Nor were these terms of praise too 
 high. Original in its key of colour, of fine tone 
 and easy but firm touch, it might have stood by the 
 side of the work of Wilkie in one of his happiest moods. 
 
 His wife reviews his position at this time in these 
 words : — 
 
MEMOIR 15 
 
 " The question presented itself to him, How shall 
 I order and direct my life : what shall I aim at 1 He 
 felt that to give himself up to the pursuit of painting 
 simply and entirely would not meet the need of his 
 nature. Both his moral and mental imperfection 
 demanded a continuous and extended culture, and he 
 hegan to formulate a plan of life, beginning in a 
 course of long disciplinary study, and intended to 
 combine art, literature, and the religious life all in 
 one. He carried this out. Speaking of this large 
 scheme of culture long afterwards, he says, 'This 
 took me twenty-five years ; but my purpose was to 
 paint concurrently with it ; so, with rare exceptions, 
 I painted some hours every day and practised every 
 requisite of art — drew every bone and muscle over 
 and over again, sketched books on books full of every 
 phase of nature, studied perspective thoroughly, 
 studied the antique, went through as full a course as 
 any student in the Royal Academy ; but alone.' Thus 
 he withdrew from the normal lines of the art career 
 and struck out a path for himself. Looked at from 
 the merely professional or commercial side it was 
 doubtless a great mistake, and was the parent of 
 much of the difficulty of his future life ; but regarded 
 from the higher point of vision which recognises the 
 dignity of the whole man in his relations to the moral 
 and spiritual, we may perhaps come to the conclusion 
 that he had the better portion. Certainly amidst all 
 the difficulties of his life he never regretted his de- 
 cision or thought his course a mistaken one." 
 
16 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 To place the accepted basis of his life-com'se in a 
 clearer light the following extracts from his own 
 letters may be given. 
 
 In 1861 he writes : " I do think I am a little sym- 
 pathised with as a painter who ' has not got on some- 
 how ' ; whereas in my own secret heart I am looking 
 on myself as one who Jias got on, and got to his goal 
 — as one who if he had chosen could have had a com- 
 petence, if not a fortune, by this time ; but who has 
 got something a thousand times better, more real, 
 more inward, less in the power of others, less variable, 
 more immutable, more eternal, and as one who can 
 afford a sly wink to those who know him, which wink 
 signifies that he is not so sure that he is not going 
 to do something comfortable in an outward and artistic 
 sense, after all. But be this as it may, his feet are 
 on a rock ; his goings (so far) established with a new 
 song in his mouth and joy on his head — and 4/6 this 
 blessed moment in his pocket, besides some postage 
 stamps.'' 
 
 Again, in 1863, he writes : "As a man I feel per- 
 suaded my course of study has been right, and this 
 joy no man can take from me. But as an artist — let 
 me reflect. My friends on the outside can see what 
 I was capable of twenty years ago, and how I might 
 have had .£5000 in the bank, and been widely known. 
 They are capable of judging of this ; but they can't 
 tell how far it was necessitated by my history, my 
 moral condition, and the demands of my moral 
 nature. These have been met, and I enjoy the 
 
MEMOIR 17 
 
 blessed results. If it should please God to give me 
 health and strength for a few years longer, I may be 
 able to show them a phase more likely to meet with 
 their approval." 
 
 The energy with which he entered upon his pro- 
 jected plans of culture and work, the earnest tension 
 of his mind, and the development of the moral forces 
 of his interior life, combined in the year 1845 to in- 
 duce a state of profound mental depression ; and it 
 was only at the death-bed of his father two years later 
 that the light became clearly revealed to him by which 
 his future life was guided, and he entered upon that 
 high service to which his best energies were subse- 
 quently dedicated. Recurring to this period in the 
 year 1872, he says: "One of my most formidable 
 enemies was a vivid and ill -trained imagination. 
 Against outward and inward evils of this kind there 
 existed a very powerful love of truth and purity, and 
 great approval of and delight in the law of God. 
 The antagonism of these two forces between the ages 
 of twenty and twenty-six went nigh to threaten my 
 reason. At length my deeply-wounded conscience 
 was pacified by faith in Christ, and a life of great 
 happiness commenced, which still continues." 
 
 From this time life wore a more joyous aspect to 
 him. Work was resumed on the old lines. Study, 
 portraits, with occasional fancy subjects, went on at 
 Warrington, Selby, Manchester, Liverpool, and other 
 places. In 1849 he painted "The Flageolet" (a 
 country boy piping on the grass), " Christ at Emmaus,'' 
 c 
 
18 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 and " The Bird-catchers "; all of which were exhibited 
 at the Eoyal Academy.^ 
 
 In 1850 his thoughts turned once more to London. 
 In a diary which he kept at this time, he thus notifies 
 his resolutions: "Many things more valuable to me 
 than gold and silver attract me towards another sphere 
 of life. My mission — the mission of the Art I profess 
 — is to those who understand and are waiting for its 
 influences ; not to the men who on a narrow path, in 
 a confined circle, are urging their way to heaven 
 without ever dreaming of the existence of those 
 influences, and totally insensible to their high ofiice. 
 I want the society of those who can perceive and 
 sympathise with my aims. I trust that pride is not 
 the foundation of my desire for more communion 
 with souls who love what I love. I see the truth 
 and I love it, and, I think, can henceforth never be 
 content to pursue lower truths than I have been led 
 to perceive. If, then, I myself be trusted to seek 
 ' fresh woods and pastures new,' my spirit pants for 
 them." 
 
 It was in the year 1851 that he became teacher of 
 drawing to the students at the Normal College, West- 
 minster, as already mentioned in his letter to Mr. 
 
 1 The following is a list of his pictures exhihited at the Royal 
 Academy as far as they have been recorded : Christ at Bmmaiis, 
 1851 ; The Bird-catchers, 1852 ; The Flageolet, 1853 ; Two Por- 
 traits, 1854 ; Counting the Cost, 1855 ; Eobert Levett, 1862 ■ 
 The Moorland Edge, 1863 ; The Hymn of the Last Supper, 1869. 
 Besides these, he was a frequent exhibitor at the Old Post Office 
 Place Gallery in Liverpool, which did so much towards popularising 
 the pre-Raphaelite movement in art. 
 
MEMOIR 19 
 
 Ruskin. This post he filled with pleasure to himself 
 and to the helpful benefit of the students for twenty- 
 six years. Here he found congenial society and 
 formed friendships which gladdened his life ; notably 
 with Professor W. K. Parker, that remarkable 
 specialist in science and most lovable of human 
 beings, now departed from amongst us, and Mr. 
 Charles Mansford, whose long-tried friendship and 
 active helpfulness contributed to make so many 
 rough places smooth to the struggling painter. These 
 and others combined to form a congenial circle, the 
 meeting with which was a periodical pleasure, draw- 
 ing the naturally introspective mind from a too close 
 concentration upon itself and its processes. 
 
 In 1854 he married, first settling in Pimlico, but 
 after the birth of his first son he removed in 1856 to 
 Park Lane, Stoke Newington, where he resided till 
 the illness which clouded the last years of his life 
 came upon him in the latter part of 1877. 
 
 This was a pleasant and cheery change, on the 
 margin of the great city and yet in the neighbourhood 
 of green fields and rural lanes. He thus describes his 
 home in a letter to a friend : — 
 
 "Look at Mrs. Stowe's 'Sunny Memories.' Ob- 
 serve that she spends a day at Stoke Newington, at a 
 Mr. Alexander's, a Quaker. Note that she speaks of 
 'Paradise,' and then reflect that our front windows 
 overlook that Paradise, and our back ones overlook 
 gardens, now blossoming. All is peaceful. I have a 
 true studio now all to myself, a sanctum in my home 
 
20 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 for the first time. I have begun to enjoy it. I walk 
 in the fields and on breezy roads. I am growing 
 familiar with trees and banks and blossoms and clouds. 
 God has given me my heart's desire, and I only desire 
 that I may dwell in Him as peacefully as I dwell in 
 my home." 
 
 Previously to his marriage he had depended chiefly 
 on portraits for the certain part of his income, which 
 was pretty well assured and satisfactory. But this 
 source was cut off to him, as to many others, by the 
 invention of photography. In fact, to the portrait- 
 painter, who at that time occupied as necessary and 
 well-recognised a position and function as the photo- 
 grapher occupies now, photography proved fatally 
 disastrous, and many respectable painters who had 
 given themselves to the painting of portraits were 
 ruined by it. He often recalled with pleasure his 
 experiences in this capacity in its revelation of 
 character and broad illustration of humanity. 
 
 In the autumn of 1857 occurred his first serious 
 illness, giving intimation, as it were, of the darker 
 years by which his life was closed. In the preceding 
 February he had received from Mr. Ruskin a kindly 
 warning which proved only too prophetic. The draw- 
 ing referred to in the following letter was the first 
 draught or conception of a picture painted some years 
 afterwards, which he called "The Women of the 
 Crucifixion." It represented the women who beheld 
 the crucified Jesus "afar off"; their countenances 
 suffused with devout anguish and piyt. It is now in 
 
MEMOIR 21 
 
 the possession of James S. Budgett, Esq., of Stoke 
 Park, Guildford— 
 
 Deak Mk. Smetham— I hardly know whether I am more 
 gratified by your kindly feeling or more sorry that you should 
 think it Ls in any wise necessary to express it in so costly a 
 way ; for costly this drawing has been to you, both of time, 
 thought, and physical toil. I have hardly ever seen any work 
 of the kind so far carried as the drawing in the principal face. 
 I shall indeed value it highly : but if indeed you think any 
 words or thoughts of mine have been ever true to you, pray 
 consider these likely to be the truest, that it is unsafe for you, 
 with your peculiar temperament, to set yoiu-self subjects of this 
 pathetic and exciting kind for some time to come. Your health 
 is not sturdy : you are not satisfied with what you do ; and 
 have to do some work that is irksome and tedious to you. If 
 your work is divided between that which is tedious and that 
 which tries your feelings and intellect to the utmost, no nervous 
 system can stand it ; and you should, I am very strongly per- 
 suaded, devote yourself to drawing and painting pretty and 
 pleasant faces and things, involving little thought or pathos, 
 until, your skill being perfectly developed, you find yourself 
 able to touch the higher chords without effort. I should like to 
 know, if you have leisure any day to tell me, your entire meaning 
 in this drawing. Is it merely the women at the cross with the 
 multitude behind deriding ; or have you intended any typical 
 character in it ? 
 
 I hope Mrs. Smetham is well, and that she will forgive me 
 for being the cause of this additional toil to you. — With sincere 
 remembrances to her, believe me, gratefully yours, 
 
 J. Rtjskin. 
 
 At this time he laid aside his systematic general 
 studies, and devoted himself to making his way as a 
 painter. In October 1858 he writes : "I look back 
 with love and wonder and pleasure and thankfulness 
 at the long sand -lane (with occasional mire) into 
 
22 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 which, for the sake, I am sure, of good and right and 
 pure motives, and better results in the end, I diverged 
 some twelve years ago, and in which I sacrificed almost 
 every outward, palpable present form of comfort or 
 success. (Strange, that just as I emerged from it I 
 should be called to suffer !) But I am all through it 
 to the last curve. I have done at least one thing 
 which I intended, and, like Prospero, I have broken 
 my wand and buried my books. Henceforth I belong 
 solely to the outward. It is mine, if spared, to do, to 
 put out, to give ; no longer specially to receive. Fool 
 as I am, I am as wise as I expected to be. ' The 
 glory dies not, and the grief is past.' I now, because 
 of the monumental way in which I have prosecuted 
 my designs, cannot by natural law lose anything, but 
 must gain by meditation rather. If I know little, I 
 have learnt the bearing of things ^ — have learnt to 
 admire, to appreciate — richly to enjoy. But the most 
 delightful consequence just now to me is that as the 
 whole stream of labour goes to the outward, I begin to 
 see the results of work." 
 
 In 1859 he sought to make his way into book 
 illustration, but without much success. Not, however, 
 from a want of imaginative power. He had the most 
 fertile and ready pictorial invention I have ever 
 known. His failure to find any extensive vocation 
 here was perhaps rather to be attributed to his want 
 of the organising faculty to adapt himself to the 
 material conditions required, not only technical, but 
 in a certain persistence and aptness for business 
 
MEMOIR 23 
 
 requirements on which so much depends where com- 
 merce is concerned. His want of any decided success 
 here led him to conceive the idea of etching his own 
 designs at a cheap rate, and of issuing them quarterly 
 to subscribers. When his project became known, 
 about six hundred subscribers sent in their names. 
 To a mind teeming with pictorial imagery, and long- 
 ing for the means of putting outside of itself a portion 
 of its artistic wealth without spending too much time 
 in the process of elaboration, this constituted a very 
 successful medium, and it was with enjoyment to 
 himself and satisfaction to his clientele that this plan 
 was continued for three years. In connection with 
 this he received the following from Mr. Euskin : — 
 
 Mt dear SmeTham — I received your interesting letter with 
 great pleasure, and you may use my name in any way you please 
 among your friends, but I would not have it in public prints 
 except unconspicuously and alphabetically under letter R. It 
 is impossible, however, to see you just now. I am just finishing 
 Modem Painters, and can really see not even my best friends, 
 among whom I am proud to class you. With best regards to 
 Mrs. Smetham. — Affectionately yours, J. Ruskin. 
 
 Of one of these etchings, " The Last Sleep," Mr. 
 Euskin wrote — • 
 
 I think the last very beautiful indeed, and it is quite a 
 lesson in etching to me just now, which I much wanted. 
 
 Later also lie says — 
 
 These etchings of yours are very wonderful and beautiful ; 
 I admire both exceedingly. But pray, on account of the 
 
24 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 fatigue, don't work so finely, and don't draw so much on your 
 imagination. Try and do a few easier subjects than this Noali 
 one. The labour of that has been tremendous. 
 
 The etching here alluded to was one of the build- 
 ing of the ark, containing many figures, elaborated to 
 a high degree of finish. 
 
 After a while, when he had completed a respectable 
 number of etchings, which were collected under the 
 title of " Studies from an Artist's Sketch Book," he 
 became somewhat dissatisfied with the point as an 
 interpreter of his conceptions, being laborious, and 
 excluding colour. He modified his plan, substituting 
 an oil-colour sketch or drawing in the place of an 
 etching, for which he charged the moderate sum of 
 three guineas ; afterwards elaborating the workman- 
 ship and charging nine guineas. Of course this nar- 
 rowed his subscription list ; but many of his friends 
 were glad to possess one of his graceful conceptions at 
 so cheap a rate. He called this plan his fortification 
 — or, as he often wrote it, 40fication ; his aim being 
 to supply forty members in the year — as being a 
 defence against pecuniary needs. It had many advan- 
 tages and some disadvantages. It gave him the means 
 of expressing himself in numerous colour studies which 
 were adapted to his peculiar capaciW. Naturally these 
 varied in quality and value. Some of them were 
 charming in choice of subject, in colour, tone, and 
 sentiment ; others less so : but in all was to be traced 
 the hand of the poetic mind, and some of them were 
 so happy as to be called veritable gems. One of these 
 
MEMOIR 25 
 
 in my own possession represents two male figures in 
 a panelled chamber, one with his legs stretched out 
 before a wood-fire, his hands in his pockets, reflective, 
 listening, the other touching a lute by his side. A 
 side window shows a landscape covered in snow. The 
 glow from the fireplace is given with considerable 
 richness and harmony of tone throughout the room. 
 The whole was intended to illustrate Milton's " Sonnet 
 to Mr. Lawrence," in which he had yet managed to put 
 some personal touches of the painter and his friend. 
 Another — a water-colour — represents a mysterious 
 traveller draped in a shawl or plaid hasting over a 
 heath, backed by a storm-cloud. Behind him in the 
 distance an ass is seen grazing, whilst just in front of 
 him is a milestone marked with vague figures. Serious 
 and impressive, I believe this was intended to sym- 
 bolise to some extent his own life and aims at the 
 time of painting it. 
 
 In 1869 he braced himself up for a higher efibrt 
 by taking up a subject more ambitious than any 
 hitherto engaged upon. It was that of " The Hymn 
 of the Last Supper." The history of this picture dates 
 back to 1854, when, attending one of Mr. Euskin's 
 lectures at the Working-Man's College, he was induced 
 to show Mr. Euskin some of his books of drawings, 
 which Mr. Euskin took home for their better inspec- 
 tion. This brought from him a letter in the following 
 terms : 
 
 Denmaek Hill, 15th Nov. 1854. 
 My dear Sir — I am quite amazed, almost awed, by the 
 
26 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 amount of talent and industry and thoughtfulness shown in 
 these books of yours. What is the nature of your artistic occu- 
 pation ? I am very anxious to know all that you are willing to 
 tell me abont yourself. Please let me keep the volumes at least 
 till Tuesday next. I cannot look them over properly sooner ; 
 and meantime send me a line, if I may ask you to take this 
 trouble, telling me what your real employment in life has been, 
 and how your genius has been employed or Mnemployed in it. — 
 Faithfully yours, and obliged, J. Ruskin. 
 
 This letter inaugurated James Smetham's acquaint- 
 ance with Mr. Euskin, and drew from him the auto- 
 biographical reply already given. Mr. Euskin's letter 
 was followed a day or two afterwards by the request 
 that he might be allowed to show one of these books 
 at his next lecture. This was accordingly done, 
 when the lecturer drew special attention to the great 
 originality of one of the drawings on a theme so 
 frequently painted as that of the Last Supper. This 
 caused James Smetham to dwell on the subject until 
 it had taken a more distinctly pictorial form in his 
 mind. He says in a letter : " The sentiment of the 
 subject has possessed me ; a large space of deep un- 
 searchable gloom in the room where they are assembled, 
 leading off into other portions of the house, and the 
 face of Judas waiting a moment outside to listen to the 
 hymn." 
 
 The subject was commenced on a canvas three feet 
 in length. He was occupied u.pon it during the 
 winter of 1868 and 1869, and in the month of April 
 in the latter year he wrote to his friend Mrs. Taylor : 
 "On the evening before Good Friday, ie. on the 
 
MEMOIR 27 
 
 evening of the Last Supper, as we commemorate it, 
 I got ' The Hymn ' finished, but without at all trying 
 to complete it by then. I was rather pleased at the 
 coincidence." 
 
 The picture was afterwards exhibited in the studio 
 of his friend D. G. Eossetti, where it was seen amongst 
 others by Mr. Watts, R. A., who said, " It must be con- 
 sidered a great picture though it is a small one." The 
 picture was sent to the Royal Academy Exhibition. 
 Mr. "Watts was a hanger that year, and it found a 
 place on the line, where it received a good deal of 
 notice from thoughtful people. 
 
 Encouraged by the success of this picture, he 
 proceeded with a good heart to the painting of two 
 large subjects : one, which he called " Hesper," a 
 poetical composition five feet long, and " The Women 
 of the Crucifixion," already mentioned, of somewhat 
 similar dimensions. These pictures were completed 
 in 1871. Writing to a friend, he said: "These two 
 pictures ought to establish me, but art is so precarious 
 that I dare not allow hope or fear to have play, and 
 so try not to think, but to do." These pictures were 
 purchased by Mr. Budgett, and remain in his posses- 
 sion. They were sent to the Royal Academy for 
 exhibition. One was rejected, one doubtful : both 
 of them were returned unhung. 
 
 This may be said to have formed the crisis of his 
 professional career as far as the public was concerned. 
 The subsequent rejection of " The Dream of Pilate's 
 Wife" and "Prospero and Miranda" crushed out his 
 
28 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 hopes of ever meeting the public as a representative 
 painter. From that time he sought to do no more 
 work of an ambitious kind, and I believe he never 
 sent anything to the Academy afterwards. 
 
 And yet there was something noble in this work 
 which might have claimed a recognition amidst so 
 much that was ignoble and trifling. "The Dream of 
 Pilate's Wife " was a large serious conception carried 
 out worthily in its treatment. She was represented 
 as having raised herself on the couch in the silence of 
 the night, and with closed eyes was groping in uneasy 
 perplexity. The corrugated covering of the couch 
 suggested the turbulent nature of her vision, and 
 aided in some way the impression of the "many 
 things " she was suffering in the tragical presentment. 
 Perhaps there may come a time in the history of art 
 when its higher function shall be more discerningly 
 recognised, when the world will turn back to such a 
 picture as this, and pass many acres of artfuUy-laid- 
 on paint to look at it and drink in its profoundly 
 impressive spirit and sentiment.^ 
 
 But if appeals to the public were more or less 
 abortive, James Smetham was backed by many ap- 
 preciative and loving friends : at this time none more 
 so than Mr. James S. Budgett of Stoke Park, Guild- 
 ford, who with a nobleness and generosity more than 
 rare in this world, relieved the pressure of his circum- 
 stances and the uneasiness of his mind by aid at once 
 
 ■' This picture is now in tlie possession of J. P. Hall, Esq., 
 Sharcorate, Somersetshire. 
 
' MEMOIR 29 
 
 timely and substantial. He claimed to be a sleeping 
 partner in his business transactions, and held the self- 
 elected post as long as he, James Smetham, lived, 
 securing to him all the advantages possible during 
 the sad years of his later life. Other friends, notably 
 Mrs. Brames Hall, Mr. John Frederick Hall, Mr. J. 
 Fishwick Stead, and Mrs. Steward, by their long- 
 maintained sympathy and stimulative appreciation, 
 were very helpful, and always ready by the suggestion 
 of a personal visit or a run to Scotland to relieve the 
 jaded brain and overwrought faculties. 
 
 Amongst these friendships those of F. J. Shields 
 and D. G. Eossetti must be mentioned as of high 
 value and importance to him, artistically and every 
 way. I believe he first made acquaintance with 
 Eossetti at the Eoyal Academy School in 1843. It 
 was renewed when he came to settle in London in 1851. 
 I remember he took me to see Eossetti in 1862, whom 
 I then saw for the first time. He occupied a flat at 
 the top of a tall house near Blackfriars Bridge. The 
 little room in which I saw him was hung round with 
 his wife's pictures, who at that time lay in her last 
 illness. The windows commanded a panoramic view 
 of the river and its neighbourhood. There were 
 occasional correspondences and intercourse between 
 the two friends up to the year 1863, when the rela- 
 tionship became more friendly and brotherly. An 
 arrangement was made by which James Smetham 
 should spend every Wednesday at Eossetti's studio, 
 paint there all day, pass the evening at one of the 
 
30 LETTERS 01' JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 studios of the circle or with friends at Eossetti's 
 house, and remain there until the next morning. 
 This was after Eossetti had taken up his residence 
 at Chelsea. This arrangement continued until the 
 spring of 1868, when the temporary failure of Eos- 
 setti's eyesight drove him from his easel into the 
 country. They were warm friends and correspondents 
 until the last clouded years. To the end of his life 
 Eossetti frequently spoke to me with tenderness and 
 aifection of his old friend, whose ultimate sad state 
 of depression, I believe, often added a dark hour 
 to his own. To Mr. Euskin also he was indebted 
 for much wholesome stimulus and encouragement. 
 Neither to Mr. Euskin does the friendship appear 
 to have been a barren one, since he writes of his 
 death as being "one of the most deeply mourned 
 losses to me among the few friends with whom I 
 could take ' sweet counsel.' " 
 
 Eelieved from immediate anxiety, James Smetham 
 proceeded during the winter and following summer to 
 complete many pictures in various stages of advance- 
 ment, as well as to commence others. The result was 
 that in the autumn of 1873 he was able to have a 
 private exhibition of his works in his studio, to which 
 he sent out cards of invitation. A characteristic 
 letter received in response from his friend D. Gr. 
 Eossetti is worth reproducing — 
 
 Eelmscott, Leohlade, 11th Oct. 1873. 
 My deak Smetham — Thanks for the card you so kindly sent 
 me. I wish heartily I were now looking at your piotm-es, hut 
 
MEMOIR 31 
 
 am not likely to be coming to town just yet. You know that 
 your work is of the kind that I really enjoy, because you have 
 always an idea at the heart of it ; and what I hear from friends 
 about your latter doings makes me sure that they would excite 
 my admiration even more than former ones. Owing to your 
 plans of life, you have remained as yet much more in the back- 
 ground than could possibly have been the case had your works 
 been more widely seen. This state of things must, I firmly 
 believe, change ere long, and such change will be quite as truly 
 a gain to the higher kind of English Art as to yourself. Your 
 work is the result of mental as well as of artistic gifts, and 
 must prove permanent. — With kind remembrances, ever your 
 friend, Dante G. Rossbtti. 
 
 The result of this exhibition was a liberal harvest 
 of sales amongst appreciative people. Lord Mount- 
 Temple bought his study for the " Hymn of the Last 
 Supper j " from him, and from Lady Mount-Temple, he 
 had much warm sympathy. This, however, was his 
 last outward success. Wanting the potent diploma 
 of public praise or popularity, his works and himself 
 were left unnoticed by the busy world. The fine 
 fibre of his mind ultimately gave way. He sank into 
 a profound melancholy from which he never recovered. 
 Ere the darker days had quite closed upon him, his 
 generous friend and helper Mr. Budgett came forward 
 with unstinted kindness. Mr. Frederic J. Shields and 
 Eossetti were very substantially helpful (nor was this 
 the last of their kindnesses) : the former made a selec- 
 tion of his works, which were exhibited in the studio 
 of the latter. Eossetti acknowledged having received 
 them to Mrs. Smetham in the following terms :^- 
 
32 LETTERS OE JAMBS SMETHAM 
 
 ^rd Feb. 1878. 
 Deak Mes. Smetham — This morning the pictures have 
 arrived, and many of them have quite delighted and astonished 
 me hy their extreme heauty. Indeed they are, in colour, 
 sentiment, and nobility of thought, only to be classed with 
 the very flower of modern art. His extreme isolation of life 
 can alone account for such work not having found a more 
 extended field of encouragement. . . . Yours sincerely, 
 
 D. G. EOSSETTI. 
 
 Important sales were made here. But this closed 
 the account. The pencil was laid aside, the hand had 
 lost its cunning. The light of his fine intellect faded. 
 He abode in the silence of a closed spirit. The abund- 
 ant kindness of his friends, the endearments of an 
 affectionate family, the most skilful medical treatment 
 — all failed to bring back the retired activities. He 
 died on the 5th of February 1889. What is mortal of 
 him rests in Highgate Cemetery under the inscription : 
 " I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.' 
 
 But though his earthly history was thus closed in 
 darkness — darkness to the human intelligence — shall 
 it be said or thought for a moment that in this aberra- 
 tion there was a failure of the life-purpose, that it 
 was destructive or nugatory to the long training and 
 defined scope of a lifetime ? Certainly not. Eternal 
 Being does not work by waste and failure. Spiritual 
 growth and advancement are carried on as infallibly 
 as organic development. There are no mistakes, no 
 failures, with the Eternal Purpose and Operation, 
 spiritual or natural. My own feeling is, that in 
 this case a new dispensation was necessary, new lines 
 
MEMOIR 33 
 
 of being required, and this was the foreclosure. Why 
 the body should have lived when the light of the soul 
 had passed or lay dormant, I do not know. But who 
 shall know what are the processes by which a soul is 
 moulded and advanced to its ultimate scope ? Only 
 this we know, that the blossom must fade that the 
 fruit may ripen, and that the tree lives potentially in 
 the dry seed. But if we shift the point of view to a 
 higher plane we may perhaps gain still clearer light. 
 It is only in the dark night that the myriad stars of 
 heaven become visible. To attain the immortal the 
 mortal must be destroyed. When every temporal 
 hope is crushed and every earthly light extinguished, 
 when the old stays are broken down, and the divine 
 support itself appears to be withdrawn to the mortal 
 apprehension, then rebirth into the unconditioned 
 sphere of spiritual freedom is at hand. It will be 
 remembered that it was not before the suffering 
 Christ had cried, " My God, my God, why hast Thou 
 forsaken me ? " that He could bow the head of His 
 fulfilled mission, and say, " It is finished ! " 
 
 For myself, I may add, our friendship was warm 
 and faithful, of that kind of which a lifetime rarely 
 affords more than one example. So enduring and 
 deep-rooted was it, that the time of his departure 
 was marked to me, ignorant of his illness and many 
 hundreds of miles away, by profound mental disturb- 
 ance otherwise unaccounted for ; thus furnishing one 
 more instance of the loving lives which in death are 
 not divided. 
 
 D 
 
34 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 It was in the year 1846, as I have already said, 
 that I first met him at Warrington, where he was 
 painting the portraits of some distant family con- 
 nections. His appearance in youthful manhood was 
 striking ; indeed his personality was always noticeable 
 as specially characteristic. He bore the stamp of 
 an intellectual beauty strangely attractive. His hair 
 grew in a sort of reckless profusion, tending to the 
 leonine in mass and hue, not reddish, but a low-toned 
 chestnut. His face was harmonious and proportionate, 
 the features delicate, the forehead well pronounced, 
 lofty, and expansive ; the nose aquiline, not over-pro- 
 minent ; the mouth firm, rather small, delicately cut ; 
 the lips ample, inclining to fulness ; the chin refined 
 in mould. He always shaved, only reserving the 
 side-growth, as the beard was unusual when he was 
 young, and he was conservative in his personal modes. 
 His figure was tall and rather spare, with a slight 
 tendency towards the student's stoop. He always 
 wore a frock coat, a loose necktie, the bow carelessly 
 tied by his own hand, and invariably clothed through- 
 out in black. There was a sort of wavering or 
 undulating motion in his gait, slightly expressed, 
 and sometimes a certain movement with the hands 
 indicated — how may it be described? — as if feeling 
 or groping towards the Unknown in the endeavour 
 to seize something not wholly out of reach, but still 
 eluding the grasp. This was quite unconscious to 
 himself, doubtless, and not marked, but when observed 
 was significant. The expression of the eye was 
 
MEMOIR 35 
 
 feminine in softness, but at the same time wide and 
 earnest, laden with, the spirit's message. His manner 
 was distinctly reposeful, and had nothing of haste or 
 fidgetiness in it. He was always gentle, kindly, and 
 courteous to all. I never heard him use a harsh 
 tone or saw him assume a commanding manner to 
 any one at any time. He was patient and forbearing 
 in all things ; reserved in speech on ordinary occasions, 
 never interrupting another, easily overborne in talk, 
 saying nothing often when he felt and thought much. 
 One did not always get at his opinion easily, and it 
 might have been supposed on some occasions he had 
 none, but on waiting inquiringly for it it was given 
 in a decided form, clear, nervous, unmistakable. 
 
 His conversational powers were remarkable when 
 he was in the vein, but so unforced that unless moved 
 to speech I have known him to remain a whole day 
 almost without uttering a word. When he did speak 
 he never failed to command a hearing. Whether 
 serious or jocular, one was met by a freshness of view 
 and aspect at once arresting. I remember once he 
 kept a roomful of persons for a long time in fits of 
 laughter describing an old gentleman he had seen in 
 an omnibus take a pinch of snuif. He began by 
 picturing in a humorous way the personal appearance 
 of the subject of his story, giving at the same time 
 a speculative diagnosis, so to speak, of his character. 
 He was described as absorbed in reflection, when it 
 suddenly occurred to him to take a pinch of snuff. 
 The box was accordingly withdrawn from his pocket ; 
 
36 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 then he seemed to forget his purpose, relapsing into 
 a brown study, which was circumstantially analysed 
 and expatiated upon in the narrative ; after which he 
 again paused dreamily, as before; then his fingers 
 were plunged into the box, his supposititious course 
 of thought being again followed by the narrator. 
 Finally, the catastrophe lay in his taking the pinch 
 of snuflF. It is impossible to reproduce the grotesque 
 drollery which he put into this whimsical narrative. 
 It was heightened by touch after touch of fanciful 
 burlesque which only the natural gift of humour can 
 impart. Many examples of this faculty of humour 
 will be found in the letters. 
 
 He was possessed of large literary powers, as these 
 letters will amply testify. With him the literary 
 taste and feeling were an endowment ; not the fac- 
 titious investiture of the time. Books to him, in his 
 early life particularly, were " a substantial world both 
 pure and good." His mind, however, rather dwelt 
 in the abstract region of ideas than in that of fact 
 and form. He did not affect much science or technical 
 study of any kind. The authors of name and note 
 who have always been recognised as the world's 
 teachers were more or less thoroughly studied and 
 remembered by him. Fragmentarily (for he made 
 no claims to academic scholarship) the literature of 
 ancient Greece and Rome, more fully Dante, Chaucer 
 (read, as I remember, in an old black-letter foUo), 
 Shakespeare, Milton, and the chief succeeding writers, 
 were appropriated in no superficial way. He re- 
 
MEMOIR 37 
 
 membered them, and it was one of the charms of his 
 conversation that by some slight touch or allusion 
 he so often recalled a phrase or a line to those who 
 knew, which added light and point to his utterances. 
 The substance of what he read was made his own by 
 the double force of form and language, for he gener- 
 ally embodied his reading — always his serious reading 
 — in drawing, symbolical or otherwise, on the margin 
 of the book he read or in his note-books. His diction 
 was pure and nervous, and held a concentration of 
 thought which appealed directly to the hearer. There 
 was an impress of the spirit's power on all he said 
 distinctly removed -from the commonplace, even when 
 concerned with commonplace subjects. It seemed as 
 if there was breathed about him an atmosphere of 
 subtle intellectualism, of which even inept people 
 were conscious, although they did not quite under- 
 stand it. Both in his written prose and in the 
 desultory verses he wrote — some of which are sub- 
 joined to this volume — the same compression of phrase 
 and adaptability of expression are clearly noticeable. 
 His modes of study were inexorable. Every 
 morning the assigned portion had to be completed 
 before his brush was taken in hand. He had a large, 
 wide-margined Bible in which he tabulated pictorially 
 all he read. Verse or chapter, the fact of its having 
 passed through his mind was duly registered, and 
 took its place afterwards as a part of his being. He 
 had an interleaved Shakespeare, and this too bears 
 ample evidence of the recording hand as a help to 
 
38 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 the appropriating brain. But indeed it would be im- 
 possible to specify his work in this kind ; it is far too 
 abundant in quantity and too multitudinous in detail. 
 
 He never much favoured the exercise of his literary 
 power in the way of publication. It was only by the 
 persuasion of friends or for some special object that he 
 was induced to appear in print. With the exception 
 of a few stray poems published in early manhood in 
 Blackwood's Magazine, and some also in later Wesleyan 
 Journals, the only examples of his writing before the 
 public are four articles printed in the London Quarterly 
 Review, with the following titles : " Eeligious Art in 
 England," 1861; "Life and Times of Sir Joshua 
 Eeynolds," 1866; "Alexander Smith," 1868; "William 
 Blake," 1868. The essay on Blake was in great part 
 reprinted as an addendum to the second edition of 
 Gilchrist's Life of Blake, edited by D. G. Eossetti, who 
 considered the article to contain the best and most 
 penetrative review of the life and character of Blake 
 that had up to that time been published. 
 
 Of his religious life I shall not here enter into any 
 close or exact analysis. Eeligion — the large sense of 
 the subjection of everything else to the soul's relation- 
 ship with God — was ever present to him, earnest, real, 
 the one important moulder and factor of his life. He 
 was born a Wesleyan, as has been said ; he remained 
 one in spirit as well as form. It suited him. Wes- 
 leyanism may be said to be a religion of expression, 
 and thus differing from all forms of Quietism. It is 
 specially social in its economy. It seeks by bringing 
 
MEMOIR 39 
 
 soul in contact with soul to kindle and maintain the 
 heavenly fires. It encourages no solitary brooding, 
 fosters no lonely struggles, but bids them come out into 
 the light of day, for revelation and redress if it be 
 possible. Perhaps by nature, certainly by breeding 
 and education, this was suited to James Smetham. 
 The enforcement of expression, whether by words or 
 forms, was a part of the mission of his life. It was 
 nearly related to his artistic faculty, and might have 
 been a condition of it. "It is well for poor man," he 
 says in one of his letters, " to put his thinkings as 
 quickly as possible outside of him ; for when he dies 
 'in that very day his thoughts perish,' and who cares 
 what he thought ? Meditate on this, and either write 
 or draw all you think." He allied himself closely to 
 his community, became a class-leader — a valuable and 
 helpful one^and remained so as long as his health 
 allowed it. He had the fearless courage of his 
 opinions, and never would stand on a false footing, 
 even for a moment. If there was any danger of a 
 misunderstanding, or the least necessity for doing so, 
 he at once avowed himself a servant of the Cross. 
 Not that religion was ever dragged into his ordinary 
 intercourse : he had a sense of the uselessness of that, 
 but it remained with him as the central motor of his 
 life, and was never concealed or ignored when he 
 came into close contact with those who might have 
 misinterpreted him. His duty was fulfilled as he 
 saw it to the utmost. I remember once he left me 
 during a pleasant sojourn we were making together 
 
40 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 in the Isle of Wight in order to join his weekly class, 
 though there was no other reason for his leaving at 
 that time. It was perhaps amongst the people whom 
 he thus met that his usefulness was most felt and 
 valued. The policeman on his beat, the young shop- 
 man, the tradesman at his counter, together with 
 many young students and others of a wider culture, 
 still remember with gratitude his sustaining aid in the 
 life-struggle, his warm and appreciative sympathy. 
 The large nature extended a helpful hand where its 
 expansive breadth could be felt, though not fully 
 understood. 
 
 His life-beams were laid on grand lines. His 
 conceptional view of life was a noble one. It lay in 
 the clear apprehension that the main purpose and 
 object of it — the only real and essential one — was 
 educational in the widest sense of the term ; that the 
 soul was born into this world in order that it might 
 be expanded, elevated, and perfected to the divine 
 standard. Towards this end the mechanism of his 
 life was arranged, and his more serious attention 
 wholly directed. All contributed to this, and it 
 formed the key to the right understanding of his life 
 course. Even his art became to him but a means to- 
 wards the attainment of this lofty purpose. To carry 
 it out thoroughly the most laborious and detailed 
 plans were entered upon ; not merely mental ones, 
 but all definitely expressed in lines almost appalling 
 in their elaboration. Piles upon piles of pocket-books 
 and note-books were filled with the pictorially drawn 
 
MEMOIR 41 
 
 results of his readings, his thinkings, his relationships 
 with the world, his mental conceptions, and his 
 spiritual aspirations ; some of them interwoven with 
 a network of connecting lines which could only be 
 disentangled by himself. Whatever he did or wher- 
 ever he went, whoever he met or by whatever circum- 
 stances he was surrounded — all went into the register 
 and contributed to the tabulated sum and tale of his 
 life. Nothing that happened was lost or wasted ; 
 just as every grain of sand and fibre of wood contri- 
 bute their mite to form the structure of a building. 
 Amongst these records may here and there be found 
 the most exqmsite little pictures elaborated with a 
 loving touch to the most marvellous degree of finish, 
 where he has dwelt upon some incident or conception of 
 special importance. Others are slight, barely indicated, 
 with a name or a letter only by himself understood ; 
 in other places they are merely hieroglyphics. 
 
 It was a noble conception, to build a monument of 
 a life by expression in order that no experience of 
 any kind should be wasted or forgotten. Perhaps it 
 repays the builder : it repaid him, doubtless ; but 
 alas ! without the guiding hand, the leading eye, to 
 others it remains a blank as far as instruction goes : 
 only a wonder, the miracle of a splendid intention 
 carried out, a lofty purpose accomplished. For here, 
 if we could but read it, indeed lies the veritable his- 
 tory of a Human Soul in its course through this world 
 written out in full in a rare fashion : its hopes, its 
 fears, its struggles, its sorrows, and its joys, all em- 
 
42 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 bodied or indicated in a visible form. But although 
 they will never be completely deciphered here, they 
 must still be intelligibly charactered 
 
 Where all pursuits their goal obtain, 
 And life is all retouched again ; 
 Where in their bright result shall rise 
 Thoughts, virtues, friendships, griefs, and joys. 
 
 The system of " putting everything outside of 
 you " as marks or indications of the road-march of 
 life, he called Momimentalism. The manner in which 
 this was usually done was by what he called Squaring, 
 that is, enclosing each design, however slight, within 
 quadrangular lines and putting a date to it. The 
 books in which the results of his reading were thus 
 stored were christened Knowledge Books. Other terms 
 occurring in these letters, well known to his circle, 
 are those of Ventilator and Ventilation. From his 
 early days he maintained a more or less regular 
 correspondence with his tried friends in the usual 
 letter form, but this was not found adaptable to all 
 occasions. He devised another. It consisted of 
 several sheets of note-paper, each sheet cut horizon- 
 tally into three slips, which were then stitched 
 together in pamphlet form. He generally kept some 
 half-dozen of these in his pocket-book, and when a 
 thought arose which he considered worth noting, it 
 was pencilled down in one or other of them ; it might 
 be whilst waiting for a train at a railway station, 
 on the top of an omnibus, walking in the street, or 
 sitting by the fire ; thus they gradually got filled up. 
 
MEMOIR 43 
 
 and were then posted to their destination. Some, 
 however, were retained, for one reason or another ; 
 these were consigned to a box labelled, " Suppressed 
 Ventilators.'' The designation " Ventilator " arose 
 from one of his friends having first dubbed these 
 quaint epistles " Idea-ventilators." Afterwards it 
 became shortened into " Ventilator," and the mode of 
 wi-iting was spoken of as "ventilation" and "ventil- 
 ating." Ere the term became thoroughly domiciled 
 in the friendly circle, a lady, one of his correspondents, 
 very much astonished her mother by exclaiming, 
 " Dear me, you have sent my dress to the wash with 
 a ventilator in the pocket ! " 
 
 This system of writing down himself on every 
 occasion became a part of the daily routine, and had 
 the double advantage of fixing the fleeting moment 
 in a substantial and tangible form, as well as that of 
 affording relief to an oppressed and over-burdened 
 mind. In the latter capacity it might have appropri- 
 ately borne the motto of Wordsworth's lines — 
 
 To me there came a thought of grief : 
 A timely utterance gave that thought relief, 
 And I again am strong. 
 
 This sketch would not be complete without men- 
 tion made of a defect or inadequacy of character, 
 which acted as a great hindrance in his professional 
 career. It was that of a want of power to meet and 
 contend with the demands of the outward, or even 
 the ability to recognise its inexorable claims. In this 
 world we must not only have wings for the empyrean, 
 
44 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 says a German writer, but also a stout pair of boots 
 for the paving-stones. James Smetham never realised 
 this. He would work industriously, setting a value 
 on the results of his labour, and then leave it, oblivi- 
 ous of exhibitions or other means to have it seen. 
 This, of course, is not sufficient, as he knows who 
 has pressed to the fore. Not until it was absolutely 
 required did he ever turn his attention seriously to 
 the sale of his works, and it generally had to be 
 accomplished at a disadvantage. It was not that the 
 question of the maintenance of a family was absent 
 from his mind ; it had an abiding place there, and 
 elaborate systems were laid down to meet it ; but 
 they remained in the shadowy realm of ideal projec- 
 tion, and were not brought into action. This insuffi- 
 ciency to meet external requirements unquestionably 
 gives the key to the lack of greater success in his 
 profession. It was not so much the artist who failed 
 as the man of business. But even in his pictures 
 sometimes the same requirement made itself felt, in 
 the want of a certain completeness and absoluteness 
 of treatment which is called for, although the work 
 may be slight. For him it was enough to have clearly 
 set down his conception, and perhaps for some of 
 those who knew him, and loved his work ; but for the 
 public, which only sees precisely what is put before 
 it, it was not enough. 
 
 In order to assign the right position to the art-work 
 of James Smetham it will be necessary to look back- 
 ward for a moment. 
 
MEMOIR 45 
 
 He entered the field of art at an anomalous time. 
 On his coming into it old foundations were shaken, 
 new ones had not been laid. He was naturally 
 endowed with a pictorial style, a mode of expression 
 peculiarly his own : just as Wilkie's was his own. It 
 did not bear translation — did not brook reforming 
 influences ; it only required development. After 
 Wilkie had been in Italy his art as an expression of 
 character was ruined. Its individuality was destroyed, 
 the life-spirit which vivified it and appealed by inward 
 potency was eliminated. It could afterwards only 
 speak by qualities of brush-work. Its words were the 
 echoed words of others, its thoughts incarcerated, as 
 it were, in an unfamiliar and imperfectly appropriated 
 medium. This was very much the case with James 
 Smetham. Some of his early work indicated an 
 individuality of character rare to behold. It was the 
 outcome of the old broad school, soon to become 
 moribund and finally extinct. His touch was ample 
 and firm, his colour rich, harmonious, and glowing, 
 character well expressed, and the picture always well 
 grasped. Then came the adverse influences — adverse 
 to him, at all events — --Photography, Pre-Raphaelism, 
 and Euskinism. He had not the power to resist 
 these. They bore him down. After a hard fight 
 with the public, they had won their way, and soon 
 held their own. The great revolution which then 
 took place can hardly be imagined by the younger 
 generation of Painters. He who would realise the 
 difference between former and present modes — be- 
 
46 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 tween the former broad and synthetic school and the 
 modern analytic one — let him set before him in 
 landscape, say, examples of Girtin, Cox, or Dewint, 
 and any good representative of the most recent school, 
 and let him note well the difference between the two 
 kinds. In the former he will be struck with the 
 eclectic power displayed ; all is sweetness, simplicity, 
 spacial largeness ; nothing used but what is wanted, 
 no confusion or distraction ; only the expansive 
 breadth and freshness of nature. Oblivious of pig- 
 ment, he smells the hay and sniffs the marsh freshets. 
 He meets the wind with uplifted brow. The land- 
 scape lives in palpitating light. He looks, as it were, 
 underneath the picture, and feels the inward vitality 
 that throbs and pulsates beneath its surface. It is a 
 conception of the mind, not a work of the hand. It 
 seems as if it was only for a moment that it is flushed 
 with effluent gleams, and he looks expectantly to the 
 next phase, when the big cloud shall advance with its 
 shadow, and gloom and gray shall be where there are 
 now silver and gold. Then turn to the more recent 
 interpretation. Academically it is right : there is no 
 false drawing, no erroneous perspective. It is called 
 a picture, but it is really a study of the form and 
 face of nature, exact in its facts, literal in its truth- 
 fulness, exhaustive in detail ; but it is the picture of 
 a corpse, not that of a living organism. The painter 
 does not seek any longer as his main object to enter 
 into the living spirit of nature, as they did, but only 
 to depict its appearance and external form, without 
 
MEMOIR 47 
 
 any sympathy witli it as a symbol of life and ever- 
 changeful emotion. Not only of the painting of 
 landscape is this true, but also of the figure. Let us 
 take a picture, say, by Eaeburn, as about the latest 
 exponent of .the broad school, and approaching the 
 period under consideration. Let us place this beside 
 a work of a similar kind ■ of the modern school — the 
 best — not for criticism, as we are simply trying to 
 illustrate a period in art, but for comparison. Li the 
 recent one we shall find an attention to detail, an 
 elaboration of minutiae, a sense of manipulation — a 
 painliness, in fact — not found in the other. The 
 jDainter of the broad school has been thinking of the 
 man, not of his picture. He has obliterated himself. 
 We forget it is a painting. We make a new acquaint- 
 ance, and meeting him in the street, would like to 
 take him by the hand and exchange a friendly 
 greeting. 
 
 I do not know if I have succeeded in placing before 
 the more youthful of my readers thus hastily the 
 differences between the two phases of art in question. 
 It was this difference, on the very line of its shifting, 
 that James Smetham had to meet. If it could have 
 been met absolutely, bravely, uncompromisingly, he 
 would have triumphed. But who is independent of 
 the spirit of his age '! In the history of art no such 
 thing was ever known as purely independent work- 
 manship. He was constrained to modify his pro- 
 cesses, his point of view, and in doing so he lost the 
 best part of himself, what was entirely his own. 
 
48 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 
 
 Others who threw themselves absolutely into the 
 new and advancing spirit of the time succeeded ; he 
 who still clung to the departing fashion had to stand 
 aside, whilst the more express disciple of the newer 
 phase took his place. 
 
 Perhaps it was in the poetic idyll of not too elabor- 
 ate a finish that his artistic mission was best repre- 
 sented. The inward pressure, both of form and idea, 
 sought continually to relieve itself in expression by 
 the shortest and least encumbered way. The " poetic 
 idyll," as revealing a sentiment of the soul rather 
 than representing a material fact, seemed to be his 
 peculiar vocation in art ; and it may be that it is the 
 fault of general ignorance, and not that of the painter, 
 if people do not see more distinctly the aim and 
 intention through that which is done, and build the 
 nobler conception from the inadequacy of the means 
 by which it is sought to express it. If the pajnter 
 only worked for those who have the best right to 
 look at pictures, he might save himself much trouble 
 in battling with the elaboration of his material, — a 
 process which as often obscures as reveals the inward 
 intention of the mind. So far is this now beginning 
 to be recognised in art that in some schools a slight 
 and impressional treatment is sought for artificially, 
 the attempt being made to stimulate the spectator 
 to a creative effort of his own rather than to fulfil all 
 the conditions of complete and actual representation. 
 Its true and legitimate use, however, lies in the 
 endeavour of rich and inventive pictorial minds to 
 
MEMOIR 49 
 
 express rapidly the outlines of their thought by sug- 
 gesting its leading features and indicating rather than 
 trying vainly to embody that which the pencil can 
 only partially reveal ; and this is unquestionably the 
 nobler aspect. Cheap ignorance can detect and de- 
 nounce a piece of careless or indifferent drawing, or 
 a passage of colour not rendered by the literal hues 
 of nature, but it takes the artistic eye and aesthetic 
 sense to discern the nobler qualities of creative power 
 and the divine insight under the impetuosity of an 
 impatient execution and the restraints of a not wholly 
 pliable material. It may be prophesied that this 
 aspect will one day furnish the key to a new phase of 
 art, the present one being almost effete, exhausted 
 by the predominance and overwork of the imitative 
 faculty appealing to the vulgar elements of an un- 
 tutored realism which does not know how to discern 
 the difference between what is a mere study and that 
 which constitutes the nobler effort and the wider 
 mission of a picture. 
 
 It was on some such lines as these indicated that 
 James Smetham's art-course lay : that in which the 
 thing to be presented is rather prefigured and symbol- 
 ised than fully and clearly expressed. Fitful passages 
 of colour reminding one of what is best in art, touches 
 of invention that mark the poet as well as the painter 
 — always preference given to and stress laid upon the 
 end, rather than a waiting on the threshold of the 
 means ; his appeal was to the mind rather than to 
 the eye, to the subtle rather than to the gross sense. 
 E 
 
50 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 Work such as his will always reach those to whom 
 it is addressed. To him it was no question as to 
 whether his audience was likely to be a large or a 
 small one ; only that his message should be faithfully 
 delivered and his life-purpose, as such, should be fully 
 accomplished. Whatever the measure of external 
 success awarded to it, can any life with such an ideal 
 as this before it be counted a failure 1 
 
 WiLLiAJffi Davies. 
 
LETTERS 
 
*„* It will be observed that the literary quotations in various 
 parts of these letters are not always verbally exact, as they have 
 apparently been made from memory and sometimes slightly 
 altered to suit the text. It has been thought better not to 
 restore them to the original reading. 
 
LETTERS 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 28a Augitst 1853. 
 Last night I had a walk twice round Vincent Square 
 by starlight (after the prayer-meeting, which, I assure 
 you, is a source of much hale and calm enjoyment to 
 me). There was a broad, vast light in the west and 
 golden stars above it, and my spirit went upwards 
 into it. I thought about you. I am beginning to 
 enjoy my life with a more direct and unquestioiiing 
 will. I have had so many great inward shocks (some- 
 thing like the overthrow of the " Palace of Art ") that 
 I have touched the joys of existence with a timorous 
 finger. Health, love, friendship have seemed to be, 
 not unreal, but more than I dare use for my own de- 
 light. The thousandfold web of life had to be woven ; 
 the anchors " entering within the Veil " had to be 
 thrown out; the foundations and ramparts of study 
 had to be dug and builded. I seemed like a pilgrim 
 in spirit : I dared not tarry in all the plain. There 
 were the everlasting hills, and there they are still. 
 
54 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1853 
 
 and pilgrim I must yet be; but with, I trust, a 
 different feeling. Christian meets with Hopeful, and 
 they " fall Into discourse '' — the two happy simpletons 
 — and then fall to congratulating themselves on the 
 increased happiness of " the way." Swedenborg says 
 that the angels are always advancing towards their 
 spring-time. The oldest angel is the youngest. 
 There is something in the idea, not for the angels 
 (bless them), but for you and me. I feel more like a 
 child than I did, and so do you. I am incomparably 
 happier than in my spring-time. I don't think life 
 need be so very incomplete a thing as some think it 
 (and we in some moods). Actually I begin to realise 
 a sense of shapeableness. My delicious " knowledge 
 books," as you call them, are so tangible, so orderly, 
 so soothing, so vital, that they have wrought my soul 
 into a condition — a most specific condition — difficult 
 to express, but inexpressibly charming. It is as if 
 my past life was not dead, the thoughts still bloom 
 and live and put forth new shoots and blossoms. It 
 is like an inward realisation of the " Domain of Arn- 
 heim " ! I want not fame, but life ; the soul's calm 
 sunshine ; Life in the eye of God. 
 
 Ot his work as a Teacher of Drawing to the students at the 
 Wesleyan Normal College he writes : — 
 
 ea Dccemher 1853. 
 
 I AM filled to-night with a sense of gratitude. In 
 this quiet parlour, on this foggy evening, by the cheer- 
 ful candle-light, I have mused on my estate, which I 
 
1853 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 55 
 
 see to be, in one sense, only " a little lower than the 
 angels." — I am 
 
 Past Thymiaterion in calmM bays. 
 
 What an honourable position I hold at the Normal 
 Institution ! I say this fully aware of the secular in- 
 significance of it. What if I only mark with chalk 
 on a black-board the same old diagrams ! It is the 
 Creative Truth gleaming white on the Abyss of the 
 Infinite. When I feel there is some definite use to be 
 made of knowledge, and see illustration polishing with 
 use, embarrassment going, influence increasing, great 
 truths developing — find myself loved and supported 
 by a warm-hearted band of men who are doing the 
 same work, joined mind and spirit in a common bond 
 — I cannot desire more. " What shall I render unto 
 the Lord for all his benefits towards me 1 " 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 8th March. 
 
 " Lady of Shalott " gone to the E.A,, with all her 
 imperfections on her head. I did not think that I 
 should have sent it : did not dream of trying, till one 
 morning I got in an effect that stimulated me to try. 
 You have also gone, and a female portrait ; but till 
 I know if they are accepted, best say nothing about 
 them. They may be all returned, so little certainty 
 do I feel about the Academy. If received, they will 
 probably be ill-hung. If noticed, the "Lady of 
 Shalott " will be abused. It is a picture which lies 
 
56 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1853 
 
 very open to abuse, and can be made fun of by 
 irreverent folk with great ease. 
 
 I have worked so closely at it that I am palled by 
 it ; and yet, I believe, there is good in it. I have a 
 great dissatisfaction with all I have done, though I 
 must not say this to any but my intimate friends, 
 scarcely to any but you; they would take it for 
 granted that I ought to know best, and would not 
 buy. I don't mean that at all, but only that I have not 
 yet done what I should like to do, and am able to do. 
 
 I wish, as a painter, that I had a greater dramatic 
 interest in life. I think I can enter into it and dis- 
 tinguish character, and with little labour could realise 
 it ; but I have a strange indifferentism about me, no 
 animal spirits to spur me on in this direction : not 
 lazy, but easily content with beauty. The world 
 cares a little about beauty, but much more for dra- 
 matic situation and a story. In the Vernon Gallery 
 the " Marriage k la mode" overwhelms everything else 
 in public interest. 
 
 The " Order of Release " of Millais is a very fine 
 specimen of what I should like to aim at. I can find 
 nothing wanting in that picture. Concentrated and 
 universal interest, intelligibility, and realising power, 
 coupled with a sense of beauty of ordinariness glori- 
 fied by expression. The ugly, red-haired, thick-lipped 
 Scotch child, fast asleep, with a pouting smile, on its 
 mother's shoulder, is a conception far above those 
 horrible little beauties that mothers love, and put blue 
 sashes round, curling their hair in papers. 
 
1854 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 57 
 
 I have been reading promiscuously lately — Ray- 
 don's Life. I cannot tell the emotions it produces. I 
 gloat over it with a strange fascination, and cannot 
 grasp it yet with any philosophy. Keats' Life, also, 
 and Letters by Monckton Milnes, which leaves this 
 line ringing in my soul — 
 
 Mighty poets in their misery dead. 
 
 I should like if I had language to talk much about 
 Haydon and Keats with you. 
 
 Keats seemed to have a penetrating imagination 
 which saw truth by instinct, but he had no reasoning 
 in him, as he himself says. His letters are like the 
 flight of small hedge-birds: hop, hop, hop — twitter, 
 twitter, and every now and then a flight into a little 
 oak-tree. They are tender -legged, too, like linnets, 
 not having much to stand on. You can scarcely re- 
 member a word of them, and yet you cannot help 
 being pleased with them. But his poetry ! His 
 "Hymn to Pan"! "Ode to Nightingale"! "Hy- 
 perion " ! 
 
 Never let people measure poets, or artists in any 
 material, by common gifts. There is a shrine where 
 the spirit is at home, is dignified, is priest-like and 
 inspired. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 PiMLioo, 2nd Dec. 1854. 
 The act of writing out my thoughts to you the 
 other day was the death-blow to the set of feelings 
 
58 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETIIAM 1854 
 
 they described. As I was walking to-day I remem- 
 bered that this week I have been calm and happy, 
 and only remembered the storm, and then my mind 
 slipped away into a stanza of Chatterton's on the 
 conclusion of a tempest — 
 
 List ! now the thunder's rattling clymmynge sound 
 
 Sheves slowly on, and then embollen clangs, 
 
 Shakes the high spire, and lost, dispended, drowned. 
 
 Still on the gallard ear of terroure hangs. 
 
 The winds are up ; the lofty elmen swangs 
 
 Against the levin, and the thunder pours. 
 
 And the ful clouds are brest at anes in stonnen showers. 
 
 Chatterton was a Titanic yonng mortal. He has 
 been compared to Kirke White, who was a milk-sop 
 (in mind, though a lovely fellow) beside that stormy 
 young poet sage who used to make his fellow scholars 
 sit in Bristol meadows and listen to him on the ground 
 while he told " sad stories of the death of kings." 1 
 should like to have seen him in the fusty library of 
 St. Mary Eedcliffe, drawing forgeries for architectural 
 designs, said to be done by Master Cannynge, laugh- 
 ing to himself as he, by instinct, spelt his words with- 
 out learning, by the mere force of sympathy ; and 
 made a thought burn more fiercely by the fire of an 
 uncouth word or phrase " alyke twaie brending 
 gronfyres." 
 
 How dreadful it is to think of such a life as his. 
 I was struck with a phrase of Gilfillan's last night. 
 In his Literary Portraits he says he sent the first 
 volume to a friend who, in reply, said "Why you 
 have sent me a list of shipwrecks." 
 
1854 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 59 
 
 I was led to look into G.'s book to see what 
 he says about De Quincey, who, I see, is collecting 
 and publishing his Essays. 
 
 What a queer, mystic, sublime, inscrutable, fas- 
 cinating old mummy he is ! Throw your mind back 
 to the days when, fifty years or more ago, he wandered 
 in London streets, and what he says of himself in the 
 Confessions then, and fancy that he has lasted on 
 tdl now, and is winking and blinking yet, quoting 
 Latin passages out of Father Maremme, a learned 
 Jesuit, " page 1461," which he " read thirty years 
 ago,'' and backing up the quotation by another from 
 Lactantius, and another from Mimnermus, and 
 finishing by a queer tale about a Kalmuck Tartar 
 and an Emperor of China ! Now the fact is, tliat 
 man has wasted his life ; and one can only, in one's 
 soul, use him as Samson used the honey out of the 
 dead lion — " Out of the strong came forth sweet- 
 ness." 
 
 Somehow there is a divine instinct within us which 
 decides that pre-eminence — using the term in its final 
 sense — shall not be given to mere intellectual strength 
 and prowess. 
 
 Dec. 1854. 
 
 Christmas approaches, a charmed time to me. 
 I hear its music afar off, — the song of the angels, the 
 breathing of the bells, but most the divine song from 
 out the central glory. I feel like a swain "simply 
 chatting in the rustic row." It has begun, it is de- 
 scending in the sloping line from the Infinite — a 
 
60 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1854 
 
 wave ebbing from the other side of the ocean to 
 break ere long on the high shore of the world, faint 
 with distance. A revolving carol that traverses the 
 spheres always, and once a year is heard among our 
 stars. The angelic "waits" go the round of the 
 universe, and when Christmas falls they come — 
 
 Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace ; 
 Peace and goodwill to all mankind. 
 
 Do you not hear it — a filmy melody like a starbeam 1 
 No, it is lost again, for the wind shook the^enshing 
 leaves, and their whispering drowned the music : but 
 I heard it, and it is ten thousand miles nearer than it 
 was — the attenuated trumpet -note, the fine silver- 
 trumpet note, long drawn out, like a gossamer thread, 
 and the thrill of the harp - string, something also 
 answerable to the fife, keen, like a star in the 
 nebulous music, and a wind-borne voice buoyed as 
 the phosphoric crest of a wide wave of vocal sound — 
 these, mixed, yet distinguishable, for one instant I 
 heard from far beyond where the phantom clusters of 
 astral world-iire grow pale by reason of distance, in 
 an abyss between two milky veils, so ghostly that 
 they were visible and invisible, veils which were 
 galaxies. Across that abyss, as a small meteor 
 fluttered and fell into the night -gulf, so I heard 
 that music. And on Christmas morn I know that 
 they who sleep, but their hearts wake, will hear one 
 full carol and feel the shining of the glory; but it 
 will not stay, only the music will linger in them 
 
1855 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 61 
 
 all day, and the glory will brood over their heart, 
 and some divine sentence from the lips of the King 
 will come up every hour to make them wonder at its 
 depth and meaning. "The Word was made flesh 
 and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the 
 glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of 
 grace and truth." 
 
 The following letter gives an account of his first visit to Mr. 
 Kuskin : — 
 
 To "W. D. 
 
 5th February 1855. 
 
 I WALKED there through the wintry weather and 
 got in about dusk. One or two gossiping details 
 will interest you before I give you what I care for ; 
 and so I wiU tell you that he has a large house with 
 a lodge, and a valet and footman and coachman, and 
 grand rooms glittering with pictures, chiefly Turner's, 
 and that his father and mother live with him, or he 
 with them. There were two gentlemen and two 
 ladies, and a boy like your brother Ned, who were 
 somehow related to him, who came to dinner ; and 
 if all came to all, I daresay he has a cat, — but let 
 that pass. 
 
 His father is a fine old gentleman who has a lot 
 of bushy gray hair, and eyebrows sticking up all 
 rough and knowing, with a comfortable way of coming 
 up to you with his hands in his pockets and making 
 you comfortable, and saying, in answer to your remark, 
 that " John's " prose works are pretty good. His 
 
62 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1855 
 
 mother is a ruddy, dignified, richly-dressed old gentle- 
 woman of seventy-five, who knows Chamounix better 
 than Camberwell : evidently a good old lady, with the 
 Christian Treasury tossing about on the table. 
 
 She puts "John" down and holds her own opinions, 
 and flatly contradicts him; and he receives all her 
 opinions vsdth a soft reverence and gentleness that is 
 pleasant to witness. 
 
 The old gentleman amused me twice during the 
 evening by standing over me and enlightening me on 
 the subject of my own merits, with the air of a man 
 who thought that I had not the remotest conception 
 of my own abilities, and had therefore come to 
 " threap me down " about them. " I never saw 
 anything to equal them [the sketches]. Why, it 
 seems to me the labour of a life ; besides, you must 
 have," — etc. etc. He finished by saying, as if he 
 had taken it to heart and considered himself per- 
 sonally ill used, in a confidential tone, " I wonder 
 you would trust them with John : you paid him a 
 great compliment to send them at all. / wouldn't. 
 I have not let them come down out of the study for 
 fear wine or anything should be spilt on them. Why, 
 I wouldn't," etc. etc. — and for fear lest I should lose 
 or injure them in taking back he sent me home .in 
 his carriage. 
 
 The old lady was as quaintly kind. " Has John 
 showed you thisl" " Has he showed you the other?" 
 "John, fetch Contet's for Mr. Smetham to see :" and 
 to all her sudden injunctions he replied by waiting 
 
1855 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 63 
 
 on me in a way to make one ashamed. " You must 
 come in the daylight, John has heaps of things to 
 show you, and — can you get away when you please f 
 etc. As these are in reality traits in "John's" 
 character, I have given you them at length. I wish 
 I could reproduce a good impression of John for you, 
 to give you the notion of his " perfect gentleness and 
 lowlihood." 
 
 He certainly bursts out with a remark, and in a 
 contradictious way, but only because he believes it, 
 with no air of dogmatism or conceit. He is different 
 at home from that which he is in a lecture before a 
 mixed audience, and there is a spiritual sweetness in 
 the half-timid expression of his eyes, and in bowing 
 to you, as in taking wine, with (if I heard aright) " I 
 drink to thee," he had a look that has followed me, a 
 look bordering on tearful. 
 
 He spent some time in this way. Unhanging a 
 Turner from the wall of a distant room, he brought it 
 to the table and put it into my hands ; then we talked ; 
 then he went up into his study to fetch down some 
 illustrative print or drawing; in one case, a literal 
 view which he had travelled fifty miles to make, in 
 order to compare with the picture. And so he kept 
 on gliding all over the house, hanging and unhanging, 
 and stopping a few minutes to talk. There would 
 have been, if I had not seen from the first moment 
 that he knew me well, something embarrassing in the 
 chivalrous, hovering, way he had ; as it was, I felt 
 much otherwise, quite as free and open as with you 
 
64 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1855 
 
 in your little study. To his study we went at last, 
 and over the fire, with the winter wind sounding, we 
 spoke, as you and I speak, about things I should be 
 sorry to open my heart concerning to scarcely any ; 
 only of course he guided the conversation. A frag- 
 ment or two will give you the key to it — ■ 
 
 J. E. "And did you pray during that time?" 
 
 J. S. " No. I ought to have done so, but I was 
 
 obstinate and discouraged." 
 
 J. R " But was there no one near you to tell you 
 
 that prayer is often long unanswered V etc. 
 
 J. R. "I can understand this life well as the pre- 
 paration for another, but not its incompleteness in 
 itself ; when man finds out what he is fit for, and is 
 able to do it, he dies." 
 
 J. S. "Yes, but the individual must prepare for 
 the other life by passing through and promoting the 
 advancing civilisation of the race." 
 
 J. R. "If life here is to be for itself as well as the 
 other, I can understand it ; but if not, why should 
 we toil? let us throw all our encumbrances away, 
 and live on bread and milk, and think of the other 
 world alone." 
 
 J. S. " But the practical part of the question has 
 staggered me. If best, let us do it. But how? 
 What action must the world take 1" 
 
 J. E. with a smile. "Turn shepherds and agri- 
 
1855 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 65 
 
 culturalists ; they are free, and happy, and simple, 
 and could also be holier. I don't know but that art 
 — painting, poetry — are devices of Satan." 
 
 J. S. "I should be sorry to think so. I can't 
 think so. I believe I am doing my right work, and 
 am happy in it," etc. etc. 
 
 Over the chimney-piece of the study was a copy 
 he had made from Tintoret, a Doge in his robes ador- 
 ing the infant Saviour. 
 
 J. S. " According to your principle that men 
 should represent all subjects in the costume of 
 their own time, and we were to paint this subject, 
 it would be well to substitute Lord John Russell for 
 the Doge in a surtout, and place his hat on the 
 pedestal here.'' 
 
 J. R. knowingly. " I don't flinch from it ; yes, if 
 it would not look well, the times are wrong and their 
 modes must be altered." 
 
 J. S. "It would be a great deal easier (it is a 
 backward, lame action of the mind to fish up costume 
 and forms we never saw), but I could not do it for 
 laughing." 
 
 J. R. "Ha ! but we must do it nevertheless." 
 
 He had two drawings, portraits of Turner, in his 
 study ; one done by Count D'Orsay. 
 
 At the door. "We shall hope to see you here 
 again (reiterated by the old gentleman and lady), and 
 you will allow me some day to come and look at your 
 
66 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1855 
 
 pictures ; " and taking my hand in both his with great 
 gentleness, and looking in my face, murmured (I 
 think) "The Lord be with you." 
 
 As I had got quite enough for my money I 
 " chevied " — (don't be offended at a somewhat 
 frequent use of this word, I like it) — and was in a 
 sort of soft dream all the way home ; nor has the 
 fragrance, which, like the June sunset. 
 
 Dwells in heaven half the night, 
 
 left my spirit yet. 
 
 Of a painter's difficulties he writes : — 
 
 Surely few persons have any idea of what it is 
 to be a painter ; where first of all the mind within is 
 taxed to conceive, to feel, to suffer, or excitedly to 
 enjoy every new subject, and then has to search the 
 earth over for ever -new materials to enable it to 
 realise the idea, materials lying wide apart in the 
 most different associations. The scholar has his 
 library round about him. Southey can spend his 
 fourteen hours a day with his books, far removed 
 among the lakes, going his mountain walk at his 
 appointed hour. The painter can do no such thing. 
 He wants a gourd : he goes to Kew, and spends his 
 day, but the gourd is not growing, and his picture 
 must be at the exhibition before the gourd blossoms. 
 He wants a costume, and has to find it and haggle 
 about it with a Jew, or hunt through Marlborough 
 House Library for it. He wants a sailor's head, and 
 
1855 LETTEKS OF JAMES SMETHAM 67 
 
 goes to St. George's in the East, not easily to find it ; 
 to walk much and idle about much, and then only 
 imperfectly to accomplish his object. The primroses 
 for his bank blow in the woods of Kent, and the 
 anemones and hyacinths. The mill wheel turns 
 slumberously round miles and miles away in another 
 direction. The bit of wild wood scenery is accessible 
 with trouble and expense, but the weather — just 
 when he has time — is gray and cold, and the east wind 
 prevails. It would be the risking of his life to paint, 
 as he desires, that ashy gray and green tree root, 
 because he has already a cold, and the ground is 
 damp ; and yet his picture would be engemmed by 
 it, and he hankers after it. The golden day arrives 
 when he could go into the woods, but the primroses 
 are dead, the hyacinths drooping, or the fancy picture 
 must be put on one side for the more remunerative 
 portrait. 
 
 Carry out this train of thought, and you will 
 wonder how a complex picture gets painted at all. 
 
 He thus describes a walk to Leigh : — 
 
 To HIS Wife. 
 
 Wth July 1855. 
 
 When I got to Preston junction I found there 
 was no conveyance. ... I had a grand walk. White 
 mists lay on the fields on either side ; trees, dark, 
 still drooping, hung round the silent meadows, out 
 
68 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1855 
 
 of which came a close rich odour of new mown hay. 
 The sky was full of that after sunset green-silver 
 glow with deep blue above, and immense fragments 
 of storm cloud in wild shapes floated low down in 
 the sky, through which the rising moon in one 
 direction opened numerous and delicate rifts and 
 bars of dappled light, and over which hung the stars 
 few and white. Solitude, stillness, and the presence 
 of these grand images, which all seem to embosom 
 more truth and emotion than man can fathom, raised 
 me into a mood more exalted than usual — the 
 romantic mood ; which I take to be based on the 
 presentiment of the immortal mood. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 10th August 1855. 
 
 I HAVE read " Maud," and the rest of Tennyson's 
 last volume. I suppose you have read it too. It 
 must live, like all exquisite art — and as art it is 
 exquisite — an episode of life with the commonest 
 romance-plot and the paltriest moral, but wrought 
 out with the lyrical changefulness of the life of this 
 our time. A very complete story, told with flying 
 hints and musical echoes ; as though Ariel had piped 
 it in the little wild island of the Tempest. 
 
 The poetic power which can swallow newspapers 
 full of business, bankruptcy courts, sanitary commis- 
 sions, wars, murders, and medical reports on the 
 adulteration of food, and then reproduce them, as the 
 
1855 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 69 
 
 conjuror brings out his coloured horn from his mouth 
 after a meal of shavings, is poetic power. 
 
 What I object to in it is an objection fundamental, 
 and is not so much against it as a work of art, but as 
 a moral work. The old tale. Thinking and feeling 
 men, in a time when civilisation has grown rank, and 
 the fat weeds of peace rot on the Lethean wharf of 
 Time, are perplexed beyond measure by the social 
 and moral problems of their era. They have been 
 accustomed to regard their offices of Philosopher or 
 Poet as of vastly more importance than they are. 
 They are the Regenerators. Read Tennyson's poem 
 called "The Poet," and see how one "poor poet's 
 scroll " is to shake the world. But they have more 
 pride than power. Now and then such ferment of 
 the nations, in the disgusting rancid simmer of un- 
 regenerate peace, or in the blasts and thunder-rock- 
 ings of war, arises that they feel it a solemn duty to 
 leave their pastoral hills and pipe a prophecy to still 
 them or to heal them. The Eed Indian physician is 
 not more powerless. The spirits "will not come 
 when they do call on them.'' Their watchwords, 
 their secrets, are as silly and as successful as Master 
 Blender's in the procuring of a wife (Merry Wives of 
 Windsor, Act v., Scene v.) : "I went to her in white, 
 and cried mum, and she cried budget, as Anne and I 
 had appointed; and yet it was not Anne, but a 
 postmaster's boy." The fact is that Poetry is to 
 delight and adorn and supplement the happiness of 
 man ; it is one of the good things which God will 
 
70 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1855 
 
 not withhold from them that love Him. Painting 
 has no mission but to make men happy, teaching 
 what truth it can steal from the eternal fountains. 
 And Philosophy is to pass round by the Cross and be 
 baptized, and then it is to make the Intellect happy 
 by throwing glorious magical light on truth. But 
 the Eegenerators are not these. 
 
 " Mr. Poet, what is the remedy for an evil peace 1 " 
 Mr. Poet storms and raves, and answers, "War" — 
 
 That is "Mum." 
 " And what is the remedy for a horrible War ? " 
 The poet smiles, and whispers, "Pe-a-c-e'' — 
 
 That is "Budget." 
 "And yet it is not Anne, but a postmaster's boy." 
 Nothing for it, my brave boy, but war to the 
 knife and to the death with every other gospel, 
 though an angel from heaven preach it. Not half 
 poetry and half gospel, nor half philosophy and half 
 gospel. 
 
 In this respect we will not even sharpen our 
 coulters and axes at Philistine grindstones, and with- 
 out disputing about the extent to which this must be 
 done, or may be done (must be, in some respects, else 
 we must needs go out of the world), I cannot help 
 sympathising with Miss Green well's ^ tone of mind on 
 this subject. 
 
 As a general principle, I say, " Happy is he that 
 condemneth not himself in the thing that he 
 
 ^ Miss Dora Greenwell, at that time a voice in our little circle, 
 now, alas ! silent here. 
 
1855 LETTERS OF JAMES SMBTHAM 71 
 
 alloweth ; " and let the hesitancy always lean to the 
 safe side. If we can bear the prophecy of Balaam 
 and the vaticinations of Saul, without cleaving to 
 them, or being held to be of them, let us hear them 
 while we can glean good, and before they use 
 witcheries or begin to blaspheme. 
 
 I would have you, on this point, when you write 
 to Miss Gr., refer her to a fine passage in Modern 
 Painters, p. 133, § 8. 
 
 This is the great quarrel I have with it, and all 
 such morals. The poetry, the art, is, as I have said, 
 exquisite. The Rose Song is a very skilful example 
 of the absorption of poetical feeling. The "purple 
 light " of love " flushes the soul " in the first assent- 
 ing blush, and the universe is coloured with it. The 
 eyes see red, and only red. The red man dances by 
 his red cedar tree, and the blowing, floating song 
 compasses the earth till the West is East in the 
 iteration — 
 
 Rosy is the West ; 
 
 Rosy is the South ; 
 
 Roses are her cheeks, 
 
 And a rose her mouth. 
 
 It ought to be read through ruby spectacles. 
 
 The Shell Song is as airy and finished as the little 
 whorls and delicate frills of one of Brother Parker's ^ 
 lovely specimens of the Foraminifera, and answers 
 well to an unvarying condition of a mind in anguish, 
 viz. to be riveted and fascinated by very little 
 
 1 Professor W. K. Parker. 
 
72 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1855 
 
 things, and to have a racking sense of beauty. I 
 remember a similar feeling on a mossy hill-top 
 watching a silver thread of water steal through the 
 moss alive with little brilliant insects. 
 
 The new stanza of " The Daisy " and the " Address 
 to Maurice " are very precious. 
 
 And should some ship of battle creep 
 Slowly beneath the milk-white steep, 
 
 And through zones of sun and shadow 
 Glimmer away to the lonely deep. 
 
 Quoted from memory ; if you have not seen it, it 
 will give you an idea. Two quiet orderly rhymes — 
 a restive leap all out of rhyme — and then Imagination 
 curbed, and gracefully, but with a flickering move- 
 ment, submitting to a third rhyme in honour of Law, 
 which it is too gentle to break. 
 
 Eastbourne, IZrd Aug. 1855. 
 I HAVE been, in the dusk of the evening, taking a 
 walk along Pevensey Level — a quiet, broad, seaside 
 road ; the wind soft and cool ; the sky orange, most 
 soft in the west, but with leaden, purple, ragged 
 clouds floating here and there in masses and wild 
 flakes about the sky, and dragging streaks of rain 
 across the darkening downs. In the east, a large, 
 rose-coloured, steadfast cloud arising from fresh blue- 
 gray banks of sinking nimbi, with the summer 
 lightning incessantly fluttering in its bosom, like 
 thoughts. 
 
1855 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 73 
 
 Yesterday I sat by the sea and began to write in 
 a little book. I thought that I would write some- 
 thing to publish. It seemed that perhaps I might 
 ease something of that sense as if a reservoir were 
 straining at its banks in the moonlight among York- 
 shire fells.i Do these feelings mean that it is one's 
 duty to write 1 I can often not interpret that wild 
 stirring, most aptly described in the little poem you 
 read me of Acton Bell's ; ^ figured also in the sub- 
 lime journey of Sir Bedivere with the load of Prince 
 Arthur on his shoulders. 
 
 He heard the deep behind him, and a cry 
 Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. 
 
 It is not that my belief and opinions are unfixed, or 
 my sources of happiness imperfect. If these would 
 give calmness, I should be calm always. It is not 
 that I do not know how to fill my time ; I know it 
 well. I have made the most deliberate choice of 
 principles, pursuits, studies ; and yet this inward 
 goading and lashing comes uncalled for, and will not 
 let me rest. Suddenly, often when it has become 
 almost painful, it disappears in a suffused sweetness 
 and sublime comfort. Miss Greenwell's remarks about 
 happiness were opportune, and did me good. I fear 
 that we must be content to be pilgrims in feeling, 
 
 ' Referring doubtless to the Holmfirth disaster of 1852. 
 
 ^ I think this must refer to Emily Bronte's fine lines begin- 
 ning, "Ay, there it is, it wakes to-night." Not "Acton," but 
 "Ellis" Bell. 
 
74 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1855 
 
 coming now and then to Elim, where there are wells 
 and palm trees, but for the most part (vide the grand 
 fragment on " Will," in Tennyson's last vol.) — 
 
 Toiling in immeasurable sand. 
 
 Not, however, with halting footsteps, but seeing, 
 nevertheless, the " city of habitation," not as from 
 the hills of Beulah, bright and near, but as when 
 
 Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill, 
 The city sparkles like a grain of salt. 
 
 COLOSSIANS III. — What a rich, full chapter ! 
 Surely it will transform the whole mind, well and 
 prayerfully to study such words. This is the way of 
 peace, and to find it let us only receive these words, 
 study them, roll them over and over in the mind, 
 and, as oil makes the joints supple, so shall we feel 
 our spiritual nature penetrated with the strength of 
 the words spoken to us. I think, seriously, that we 
 are too superstitious, in our want of simplicity, in our 
 wish to be independent, original, and that we even 
 miss tMt aim. Let us first produce the intense 
 summer calm of spirit which ought to dwell in us 
 richly through the word of Christ, and then in the 
 brooding light of heaven all knowledge will be simple 
 and easy, and our minds will play freshly, and pluck 
 no crude or unripe fruit. The only truly grand 
 people I have known are those whose moral sim- 
 plicity licked up, like sunlight, the foetid, exciting, 
 sickening, uncertain torch-flames of intellectual pride. 
 
1856 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 75 
 
 Who are the wise ? I know who the learned are — 
 
 With eyes well practised in Nature, 
 "With spirits bounded and poor. 
 
 Who were Heman, Chalcol, Darda, but moral thinkers, 
 genuine men, sleeping under the stars, and revolving, 
 revolving, revolving, till truth came by midnight — 
 simple, pure, white, like a visiting angel, and dwelt 
 with them ? 
 
 ith Jan. 1856. 
 
 I HAVE just finished Villette and The Tenant of 
 WUdfell Hall, having been seized with a desire and 
 determination to know the whole Bronte literature ; 
 half impatient that I should be so swayed out of my 
 regular course as to study with interest five novels. 
 But indeed these things, though they contain some 
 elements of the ordinary "founts of fictive tears," 
 are of another cast and purport to all other similar 
 books. They are — Currer Bell's particularly — so far 
 autobiographic that one looks on them to be important 
 revelations of a life that has been lived, and of 
 thoughts that have been thought ; no frivolous, un- 
 worthy, ambitious life either, but something pure, 
 strong, deep, tender, true, and reverential ; something 
 that teaches one how to live. 
 
 I know this, that I perceive principles and motives 
 and purposes nobler than my own in several aspects 
 of that quiet, shy, observant, and yet powerful nature 
 which calls itself "Jane Eyre" and "LucySnowe," 
 and hovers over Shirley and Caroline Helstone as 
 their presiding genius and instinct. 
 
76 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1856 
 
 It is of no use for me to spurn the teaching because 
 I have got it from a source I do not generally acknow- 
 ledge as authoritative, nor to reply that it is iiction. 
 What I refer to is not fiction, it is what has been 
 lived, and may be lived. It is moral, and not im- 
 aginative, in its origin. It does not come (as I think) 
 from a healthy or perfect moral nature, but from a 
 noble one nevertheless. It reminds one of the Prome- 
 theus Vinctus ; an enduring, age-long suffering, un- 
 quenchable spirit, beset and bound by vast powers. 
 Strength and Force ; and accompanied by a wailing 
 chorus who alternately cheer and depress it ; with 
 the vulture eternally gnawing, and the chain eternally 
 galling it : never complaining, never undignified, and 
 ever seeing beyond the present suffering the scintilla- 
 tions of distant sunrises, and hearing the music of 
 in^'isible plumes " winnowing the crimson dawn," or 
 the silver spikes of the aurora lace the hemisphere 
 with crackling whispers. 
 
 As to IFuthering Heights I can't find in my heart 
 to criticise the book. If I were walking with you 
 over those empurpled fells for an autumn day, start- 
 ling the moor sheep and the lapwing with passionate 
 talk, I could not criticise what I said or what you 
 said. It would become sacred. The remembrance 
 of it would make my heart swell and the tears come 
 to my eyes in the midst of the stern, hard life of the 
 city. And yet, if I could see it to be a duty, I should 
 greatly enjoy shutting myself up in a lone farmhouse 
 for three days in the winter to write a criticism on 
 
1856 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 77 
 
 it. It is a wild, wailing, moorland wind, full of that 
 unutterable love and aDguish and mystery and passion 
 which form the substratum of high natures. Turner 
 has a landscape which is ii. It is those wild hills, 
 and a storm is wuthering over them, and the molten 
 lightning is licking the heather, and nobody knows it 
 but the one solitary soul, which he has not put there, 
 who is watching it from a window in the waste. 
 
 But there is a very solemn and peaceful perception 
 of a truth most pojrerful just now to my mind, even 
 while I am giving inwardly a full unrestrained tribute 
 of sympathy and admiration to it, and the mind that 
 conceived it, viz. that the real, eternal, the true, the 
 abiding, does not lie in these grandeurs and swelling 
 emotions, and entrancing passions in any measure. 
 They are, indeed, noble lineaments of our nature, but 
 that by which we live is different. 
 
 Heathcliff is quite impossible, and therefore, so 
 far, feeble. He is no bogie to me at all. Catherine 
 is far more fearful, because quite possible. Heath- 
 cliff is an impalpable nightmare, and I put him beside 
 the man who followed me in a dream with a loaded 
 horse pistol, among the rafters of Lincoln Cathedral, 
 holding a dark lantern. 
 
 A few montlis after he wrote on the same theme the follow- 
 ing :— 
 
 If a traveller, passing in a "dark summer dawn'' 
 over a lofty mountain track, across moorlands very 
 wide and waste, were to see, as the amber of the east 
 
78 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1856 
 
 revealed the world to him, a strange-looking image 
 at a distance among the heather, dark against the 
 purple horizon and the yellow daybreak, " in a bed of 
 daffodil sky," and, coming near to it, were to discern 
 unmistakable evidence that a huge granite rock had 
 been carved into the rude images of two human 
 beings : — if, wondering, he were to examine its base 
 and find that neither by name nor by style could he 
 tell whether it had been carved two or ten centuries 
 ago ; to his eye it would seem as if Michael Angelo, 
 striding in his sleep across the wild, had been trying 
 to realise a human nightmare which would not let 
 him rest in his bed ; and yet, though there is the 
 colossal aim, there is not the science of Angelo. Two 
 human forms are locked in an embrace strong and 
 stern as death. The woman strains her arms round 
 the man, but the man — or, as he looks, is it the fiend 1 
 — flings one arm and one clenched hand outwards and 
 upwards, as if in imprecation. The faces gaze at each 
 other with portentous passion. The features — as he 
 strives to study them he sees that there are no features 
 but lichen and moss and obscure trenches of gray, 
 storm-battered stone — glimmer into expression only 
 while he is not searching them. He doubts whether 
 it is an unheard-of freak of nature ; and yet there is 
 design, and unity, and simplicity, and meaning, and 
 unutterable passion, with pathos which rends the 
 heart. "Who did it? and when? and why? and 
 what does it mean ? and why have I not heard of it 
 before ? " he asks. 
 
1856 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 79 
 
 The shapeless base springs out of ruddy clustering 
 heath ; a wild rose or two has found its way there ; 
 the bleat of a yearling lamb cries out of the deep 
 bloom of the heather. Overhead a lapwing gleams 
 and wails. Dew lies and sparkles all about. He 
 cannot tear himself away ; he dare not stay, for he 
 begins to think curious thoughts better for him not 
 to indulge; and coming some days after into the 
 town, his friends think him silent and " queer " ; and 
 in answer to his story about the granite figures, they 
 look silently at one another ; and as he cannot tell 
 the whereabout, and no one has ever heard of them 
 before or since, they conclude that he only set out on 
 his pedestrian tour after the strain of publishing his 
 last volume — just in time. 
 
 The place, though, where he saw them was Wuther- 
 ing Heights, and the granite figures were Heathcliff 
 and his lover Catherine. 
 
 The above rhapsody is my "impression" of Ellis 
 Bell's work, and I think I feel it to be great. But 
 whether it comes from my own or another mind, such 
 a mode of using the grand and glorious faculties of 
 the mind demands continual protest ; and I feel, as 
 I grow older, and, I trust, wiser, more disposed to 
 denounce and renounce all such action of the intellect 
 and heart. At twenty, I should have gloried in it ; 
 at thirty-five I as heartily despise it, both in myself 
 and others. 
 
 I HAVE bought the third volume of Modern Painters, 
 
80 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1856 
 
 and mean to read it with the slowness, iteration, and 
 thought which it deserves. I have glanced at the 
 chapter on " Finish," and I see the exquisite definition 
 of it : " added fact.'" How clear, how true ! Finish, 
 from first to last — added fact. How this leads to the 
 great principle, study nature. 
 
 I do not altogether care that in Art he should be 
 absolutely consistent. It is a thing in which mood 
 and feeling are concerned, and a man may speak in 
 various ways, according to his moods. A man who 
 does not would be likely to say cold and unmoving 
 things about Art. If we have the verdant tropical 
 zones of mountain, the sharp stony precipices and 
 pearly snows of the Andes, with the dark large blue 
 waves lapping their base, and can see them for our 
 own delight through a golden haze, let us not care if 
 now and then a smoking cone thunders and spits 
 volcanic fire. Just before I began this letter Ruskin 
 drove away from our door. He fulfilled his long- 
 spoken intention, and brought my books. I showed 
 him what I had to show. A quiet, kind conversation 
 of half-an-hour, perhaps ; encouraging on the whole, 
 and showing a pleasant interest in what I am about. 
 
 1856. 
 
 It is the Truth that lives. This evening, going 
 round the fields and lanes, on my old steps of thirteen 
 years ago — the same gray twilight, sharp air, and 
 pensive gold purple sunset over Highgate — my heart 
 glowed within me as I thought how my life has 
 
1850 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 81 
 
 changed by the belief of a few simple things since 
 those old days. I thanked God aloud. I sent some 
 plain expressions of praise upwards to the heavens, 
 where I saw one white star in the gray, tender blue, 
 eastward ; such expressions as I could scarcely repeat, 
 so unlike me to say aloud were they ; but I could not 
 help it. My heart was glowing silently like that star 
 in the heavens. A star is ever the same. All that 
 we know of it was known by the shepherds of the 
 East — by us as children — but it is for ever there. The 
 leaves are tossing on the grass, or perishing in the 
 pool, but the star is simple and the same. The leaf 
 is not so simple to us as the star, it is not so grand, it 
 is not so ineffable. 
 
 I find the Truth to be like that ; I know no more 
 intellectually of it than when I first believed ; but 
 what a result comes from its abiding ! A deeper, 
 deeper happiness absorbs the heart and pervades the 
 soul. A deepening calm rules and assimilates the 
 faculties, and compels them into action ; not excite- 
 ment, but definite and proper action. 
 
 The peace of God, which passes all understanding, 
 which baffles analysis, which has an infinitude of 
 depth about it. As you cannot understand remote 
 stars, nor the Overhanging vault which you cannot at 
 all explore, but can only feel as you feel your life, so 
 you cannot touch this Peace of God with your under- 
 standing. It lies round you like an atmosphere. It 
 dwells in you like a fragrance. It goes from you like 
 a subtle elixir vitse. "My peace I leave with you, 
 G 
 
82 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1858 
 
 My peace I give unto you : not as the world giveth 
 give I unto you." 
 
 May God double to you His peace. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 1858. 
 
 Don't get into the focus of Criticism. Many men 
 spoil their enjoyment of Art by looking on it as some- 
 thing to pull in pieces, rather than something to 
 enjoy and lead them to enjoy nature, and through 
 nature to enjoy God. How wretched is that feverish, 
 satiated, complaining spirit of criticism. Never con- 
 tented, never at rest. " Is this better than that, these 
 than those f Is this a great man, and if great, how 
 great 1 Is he as great as Eossetti, or as great as 
 Raphael? or is he little, like Brown, Jones, and 
 Robinson "i " all the while avoiding The Thing and its 
 relish : not thinking art, but about art ; not conver- 
 sing with nature, but with names. When they talk 
 of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, continue to 
 shift your trumpet and only take snuflF, and ask them 
 with some earnestness if the Atlantic cable is likely to 
 work again. I wish you were near enough to go with 
 me to see the Sheepshanks Gallery and Turner's 
 sketches at Marlboro' House. These last are very in- 
 teresting and profitable. They confirm what I have 
 long believed to be true, that in preparing for painting 
 the best way is not to paint finished things from 
 Nature, but to make slight, often symbolic records, in 
 abundance oi facts. There is scarcely an instance of 
 
1858 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 83 
 
 a finished sketch of eifect directly from nature in all 
 Turner. Careful outlines, however, of places, with 
 true position of everything marked down zealously 
 and minutely : and generally very modest, almost 
 timid, in touch. I like the reverence this betrays. 
 Some are slight, others hasty, for want of time ; but 
 all are full of tender, reverential feeling. The leaves 
 from his sketch books reveal to me how he lived pencil 
 in hand — every variation of coast-line ; every heave 
 of the vessels he saw, as long as he could see them ; 
 every pulley, and block, and tackling ; every utensil 
 and costume ; every fact of growth, time, place, and 
 size. To me this spirit is wonderfully fascinating. 
 
 Sept. 19. — Another week of work gone, and this 
 letter not gone. Never mind, old boy. 
 
 Some think this life is pleasant ; 
 Some think it speedeth fast ; 
 In Time there is no present ; 
 In Eternity no future ; 
 In Eternity no past : 
 
 and a week more or less is nothing. 
 
 Still it is good to get more life outside of you. Of 
 ' all lives a painter's is perhaps most complete in this 
 respect ; deliciously complete. Monday's face, Tues- 
 day's hand, Wednesday's foot, Thursday's flowers 
 and foliage, Friday's drapery, Saturday's flying 
 touches — all there just as you thought them, count- 
 ing for you the fled moments of the past, and destined 
 to live in hours and moments when you have fled 
 
84 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1858 
 
 beyond all moments into the unembarrassed calm of 
 Eternity. 
 
 Where Day and Night divide God's works no more. 
 
 Paul Veronese, three hundred years ago, painted 
 that bright Alexander, with his handsome, flushed 
 Venetian face, and that glowing uniform of the 
 Venetian general which he wears ; and before him, 
 on their knees, he set those golden ladies, who are 
 pleading in pink and violet ; and there is he, and 
 there are they in our National Gallery : he, flushed 
 and handsome, they, golden and suppliant as ever. 
 It takes an oldish man to remember the comet of 
 1811. Who remembers Paul Veronese, nine genera- 
 tions since ? But not a tint of his thoughts is 
 unfixed, they beam along the walls as fresh as ever. 
 
 Saint Nicholas stoops to the Angelic Coronation, 
 and the solemn fiddling of the Marriage at Cana is 
 heard along the silent galleries of the Louvre. 
 ("Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are 
 sweeter ") — yes, and will be so when you and I have 
 cleaned our last palette, and " in the darkness over 
 us, the four-handed mole shall scrape." 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 Reading Voltaire's Hisfoire de Charles XII. Pro- 
 fited by it. He was an imitator of Alexander, but 
 without his debaucheries ; a man of one idea, firm, 
 unflinching, having taken account of life and death 
 and put aside the fear of death, so being prepared 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 85 
 
 for anything ; sitting on horseback with a broken toe 
 till his boot let blood out through the leather, with- 
 out betraying any signs of emotion ; fighting the 
 battle of Pultowa in a litter, and only hoping for a 
 glorious grave; undistracted, undivided, and believ- 
 ing in the glory of his destiny; pushing his men 
 through forest, flood, and frost, through marsh and 
 iceberg, while they fell round him by thousands 
 gnawed away by the hungry North ; swimming black 
 and turbulent rivers, and climbing their precipitous 
 snowbanks only to fight unlooked-for Cossack hordes 
 in the white wilderness, out of hearing of friends and 
 home ; swallowing mouldy crusts in front of his army, 
 from which his men turned with loathing; and re- 
 assuring them by his cheerful "/Z n'est jpas hon, maisil 
 peut se manger.'' (By the way, it is not good taste to 
 put French into his mouth, for he, though he knew it, 
 would never speak it, and hated everybody that did.) 
 This is the sort of man to accomplish. The defects 
 of such men are very patent, but they do not lie 
 in their indomitableness nor in their perseverance. 
 Why should not these qualities exist along with faith 
 and peace and humility 1 
 
 Bishop Usher used to say to a friend before parting, 
 " One word for Christ." It is Saturday evening, and 
 I do not like to go to bed without something more 
 serious than has been yet put in my letter. Any 
 person, acquainted at all with Christ, ought to be 
 ready to speak of Him whenever he has leisure for 
 anything else. At first one's conceptions of Him are 
 
86 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1860 
 
 abstract to a great extent ; they ought to become 
 more and more concrete. To find ourselves any 
 nearer the belief that we have an High Priest, once a 
 man, now passed into the heavens, and whom the 
 heavens will contain till the restitution of all things, 
 ought to be a glad thought. We feel His workings, 
 His efficacies. I thought to-day, when I was weary, 
 of His saying, " In the world ye shall have tribulation, 
 but in me ye shall have peace." We feel it. Say not 
 in thine heart, " Who shall ascend into heaven, that 
 is, to bring Christ down from above. Behold, the 
 word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy 
 heart." This to me has always been a marvellous 
 explication of the mystery of faith — the incarnate 
 Word, the truth, the life, the syllable, and the 
 essence. 
 
 Whate'er we hope, by faith we have 
 
 Future and past subsisting now. 
 
 But as experience advances we ought to get nearer to 
 the realisation of " Whom, not having seen, we love ; 
 and in whom, though now we see Him not, yet be- 
 lieving, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of 
 glory." Should we not be able to speak of Him, and 
 feel towards Him something as certainly as of a living I 
 friend whom we knew to be in the next room ? 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 Wth March 1860. 
 
 I SUPPOSE I ought to wish with you to go to Rome 
 and Venice, and that it is the duty of painters to go 
 
1860 LETTEKS OF JAMES SMETHAM 87 
 
 when they can seems pretty clear. But, really, I feel 
 so very happy among our English hedgerows, and find 
 such inexhaustible and transcendent delight in the 
 English flowers, and birds, and trees, and hills, and 
 brooks, and, above all, in the wondrous sweet English 
 faces and charming English ways, that nothing but a 
 sense of duty wiU ever drive me to Eome and Venice. 
 My diificulty is to appreciate our little back garden — 
 our copper beech, our weeping ash (a labyrinth of 
 dropping lines in winter, a waving green tent for my 
 babies in summer), our little nailed-up rose trees 
 and twisting yellow creepers, whose names I have 
 been told a hundred times, but shall never get off by 
 heart. The Vale of Hornsey seems a vast "foreign 
 parts " to me — a happy valley, into which I get a 
 glimpse once in six weeks or so — a valley of wonders. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 nth May 1860. 
 
 Theke is an unspeakable repose in being inde- 
 pendent enough to keep quiet. Great wealth is loud 
 and noisy. But poverty is noisy also. 
 
 It certainly takes the shine out of work to feel 
 that you are dependent on the small amount of real 
 taste and knowledge there is at the command of a 
 painter in private life. The feeling of "proud 
 wrath," which characterises the proud and haughty 
 scorner of the Book of Proverbs, is a besetment of 
 any one who feels he can do what people won't be- 
 lieve he can do, or won't let him do, for them. 
 
88 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1860 
 
 I am in hope that my efforts to get illustration 
 work last autumn were not fruitless. I have a fifty- 
 guinea commission, on which I am at work, to illustrate 
 a book on Mexico by E. B. Tylor. Little picturesque 
 vignettes on wood, just the thing for enjoyment ; and 
 I mean to push this branch of trade till I get enough 
 work to give fortification to our resources. Let " High 
 Art " go to Hanover (where I daresay it would meet 
 with every encoui-agement), but let me and my beloved 
 wife and children be free from imminent uncertainty 
 as to the honest things of this life. Let our fireside 
 have no spreading shadows that hard work in humble 
 ways could dissipate. The hand of labour and the 
 honest shilling for J. S. 
 
 But really you don't know what an essential 
 difference these little changes (i.e. wood drawing and 
 etching) have made in our experience, even in the 
 mode of thought — the power to follow out a quiet, 
 unruffled train of sweet thoughts or fancies — what a 
 change it has made ! I am reaping the fruits of long 
 and arid toils which were made in hope of this haven. 
 I have begun to recur with zest and still renewal to 
 what you christened my knowledge books. They are 
 just what they ought to have been, and I feel that 
 for the rest of my days "my resting is my work, my 
 working is my rest." For though I am infinitely 
 ignorant I have learnt to be content. Though I know 
 little yet, for my pursuit of painting I have broken up 
 the fallows, and have found treasure in the deep-delved 
 earth. I have found the Art of Finding how to get 
 
1860 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 89 
 
 thought out of books, out of men, out of things. I 
 have learned the art of Appreciation. I am nearer to 
 my kind. And I have learned — blessed knowledge ! 
 — the philosophy of Life, as it respects me and mine. 
 Eureka ! I have found Him of whom Moses and the 
 prophets did write ; I have found how He comes to 
 man's soul, how He dwells, rules, guides, consoles, 
 how He suflSces. I have found the Way, the Truth, 
 the Life. 
 
 Fourteen years ago I prayed earnestly that He 
 would be my sole teacher, and show me the Way of 
 Life — that He would be the centre of all my studies, 
 all my motions ; and this balmy Saturday evening I 
 review the past, as Jacob did his fourteen years of 
 servitude. With my staff I crossed this Jordan ; now 
 I am become two bands. Wonderful guidance ! Blest 
 Angel of the Covenant, who has redeemed me from all 
 evil ! 
 
 More things are wrought by prayer 
 
 Than this world dreams of. 
 
 litn June 1860. 
 If you stop your diligence in writing to me because 
 you are afraid of being too personal, learn that you 
 labour under a mistake. I never did let this stop me 
 in writing to you, and (though I have, I trust, got past 
 certain phases of insideness) I never mean it to stop 
 me. It may not be good in books written for the 
 world to crowd in too much of the Ego, but I have 
 thought out the subject of private friendship, and I 
 
90 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1860 
 
 learn that one of its sweetest essences is the mutual 
 and unforbidden outpouring of the perilous stuff 
 which "haunts the worn heart and will not let it 
 rest " : — duets in the Psalm of Life. One nightingale 
 warbles in the moon-lighted dell — as Keats heard it 
 warble — sad, and long, and solemn, and penetrating, 
 like Ariel crying to the winds out of the compression 
 of the pine tree ; and, when the song is ended for the 
 time, a distant trill comes from a deeper grove. " And 
 
 I also — also — also " it begins, and light echoing 
 
 music-billows tumble against the silver crags, trickling 
 away in the gurgle of a hidden stream. 
 
 Of his mode of letter-writing he says : — 
 
 This way of "thinking aloud" is the only one in 
 which I can ever get along with friends, and I don't 
 want and won't have friends with whom I can't do 
 it. I have found within the last few years that it is 
 a " kill or cure " method. Some folks won't stand it. 
 They have themselves acquired the art of being careful 
 and measured, and think it highly derogatory to a 
 person's dignity to play the schoolboy, and swear and 
 vow and commit yourself to the mercy of other 
 people. They don't tell you much about the work- 
 ing of their own heart and life, but ask you if you 
 have read Silas Marner, and enter on a short criticism 
 of it, not half as good as you could read in a review, 
 when you ought to get a living letter from a living 
 friend. They will talk generals, when you want 
 particulars — about others, when you want to know 
 
1860 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 91 
 
 about themselves. These people are excellent people 
 often. They are respectable people, people to be 
 respected. You always do respect them ; you respect 
 them when you see them flirt off two specks of dust 
 from their waistcoat and see what a " clean shave " 
 they got in the morning, and how difficult it is to 
 get an impromptu opinion out of them, and how 
 their whole life seems one endeavour not to commit 
 themselves. 
 
 Well, as I was a- saying, this way of thinking 
 aloud is a kill or cure with them, and I have been 
 quietly dropped by a few of them, here and there, for 
 thinking aloud — 
 
 My manners have not that repose 
 That stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. 
 
 But I beg to go on thinking aloud though they have 
 gone out of earshot, and to remark that the caste of 
 Vere de Vere is very welcome to its repose, and then 
 when I find out by this patent method (of thinking 
 aloud) that they are the caste of Vere de Vere, it is a 
 great pleasure to leave them to their repose. They 
 shall sleep a hundred years, like the princess in the 
 nursery tale, in the sweet silence which is not broken 
 by the thin bugle of a gnat, and Mr. Spouter will not 
 be the fairy prince to awake them. 
 
 The ideal of a letter is that it should do on paper 
 just what you do after the little party is over, when 
 you poke the fire and spread the screen and mix the 
 I was going to say "toddy," but that has 
 
92 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM I860 
 
 such a bad sound ; let us say fclie sugar and water. 
 No, we won't say sugar and water, because there 
 must be the sly cigar unbeknown to the caste of 
 Vere de Vere, and no mortal Englishman could 
 smoke with eau sucrSe. What we will do is to give 
 an intelligent wink and pass on. 
 
 "When you mix the" — (wink here) — and get 
 into one of those moods that don't come every day, 
 the mood so well described in Longfellow's " Fire of 
 Driftwood," which you are to get down and read this 
 very minute before you go any further. When you 
 open your heart without fear of being misunderstood, 
 when you talk of yowrseli and listen with more eager- 
 ness for a corresponding voice from themselves — and 
 when, without swearing one another to secrecy, you 
 feel that the penates of the heart have been passing 
 to and fro between their secret chambers, as the 
 angels passed and repassed on the ladder of Jacob, 
 each with a soft forefinger on his lip ; and that these 
 mystic rites of friendship are most sacred, never to 
 be fully revealed except for some occasion of benefit 
 or service : — is not that the right notion of a letter, 
 as distinguished, I mean, from an order (for " a ton 
 of your best coals ") or a criticism (" By the way, 
 have you read the Essays and Reviews, etc.," and " I 
 fear the late Civil War in America is likely to prove 
 bloody work, etc.")? Starting from this conception, 
 letters become one of the prime blessings of life. 
 
 But how few such correspondents ! 
 
1860 LETTERS OE JAMES SMETHAM 93 
 
 To Mrs. STEWARD. 
 
 20<A Odoher 1860. 
 
 I INTENDED long before this to have written to 
 you again, but have been driven with business — a 
 new class of complaint with me. I am very glad 
 I gave you a picture, as it turned up, of the opposite 
 state of things, when I was buffeting with the waves. 
 
 Indeed I think it is a good thing when any one 
 will speak out what is befalling him, not in mystic 
 hints but in plain English. Then both he and his 
 friends will ultimately see " the Lord's dealing " (dear 
 old phrase), for He works through all ; and for Him, 
 and to Him, and through Him are all things, to whom 
 be glory for ever. Oftentimes it will be seen how 
 He delivers and guides. The 107th Psalm will be 
 found justiiied, and they will understand the loving- 
 kindness of the Lord. Whereas, when you only get 
 hints from which you cannot tell to a shade whether 
 the deponent has had the toothache, or a house on 
 fire, or has lost his silver spoons, you can neither 
 fully sympathise with him, nor learn much from him. 
 
 Did you ever read Isaac Taylor's Saturday Evening ? 
 In 1842 B. Gregory introduced it to me. What it 
 was all about I have forgotten, but not the deep 
 tranquil impression made by it — 
 
 Light 
 Which broods above the sunken sun, 
 And dwells in heaven half the night. 
 
 Still and vast with a plenitude — (Baby gives a 
 grunt and a kick in the cradle just as I was coming 
 
94 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1860 
 
 to something real stunning, and I have to stop and 
 rock, being all alone with him) — with a plenitude of 
 — of — amber light softening upwards towards the 
 purple night, star -strewn "through all the silent 
 spaces of the worlds," and enthroned on HelveUyn, 
 with a brow marble cold and marble calm — " the 
 Cherub Contemplation " — considering — considering 
 life and death and change and immortality — consider- 
 ing these things, not purblind, but with clear eyes 
 faithful to the truth, and seeing by the light of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 Well, that was Isaac Taylor's Saturday evening, 
 and this is mine ; and for many years every Saturday 
 evening I have felt just like that, "In the beginning 
 of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first 
 day of the week." 
 
 " My dawning is begun," like the Jews' dawning, 
 the evening before. 
 
 So that if Mr. Chitty, the gardener, didn't come 
 in to talk away an hour why woman was made from 
 a rib in preference to any other bone ; if I hadn't 
 promised Mr. Shaw his etching, and to call on brother 
 Paul (not of Tarsus, but of Spenser Road, Albert 
 Town) ; if I had not to post accounts in re-etchingibus, 
 or ideas in my big parchment book to keep them for 
 use, if all and several such hindrances did not strew 
 all the way, there is no knowing what long letters I 
 should get written to all my dear friends, you among 
 the number; for then the sense of benignity and 
 regard, outgoing and unrestrained, is always very 
 
1860 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 95 
 
 strong upon me, lying like deep waters — a tidal sway 
 of affection — " of pure ablution round earth's human 
 shores " ; and it is one of the most delicious feelings 
 on earth. As Saturday evening is to the coming 
 Sabbath, so is this feeling to the coming heaven. 
 
 I have had some kind letters from Ruskin, one 
 giving me leave to print anywhere or anyhow any 
 opinion he may have expressed about my work in 
 private letters, in bits, or wholes, or how I like, and 
 concluding by a very characteristic sentence : "I 
 never wrote a private letter to any human being 
 which I would not let a bill-sticker chalk up six 
 feet high on Hyde Park wall, and stand myself in 
 Piccadilly and say ' I said it.' " Isn't that " spirity,'' 
 but is it not also very grand 1 I wish I could say as 
 much. He says he is "proud to class me among his 
 best friends." 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 I HAVE been thinking lately of the set-ofTs against 
 a painter's difficulties, which are greater to him 
 because of his structure — 
 
 Cords that vibrate sweetest pleasure 
 Thrill the deepest notes of woe. 
 
 1. He is less than many dependent on money for 
 happiness and supply ; " His mind to him a kingdom 
 is," and if he can pay his way, and his wife and 
 children not want the ordinary comforts of life, 
 money can do next to nothing for him. He would 
 rather walk than ride, rather dine plainly than 
 
96 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1860 
 
 delicately, dress plainly than finely. A few books 
 are all lie wants. A sixpenny sketch-book and a 
 lead pencil set him up at once, and in a new colour- 
 box he sees the wealth of Ormus concealed. He 
 " makes the heaven he cannot find." His belongings 
 are not too narrow; they are too vast for him. 
 Park Lane and the peep into the New River give 
 the combinations of Paradise (Eow),i etc. etc. 
 
 2. Nobody expects him to be rich. Some even 
 think it a degradation if he care for money at all. 
 All good society concedes him an upper seat at the 
 board, which a large fortune does not open to the 
 mere man of money. So that, in fact, solvency is to 
 him equal to two thousand a year. 
 
 The following notes may be interesting on the works of 
 painters, then comparatively little known to the public. 
 ' ' Edward Jones " is Mr. Burne Jones. 
 
 24ft March 1860. 
 
 A LETTER from Eossetti. He is coming to see us 
 before long. He has some fine things at the Hogarth 
 Club, to which he gave me a ticket. There is a man 
 there, Edward Jones, whose work you would like 
 amazingly. There is a tall cabinet, seven feet high, 
 designed and painted by him from Chaucer, the 
 legend of the little boy whom the Jews murdered, 
 but who would go on singing "Alma redemptoris, 
 evermore," till some saint, or somebody, put a grain 
 
 ^ Paradise Row adjoins Park Lane at Stoke Newington, where 
 he was then living. 
 
1860 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 97 
 
 of wheat on his tongue. It might have been done 
 by Giotto, only Giotto could not have done it near 
 so well. Rossetti has Dante and Beatrice in Paradise ; 
 a glorious thing. The sky is gilt, the name is put 
 on scrolls {^ Ilortus Eden ') in the sky, and the names 
 are written near the heads. The background is a 
 rich rose hedge, with birds of Paradise pecking roses, 
 and nestling, and singing birds singing lustily. There 
 is a floor of tall buttercups, hyacinths, and lilies, 
 among which the five figures are treading ankle deep. 
 Coloured calm, " above all pain, all passion, and all 
 pride,'' reigns in the atmosphere. There they walk 
 in knowledge, love, and beauty evermore. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 May 1860. 
 
 As to the Academy, I have not much to say. The 
 picture that fascinates me most is " Pegwell Bay " 
 by Dyce. It is great and solemn in its truth and 
 simplicity. There is also a classic dream of Danby's, 
 a sea of emerald and silver, with silver morning, and 
 blue Apollo and his horses, and Venus born from the 
 foam, and a blue mountain altar with its smoke from 
 fire kindled, whether by mariner or shepherd who 
 knows or wants to know as it wreathes upward 
 among the radiant cirri that seem to have leaped 
 from the anvil of the East in silver sparks over 
 the silver sea — such seas as are seen from "magic 
 casements" "in faery lands forlorn" — such seas as 
 roll in reverie on coral rocks, when we have forgotten 
 H 
 
98 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1860 
 
 that men eat one another, and only think that nymphs 
 and tritons lie among the shells on the glistening 
 sands. Ah ! it is good to have seen Danby's waves 
 roll in on that light and lovely shore. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 Htthb, 9th July 1860. 
 
 I WISH you were down here with us. Just six 
 years ago on our wedding trip we were at Eastbourne 
 with the Boltons and their four children, now we are 
 here. We are spread into bands. We have taken a 
 house and the cook thereunto belonging (for Bolton 
 likes his servants to enjoy the seaside as much as 
 they do), so we have plenty of fun with the children 
 and no trouble. So you see we are as nicely fixed 
 as we could desire ; only if you were with us we 
 should be fixed nicer-er. 
 
 Since I came down I have been trying to find 
 something in the way of worry to overcome by 
 " consideration," but I declare I can't ; and so I am 
 obliged to confess the fact. We cannot reasonably 
 be uneasy about money matters now ; and as we are 
 all in health and at peace, it would be wrong not 
 to be very thankful and content. And yet in the 
 multitude of my thoughts within me it has been 
 "borne in on my mind " that one may give an aspect 
 of too self-sufficient contentment to one's historic life. 
 There are so few who are at peace, who are satisfied, 
 who are truly happy, that it is grating to their feel- 
 ings to inform them that you have no sorrow or 
 
1860 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 99 
 
 trouble to share with them, that you have become 
 independent of sympathy ; that your mountain stands 
 strong. I have had this thought even in regard to 
 spiritual peace and rest. It seems little comfort to 
 others to tell them of your joy, vrhile perhaps they 
 are yearning and striving after repose which does not 
 come. It often comes back on one's mind as if it 
 were selfish. But I have thought this last difficulty 
 pretty well out, and conclude that as such peace is 
 not the product of skill, or labour, or thought, but a 
 divine gift, free for all who seek it in the right way, 
 it would be wrong not to announce it. 
 
 It is of no use for Maurice and the like to taunt 
 (as it appears to me he does in his refined and power- 
 ful style) those who affect to attain personal fellowship 
 and adoption into the family of God, as if it were a 
 narrow and presumptuous claim of special goodness 
 and special favour. I reply in my own heart that 
 the objection is not only unfair, but positively 
 childish. I think that as the well-being of a nation 
 is the aggregate of individual weal — of family welfare 
 — so the happy church (in which he would, seemingly, 
 have all believers, somehow, I cannot see how, lose 
 their identity) is the host of happy souls — of pure 
 souls. And I think the more intensely each member 
 of that church realises his own relation to God, the 
 more expansiveness will his religion have. 
 
 Yesterday went a walk with Bolton's young ones ; 
 took sketch-book ; drew flowers by the way. 
 
 There are two ways of sketching. One is pic- 
 
100 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM I860 
 
 turesque sketching, which gets pretty effects ; the 
 other is knowledge sketching, which draws things 
 with their constructive elements — the petals, the 
 calyx, the stem, the leaf, which thus recognises 
 classiiication and knows what is what. I don't mean 
 botany, for I have not got to that yet, but that kind 
 of order which links one summer to another and 
 makes you remember the yellow -horned poppy of 
 six years ago, and makes you see that English-flower 
 elements are not endless so far as they concern the 
 poetic charm of your English country walks. It is 
 the " wild briar and the vine and the twisted eglan- 
 tine " ; it is the cowslip and the daisy and the butter- 
 cup and the clover and the wild geranium, and the 
 one o'clock that you puff away with your breath ; it 
 is the dog-rose and the feathery grasses — things that 
 dwell everywhere, have a recognised prominence and 
 predominance ; it is these that subdue you and haunt 
 you, and not the things that you put in a hortus 
 siccus and label with names that you would hate to 
 learn if the knowledge of them didn't make you seem 
 somebody. 
 
 If you are out on a serious working expedition 
 take the picturesque mode of working, and make 
 pretty landscapes. But if you are idling for health, 
 do these fragments that will breathe out of your 
 uote-books in winter-tide, and bring back the lanes 
 and fields to you when you are far from them. 
 
 I am reading Bulwer's Harold. One of the best 
 ballads of the sort I ever read is one towards the 
 
1860 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 101 
 
 beginning of the book about "Rollo the Norman," 
 sung by TaiUefer at a feast. 
 
 Your theory of poetry-making is a good one. It 
 is singular that only a few days before your descrip- 
 tion came I was thinking that if ever I was taken 
 poetical again I would write it in prose first, but as 
 to the rest I rarely alter anything. Having got the 
 substance and sentiment before me, I can't put down 
 a word till I have got the right one — as far as I can 
 grasp the right one. So it is very slow work. So 
 usually, when written I can't mend it, because I have 
 done my best. 
 
 What a strange demand is that which an idea 
 makes now and then, which won't let you rest tiU 
 you have written it in poetry ! 
 
 Have you seen Mrs. Browning's poem in Cornhill 
 Magazine for July, with Leighton's very fine drawing 
 of Pan ? It is as fine as if Keats had drawn it. 
 
 KiNGSLEY says he gave up his Professorship of 
 History at Oxford because he could only make out 
 history to be one long tissue of lies. That at least 
 is a credible fact. Yet we must amuse our imagina- 
 tions, and if we keep believing the opposite of an 
 historical fact we shall keep near enough to the truth 
 for all practical purposes. "In much wisdom is 
 much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge 
 increaseth sorrow." Nay, there is nothing like 
 living beings and the thing that is. "A living dog 
 is better than a dead lion." N. Hawthorne said, 
 
102 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1860 
 
 when he saw the British Museum Library, " Let us 
 burn them all and begin again." How to hit the 
 truth between these two moods, the book mood and 
 the life-mood is the question. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 25ft September 1860. 
 
 Spent the morning with Eossetti. His " Marriage 
 of St. George " is one of the grandest things, like a 
 golden, dim dream. Love "credulous all gold," gold 
 armour, a sense of secret enclosure in "palace 
 chambers far apart " ; but quaint chambers in quaint 
 palaces where angels creep in through sliding panel 
 doors, and stand behind rows of flowers, drumming 
 on golden bells, with wings crimson and green. 
 
 There was also a queer remnant of a dragon's head 
 which he had brought up in a box (for supper 
 possibly) with its long, red, arrowy tongue lolling 
 out so comically, and the glazed eye which somehow 
 seemed to wink at the spectator, as much as to say, 
 " Do you believe in St. George and the Dragon 1 If 
 you do, I don't. But do you think we mean nothing, 
 the man in gold and 1 1 Either way I pity you my 
 friend." 
 
 Did I tell you that Ruskin has given me a com- 
 mission to etch from Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," 
 a large Bacchante's Head, at my leisure ? 
 
 A letter to Eossetti on the same subject as the above may be 
 given here, though not in the order of date — 
 
1861 LETTEKS OF JAMES SMETHAM 103 
 
 To D. G. R. 
 
 8th December 1865. 
 
 Your Saint Georges and Sir G-alahads are almost 
 the only modern pictures of heroes that reach the 
 Christian ideal, in my judgment, as to expression. 
 Not to be invidious in naming artists, the modern 
 knight is a proud, vain, truculent rascal. Yours are 
 "renewed in the spirit of their minds " — couldn't do 
 a mean or wrong thing — ^fear nothing and nobody, 
 but would not hurt a fly or strike an unnecessary 
 blow. So I greatly esteem and respect them. 
 
 And falling in with modern life and thought one 
 can well look on the George and Dragon idea as a 
 good allegory of the war of Christianity against that 
 old dragon the devil, and not exclude even a certain 
 grotesque element. For though often Satan dismays 
 the individual Christian, Christianity is so sure of 
 the rout, seizure, and destruction of the dragon that 
 (as in Luther, and many men with wit and fancy as 
 well as piety) the war is conducted with a sort of 
 mockery in the assured expectation of victory. 
 Christianity is not in the least ashamed of its rams' 
 horns, and lamps and pitchers, and all that abases the 
 pride of man and exalts the power of God. So 
 Georges and Dragons are charming in their place 
 and way. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 7th January 1861 (5.40 p.m.) 
 
 Been down to the end of Church Street to get a 
 blow before settling for the evening. A sublime sort 
 
104 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1861 
 
 of evening — windy, vast, with wild clouds and great 
 spreads of mournful light where the sun had been, 
 clearing away for a while into a starry purple dome, 
 with the Pleiades and Orion and the Great Bear and 
 the Galaxy, a sight that makes man feel his immor- 
 tality and his littleness more than perhaps any other. 
 As I went Mr. Clissold's house in the dark park had 
 a curious gleam on it, a phosphoric light from the 
 west that made one think of ghosts, and across the 
 pale amber two or three dark, almdst black, little 
 clouds drove slanting-like collapsing balloons. Against 
 this western screen the trees showed their leafless 
 fringes, and a bend of the New River lay gloomy and 
 blue beneath them. 
 
 Winds were blowiDg, waters flowing, 
 We heard the steeds to battle going, 
 
 Oriana, 
 And the hollow bugle blowing, 
 
 Oriana. 
 
 To Mrs. Taylor he writes : — 
 
 Many best wishes to you at the beginning of 1861. 
 I hope it may be the happiest year of your life, as I 
 think each succeeding year of everybody's life should 
 be, if only everybody were wise enough to see things 
 as they are ; for it is certain that there really exists, 
 laid up and ready to hand, for those who will just 
 lay hands upon it, enough for every one and enough 
 for ever. 
 
 I am quite sure that the central mistake of all 
 lives that are mistaken is the not taking this simple 
 
1861 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 105 
 
 unchangeable fact for granted, not seeing that it is so, 
 and cannot but be so, and will remain so " though we 
 believe not." A man in prison, with a signed and 
 sealed permission to leave it and walk at liberty lying 
 on the table beside him, untouched, unopened, yet 
 bemoaning himself and unhappy in his cell, is just the 
 image of us unbelievers who have even a fragment 
 of unhappiness about us. I think I can trace every 
 scrap of sorrow in my own life to this simple unbelief. 
 How could I be anything but quite happy if I believed 
 always that all the past is forgiven and all the present 
 furnished with power, and all the future bright with 
 hope, because of the same abiding facts, which don't 
 change with my mood, do not crumble, because I 
 totter and stagger at the promise through unbelief, 
 but stand firm and clear with their peaks of pearl 
 cleaving the air of Eternity, and the bases of their 
 hUls rooted unfathomably in the Rock of God 1 
 
 Mont Blanc does not become a phantom or a mist 
 because a climber grows dizzy on its sides, and yet 
 we make mistakes just as great as if we fancied, being 
 climbers, that it did. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 (Saturday night). SOth March 1861. 
 
 Been a walk along the Lower Eoad, Islington, 
 among the grocers' shops. Man, getting bald, look- 
 ing so respectable among his cannisters that I stood 
 and stared at him. He thought I was admiring his 
 shop and should become a customer ; deluded man ! 
 
106 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1861 
 
 Watched a man with two candles wrapped in brown 
 paper to give a better light — very ingenious — with 
 an old tea-tray for a table, making toasting forks. 
 Honest nice man, liked that man ; scrubby looking, 
 but honoured him. I honoured him more than the 
 respectable grocer, though I have no doubt he is a nice 
 man, and have a great respect for him, and his coffee 
 smelt very fragrant ; and if I had not money enough 
 to be a grocer I would make toasting forks. Do you 
 think I feel myself above that? Then you are 
 mistaken. I know that either you or I, if need be, 
 could wrap our two candles in brown paper, trudge 
 out with our old dirty tea-tray with all the paint 
 gone off long since, set the two candles aflaring, and 
 begin to twist toasting forks in the sight of the 
 public ; and then when our fingers ached, hold up 
 the forks, big and little, and with a contented, quiet, 
 experienced, husky voice, say, " One penny ; large 
 fork only twopence; tobacco stopper, one penny." 
 Only take care to wrap up well, for the sake of our 
 family and society ; for neither the one nor the other 
 could do without our toasting forks. I know another 
 man who would do the same thing, and be extra 
 cheerful over it : and that man is John Euskin ; 
 and whether a man would do such a thing and not 
 whine over it, if he were put to it, is one of the best 
 ways of estimating a man. 
 
 I wish you had been with me. I know your heart 
 so well in some directions, and am sure that it is filled 
 often with the 
 
1861 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 107 
 
 Sweet, sad music of humanity, 
 
 Not harsh or grating, but of ample power 
 
 To chasten and subdue. 
 
 There can be no more refreshing thing than such 
 a walk after a hard day's home-work, especially at a 
 peculiar class of pursuits. You are taken out of your- 
 self by seeing how many kinds of work and styles of 
 mind and ways of living there are in the world ; and 
 how honest, and hearty, and genial, and heroic, some 
 old dirty, fudgy people are. I wish I could be certain 
 that they were all going to heaven. Some of them are, 
 and I thank God on their behalf. I have a world of 
 such meditations about old rheumatic chaps that I 
 have known long years ago, whom I have met in 
 prayer-meetings, men "despised and rejected of men," 
 and not noticed in the thoroughfares of life, but dear 
 to God. It is a comfort to me to know that lots of 
 them have gone to God. Two such old men have 
 gone from our little society here at Stoke Newington. 
 One sold a bit of tea, and had a little pension, and stag- 
 gered along in June days with a tendency to hernia, 
 and prayed as if he had a fortune of ten thousand a 
 year, and were the man best off in the world, and 
 arrayed like Solomon. The other sold brushes in a 
 decent shop, and used to lead the singing in the prayer- 
 meetings in a way to craze a sensitive person, and he 
 prayed like a good old muff ; but he was one of those 
 who lasted out, a "Class Leader" 50 years; only 
 think ! 
 
 And now he is past all his sorrows and ignorance, 
 
108 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1861 
 
 beyond your thought and mine. These old men, I 
 notice, always die grandly. They don't talk much. 
 They say, " I am willing to stay or willing to go, and 
 I have peace with God," and that is about all you can 
 get out of them. They dread their grave as little as 
 their bed. 
 
 The following refers to his constant habit of drawing all he 
 read ; " Squaring," as he termed it. (See Memoir.) 
 
 The comparison in judging of my books should 
 never be between them and good art ; but between 
 them and nothing ; for that is Just it. When I con- 
 sider that many of the facts and ideas that passed 
 through my mind, say ten years ago, would by this 
 time have vanished utterly, I do think it is better to 
 have lame ghosts of them which can be brought to life 
 than no memorial at all. 
 
 I stayed as well as I could in my rapid years-long 
 camel ride through the desert, or by Elim when at rest, 
 and I built my rude monuments, and often since then 
 have I revisited what otherwise would have perished 
 utterly ; revisited them, pouring the oil of joy on the 
 shapeless stone in which I saw my thought as Michael 
 Angelo in his marble saw hidden the gigantic shapes 
 of Night and Day, though to others they look even 
 now like cairns in which rude fanciful resemblances to 
 human life may be traced by ingenious eyes. So in a 
 beetling coast-rock picnic parties are shown, as one of 
 the sights, the enormous head of "the Old Duke," 
 staring like Cortez stared at the Paciiic. 
 
1861 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 109 
 
 Depend upon it, that in many of those old illumi- 
 nated books, done by pious monks, ages ago, in retired 
 abbeys staijding silent among the corn-seas, there are 
 wrought into the borders of the gospels and other 
 books the whole life and soul and history of the men 
 who did them; but tenderly veiled. I trust that under 
 the lig leaves of the margin God saw many a Nathaniel 
 at his orisonSj and that where imopened eyes now only 
 see idle wanderings of pure crimson, gold, and purple, 
 there flowed rivers of thought that divided the plains 
 of veUum, hiding in their " dimpling coves " the 
 triumph or the hope, or the care, or the dark and 
 twisted temptations to which I fear those too solitary 
 souls, warm with humanity which no whips could tame 
 or water drown or quench, were often exposed. 
 
 To me an illuminated book is a mystery, like the 
 Microcosm. I am sure, by the mode of their inven- 
 tions, by the subtlety of their imagery, by the sensi- 
 tiveness to natural Fact and Being shown in their 
 imitations, that they could not avoid finding out the 
 fundamental principles of Monumentalism, and that 
 more is meant than meets the eye. People wonder at 
 their patience. Ah ! they would not wonder if they 
 knew how in a remote corner of a crowded page there 
 may be trivial forms that ring out to the mental ear 
 like huge golden bells in the eternal chime — to Jerome 
 striving to rise from the mastery of all human passion 
 into the thrice-purged heavenly passion of Christian 
 love for Paulina, loosed from, or at least striving to 
 shake off, all the "chains of sense." I JcTimv that 
 
110 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1861 
 
 many of those pages were done in a bewitching dream, 
 with eyes full of the dew of hopeless love. I know 
 that those female faces — those angels in the borders — 
 lived in castles within sight of abbeys in the vales. 
 I know that the silent painter-monk saw the vision of 
 the lady in the convent chapel. I know that though 
 his lips moved in paternosters, and though his beads 
 fell steadily through his fingers, that the power of 
 beauty enthralled his eye and imagination, and that 
 for days after he muttered in green and purple and 
 gold to the Eternal Silence. 
 
 1 WENT to Gilchrist's ^ on Saturday. Found him 
 living next door to Carlyle, and to be an intimate 
 friend of his. The day before he had gone with C. 
 to hear Euskin lecture at the Royal Institution. 
 (Carlyle kept inquiring the time every ten mimutes, 
 and at last said, " I think he ought to give over now"). 
 Ruskin is a favourite of his, or he would not have 
 gone at all, for he hates art in reality; but R. sent 
 him a ticket. Gilchrist and several others we heard 
 of thought the lecture a failure ; but C. would not add 
 the weight of his opinion to this, whatever he might 
 think. G. seems to be a nice fellow, and very fond 
 of art. 
 
 1861. 
 
 I HAVE read several interesting books lately. Bos- 
 well's Tour to the Sehides is one of the joUiest books 
 that can be ; like nothing so much as having been 
 ' A. Gilchrist, tlie biographer of Etty and Blalce. 
 
1861 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 111 
 
 there along with Dr. Johnson and him. I am enjoy- 
 ing Carlyle's French Revolviion just now ; a singular 
 book, but very interesting, and so full of fancy and 
 humour and reflection of the oddest kind that it is 
 unlike any other history. It is all prelude so far ; 
 but the prelude is portentous, and he makes you feel 
 it to be so : " Distress of nations, with preplexity, the 
 sea and the waves roaring." He presents through 
 gaps, again and again, the image of the 25,000,000 of 
 France, till it haunts you as the sea haunts you ; and 
 each time the swell and the trouble of it seems 
 greater, and you cannot but feel that such a tempest 
 as never brewed before is labouring up. 
 
 The wrong of centuries can not be revoked, and as 
 you watch financier after financier build up his hope- 
 less schemes, and see them rattle down, you can't help 
 mocking with the rest. 
 
 The red clouds — " dragonish " — mount all round 
 the horizon ; and what can avert the crimson rain 
 which will soon drive over land and sea ? for, "There 
 is sorrow on the sea, it cannot be quiet." — Jeremiah. 
 
 I OFTEN impersonate the Heavenly Wisdom to 
 myself as a pure and beautiful woman, fresh, and 
 sweet, and soft, and radiant, and strong, who has a 
 mystic embrace for those who will be enamoured of 
 her. I find imagination to be a great help to re- 
 ligion. The Bible encourages me in this more than 
 any book in the world ; and often, when the accus- 
 tomed fm-ms of truth grow less attractive, or when 
 
112 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1861 
 
 the pressure of moral responsibility becomes intense, 
 the bright wand of the ideal transfigures in endless 
 directions truth on truth. And so a strong refresh- 
 ment comes to the soul by that very agency which 
 in past years I have often been led to regard as an 
 enemy. 
 
 To Mks. hall. 
 
 July 1861. 
 
 " To save a soul " : I can't somehow realise the 
 
 idea that / should ever be so honoured of God. To 
 
 save my own soul, and wear through the long fight 
 
 without losing my own crown, and without bringing 
 
 disgrace on the cause of Christ, these have seemed 
 
 the limit of my hope. I can go on working ; I can 
 
 sow a little ; I can add my labour to the heap in hope 
 
 that among other agencies I may help rather than 
 
 retard the work of Christ. But to "save a soul," as 
 
 the direct result of my own direct effort, has scarce 
 
 ever entered into my contemplation. I shall be glad 
 
 if both he that soweth and he that reapeth rejoice 
 
 together. Though " a son in the gospel " must be a 
 
 pleasant relationship. 
 
 [I transcribed the above this morning, 8th August 1889. 
 This evening Mrs. S. called. She said, ' ' I never had the 
 pleasure of knowing Mr. Smetham, but I have heard so much 
 of him since I came to Stoke Newington that I feel as if he 
 were a personal friend. There is scarcely a social meeting held 
 in Green Lanes but his name is mentioned. At a Love feast a 
 few Sabbath evenings since, a gentleman said, ' I shall praise 
 God to all eternity that I was ever led to Mr. Smetham's class, 
 I owe all the good I have to his teaching and inilueuce.' " — 
 S. S.] 
 
1861 LETTERS OF JAMES SMBTHAM 113 
 
 2Srd Aug. 1861. 
 
 Painted three and a half hours in the morning at 
 Caedmon. The sense of urgency would make me 
 overwork myself, as Haydon used to do. I know it 
 won't do. A few days' good work would be done, 
 and then would come that ineffable disgust which 
 would sap all strength out of mind and nerves, and 
 make me hate the sight or thought of a picture. 
 Five hours a day is as much as any but iron men can 
 do safely ; and yet artists are just the men to get 
 roused to the utmost at times, by the sense of imper- 
 ative action. 
 
 Religion helps me greatly here. The large views 
 of the gospel, the high hopes, the deep consolations, 
 enable me to master myself even when I should be 
 carried away by what seems a praiseworthy stimulus. 
 "Grodliness is profitable for all things" : profitable to 
 direct. 
 
 2ith Aug. 
 
 Such a sky ! Such films and threads of infinite 
 tenuity ! Such flat roofs of cirri, lying high up in 
 perspective, beyond the reach of science ! Euskin's 
 "don't know," in the last volume about clouds, is 
 very manly and noble after his " spouterism " in the 
 first volume of Modern Painters on the same subject. 
 There he spoke as if he had "entered into the 
 Springs of the Sea"; "walked in search of the 
 Depth"; "seen the treasures of the Snow, the 
 treasures of the Hail," and " by which way the light 
 is parted," and "the way for the lightning of 
 I 
 
114 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1861 
 
 thunder," and knew whether the " rain had a father, 
 and who had begotten the drops of dew and had 
 numbered the clouds of heaven." 
 
 I love him more for the subdued, reverential, re- 
 nunciatory tone of his last writings, which come not 
 from less knowledge but more wisdom. 
 
 As the sun dropped, these long ranks which 
 might have been the immeasurably distant effect of 
 an army of " mailed angels on a battle day," all took 
 a purple and scarlet fire ; but I had to leave them 
 before they acquired, what I was sure they would 
 have before long, a sort of metallic lustre dark and 
 flowing. 
 
 Sunday, mth Nov. 1861. 
 
 Thoroughly enjoyed the Sabbath. The total 
 and enforced change cleared my head of the finishing 
 touches of my paragraphs in the Essay ^ which would 
 follow me, as 
 
 Bells say ding to bells that answer dong. 
 
 ROSSETTI. 
 
 The night was cold and wild, and the fire looked 
 so comfortable after chapel as I enjoyed my cigar and 
 the sweet repose of thought till bedtime, full of 
 thanksgiving for " all the way in which the Lord has 
 led me." 
 
 Monday, 6.30. 
 
 Monumentalising the historical introduction to 
 Eossetti's Early Italian Poets, friends of Dante ; de- 
 
 ^ This refers to Ms Article on Religious Art in England, published 
 in the London Qnarterly Review. 
 
1861 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 115 
 
 licious work. E.'s sketch is good strong common 
 sense ■writing, without a touch of oddity or of ex- 
 travagance, and very intelligent. 
 
 There is a beautiful clear sketch of the life of Guido 
 Cavalcanti, evidently a great gun in Florence in the 
 days of Dante, rich, learned, handsome, polite, dis- 
 dainful, studious, solitary : a man whose society all 
 coveted, and of whom all anecdotes were acceptable : 
 one of the subjects of the Boccaccio's Tales. It is 
 pleasant to see the dark lantern's level ray thrown 
 on " The night of Time " to illuminate some solitary 
 ghostly passenger who moves from the uncertain 
 gloom on one hand to the impenetrable oblivion on 
 the other, across a track of solid life which he has 
 made for himself by a poem, or a picture, or a bene- 
 volent or brave deed. 
 
 To Mr. J. F. HALL on the death of Mr. Thos. Farmer 
 of Gunuersbury. 
 
 1861. 
 
 I HEARD on Sunday evening from Dr. Osborn that 
 your grandfather was gone. I had previously posted 
 a scrap of letter to you, which, if you get it, I hope 
 you will put by till some time when it will be more 
 congenial. 
 
 The immediate presence of death makes outward 
 things seem very small and unimportant, and the 
 ordinary gossip of life tame and sapless. It is well 
 that it does, for we often need to be carried nearer 
 the borderland, and see how we hasten there our- 
 selves. I am glad, however, that in ymr household 
 
116 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1861 
 
 death will not come, as it does in too many, a dark 
 surprise when its real presence is felt there. The 
 certainty and importance of death is one of the 
 elements in the problem of life to all believers. The 
 way in which we look at it will be to each of us a 
 good test of the whole of our mental and moral 
 organisation and training. To many Christians, even, 
 it comes very cheerlessly when it invades their homes. 
 It is hard to judge of others, though, by this test, 
 however serviceable it may be to ourselves. We 
 must not suppose faith to be too low, or to be absent, 
 where the reality of death presses heavily and gloomily 
 at times. Even John Fletcher murmured now and 
 then in his last hours, " The cold grave, the cold 
 grave ! " and very great and good people, with much 
 forethought and outlooking into the future, feel deeply 
 awed and humbled by the very remembrance of death. 
 It is of itself so very obscure and mysterious. Life 
 ceases so silently. The soul passes so utterly from 
 the senses of the survivors, and in the unanswering 
 pathetic decadence of " the remains " we feel so 
 baffled. We have no power over those we loved most. 
 They will slide away from us, and all our force of 
 will and ingenuity is nothing to the calm, inexorable 
 wasting of our friends and lovers and acquaintance 
 into darkness. I have in one of my books a memorial 
 sketch of Quintilian with his wife and three children 
 all dead beside him. All his quiet philosophic studies, 
 so sweet for years with the "placens uxor" and the 
 dear children, are broken in upon by a mystic death 
 
1861 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 117 
 
 that he cannot dispute with, and cannot see ; and he 
 is lifting his hand impotently and declaring that a 
 man could not be a man who did not curse those gods 
 and that Fate who sit behind the scene of mortality 
 and do all this to him. 
 
 Oh how precious does that intangible faith (as real 
 though as invisible as death) become in the presence 
 of death ! What peace can there be in death, either 
 to the dying, or the witnesses of it, but that which 
 comes from the possession of faith 1 There may be 
 Stoicism, but not Peace. " I know that he shall rise 
 again.'' Do you indeed? How do you know it? 
 Jfou have seen death often ; have you seen a resurrec- 
 tion ? If you kTiow that he shall rise again, you are a 
 believer ; for here there is no proof but Faith. How 
 blessed is he that believes ! Every portion of faith is 
 precious, from the first dawning recognition of God 
 to the "full assurance of faith." It is a comfortable 
 thought that Christ dieth no more and that He will 
 bring with Him those who sleep in Him ; and how 
 comfortable it ought to be to those who knew and 
 loved your grandfather, that as he shared in the 
 fellowship of Christ's sufierings, so now he has taken 
 his seat in Christ's rest. If we know this only by 
 faith, yet we do know it ; and this fact, carefully 
 entertained and treasured, ought from this time to be 
 constantly at work on our moral nature. The death 
 of a good man is precious in ten thousand ways, 
 precious to God, for He knows, as we cannot, what 
 is in store when the probation is faithfully and safely 
 
118 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1862 
 
 passed, and when the proved soul has entered through 
 the gates into the City ; but it is also most precious 
 to those who remain. No one can be the same after 
 the death of one very near to them ; they will either 
 be much better or much worse, and surely then, when 
 the hand of God is stretched out to resume a soul, 
 the ear of God is very near and very open, and His 
 voice very clear in saying, " What can I do for thee ? " 
 He waits then for some very earnest response ; and if 
 ever men may ask for some good thing, if ever they 
 are in the right temper for asking, it is then. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 2Uh Marclh 1862. 
 EoMNEY, the painter, a man far superior to 
 Reynolds in native poetic power, was originally a 
 cabinetmaker in Kendal, where he painted portraits 
 with success, and married, and had two sons. He 
 came to London, leaving them to be sent for when 
 he had made his way. He achieved fame and fortune, 
 and never sent for his wife for thirty-seven years ! 
 When he was old and helpless he returned to her, 
 and she nursed him till he died. He was the friend 
 of Cowper the poet, and of Flaxman the sculptor. I 
 know how it was : " This country wife would ruin 
 everything : how could I have her here and keep her 
 bottled up? and how could I present her? Fancy 
 Lady Hamilton having a talk with her ! Fancy me, 
 with these deep, classic, thronging conceptions. Titanic 
 glimpses "of nature and the passions, presenting a 
 
1862 LETTEKS OF JAMBS SMBTHAM 119 
 
 ' missus ' who says, ' Yes mum ' and ' No mum,' and 
 calls me ' Our George ! ' " Here was a case where 
 pride carried with it the shame of sense, and substi- 
 tuting one word for the other it suggests the line — 
 
 The crime of sense Ijecame 
 The crime of malice, and w^s equal blame. 
 
 I HAVE been to the Exhibition of the British Artists 
 this afternoon. I can't say that I saw any very good 
 work, though there were some decent pictures. The 
 two best little things (by Provis) were actually stuck 
 away in corners on the floor. I felt not disinclined 
 to go to the man at the secretary's table (as he was a 
 little one) and pull his ears, as the representative of 
 the body. I could scarcely have believed such a piece 
 of malevolent injustice without seeing it with my own 
 eyes. I greatly dislike exhibitions — scarcely ever love 
 painting less than when I am in them. They are, no 
 doubt, necessary evils, for sales could not be effected 
 very well without them ; nor could the public, as such, 
 get well acquainted with their country's art, but the 
 incongruity of the swarms of ideas thrust on the eye 
 at once, and the occasion they give to petty jealousy 
 and passions, take half the charm from them. But 
 it was not always so. How well do I remember in 
 1844 the first sight of Collins's pictures and others. 
 I remember half wondering if I should live till the 
 doors were open and I could get a fair sight. The 
 picture I then saw of Collins's is now, I am thankful 
 to say, in the South Kensington collection — the " Sea- 
 
120 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1862 
 
 ford," with the cloud shadows chasing each other on 
 the windy sands, and the lovely group of children 
 in the foreground. 
 
 To F. J. S. 
 After a good day's work perambulated the neigh- 
 bourhood till 9 P.M. How wonderful are the new 
 streets ! The whole business of such a walk is enough 
 for two volumes of a Middlemarch tale. The mere 
 effects are grand — the black field beyond the lamps 
 with the mystic white old houses ; the wild light and 
 shade in gardens from varied lights ; the steady stars 
 as of old up above ; the new shops — new ventures in 
 the " grocery line," the " confectionery line,'' the 
 fruiterer in a fair way of doing well ; the solemn old 
 men smoking in the dusk, come from no one knows 
 where ; young married folk setting up housekeeping 
 on very little a year, yet with notions of being " above 
 some folks.'' The interest is profound and endless. 
 A slow walk in a neighbourhood both old and new — 
 stopping, prowling, poking — is a wonderful thing. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 21st December 1862. 
 
 It is a windy morning, and the grass is driven to 
 the earth on the bank. These changes in the weather 
 are influential over some folks' thoughts. That poem 
 in "In Memoriam," about the rooks blown about the 
 skies, and 
 
 I scarce could bear the strain and stir 
 That makes the barren branches loud, 
 
1862 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 121 
 
 is a valuable contribution to the natural history of 
 sensitive people. The elements seem to make sport 
 of the surface of thought, just as they do with grass 
 and reeds and little pools, and brooks and garden plots. 
 
 I got your letter last night. I wish' you would 
 believe that the most trivial detail of your life is 
 deeply interesting to me. I set you an example by 
 giving you what is uppermost always ; whether it be 
 etching or painting, or visiting, or grumbling, or bad 
 temper, or anything. This is the only way to keep 
 on writing letters. If we have to escape from our 
 present mood and engrossing thoughts in order to write 
 a letter, writing becomes a pain and a difficulty. The 
 personality of a letter is one of its commendations. 
 
 Life is indeed blessed. All the outward success in 
 the world could not produce the feeling I had last 
 night after a service led by Mr. C. Taylor. Such 
 sweet and fresh emotions dwelt in me as I could not 
 describe. 
 
 Beside that, when I sum up what God has given 
 me externally, such friends, such associations, such safe 
 retreats, such delicious pursuits in which I realise the 
 flushing joy of art employed on all the highest topics 
 of human thought, there seems enough indeed to fill 
 me with unbounded joy and satisfaction. Blessed be 
 God. 
 
 To Mrs. HALL. 
 
 9* Septemler 1862. 
 
 It is my birthday, as I found on waking by Ally's 
 
122 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1862 
 
 betraying the secret that a pair of worked slippers 
 were under the bed, from Mama with an affectionate 
 inscription. Presently Johnny turned up with a 
 packet containing a pair of olive gloves (now per- 
 petuated by the illustrious camera). This was an 
 opportune present, for I had only one glove in the 
 world, and that was an old one, its fellow being 
 dropped on the Bradford Eailway; and I was re- 
 solved not to spend money on another pair just yet, 
 seeing that an honest man can go without, or make 
 believe with one. I believe I have "took in" the 
 public for at least eight weeks. The public has been 
 living under the delusion that I have had a whole 
 pair of gloves, whereas, by a dazzling series of 
 manoeuvres with one, they have lived in a hollow 
 cheat. I shall now go on a different tack, making 
 such a display as to convey somehow the impression 
 that I have four hands instead of two (all with gloves 
 on), and that I have a brand new pair on every 
 morning. This will lead to the supposition that I 
 must be very well off indeed ; which will lead people 
 to buy my pictures (it being well known that they 
 only buy them of those who don't need to sell them) ; 
 and so, by what may be well called a coup de main, I 
 intend to become rich, prosperous, admired, sought 
 after, and afterwards a statue erected to my 
 memory, with a pair of gloves on, in the Italian 
 style, where you can see the hands through, as in the 
 veiled ladies, etc. 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 123 
 
 To Mes. hall. 
 
 ISth January 1863. 
 
 I FEEL somewhat the effects of close work lately, 
 in a sort of eagerness and solicitude. I grudge every 
 moment not spent at the easel. 
 
 The work I have done ought, one would think, to 
 be telling in outward ease of circumstances, and I 
 hope is gradually telling, enough to justify me as to 
 faithful labour in the eyes of all right-judging people. 
 Yet it often is a strain upon me to feel that there is 
 no proportion between labour and result. 
 
 To keep from murmuring, from rage, from de- 
 spondency, from unmanly perplexity, is the thing I 
 have to contend with — to go on peacefully, meekly, 
 hoping against hope, and acquiescing in all these 
 changing and complicated tests ; not seeking relief 
 by going to Egypt for help, or to that king Jareb, 
 who is only a heathen scamp after all. To expect to 
 be free from these or similar trials would be to wish 
 the course of Christian life to be other than the 
 Bible represents it to be. Why am I thus ? Why, 
 for more reasons than thou canst conceive of j for 
 everything blessed and good, and perfect and per- 
 manent. Good even now ; good, because strength is 
 made perfect in weakness ; good, because a true man 
 rejoices to contend and endure, and does not look to 
 ease and rest as the highest good. 
 
 To A Feiend. 
 There is yet another thought I have for you : 
 
124 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 1863 
 
 " If thou seekest for her as for hid treasures, then 
 shalt thou find the knowledge of God." I want you 
 to take this view, that whereas hid treasures never 
 sweat themselves to the surface on the rumour that a 
 treasure -seeker is afoot after them, there is that 
 strange element in the truth. Try to realise while you 
 seek that as soon as your foot is turned to the fields 
 of gold all heaven is astir to help you. Strange helps 
 will come to you — hints, intuitions, breathings, 
 curious allurements, as of singing birds flitting to 
 show you the way. A divining-rod will put itself 
 into your hand, and it will press and waver and draw 
 and point, and though it may lead you into darker 
 places than you like, and though you may even grow 
 faint and fearful, yet if you don't draw back you 
 will come into the whole land of Havilah, where 
 there is gold, and to Paradise, where the streams 
 divide themselves into four and water the whole 
 earth. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 27ft March 1863. 
 
 Yesterday when I put up my canvas I found 
 
 myself checkmated by that sense of mental nausea 
 
 which results from having expended the delicate 
 
 store of nervous power required for work. I could 
 
 almost have cried, but remembered the patience of 
 
 Job. I did not lose the day, but wrote hard in 
 
 " ventilators " to drive off the blues. Yet the nature 
 
 of the hindrance is the vexing part of it. I was well 
 
 enough to have gone on with almost any other kind 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 125 
 
 of business. It is faint inodorous gases that are 
 generated slowly and pour invisibly over the silver 
 rims of the brain. It is fine bubbles that swim 
 round the optic nerve and burst to meet the gas, and 
 by their meeting create that Vis vivida animi without 
 which painting is as futile as firing with a broken arm. 
 
 You have seen a lecturer on chemistry come to 
 the experiment of the evening. You have noticed 
 his neat manipulation and quiet self-collected voice. 
 Yet as the preparation for the grand explosion, that 
 is to prove a series of statements previously made, is 
 going on, you see that something is wrong. The boy 
 in buttons, who runs with glass balls and retorts ; 
 the assistant, with his hair parted in the middle ; the 
 maestro himself, though he talks on and puts the 
 cart before the horse in the statements, shows by his 
 knit brow and restless glance that something, some- 
 where, is going wrong — the fiame is not blue 
 enough, the bubbles don't rise. At last he is 
 obliged to say "Ladies and gentlemen, I am ex- 
 tremely sorry that through some at present undis- 
 covered hindrance I shall be obliged to lay aside this 
 interesting demonstrative experiment,'' etc. 
 
 And so, just as the lecturer cannot point out to 
 John Bull why the experiment didn't go, John Bull, 
 who loves an explosion and doesn't see why, if you 
 know what you are about and have pluck and capital, 
 you can't command your spirits from the vasty deep, 
 doesn't see why you can't send for two-penn'orth of 
 stuff from the chemist and go on. Just as it would 
 
126 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 1863 
 
 need a Faraday to catch at the meaning of an 
 apologetic phrase because he sees into the Arcana, 
 so often to an observer an artist seems fitful and 
 fearful, when indeed he is checkmated by invisible 
 foes. 
 
 I know, as well as Mr. Gradgrind, the value of 
 painting-time, and believe in work as much as he does ; 
 yet I maintain that in the long run I get more and 
 better work done than if I were not, at such seasons, 
 to use even the " golden hours " to allay a state of 
 feeling which if not allayed and suffered to accumu- 
 late would terminate in hypochondria or in paralysis. 
 For often, when no one would think me moved at all, 
 the sense of numerous, resisted pressures within is so 
 great that I feel like a man in the gorge of St. Paul's 
 on the illumination night when the human currents 
 set in furiously from Whitechapel and Temple Bar. 
 Just such a sense of stifling, of surrounding panic, of 
 watchfulness at all points, of consciousness that no 
 one knows nor cares, having to take care of himself, 
 and yet that in a few minutes he may be down under 
 the heels of the crowd, where no scream can be heard 
 and no breath taken, and no blow of the iron heel 
 resisted. 
 
 The truth is that the artist's work is so intensely 
 and incommunicably personal and inward, that it 
 cannot be discerned unless he take infinite pains to 
 make it known. 
 
 When a man builds a house that takes six months 
 in the building, there is a sign and wonder to a whole 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 127 
 
 neighbourhood. Masons and carpenters, and Mike 
 and Pat and mortar-boy, while the full-fed builder 
 looks on with hand in pocket ordering about the 
 whole noisy crew. To any one man employed on it, 
 whether he be architect or mortar-boy, the building of 
 a house is nothing to the building of a picture. Silent 
 as a sunbeam on the wall of a deserted palace 
 "where no one comes," the whole complex labour is 
 transacted, and does not in the least seem like labour. 
 The more it has had, the less it bears the marks of 
 labour. It is gay and free and glowing and light, 
 burning under the crown of a central idea which has 
 pressed on one brain, thrilled in one hand, fluttered 
 round one heart remote as Mariana the dejected. 
 
 A picture while in hand is like "the order of a 
 peopled kingdom.'' 
 
 In the " Moorland Edge," for instance, now on my 
 easel, how shall I dispose of those distant hazy fields 
 and that rising smoke contained in two and a half 
 inches of distance 1 Shall they be light, dark, gray, 
 warm, blue, yellowish 1 If I alter one touch I alter 
 nearly all. That tuft of new grass, is it not too 
 sharp, too cold, too green ? 
 
 But as I work I feel the soothing of the angles of 
 the sweet fields, and the peace of the tree-tops, and 
 the comfort of love, so — 
 
 5.20 P.M. — I lay down my brush in better spirits 
 than I have done for some time, and instead of pro- 
 jecting my anxieties into the middle of next week I 
 shall go on merrily to finish my two pictures. 
 
128 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 So merrily jog the footpath way, 
 And merrily hent the stile-a ; 
 
 A merry heart goes all the day, 
 A sad one tires in a mile-a. 
 
 With which grave observation I will go down to tea, 
 full of " nods and becks and wreathed smiles." 
 
 2nd June 1863. 
 
 Interesting and clever sketch of Eugenie Gu^rin 
 by Matthew Arnold in the Cornhill Magazine. 
 
 One is often curious to know how a Methodist 
 Memoir would strike an outsider. He has picked up 
 Emnia Tatham (I guess in pursuance of some con- 
 scientious review of our Modern Poetry in his 
 character as Professor at Oxford) and we get a touch 
 of how it affects him. He is no scoffer, and I have 
 noticed a strong eifort in several of his papers at 
 manly fairness and extended sympathy. He is a 
 true man, a real worker, and in good earnest "up to 
 his light." I believe the candle he works with is 
 rather snuffy (from a Methodist point of view). Let 
 us hope it will enable him to find much and lasting 
 treasure. 
 
 What a blessed thing the bigness of the world is, 
 and the completeness and isolation of its social circles, 
 wheel within wheel. Eugenie Gu^rin has her orbit, 
 and Emma Tatham has hers, and Matthew Arnold 
 has his. His coin passes in his own country. 
 Kreutzers won't pass in an English shop. If a 
 traveller fresh from China were to satirise his 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 129 
 
 acquaintance Chang Wing who lives in a small town 
 somewhere up the Yang-Tse-Kiang (you see what an 
 array of Chinese learning I can command in its proper 
 place), no great harm would be done anyway. He 
 would have to make it very funny in order to excite 
 any interest; such is the power of distance — mere 
 removal. Let Chang Wing come here and we will 
 pull his pigtail for him. I should like to know what 
 a Chinaman's " consciousness " is in respect of his 
 pigtail. It must be a great idea ; far more central 
 than such as you and I can realise. I daresay it is 
 his honour, something to swear by, to make vows 
 upon. When you consider the solemn risks it runs 
 (as for instance of being tied to somebody else's pig- 
 tail), and how great a purchase it would give to his 
 enemy if he were to catch hold of it, and what a 
 dreadful thing it is when the hair seems as if it was 
 going to pull your scalp off; I say, when you con- 
 sider these things I believe they will throw a new light 
 on thoughtful minds. The Chinese are a philosophic 
 people. We say " Hard words break no bones " ; I 
 would venture to affirm that the equivalent proverb 
 with them is, "Hard words pull no pigtails." 
 
 At present I see nothing better to be done than 
 to have communion with friends. Some people may 
 think it would be better to write for the press. At 
 present I don't thing so. What is lost in superficies 
 is gained in force. After a course of years it is very 
 probable that germs of thought, grown warm from the 
 
 K 
 
130 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 heart, might ultimately be gathered, reset, and re- 
 grown in a more permanent form. Even if not, why 
 need a man speak to a crowd if he has a little 
 audience who understand him and which he under- 
 stands ? A man ought to have a strong call before he 
 intrudes into the region of literature in these over- 
 pampered days, when high public rewards ought to 
 be given to men who worit print their thoughts. 
 What is the use of arrows fired in the air in comparison 
 of arrows shot at a mark % Dissipation of thought, 
 aimlessness, multitudinousness, are some of the faults 
 of our age. It is the difference between the ballroom 
 and the homestead ; the one all sparkling and irritating, 
 and superficial and dangerous, the other all profound 
 and calm and healthful and mighty. To "study to 
 be quiet and to mind their o\vn business " is one of 
 the first correctives the people of this generation need. 
 Why did the Saviour remain in obscurity for thirty 
 years ? Why did He choose one by one, two by two, 
 His humble disciples till they amounted to twelve ; a 
 small dais for His esoteric teaching in Gethsemane 
 under the olives, where "He often went with His 
 disciples " and the seventy for a small congregation of 
 scholars? Why did He so frequently complain of 
 the crowding, and long for and seek the desert, and 
 take moonlight rambles near the foxes' holes and the 
 silent nests in the palms'? He left us an example 
 that we might tread in His steps. There are many 
 reasons for all this when once it is fairly analysed. 
 In every efiicient act there is the agent and the object ; 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 131 
 
 and at either end a thousand considerations show 
 that to make an act eflScient certain conditions are 
 necessary. Christ knew this ; and when the multitude 
 thronged Him He got Peter to thrust out from the 
 shore to isolate Himself and to command His audience. 
 But when He wanted to plant His kingdom He 
 carefully grafted in the hearts of Peter and James and 
 John those living words which after His death were 
 brought to their remembrance by the Holy Ghost. 
 How personal He was. He loved Lazarus and Mary 
 and John. He took a strong vehement interest in 
 Peter, and followed him with love, and pity, and 
 prayer; and He said to Thomas, "Reach hither thy 
 hand," so that Thomas said "My Lord and my God." 
 When Mahomet got one convert thoroughly made 
 it was a great step. It was then Mahomet and Co. 
 
 To HIS "Wipe. 
 
 EusBMBEE, 5th July 1863. 
 
 Life seems to me to be wonderfully blessed and 
 perfect (considering its necessary incompleteness until 
 the restoration of all things). All things fall so well 
 and suitably into their places that there is no want, 
 no vexatious craving for something we have not got. 
 I could scarcely wish to realise more on earth of an 
 earthly kind. All I wish is to increase the knowledge 
 of God and the sense of repose in Him as King and 
 Father, through His Son the Mediator by whom we 
 receive all satisfying gifts. 
 
 How much more simple Eeligion seems than it 
 
132 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 used to do. I find it easier to believe the " faithful 
 saying." Freeing my mind of what is not to the 
 point — of all doubtful controversies and idle reason- 
 ings — I ask for the things I think I need. When 
 dark problems as to God's dealings with the World 
 occur to my mind, or those which relate to questions 
 of what is Revelation or Inspiration, or how this and 
 that can be reconciled, or anything for which there is 
 only tmsettlement, and no data for settlement, I say 
 broadly, " Well, if the Bible is not true, I don't know 
 anything that is more so, and nothing so adapted to 
 what / want. I will therefore, till I get clearer views, 
 assume that it is true, and put it to experiment. If 
 it turns out not tnie, I shall be no worse off than 
 those who don't believe it. If it is true, then all will 
 be well. In the meantime, as a companion I have (so 
 to speak) picked up on the way of life, I have got to 
 love it for its strange suitability to my notions of how 
 man may use his powers to the best advantage ; and 
 at the lowest estimate, as far as I can judge for Man, 
 I think it would be a grand thing if its principles 
 could be realised. They come nearer to the right 
 idea of harmony and power and happiness and pro- 
 gress than anything else I ever heard of. And so, as 
 I said, in the meantime I will make a Venture and 
 run the risk of my soul on this foundation." 
 
 9th July, 
 Sitting on a mossy stone by the lake, which is 
 glassy and calm. A man in a little boat with a dog 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 133 
 
 is rowing across, leaving a straight silver line ; a fish 
 leaps to a fly ; a few swallows dart over the lake with 
 an occasional chirp; the. sky is full of high gray 
 clouds. No cloud rests on the hills, which lie in 
 veils of shadow, soft and gray. The echo of chil- 
 dren's voices by the "Flush gate," and the report of 
 an echoing gun are heard now and then. It is 
 pleasant to see all this in your slippers and dressing 
 gown, which I am now doing. 
 
 How time rushes on ! It seems a short time since 
 I last sat here and saw these mountains and waters, 
 yet a year has gone. I feel increasingly anxious that 
 what remains of life should he used well. If life be 
 looked at from a pagan point of view, it seems sad 
 that Time should hurry away so fast, and that youth 
 should leave us, and life on the whole be so short. 
 Christianity alters all. This life ■ is not the only 
 sphere of being. If the great objects of life be ful- 
 filled, who can mourn at the advance of life towards 
 its final blessedness? Are these objects being ful- 
 filled ? I can't help frequently summing up my 
 purposes and pursuits. Of those of others I cannot 
 judge. I don't want to grind life away in a state 
 of anxious slavery to some mistaken conception of 
 " Duty," but I can't be content that life should be 
 blank or aimless or even feeble, though well-meaning. 
 How can the greatest amount of force and compact- 
 ness be given to life without imposing burdens which 
 are too heavy for it ? On the whole I am obliged to 
 believe that I am doing what I ought to do, and that 
 
134 LETTEBS OF JAMES SMETHAM. 1863 
 
 for the best part of my life I could not well have done 
 otherwise. 
 
 It seems one of the laws of life that the outer and 
 inner man should be compensatory to each other. 
 The young people here are full of life and animal 
 spirits, and those who are past middle age are not. 
 But who would exchange the quietness of the mind 
 and soul and its increasing light and wisdom for mere 
 spirits ? If we could have the two, life would be more 
 superficially agreeable. One's soul is, like those 
 mountains this morning, at times sunny and calm, 
 but with a broad blue haze over them. This mingling 
 of outward dimness with inward light and joy and 
 rest shows where we are, and makes the prospect of 
 heaven nearer and more precious. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 EusEMEEB, 2Srd July. 
 
 1 HAVE been here three weeks, boating in a way so 
 masterly that if you had seen me pulling myself about 
 on the lake last evening it would have given you a 
 new respect for nautical life ; walking up fells, and 
 lying on turf among moorland blackfaced sheep, with 
 nice young ladies, and curlews and lapwings and 
 grouse ; sketching now and then, when driven by a 
 sense of duty; reading more or less in the books 
 current in the household,, or which looked gamey 
 enough to be pulled out of the library. This place is 
 a paradise for a painter. Out of doors there are the 
 mountains, among whom Helvellyn is king, and 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 135 
 
 Catchedecam grand vizier; the lake, which has a 
 large variety of aspects in different weathers, smooth 
 and glassy, with aU the firry woods reflected and the 
 two masts of the yacht clear under the keel, smoothly 
 rippled when these reflections are broken yet visible, 
 roughly rippled when no reflections are visible, rising 
 in blue waves with white "dogs" on their tops, 
 or what Longfellow christens "the white caps 
 of the sea," leaden and sulky when it seems 
 out of humour and indifferent to reflections or 
 waves either, dark blue, cold and frowning, or 
 reflecting the frowning fells and dusky curtains of 
 clouds — it has as many humours as a man and 
 woman put together. 
 
 Bound the low, large slatey-looking house (de- 
 fended with a slate-like mail against the fierce south- 
 westers), over its solid stone wall, and with a porch 
 covered with roses and honeysuckle, a glass door open- 
 ing out of the dining-room to the lawn; the flower-beds, 
 the sun-dial, the belt of birch and fir, the lake, the moun- 
 tains and the beyond (which on a moderate computa- 
 tion is at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 
 of English miles oflf). Eound and behind this is a 
 garden surrounded with stone walls and an orchard 
 where there is grass and apple trees, and down in the 
 depths and verging on the low pasture is a spreading 
 oak tree with a seat under it. 
 
 There is no fairer spoken tree 
 From here to Lizard Point. 
 
 There are what the people here call " meedows '' 
 
136 LETTBKS 01 JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 and cornfields in the valley; solemn but amiable 
 cows ; six or eight long-legged and unformed white 
 and brown calves, who now and then, under a per- 
 suasion (produced by secret influences from Dr. 
 Cumming's works) that the sky is falhng, gallop 
 wildly to get out of its way ; turkeys gobbling with 
 their broods ; cocks and hens and ducks and chicks 
 and pigeons — pigeons who, like Metius Curtius, leap 
 into the gulf of the pie-dish for the good of the com- 
 munity ; a peacock, whose dark blue and emerald and 
 purple glories are enhanced by the white wife, who 
 walks where he walks, and who (between you and 
 me) treats him shamefully. I call her Lady Cecilia 
 Dreddlington (see £10,000 a Year, by S. Warren, 
 Master in Lunacy). She has all the airs and all the 
 neck and all the emptiness and all the exclusive inso- 
 lence of the bride of Tittlebat Titmouse, and I despise 
 her, not being an aristocrat myself (but don't mention 
 this, for she may have influence in high quarters, and 
 either do me a good or a bad turn). 
 
 Mr. Steward's library is ample and good, and it 
 contains Hildersheim's works in one dark volume 
 quarto, and on the sofa (it is the comfortablest sofa 
 within the four seas) in the back drawing-room I did 
 read certain chapters in it over my cigar, which I shall 
 keep in terrorem in case thou shouldst get uppish at a 
 dinner party, making a display of thy theology ; then 
 will I gently turn the tide of discourse to Hilder- 
 sheim's works, which it is a moral impossibility that 
 thou canst ever have heard of. But if it should 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 137 
 
 happen that thou hast, I have yet a resource — Salt- 
 marsh's Sparkles of Glory. 
 
 The following was written on an excursion from Dunoon: — 
 
 ■To HIS Wife. 
 
 July 1863. 
 
 The scenery above Blairmore is exquisite. On a 
 
 small scale it is like Vevay on the Lake of Geneva, 
 
 only the wild crests are not covered vpith snow, nor 
 
 do they assume the delicate visionary blue which the 
 
 Alps have, even in the lower buttresses. The day is 
 
 not only fine but gorgeous. If nature could fill the 
 
 soul this would be a high and holy day. But to me 
 
 those things which show the majesty and vastness of 
 
 creation suggest most the littleness of man. I cannot 
 
 see one living thing on all those purple and silver 
 
 shores ; I can scarcely see his dwelling-places ; but I 
 
 can feel that which seems to contain them all and to 
 
 be superior to them all. This Consciousness will not 
 
 be ignored. The body may seem diminished to a 
 
 speck, but the soul opens and swells like an infinity. 
 
 Doth not all that is 
 Press on thy head and heart, and visibly, invisibly 
 "Weave its mysterious charm eternally around thee 1 
 
 And yet nature, so vast and varied, wiU not come into 
 it. It remains distinct, and distant, and outside. 
 I don't possess it. It does not possess me. Nay, 
 however near the creature comes, it is yet distant. 
 The food I eat is only in transit through my senses, 
 and I feel that even the body it feeds will fall from 
 
138 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 me ; so that there is only a home in me for God. I 
 never feel it more needful to invite the Divine 
 Presence to come and dwell in me than when I feel 
 that all His universe can create no touch of Peace. 
 
 To HIS Wife. 
 Dunoon, 26th July 1863 (Sunday morning, 3 a.m.) 
 The exercise and novelty of yesterday (a review 
 on the Clyde) were too much for me, although I felt 
 in good spirits all day, so that I cannot sleep, and I 
 get this little book and write rather than lie, revolving 
 vague thought. But for the want of freshness next 
 day an occasional wakeful night is a thing to be en- 
 joyed, and that it comes to most people now and then 
 is indicated by the verse : 
 
 If in the night I sleepless lie, 
 
 My soul with heavenly thoughts supply. 
 
 There is a verse, too, that I often wonder what is its 
 meaning : " Thou holdest mine eyes waking." There 
 is another : " Who giveth songs in the night." I have 
 found many pleasant and thankful trains of thought 
 filling my mind in the darkness, calm and equable 
 impressions of truth and a steady peaceful frame of 
 feeling, a sense of God and of salvation, a resting by 
 faith on His Word and Will, a thousand pleasant 
 memories of His grace, a persuasion of being where 
 He would have me be, and on the whole of doing 
 what He would have me do — a life going in the right 
 track, enclosed within the bounds of the Church and 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 139 
 
 seeking its good and the good of the world. And 
 this without any supposition of merit, but with a clear 
 acceptance of mercy and strength in Christ. 
 
 So I thought I might as well record these feelings 
 instead of letting them pass. They are my habit 
 and experience under similar circumstances, and it is 
 pleasant to share them with you. It is this bond of 
 perfectness which has made our lives so happy, and 
 which will continue to do so while God spares if we 
 walk by the same rule and mind the same things. 
 
 To HIS Wife. 
 
 DtTNOON, Srd Aug. 1863 (Sunday, 10.30). 
 
 Waiting to go to church — "the Established 
 Church of Scotland." How different are my sensa- 
 tions this morning from those of last Sunday ! I feel 
 how great a blessing it is that the Great Father gives 
 His children sleep. The morning has turned out 
 fine once more and very fresh and cool. I am strolling 
 up and down the grassy slopes. The sound of the 
 waves below is continual and of the wind in the trees 
 above. The beauty of nature is a gentle and soothing 
 influence when the sense of reconciliation with the 
 great God of nature is fixed in the soul. To the 
 renewed mind the one must precede the other. 
 Every tree, every daisy, every floating cloud, every 
 breeze that bends the grass, speaks to the heart of 
 the glorious Creator and Sustainer and multiplies 
 either the fear or the hope. 
 
140 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 The hugeness and immensity of the soul's in- 
 terests and needs is frequently very oppressive to 
 me. The feeling of exigency is soon suggested and 
 not easily allayed. I need a great deal of actual 
 Divine upholding : "I should have fainted unless I 
 had believed to see the goodness of the Lord," and 
 I ought the more to love and serve Him ; because 
 while my fears are quickly aroused and very urgent 
 I am almost habitually raised above them ; but I 
 need to learn more fully what is implied in the pro- 
 mise, "In quietness and confidence shall be your 
 strength." 
 
 Just now I write leaning against a birch tree in 
 my favourite daisied plot surrounded by light firs and 
 laurels, hearing the bell of the church and trying to 
 rejoice and rest. What will be the complete rest to 
 which we are aspiring when all the history of the 
 world is wound up and God is all in all ! What 
 retrospects of home repose, and wanderings here and 
 there, of earthly histories wrought out and consum- 
 mated ! How can we conceive of a complete joy if 
 those we love are not there with us 1 I dare hardly 
 turn my eyes this way. It is like the beginning of 
 an agony to think of Eternal separation : it Seems 
 as if it would fill Eternity with tears. What is that 
 view of Truth that will wipe all tears away 1 What 
 that consent to the Divine Rectitude which cannot 
 permit a diminished joy even when the wicked are 
 silent in darkness t I need help for such thoughts 
 as these — God bring all we love safe within that circle 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 141 
 
 of glory. God grant we may have no loves on earth 
 that will not be everlasting. 
 
 9* August 1863. 
 
 I HAVE been reading the newspapers a little. A 
 newspaper often depresses me ; it is so suggestive of 
 sin and sorrow. Yet a little reflection shows that the 
 close bringing together of things makes them seem 
 more frequent and dark than they are. My heart 
 bleeds at the things brought before the eye of the 
 mind. It reminds one of the description of the Lazar 
 House in Milton, shown to Adam by the angel as a 
 picture of the results of the Fall. My heart gets both 
 more firm and more tender. Every little child I see 
 touches me; and yet I can look on terrible things 
 with a steadier eye, knowing, as I do, that the world 
 is not left to itself, but has a King, who is its Kedeemer. 
 I fly to Him, first for refuge, first for my own sins, 
 the burden of which, but for His love, would be 
 intolerable ; and then for comfort as to the world's 
 condition, but for Him so gloomy and hopeless. If I 
 don't go far in politics it is partly because, on the one 
 hand, it shows to the human mind such a web of 
 helpless confusion, and, on the other hand, I believe 
 that God sits on the waterfloods and reigns a King 
 for ever. To keep in my own little place, doing my 
 own work as well as I can, not taking the world's 
 burdens on me, where I can only talk and not help, 
 seems the best that can be for me. 
 
 Irreverent and empty twaddle about the nations 
 and their histories and fate, prognostications on small 
 
142 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 data constantly overturned by events, partisanship 
 raging — all seem very vain and idle, and always 
 make me think of the good old man who would never 
 read a paper, but said, "It shall be well with the 
 righteous." 
 
 He returned from this pleasant Scotch visit to the Thomp- 
 sons of Dunoon by way of Edinhurgh, visiting Abbotsford and 
 Melrose Abbey. 
 
 Leigh, 15th August 1863. 
 
 Walking towards Platfold [his mother's home in 
 Lancashire]. A coat of j^ellow wash is over the cot- 
 tage. How I like to stop and look at the nest of 
 our family : the fields, the pool with its rushes and 
 flags, the old barn, and the willows and orchard trees ! 
 
 The Leigh that is, and the Leigh that was, are 
 two. The tide has washed over nearly all that is 
 connected with the past, and our family is blown like 
 thistle seeds here and there into new soil. It is a 
 consolation to think that all true and good things 
 remain the same. The God of our fathers who spake 
 to them in their cottage is our God, and speaks to us 
 at Stoke -Newington in the same still voices. This 
 grand unity of essence is entirely satisfying, binding 
 all the earth and all the heavens together. Time and 
 Death can only steal away accidental things from us. 
 
 The air is fresh and pleasant. I am just by Ather- 
 ton Bridge, with its broken lions and sphinxes, and 
 the pools choked with water-lilies, reeds, and rushes. 
 It seems as if one could never ponder long enough 
 among these old scenes — old even to me ; for in 1843, 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 143 
 
 after painting at some portraits I was doing in Leigh, 
 I used to pace these very walks, and lean over the 
 gray bridge, looking at the lilies and reeds and rushes, 
 but with far more unquietude in my heart and nature. 
 Now every sound and sight is sweet and refreshing. 
 There is more beauty and meaning than I can fathom 
 in all I see. I am filled with praise and thankfulness. 
 
 After all, association has a great deal to do with 
 pleasure in nature. These level meadowy walks, with 
 their whispers of poplar and fir and willow, their 
 waving corn and rich grass, their distances of low 
 undxilating hills, the dark green pools they call " pits " 
 with sword-sedges, bending bulrushes, and coating of 
 thin yellow weed here and there — all that was here 
 before railways — delight and soothe me as Keble 
 intends his Christian Year to soothe the ear of the 
 Church. Perhaps it is a fancy that there is an affinity 
 of the frame with its native air. Be that as it may, 
 no air seems so balmy and sweet ; — the pure breath 
 of thatched farms, quaint quiet gardens and fields 
 where Quietude herself might walk from morning to 
 evensong. 
 
 These "pits," with flapping lily leaves and trem- 
 bling rushes, are quite a feature of the scenery. 
 There is one in every hollow where a few fields meet. 
 Very often there are fish in them. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 7th October 1863. 
 
 Spent yesterday with Parker [Professor W. K. 
 
 Parker]. Mansford was there. P. talked in generals 
 
144 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 as long as he could abide, and then he gave us such a 
 furious storm of ornithological anatomy about a bird 
 that was an ostrich and a crocodile and a grouse and 
 a crane and a hen. Do you understand 1 all of them 
 together, each of them separately, and was going to 
 be published in eight quarto plates, exquisitely tinted, 
 the cartilaginous bones one colour, the solid bones 
 another. Do you see 1 And Owen has put his foot 
 in it (crossing his in imitation of the mess that Pro- 
 fessor Owen is in — executed on his own legs — from 
 which I gather that Professor Owen is just like this 
 [Here is a drawing of Professor Owen with legs 
 crossed and recrossed, ending in a diminishing tail of 
 crossings], as near as I can make out) ; and as to the 
 "crocodile bird," why that is a net, you perceive, but 
 not spread out. It is a net all in a lump, the reticula- 
 tions crossing (like Professor Owen's legs) through 
 countless ages. It is evident that Professor Owen's 
 legs are in a mortal twist, and it is impossible that he 
 can ever stand upright again- ; and so, as I was saying, 
 there is no doubt that the reptilian character of this 
 bird and its intricate relations to the " mound-makers " 
 — birds that peck their way out of the shell and dig 
 their way out of the dunghill — is also established. 
 Beside this — now look here ! there are three (grin) 
 distinct (shakes finger) bony, bony plates (ready; — pre- 
 sent) on each side of the spino-occipital-basis (fire !), 
 and Professor Owen — I'll tell you what it is — ^that 
 man rather than confess an error would build up a 
 hollow system (get his legs more and more twisted). 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 145 
 
 Well, he says there are only two ! ! (Stare, Boswellian 
 pout, solemn appealing look, first at Mansf ord then at 
 me ; Mansford horrified, — I express by a shocked look 
 the sentiment, " like his imperence "). 
 
 This is good fun, but it is really grand to listen to 
 P., even when one only catches glimpses of his sub- 
 ject. 
 
 Walking, Lordship Road, 16th October 1863. 
 The sun shines out on the glistening roads ; the 
 wind blows warm and soft ; the mere ripples under its 
 influence; a gentleman has got leave to fish in it. 
 There is a sweet remote white cottage with a verandah 
 seen across it, which can only be approached through 
 fields. Lordship Eoad looks hollow and woody, like 
 some country roads near parks. You like open, un- 
 bounded scenes ; so do I sometimes. But generally I 
 cleave to seclusion — shelter. The most limited scene 
 supplies me with ample material for Thought and 
 Imagination. Wide scenes overwhelm me with mul- 
 titude and suggestion. So I like a glade — a meadow 
 nook with an oak tree — "an odd angle of the 
 isle,'' 
 
 A rose tree blowing 
 In a green island far from all men's knowing, 
 
 Arnheim — or the mystic lake where Fenimore Cooper 
 lays the whole scene of one of his Mohican stories. 
 
 The dim tarn of Auber, 
 
 The misty mid-region of Weir. 
 
 L 
 
146 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 To Mes. hall. 
 
 nth Novemler 1863. 
 
 Read a chapter or two in David Copperfield. Mr. 
 Micawber fills me with wholesome terror ; not that, 
 like him, I ever expected, in his sense, anything to 
 "turn up," but because I see that all "being behind- 
 hand " has a fatal quality about it. I never saw this 
 as I see it now, because I never saw any danger of 
 my being behindhand. I used to feel sure that Work 
 must bring reward. So it does, as I experience, in 
 the long-run. But I have seen that attempt after 
 attempt may be made in vain. That vague abstrac- 
 tion, Society, which Mrs. Micawber scolds and Mr. M. 
 defies, is, I see, an impregnable thing so long as it is 
 looked at in the abstract. There is both Justice and 
 Mercy in the world if you come into contact with those 
 who have them. Kindness and Help there are also, 
 or " Society " would have trampled me under long ago. 
 
 Nov. 12. — I'll just tell you what it is, women's 
 opinion about women's beauty is just worth nothing. 
 They haven't the least idea how women look to 
 the other sex, and just as little of how they look in 
 the abstract. This disparaging remark arises out 
 of your criticism of my picture women. But, at 
 the same time, it causes me to review that subject. 
 My first observation is, that every painter has had, 
 and has, his favourite style of face, and it is always 
 peeping out in his works. Eaffaele, M. Angelo, 
 Titian, Perugino, Rossetti, Millais, Frith. This 
 comes from his notion either of beauty, or what 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 147 
 
 he likes. A painter won't do what lie doesn't like, 
 even though others may call it beautiful. And 
 whatever type he chooses, there will be six out of 
 ten who will not like it, and four will pronounce it 
 " ugly." Also, another thing : an artist makes his 
 first sketch often from his nearest model, and seldom 
 effaces his first impression, even though he consult 
 subsequent models. The great difficulty of pro- 
 curing models is certainly the root and ground of 
 most of these similarities. It is said of Perugino 
 that he was miserly, and when he had paid a model 
 to sit, he used up the sketch as often as he could, 
 to save trouble and expense. Professional models, 
 as Etty used to say, " take a good deal of the gilt 
 off the gingerbread." 
 
 I muse deep on my painter course, not that I 
 am in any doubt or perplexity, for I think I have 
 found a footpath through the forest. 
 
 I feel a stirring of far greater powers than will 
 ever find their earthly development. You will be 
 more likely to believe this than most people (besides it 
 is not said to "most people," and they have nothing 
 to do with it), and it is one of the things with which 
 my religion and philosophy have to do battle. I 
 can throw light on it by some analysis of Leslie's 
 course. Leslie was the type of a painter, pure and 
 simple. What did it cost him ? It cost him all his 
 time. He did not profess to be a scholar. He 
 read Shakespeare, Smollett, etc.. Goldsmith, Cer- 
 vantes, Addison, the Bible. All his subjects were 
 
148 LETTERS OP JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 got out of these. His first picture was exhibited 
 when he was twenty-three, " Sir Roger de Coverley 
 going to Church." His last of any vigour was, "Sir 
 Eoger de Coverley in Church," and all the interval 
 was a placid seclusion among those few authors, 
 expressing out of them by constant reading a few, 
 very few, subjects from each ; and on this foundation 
 all his labours were built. If you don't know it, 
 you will be surprised to hear that a good half of his 
 whole life work is at South Kensington. Including 
 his heads (of any importance), I can only mark fifty- 
 six pictures which deserve the name of serious 
 effort. He painted duplicates of the principal ones, 
 but here no invention was required. He lived to be 
 sixty -five. Including small portraits, he painted 
 about 120 pictures in forty mature years : three per 
 year, but most of them small. The time was not 
 bestowed on mere finish ; it was absorbed in the 
 action of consummate Taste and Judgment. On 
 the floor of the picture, "The Dinner in Ford's 
 house," there are about half a dozen small flowers 
 scattered. It is recorded that for these flowers 
 there are sheets on sheets of studies in water-colours 
 of flowers from nature. That was his life's work. 
 He wrote three or four mild books — mild, prudent, 
 unselfish books — in which, even in the autobio- 
 graphy — he scarcely mentions his own work, so 
 we know little about him. He strolled half an 
 hour in the garden before breakfast, gathered a 
 flower in flower time, and painted all day. In the 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 149 
 
 evening he either read by his fireside, or talked to a 
 friend who "liked pictures," or went to see one 
 who did, or who had good pictures. If a man 
 didn't like pictures, he didn't care two pins for him. 
 He was always in low water as to money ; most of 
 his life in debt. He had a few good friends. Lord 
 Egremont particularly. Lord E. would like him 
 because Leslie was — must have been — a gentleman 
 of the old school, honourable, quiet, simple, un- 
 demonstrative, tasteful. Also Mr. Sheepshanks. 
 Now I heard Mr. Sheepshanks say, and he said it 
 to me, "Yes, poor fellow, I used to have him to 
 dinner on a Sunday, and his wife and children. He 
 had to work hard enough, for he had a large 
 family. When I bought that picture (a child, 
 Leslie's own, drawing a cart in a garden), he said, 
 ' If you'll take this, I'll never draw trees any more,' 
 for," added Sheepshanks, "his trees were very bad 
 indeed." 
 
 I used to see Leslie at E.A. lectures and soirees. 
 He was a little, dry, prosaic-looking man with short 
 black hair over his forehead, and like a country shoe- 
 maker in his best clothes. 
 
 Scene in Leslie's Studio 
 
 on a cold winter evening with a fire, which he keeps 
 poking to brighten. 
 
 He is quite restless, and has been all the after- 
 noon. He pokes his lips out and stares, with the 
 
150 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 poker in his hand. He makes a grimace at the 
 corner of the ceiling in an abstracted manner, and 
 then heaves a great sigh and blows like a porpoise. 
 Then he ruffles his forehead into a ploughed field 
 by elevating his eyebrows as far as they will go, 
 gapes like a fish, and goes into a cataleptic stony 
 stare at a hot coal. He does, in fact, what thought- 
 ful people do when they are threatened with an 
 execution in the house. What is it all about ? I'll 
 tell you as if I saw it. He is thinking whether he 
 had better put that bit of white flower under the 
 tablecloth in the picture of "The Dinner at Ford's 
 house." One would think, to see his light and 
 airy touch, that he had flitted over his pictures like 
 a swallow. Oh dear ! the mouth of Mrs. Page, the 
 lady in black and amber, with her charming laugh, 
 would cost days of watching, and musing, and fidget, 
 and alteration. 
 
 Nov. 13. — I fall back on this truth, that, after all, 
 the greatest thing about a picture is its Conception — 
 the Thought of it. If this be sufficiently conveyed, 
 the highest of all its purposes is served. 
 
 IBOi NovemUr 1863. 
 Had a turn at Leslie's pictures yesterday, rum- 
 maging over them with the catalogue and making 
 notes of all the details. In my opirrion there is 
 scarce a modern painter like him. Mere finish, 
 smoothing up of hands and faces, even with the 
 floral colour of Mulready, considering the enormous 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 151 
 
 labour it takes, is nothing to the salt -breezy life of 
 Leslie's indications. Instead of attempting a close de- 
 ceptive imitation he thitiks in delicious touches of oil 
 colour, and with a handling so refined and piquant as 
 makes even Mulready seem dogged and laborious. I 
 would rather have the indescribable vigour of the 
 slightly painted "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," the 
 racy " lunge " of the foil which bends against his 
 distracted breast wielded by his maid-servant, than 
 any single picture of Mulready's in which you can't 
 help getting entangled in the sweet reflection that 
 knuckles are pink and veins are blue, and that 
 emerald green and purple look very well together. 
 Leslie sweeps all this away, and you brim over with 
 laughter at the poor terrified lumbering affectation 
 of the old gentleman who thinks it is the thing " to 
 fence," and the saucy spirit of the maid with the 
 broom, who, knowing nothing about "carte and 
 tierce," knows, nevertheless, like Bailie Nicol Jarvie, 
 how to strike home. What is called his want of 
 "colour" is for the most part mere disdain. He 
 had no boarding-school taste for pink and sea-green, 
 and believed the world of men and women to be a 
 quiet mixture as to colour. He was a Man painter, 
 and not one who matched tints with a snuffle. 
 
 Uh December 1863. 
 I WOKE up to a pleasant fact as I sat reading this 
 evening, viz. that J. F.'s pleasure in art is having 
 a good stimulating influence on me, just as on a 
 
152 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1863 
 
 larger scale Schiller had on Goethe. I seldom see a 
 thing at once : I wake up to it, and then it becomes 
 a strong idea. My life for twenty years has been 
 so locked in that I have been actor and audience 
 both, and though I know quite well that through 
 my etchings and a few pictures I have been gaining 
 the rudiments of a circle where my life is felt, no 
 one scarcely has come near to me with any of the 
 instinctive love of what makes my intellectual life- 
 work. Davies does, certainly ; but I have seen him 
 too seldom to get that salt -freshness of stimulus. 
 The Rossettis and Ruskins I dare not, much as I 
 admire them, go often to. J. T.'s visit on Monday 
 put this into my head — his rooting among the sketches 
 and curiosity to find some new "study." This sort 
 of interest has just the kind of temporary incitation 
 that is needed in a studio. There is some danger 
 of becoming too much isolated, for although my 
 range of study has embraced literary aims, I never 
 intended nor intend to ally myself with literature 
 and so confuse my life. I am a Monumentalist, an 
 artist in an original field (a field where you can 
 see over the hedge into literature and morals and 
 religion). From my chosen position I don't intend 
 to move. It is perfectly suited to me, to my power, 
 to my tastes, to my habits. I have no need to look 
 beyond it. I don't say I will do no pictures in the 
 ordinary sense, because I will ; but my speciality 
 will be Idylls in Oil. And all I ask is current 
 stimulus and undisturbed leisure to produce them. 
 
1863 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 153 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 lUhBec. 1863. 
 
 The delight with which I think of the " Studies " 
 already gone out beats any form of Art satisfaction 
 I have yet experienced. My forte lies there just as 
 Stothard's really did. His small oil studies are the 
 most charming things he did, and they exactly 
 correspond in size and aim to my own. 
 
 And I see very clearly that it is worth my while to 
 make them good and brilliant, and I intend to do so. 
 J. F. H. chose a charming subject — "Narcissus.'' 
 
 Shall read poetry and sketch nature with new aims 
 and under a new light. Your Vignetting is also a 
 great discovery, a great instrument. The tune of life 
 is played by finding out the right pressure on the keys, 
 the right inflations of the breath. Press or blow too 
 hard and you make a grunt or a squeak. Press too 
 lightly and blow timidly and you cannot make the 
 music speak. But acquire the touch and the divine 
 breathing, and out comes the mellow music flooding 
 hUl and dale. Now Vignetting and Monumentalism 
 for thee and for me is this finding how to touch and 
 how to blow. For thee a vast repertory of " Aspects 
 of Nature," for me a gallant horse to carry my thoughts 
 without my becoming footsore and travel worn ; a 
 well -trained Pegasus that doesn't kick, that will 
 amble in the lane, walk over the downs, and on wild 
 windy evenings when the crescent rises or sinks, will 
 take a burst up into the skies and bring me down safe. 
 
154 LETTERS OP JAMES SMETHAM 1864 
 
 Where are you going so high, so high ? 
 I'm going to sweep cobwebs out of the sky, 
 And I'll be with you by and by. 
 
 And SO, old Boy, all this last 20 years has been 
 
 "the tilling of a field that the Lord hath blessed." 
 
 One of my aims now will be Colour. What Bewick's 
 
 tail-pieces are to engraving so is Monumentalism to 
 
 Painting — Tennyson's Brook compared with the 
 
 Thames on which the ships go and into which critical 
 
 filth is poured till it is noisome, a tinkling brook 
 
 making all green where it runs : 
 
 "With here and there a lusty trout, 
 And here and there a gi'ayling : 
 
 Goldsmith working his way among Belgian villages 
 
 by the aid of his flute, and not " an artiste '' craving 
 
 applause and bread in critical concert rooms and against 
 
 all sorts of odds. 
 
 To Mrs. HALL. 
 
 January 1864. 
 
 Took down Tennyson; glanced at the fly-leaf — " J. 
 
 Smetham, 1843." That book has a charm for me that 
 
 no other book but the Bible has. It is like moonlight 
 
 and music and the shores of old romance and the 
 
 "light that never was on sea or land." I know by 
 
 heart, if not by spontaneous memory, every line of his 
 
 poems. The days of my youth are enfolded in their 
 
 scent, as the scent of violets hidden in the green. My 
 
 memory kindles over them ; my blood runs more 
 
 quickly; my nerves thrill, and love and joy, even 
 
 through the dusky shades that in places hang over the 
 
1864 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 155 
 
 past, are recalled. The raMes for Tennyson has passed 
 with the public, but he has taken his immortal seat 
 among the poets. 
 
 An Old Book, frail as it seems, is an awful thing. 
 It preserves its personal identity. Paper is more 
 unchangeable than stone. We have the very books 
 on which Henry of Huntingdon wrote and looked, and 
 the drawings upon which Raffaele rested his hand ; 
 but the drifting sand, and changing earth-mounds, and 
 crumbling stones, have really altered the very being of 
 scenery. Nothing remains but the latitude and longi- 
 tude. The eye walks the enclosures of an old book 
 as patiently as the feet traverse meadow and wilder- 
 ness, yet it remains for traveller after traveller to 
 wander in. At a cunning corner of the road, at the 
 same page, top or bottom, lies lurking the witty 
 sentence that relaxes every traveller's face into a smile, 
 or the pathetic lines that unlock the fountain of tears ; 
 and in years to come the traveller's eyes that come 
 that way will " weep there.'' 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 Smiday. 
 
 A TENDER April morning opening the pores of the 
 nature and filling it with "all the fulness of the 
 Spring." All is easy and bland. Religiously, no state 
 is without its materials for fear. The service on 
 Friday was so refreshing and soothing ; yesterday so 
 fine in the open air all day long ; to-day is so pleasant 
 and restful, that Mephistopheles is disposed to say. 
 
156 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1864 
 
 " Upon my 'word, this is very pleasant work. I 
 thought religion was a sort of being crucified. It is 
 time to turn pious myself." This is really too bad. 
 Nothing pleases Mephistopheles (Mephistopheles is 
 Suggestor in Ordinary to one stronger than he and 
 darker). Talleyrand, Machiavelli, Ahithophel, are 
 only fragments of Mephistopheles. So I'm called to 
 consider whether what I suppose to be Divine Rest is 
 the voluptuous apathy in which the men of Laish lay 
 when the sword brake in on them, " a bluidy, bluidy 
 ane.'' StiU we ought not to be cheated out of our 
 comfort because Mephistopheles exhorts us to make 
 ourselves long-faced and miserable in order to show 
 that we are true men. Wisdom is justified of her 
 children. The Son of man came eating and drinking, 
 and they say, " Behold a gluttonous man and a wine- 
 bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.'' John the 
 Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 
 " He hath a devil." 
 
 To keep up the sacrifice of Praise and Prayer among 
 the violet banks, " stealing and giving odours '' while 
 the spell of beauty lies on you, and the soft west wind 
 fills you with a tingling sense of immunity, requires 
 fresh baptisms of grace ; and to triumph in Christ over 
 joy and prosperity is as difficult as over grief and pain. 
 
 Geben Street Gkeen. 
 One simple attribute of Place — true of course of 
 Cheapside, but more impressive in the deep country — 
 is peculiarly solemn. A Place has its solitary entity ; 
 
1864 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 157 
 
 just as a soul has. There is that bend in the road, 
 for example, where the cottage stands, " built in 1705 " 
 (when Queen Anne, Queen Anne, she sat in the sun !) 
 Well, that bend in the road is only seen at the bend. 
 You must go to it, as David to his lost child, it won't 
 come to you. There, under all solar and astral aspects ; 
 when snow loads the fir tree, or Autumn shakes the 
 brown corn in the ridge above it, it asserts its right 
 to locality, as the soul to being. The latitude and 
 longitude are its own ; one speck of a globe with its 
 own right line that reaches some star vertical to itself, 
 " where and where 1 " is a very important question. 
 The individuality of space is a touching element in the 
 Universe. 
 
 To THE Rev. M. C. TAYLOR. 
 
 Since portraiture went down, it has taxed my 
 wits to the utmost to till the more poetic side of my 
 calling. Parnassus was ever barren, I suppose ; only 
 if a man by circumstances is left high and dry on it 
 he must get what he can out of it. I have to keep 
 hold — by correspondence as well as by painting — of 
 a great many threads ; first this, then that, and by 
 this means get along somehow ; but it leaves me often 
 devoid both of time and energy to have the converse 
 I should like with even my best friends. I some- 
 times feel ludicrously like a street musician who plays 
 drum and bagpipe, pan's pipe, and cymbals all at 
 once with mouth, fingers, elbow, and knees. It is a 
 good thing that it answers somehow, and that people 
 
158 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1865 
 
 throw pennies enougii out of the window to keep us 
 all alive. 
 
 To HIS Bkothee. 
 
 loth Felruary 1865. 
 
 Nothing can be more enchanting than the method 
 of study which I have practised for nearly twenty 
 years. Whatever it may be for others, for an artist 
 it is a glorious way : 
 
 (And now they never meet in grove or green 
 But they do Square. ) 
 
 You must therefore fancy that almost every morning 
 somewhere between 9 and 1 1 A.M. I am " squaring " ; 
 not like Tom Sayers, but otherwise. For example, 
 this is a scribbly little square [drawing] containing a 
 meditation on vers. 36, 37. What a great deal is 
 implied in the words "having land." And here is 
 " the Son of Consolation " pacing his (paternal ?) acres, 
 
 the Cj'prian fields, thinking of . Did he never 
 
 wander there like Isaac with his hands behind him 
 musing at eventide 1 
 
 If you suppose every fragment to be " squared " 
 on this principle, and the square to grow a little at 
 every recurrence to it, and sometimes to get faint hues 
 of colour that deepen into a miniature picture at last, 
 you have a notion of the shape my meditations take. 
 I call it Monumentalism, i.e. instead of letting ideas 
 die I build to each a lasting monument. The effect — 
 the mental eflfect — is surprising, though I use it most 
 of all for Bible work 
 
1865 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 159 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 Every sentence penned in letter or ventilator, 
 every "square" embodying some new discovery of 
 Divine or Human fact, is something rescued from the 
 rush of Oblivion. 
 
 "He being dead, yet speaketh." A man ought 
 to contrive, as far as may be, to embalm__his life 
 so that it shall last when the body is gone to dust. 
 The question is not whether he can give new 
 thoughts, but riglit thoughts — echoes of truth — where 
 there would otherwise be no thoughts. He was a 
 reilective man who carried a sponge to fight the 
 Devil with. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 16ft February 1865. 
 
 Read after dinner Haydon's lecture on Wilkie. 
 That lecture comprises much of the bitter truth which 
 seems to make any labour or trouble light, that 
 enables a man to find the happy middle way so next 
 to impossible to find in Art. It has been found by a 
 few, and ought to be sought by many more. Wilkie, 
 after painting the "Blind Fiddler," was suddenly 
 placed on the pinnacle of fame, and Haydon graphi- 
 cally describes the effect. The older men of influence 
 were incensed, and sought high and low for a rival to 
 pull Wilkie down. They found a sort of rival in 
 Bird of Bristol, and then glided in and out among 
 patrons as snakes glide. Sir G. Beaumont was " fond 
 of a new genius," and Fuseli the painter asked in a 
 hoarse whisper of Haydon, "what Sir George thought." 
 
160 LBTTEKS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 1865 
 
 He, Sir George, was to Art, what "the Rulers" were 
 to Eeligion of old. Then they advised WUkie, who 
 was humble, and timid, and modest, and diligent, 
 next Exhibition to withdraw his picture, lest Bird's 
 should floor it, or as the phrase goes, "kill it." 
 Wilkie was humble and sensitive enough to comply. 
 Then the Eulers trampled on him the more : said he 
 was afraid of contest with Bird. Then, affecting a 
 pity for him, they got the Prince Regent to buy Bird's 
 picture and to order a pendant to it from Wilkie, as 
 if Wilkie were make-weight to Bird. Then Haydon 
 found Wilkie lying on his sofa, almost dying, with 
 the prayerbook in his hand, and gasping for breath. 
 Then followed illness, fever, slow restoration, life-long 
 liability to disease. 
 
 The force of this can only be felt by those capable 
 of estimating the art of Bird and Wilkie. Says 
 Haydon, "I date my disgust at the mean passions of 
 the Art from this moment. The ecstasy, the fears, the 
 hopes, the prophecies, that Wilkie would be done for, 
 are not to be expressed, or understood now, after so 
 many years ; but I witnessed all." 
 
 It is true that Haydon quarrelled like a madman 
 with these things, and ruined himself ; and he saw no 
 medium between what he called the ".toadyism" of 
 Wilkie, and his own rampant rebellion against the 
 world as it is. 
 
 But if he be not greedy of fame or gain, and he 
 have ability, there is a medium between servility on 
 the one hand and uproar on the other. 
 
1865 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 161 
 
 Such a victory has been gained by old Linnell, 
 the true patron and friend of Blake, when he, Linnell, 
 had little to spare. 
 
 I should like to throw a bouquet to old Linnell, 
 who defied the Academy, and the dealers, and the 
 public, and everybody else by work and waiting, 
 though the snow of age was beginning to fall on his 
 summit before it was seen that his crest was higher 
 than that of others. ^ 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 The other day I met a scholastic prosaic man who 
 said, "Now I should like to know what Tennyson 
 meant by 
 
 Spinning for ever down the ringing grooves of change. 
 
 A friend of mine did ask him, and he said, ' It was to 
 be understood figuratively, it was an ideal expression.' 
 Humph ! Now I should like to know what sort of 
 an explanation that is ! " 
 
 I would hazard a conjecture, however, at this 
 distance of time. Did you ever see tenpence spilt 
 on a jetty, chiefly in ha'pence? The tenpence is 
 "change," without a doubt. Many of the ha'pence 
 would "spin" on the planks, and "ring" in the 
 " grooves " or open spaces between them. Let the 
 
 ' Mr. Linnell paid a high tribute of respect to the writer of 
 these letters, in that he wished him to he his literary executor and 
 biographer. This, however, James Smetham did not feel himself 
 at liberty to undertake. 
 
 M 
 
162 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1865 
 
 great world change its positions and aspects as 
 frequently as these coppers change their positions 
 and thdr aspects. " Let " it ; what then ? Why not ? 
 Avast ! 
 
 If now you give your Captain Cuttle's hook a wave 
 in the air, and cock your eye on the horizon, it seems 
 to me you are out of your difficulty as completely as 
 you are ever likely to be. 
 
 He received the following letter from Rossetti : — 
 
 16 Cheynb "Walk, 21st November 1865. 
 
 My dear Smetham — Thanks for your letter of the other 
 day, which is very interesting, and lets me into much concern- 
 ing you. I am afraid you will think no hetter of me for 
 pronouncing the commonplace verdict that what you lack is 
 simply ambition, i.c. the feeling of pure rage and self-hatred 
 when any one else does better than you do. This in an am- 
 bitious mind leads not to envy in the least, but to self-scrutiny 
 on all sides, and that to something if anything can. You 
 comfort yourself with other things, whereas art must be its own 
 comforter or else comfortless. 
 
 I will hope to see you to-morrow to dinner at six. After 
 which we will go to Scott's, and you remember I have a bed for 
 you ; and am meanwhile and ever, my dear Smetham, very sin- 
 cerely youts, D. G. Rossetti. 
 
 And do please kindly let more distant forms be dropped on 
 both sides, being, as we are, almost ten-year-old friends. 
 
 To HIS Brother. 
 
 Went on Thursday to the Portrait Gallery at 
 South Kensington— the third and last assemblage, and 
 containing the whole semblance of our era. Among 
 
1865 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 163 
 
 other records is the very portrait of Cowper's mother 
 to which he wrote the lines so well known, "0 that 
 those lips had language," etc. — a most affecting record. 
 There are seventy portraits by Sir T. Lawrence ; the 
 great Duke in his fresh prime, who used to take his 
 sittings at 7 A.M., a picture retaining somewhere the 
 last touch of " the vanished hand," as when Lawrence 
 said, "There, that will do now," strikes strangely 
 on the senses and intellect and heart. Men taken in 
 their prime, who were afterwards seen in their decay, 
 and now not seen at all — how strange is the arresting 
 process ! Sir John Moore bade Lawrence "good morn- 
 ing," and went to Corunna, and was " buried darkly 
 at dead of night." Castlereagh made his bow and then 
 destroyed himself ; but there are no traces of these 
 subsequent histories in the silent canvases. There 
 are four pencil drawings of Lamb, Coleridge, Southey, 
 Wordsworth (when Coleridge was 23) for Cottle of 
 Bristol — Coleridge with white hair, by Phillips, and 
 also (with a cathedral window) by Washington Allston, 
 and in both cases with a snuff-box. There is Tom 
 Moore by Lawrence, small, smart, wonderfully painted, 
 and Campbell by Lawrence, and Byron by Phillips. 
 In Byron's Journal there is this entry : " Sat to Phil- 
 lips for faces." Here is the "faces" as fresh as ever, 
 and where is Byron ? There is Phillips himself with 
 a cloak over his shoulder, very gentlemanly. I re- 
 member as a young man Phillips's kindness to me. 
 It determined me to stay in London and study at the 
 Academy. How these links move one ! A gallery 
 
164 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1866 
 
 like this with sufficient knowledge is more enchanting 
 than an Arabian night. There is a drawing of Arthur 
 Hallam, as a boy of 1 6, by the side of his father ^ — that 
 is to say, the pictures are side by side. 
 
 Blest bo tlie art that can immortalise. 
 
 And what a comfortable proverb is that : " A cat may 
 look at a king." Here are awful Warriors and sages 
 and poets and judges who would make you shake in 
 your shoes, and yet you may poke your nose within 
 an inch of their faces. As dependable likenesses how 
 vastly superior are all since Hogarth to Lely and 
 Kneller, and indeed to Vandyke in some respects. 
 Lawrence beautified his subjects, but he sought out 
 the most trifling "modellings" in his faces and fixed 
 them for ever. The ordinary portrait-painters of our 
 era give us what may be reasoned upon. 
 
 To J.F. H. 
 
 21st May 1866 (Monday, 8 p.m.) 
 
 It is not often on week days that I can follow up 
 any serious thoughts with the pen. All my wit is 
 taxed to cut and contrive for current work, and any 
 leisure is only good for a bit of recreation and a joke 
 or two to keep one's spirits up. 
 
 Dickens, in a bright speech as chairman at the 
 dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund yesterday, gave 
 a graphic description of the romantic toils of the re- 
 porter ; but these compared with his subsequent ones 
 as literary inventor were light. To any man of health 
 
1866 LETTEES OF JAMBS SMETHAM 165 
 
 and pluck mere action and energy are delightful. I 
 never could much value a man for being merely "a 
 scholar," for it is so easy if a man wills to become one. 
 He has but to sit all day eating books. A far different 
 thing is invention, especially invention by which you 
 have to live, which it requires the toil of months to 
 produce, and which yet a breath may blast. All the 
 array of fact to be at hand, and wielded under certain 
 conditions, subjected to delicate eesthetic laws, which 
 are not written on brass, but are like the airy music 
 and flying noises on Prospero's island — so filmy and 
 fine — and then exposed to the coarse and blustering 
 popular judgment. And this not at full leisure, but 
 on the rigid conditions of supply and demand, made 
 to turn out whether you will or no — as the captive 
 Jews were buffeted and bid to sing " one of the songs 
 of Zion." "How can we sing in a strangelandf said 
 they. " Anything else you like : tales, histories, car- 
 penter's and smith's work, fetching and.carrying to any 
 extent ; but those delicate songs which we used to sing 
 in the height of Zion, warbling among the corn-lands 
 and the vineyards, don't ask us." 
 
 " No song, no supper," says the Babylonian ; " you 
 and your Jew's harp." 
 
 One wouldn't care so much if it comported with 
 one's views to become a mere David Roberts or view- 
 taker. The penalty you pay for affecting invention 
 is to be taxed in all your powers and passions. No 
 doubt if you succeed you get some of the rewards of 
 repute, and when a man is hot set on that it is (as one 
 
166 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1866 
 
 of the famous says) " purgatory to have, and hell to 
 want." 
 
 There is a way (which the vulture's eye hath not 
 seen) in which a man may pursue what the pursuers 
 of fame pursue, and yet find neither purgatory nor the 
 worst alternative ; but that secret path is the path of 
 increased toil and dizzy climbing. The man who, 
 while putting forth all his mental energy, wishes to 
 find rest to his soul, must fight ten where the other 
 fights only one. But with this difference, that he is 
 sure to vdn. This is true. I believe some men have 
 as truly vanquished fame, as others covetousness or 
 pleasure. One is as hard as the other. One is as 
 easy as the other. Eeligion can so lift a man up that 
 the rains and floods can't shake his house. But even so 
 much religion won't give a man leisure, though it gives 
 him peace. The world can't understand the believer's 
 life. With a worldling "drive" is either distraction 
 or pain or oblivion. Not so with the behever. He 
 may be "pressed out of measure beyond strength," but 
 he is at rest. " Ye shall find rest unto your souls. "^ — 
 
 Got your ventilator fresh as buttercups. "One 
 word at or near the spot is worth a whole cartload of 
 recollections " (Gray the poet). 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 Gth June. 
 Others apart sat on a hill retired 
 In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 
 Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
 Fix'd fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute, 
 And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. 
 
1866 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 167 
 
 Of good aud evil much they argued then, 
 Of happiness and final misery, 
 Passion and apathy, and gloi-y and shame : 
 Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy ; 
 Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm 
 Pain for awhile, m anguish, and excite 
 Fallacious hope, or arm ih' dbdured breast 
 With stubborn patience, as with triple steel. 
 
 To those who know God one of the most saddening 
 sights is these groups of dreamers on the hillsides, 
 seen from the vale of humhle love. 
 
 As opium laps the votary of it in Elysium, so, 
 exactly so, Thought sustains the thoughtless. They 
 stick thought about them as a dignity and adornment, 
 as the idiot sticks the peacock's feather in his wispy, 
 tangled hair. One would think they would wake 
 sometimes and see things rightly through the misty 
 gaps in their dreaming and go wild, or be like Bel- 
 shazzar when he saw the hand on the wall. Perhaps 
 they do sometimes. Perhaps, at some new sweep of 
 the endless " mazes," they call out in the lonely deserts 
 or frightful hollows of the monstrous hills where there 
 is none to hear, when the whole air hurtles with un- 
 certain noises and the earth vibrates with the tread of 
 gigantic footsteps, and the eyes strain with " fearful 
 lookings for." 
 
 But in the main it is not so. " Pleasing sorcery," 
 "fallacious hope," "stubborn patience,'' these are the 
 workings of the Circean cup of Pride and Thought. 
 The calmest of men are these placidly obdurate. 
 
 When a man is full of opium you may shake him 
 
168 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1866 
 
 rudely, but he is not provoked. Whether in the body 
 or out of it he cannot tell ; he is beyond vulgar haul- 
 ing. De Quincey made attempt after attempt to 
 recover himself out of the snare of opium, but the 
 deep-rooted fascination vi^as too much for him, and 
 though the dreams became darker and vaster, and the 
 awaking to the cold drizzle of life more intolerable 
 month by month, he was led downward by the spell — 
 such as you see Burne Jones illustrating in the Old 
 Water-colour Society's Exhibition, where Merlin can't 
 help himself, though the lid of the sepulchre rises to 
 admit him, then to seal him safely for ever and ever. 
 What set this fragment in motion, though, was this 
 reflection, that what makes religion vital is not the 
 stern proud thinlings about it ; it is the " drawing near 
 unto God " ; it is the "coming boldly to the Throne of 
 Grace.'' It is a humbling thing for the little Rotifer 
 with his two little wheels of Thought and Imagination 
 creating his little currents and finding his food in the 
 vortex he makes, to realise his place in the universe. 
 The Rotifer and the " Great Thinker " who will not 
 draw nigh to God seem a pair. He makes a stir 
 among the Rotifera, and is the fear and dread of the 
 Polygastri — something or other ; but that is his 
 reward, his " be-all " although not his " end-all." The 
 Rotifer has the best of it. He is in his place, doing 
 his happy little whizzing duty. He lives in God. He 
 reveals God. He proclaims God to all who gaze and 
 see his wheels at work. But the other one has un- 
 moor'd himself. He goes about bullying the Poly- 
 
1866 LETTERS OF JAME& SMETHAM 169 
 
 ceteras for the time being. He has the best of it in his 
 "pleasing sorcery," "fallacious hope," "stubborn 
 patience " ; yes, the best of it among the Poly-what's- 
 their-names ; but then the whole organic relations are 
 not yet brought to the test — the time of the end has 
 not yet come. The Rotifer that is now making 
 vortices in the north-west bay of a teaspoon may find 
 himself somewhere else in a hundred years. Fancy a 
 Rotifer who in one year is on terms with the inhabi- 
 tants of a teacup being removed in time out of sight, 
 out of mind, into some unsounded dark depth of the 
 Pacific, where we can't follow him or watch him ! 
 
 Man lives as if he was in the hands of the pre- 
 sent, and as if he bore no fixed relation to a whole. 
 He publishes his quarto or duodecimo, and it is cir- 
 culated by tens of thousands, and he thinks he has 
 done it. But he has only done a little bit of it — 
 whirled his wheels, made his vortex, swallowed the 
 Polys that happened to be in the nor'west bay of 
 the teaspoon. But — he'll be caught alone some day 1 
 
 About Stothard, I want to know why "They" 
 didn't buy up his work and croodle over it a Uttle 
 sooner t why they let him have an execution in his 
 house in Newman Street? There goes the calm, 
 seedy, philosopher - looking old man, walking for 
 hours with his sketch-book, and getting life from the 
 fresh air, and knowledge from the hedges and from 
 the passing incidents of being, and then he plants 
 himself with one foot on the rail of his easel till it is 
 
170 LETTERS 01' JAMES SMETHAM 1866 
 
 worn through, and does things for 30s. that fetch 
 20 guineas now that he can't know about it. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 SOUTHPOET. 
 
 The dwelling on any subject of study is very 
 calming and soothing. I am at present on the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews. The great difference of such a sub- 
 ject from all others is that all the interests of Time 
 and Eternity are wrapped up in it. The scrutiny of 
 a title-deed to £100,000 a year is nothing to it. How 
 should it be ? Is there a Christ ? Is He the Heir of 
 all things ? Was He made flesh ? Did He offer the 
 all-perfect sacrifice ? Did He supersede the old order 
 of priests 1 Is He the Mediator of a new and better 
 Covenant! What are the terms of that Covenant? 
 There are no questions like these. They raise, in 
 their very investigation, the whole soul into the Em- 
 pyrean. All other interests seem low, trivial, petty, 
 momentary. How needful to search the Scriptures 
 to see " if these things are so " ! Certainly the God 
 of Truth desires us to receive nothing that is not in 
 accordance with the clearest reason, nor to render any 
 but a " reasonable service." I am astonished, too, at 
 the imperative tone of this Epistle, and the element 
 of holy scorn against those who refuse to go into 
 these great questions carefully. The Voice seems to 
 shake the heavens and the earth in order to establish 
 in the hearts of the obedient the kingdom that cannot 
 be moved. 
 
1866 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 171 
 
 The effect of a more detailed study of such an 
 Epistle is not to be enough set forth. It is as the 
 difference between a weU-constructed but breathless 
 body, beautiful and strong, and the same body when 
 the breath of life comes into it. It gazes, it speaks, 
 it moves with ease, simplicity, and power ; it is warm, 
 glowing, attractive, iniiuential at every pore. It is 
 mighty through God. It arises and stands upon its 
 feet. Now, no one can describe the difference between 
 inanimation and life, but the whole nature echoes 
 loudly to it. " Because I live," says the Great High 
 Priest, " ye shaU live also." 
 
 I only see more and more that dealing with 
 " Doubt " is dealing with a phantom changeable and 
 elusive as a writhing mist about an inaccessible crag. 
 
 "If we believe that Jesus died and rose from the 
 dead." How much hinges on this ! What step 
 behind the Veil can we take without this? Is it 
 annihilation, or is it metempsychosis, or is it absorp- 
 tion into the Divine Nature if there be onel Ask 
 all the ages, and you have just a dead silence of six 
 thousand years. You may fancy a ghostly laugh at 
 your perplexity, but it is all fancy. There is nothing 
 so distinct as laughter. It is all blank and world-wide 
 silence. There is a little dust before your eyes, and 
 that is all you know of the matter. 
 
 In Art, if a man says Titian cannot colour, or that 
 Danby's landscapes are not " poetic," I'm done. Some 
 folks would find pleasure in firing up, accusing the 
 objector of want of "soul," others would begin a 
 
172 LETTERS 01" JAMES SMETHAM 1866 
 
 thesis, and refer to Burhe on the Sublime; but what 
 strikes me, even in Art, is the gigantic quantities to 
 be dealt with in discussion, their subtleties, and the 
 variable basis arising from capacity, knowledge, taste, 
 etc. Random hints, or mere syllogistic foiling, are 
 waste of breath and energy, and the discussion is a 
 matter of years and protracted study. 
 
 But to the believer in Danby all the persuasion 
 and settlement is there — the data of " the poetic " — 
 that dark pines cutting crimson horizons are poetic ; 
 that misty tarns with the purple evening departing 
 from them are poetic ; or that Danby's pines and 
 Danby's tarns are so, if a hundred instances in which 
 pines and tarns are not so in other men's pictures, or 
 were not so in given circumstances in nature, were 
 cited. "No," says the cautious mind, "here is no 
 chance of coming to a conclusion ; too many things 
 to be stated, sorted, compared." Rossetti would grant 
 me at once the whole question, because at a glance he 
 sees the whole. Here is a man who does not, or will 
 not. No matter, let us turn the conversation. But 
 no ; he has new questions about the nature and value 
 of "authority." What if Rossetti agrees with you 
 about Danby? Rossetti is not infallible, and Frith 
 thinks Danby's pictures "miserable." "Rossetti? 
 where are his pictures to be seen 1 Now Frith 
 painted for the Queen and Royal Family, and 
 is R.A." 
 
 Even in painting, the mere conception of disputa- 
 tion gives me a sense of being wholly addle-headed. 
 
1866 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 173 
 
 Yet Titian is a colourist, and Danby's pictures are 
 poetic ; and those who say they are not are in a 
 quagmire. But those who understand Titian and 
 Danby didn't argue themselves up to it. They saw it 
 at once, as soon as they clapped eyes on them. The 
 evidence came with a flood of clear light. 
 
 In perspective, now, it is otherwise. "I've only 
 this point short, I know all the rest." I say, " My 
 dear fellow, your very difiiculty shows you don't know 
 the first principles.'' Here it is merely a matter of 
 time and attention, unless he deny data. "Rays of 
 light don't go in straight lines ; I've a right to my 
 opinion ; light is a fluid." 
 
 "But you must grant that they do." "I can't." 
 "Then, of course, we had better say Good morning.'' 
 
 But in Religion, it alwa)'s seems to me that while 
 one simple, central, line of truth is so plain that peer, 
 ploughman, philosopher, child, may all see it and 
 walk in it, all but that one way is sheer morass, and 
 argument is like trying to fill up a morass, or to 
 pick one's way across a bit of it. It gives at every 
 point. 
 
 When Paul preached, he preached Jesus and the 
 Resurrection ; he reasoned of Righteousness, Temper- 
 ance, and Judgment to come ; he told his own expe- 
 rience. Some believed and were saved; some trembled 
 and delayed to obey ; some mocked ; some doubted ; 
 some contradicted ; some blasphemed. And that is a 
 summary of what is to be done, and what will happen 
 ill regard to the gospel from age to age. 
 
174 LETTEKS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1867 
 
 The following is o, note from Mr. Ruskin, in answer to one 
 telling of the death of James Smetham's mother : — 
 
 3rd March 1867. 
 Dear Smetham — Thank you for your note. I am always 
 glad to hear from you. You are happy in feeling that your 
 mother is " at rest. " My father died this day three years ; but 
 I look when I pass, at the place where he lies as at a prison 
 from the blue sky and things he loved. I've had many a loss 
 since, of various kinds, too — Deaths in life ; worse than Deaths 
 true. You are very happy in your peace. — Ever affectionately 
 yours, J. Ruskin. 
 
 To Mrs. TAYLOR. 
 
 We have often to pay a high price for our best 
 blessings ; and how little it matters what the moment- 
 ary mood or aspect of affairs may be, if out of it 
 comes the true blessing — knowledge of God's will in 
 higher degrees, and obedience to it, and rest in Him ! 
 What son is he whom the Father chastens not 1 If 
 our own wisdom and wit and energy had to shape 
 things to a good end, we should in most cases be 
 quite at our wit's end ; but it is not so. A God of 
 infinite perfections has the whole of our lot in His 
 hands, sees the end from the beginning, knows how 
 to adjust the strain of trouble to our powers of 
 endurance, sends appropriate little mitigations of one 
 kind or another, like temporary cordials ; and by a 
 long and wonderful series of interventions, succours, 
 and secret workings, Jacob, who at one time said, 
 " All these things are against me," finds himself 
 housed in Goshen, in the land of light. In the 
 training and discipline, particularly of the families of 
 
1867 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 175 
 
 God's people, as we read of it in biographies, hear of 
 it in Church fellowship, talk it over in private, how 
 large and important a part does trouble play ! 
 
 To T. A. 
 Studio, 11.20. Saturday, 19th July 1868. 
 
 Just going off to Hampstead Heath with the 
 children. It is my eldest boy's birthday, age 13. 
 
 Did I ever rave about the Eotifer to you — I have 
 to others, I know — but to you 1 I think not. I will 
 to-day for a while if possible. Some folk want Whales, 
 Mammoths, Iguanodons, Behemoths, to rave about. 
 They won't rave under two tons. But being a speck 
 myself, my speculations are exhausted and overdone, 
 and carried out of soundings by a Rotifer. 
 
 7.45 P.M., Studio. — That last paragraph was the 
 occasion of more than I thought, and it shows how 
 the events of our life may depend on the most casual 
 trifles. I wrote the last paragraph, put on my straw 
 hat, got ready to set off with the boys, got a little 
 sketch-book, lest it should be wanted, went out at the 
 side door, and just before opening the trellis gate felt 
 in my right waistcoat pocket for I really forget what, 
 but pulled out instead a scrap cut out of a paper 
 weeks ago, a little poem by Bishop Middleton. The 
 " ring " of the verse struck me, and my head being 
 full of the Rotifer, I got out the sketch-book, and on 
 the way to the rail, and in the railway carriage, and 
 on the heath, I wrote the poem which I shall now 
 proceed to publish by sending you a copy. 
 
176 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 THE ROTIFER. 1 
 
 When, out in midnight's huge expanse, 
 
 Our gazing orbits stop 
 On galaxies in braided dance — 
 
 The Sea becomes a drop. 
 
 But when, to microscopic ken, 
 Life's lessening gulfs lie free — 
 
 The inverted wonder turns, and then 
 The drop becomes a Sea ! 
 
 And look ! the tideless, shoreless deep 
 
 Tran.slucent to the eye, 
 Is charged with vital shapes that keep 
 
 All forms of monarchy. 
 
 Behemoth of the small abyss. 
 With ribs of glass-like steel — 
 
 The force which makes the kingdom his. 
 Turns his colossal wheel. 
 
 And down a shining vortex slide 
 
 His helpless myriad prey. 
 Who gathered life from depths that hide. 
 
 Where none could search but they. 
 
 And yet, who knows ? even there the scale 
 
 Of downward life begins, 
 Where less leviathans prevail, 
 
 And lesser prey-wheel spins. 
 
 what is great and what is small, 
 
 And what the solemn bound 
 Of great and little, where the all, 
 
 The last of life is found ? 
 
 A few copies of this were printed by a friend. 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 177 
 
 To Thee, the ONE— the Infinite- 
 Is neither large nor less — 
 
 Where thundering sun-stars sweep and light 
 The chasms of nothingness. 
 
 Or where, enclosed in globe on globe. 
 
 The lessening less descends — 
 Majestic Being drops her robe, 
 
 And Life's last throbbing ends. 
 
 Great God ! whose day's a thousand years — 
 
 Whose thousand years a day — 
 Pity the doubts — forgive the fears 
 
 Which vex me on my way ! 
 
 Why should I fear, who, wondering, see 
 
 Those deeps too small to view ? 
 The Power that made such life to be. 
 
 Makes life to feed it, too. 
 
 Eemembered sparrows — numbered hairs — 
 
 Clothed lilies — ravens fed — 
 Enfranchised spirits — ours and theirs, 
 
 The Living and the Dead. 
 
 Vast spheres of life — dim shades of death — 
 
 To-day and yesterday — 
 The vault above — the void beneath — 
 
 Hark what their voices say — 
 
 "No room for fear — no place for care 
 
 That single eye can see — 
 Opened by faith and purged by prayer. 
 
 And turned and fixed on THEE." 
 
 But that is not, after all, the direction of my pro- 
 posed " Eave about the Eotifer." That's not a "rave" 
 at all. "If I should intend Liverpool and land in 
 Heaven," said John Howe in regard to crossing from 
 
 N 
 
178 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 Ireland, — I intended Liverpool and got what will do 
 me and others good for — How long ? 
 
 My Liverpool was a commercial idea, but the 
 course was devious like the voyage from Belfast. 
 Did you ever see a Rotifer? If not, see one, and 
 what you will notice is this, that you will not only 
 see a Rotifer but see through one. 
 
 In some senses I'm a Rotifer. Some people are 
 cuttlefish hid in a cloud of sepia. A crocodile isn't 
 a Rotifer. Nothing less transparent, both in looks 
 and ways, than your crocodile. Read in Baker about 
 the shameful conduct of the crocodile to the little 
 birds on the Atbara. But a Rotifer ! You see all his 
 machinery, you think he's a little fool. You do see 
 all his machinery, but he isn't a little fool. He isn't 
 a little fool because you see through him. The man 
 whose life is a game at chess, and who sits like 
 Moritz Retzsch's " Satan playing for the Soul," may 
 call himself "deep," and it sometimes answers : some- 
 thing depends on the other player. There is a differ- 
 ence between a player in deadly earnest and one who 
 has sat down to oblige a friend, meaning only a light 
 tilting, while the other has couched his unblunted 
 spear for "play," like those in Israel's day who sported 
 by the pool in Gibeah. At a point in the devilish 
 game the sinister eye pierces across the board with 
 "mate in six moves" (see Wendell Holmes on this 
 head). But to him the other (who has been partly 
 following his soft fancies down the stream and partly 
 keeping an eye on a trivial game) — " What's that — 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 179 
 
 eh? — in six moves — don't quite see it. Check — 
 check — check — mate ! " 
 
 However, I see I can't just now complete the 
 discourse. In gathering matter and impetus I've 
 overloaded the mule, as they did in Abyssinia, and 
 he has, in the open day, rolled right over the crag 
 and perished in the pool. 
 
 Jvly 30. — Look out in the Rearrder for "The 
 Rotifer." The Editor kindly says the verses have 
 " cheered and stirred " him, and we're going to press. 
 The Lord make them serviceable to any podr clerk, 
 or artist, or farmer who doesn't know what's to 
 become of him and his missis and little Tommy and 
 Esmeralda Hann "if this weather continues." 
 
 I have seen lately what never struck me so closely 
 before, viz. that ventilation has been given me, as 
 horns to bull, hoof to ass, wheel to Rotifer. I only 
 see the full bearings now that we are upon a hill and 
 at a distance. I began it as a theatrical clown begins 
 his career, without any idea that he shall ever find it 
 of account in getting a living. But the time rolls on. 
 He's much too flighty for the brewery, and " gets the 
 sack," after his marriage, too, to Mary the maid of 
 the inn. And they are starving in a garret as woe- 
 begone as Marks' " Toothache in the Middle Ages," 
 when all of a sudden, his toothache is cured by a 
 Thought ; " I'll be a clown ! " Pale Mary thinks he's 
 gone off his head ; but no. Six weeks more and the 
 " music from the town, the murmurs of the drum and 
 fife," are heard by the Talking Oak, and now and 
 
180 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 then the clink of a cymhal levigated by the breeze 
 that sinks and swells and blows "the sound of 
 Minster bells" all round and round its "towering 
 top." The drum and fife is the recruiting party. 
 The music from the town is Bulwer being chaired 
 down High Street, and the cymbal tone, the staccato, 
 is the travelling theatre. The dreamy noise invites 
 the dreamy poet to the fair, and there is the canvas 
 pavilion, and Toothache with his hundred jokes, and 
 pale Mary crushed into beauty by carmine, the 
 tragedy Queen, whose part has been pared down to 
 suit her limited memory, most of what the audience 
 catch being " kyind ev-vin ! " and " her babes " are in 
 short frocks, and spangles and stomach-ache. 
 
 The tragedy is worth all the money ; and yet it 
 would never draw if it were not for electrified Tooth- 
 ache ! O what spasms of efibrt does he make, what 
 twinges of wit, what darting, stabbing, throbbing 
 hits right and left, what climaxes of anguished 
 funniness, as if the doctor must have it out at once 
 and an end to it ! 
 
 Impassive and stolid crowd ! Why don't you 
 walk up, ladies and gentlemen, walk up ? Yes, here 
 and there the clever clown singles out a bashful young 
 man and draws attention on him, and, as it were, 
 threatens him out of threepence. Here a round- 
 faced, burly, white-whiskered squireen renders him- 
 self ridiculous by mounting the steps, and brings 
 tears from the Tragedy Queen (who takes the money) 
 by insisting on giving her five shillings for his 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 181 
 
 ticket : " No, really, Sir, the chawge is only thrip- 
 pence." "Well, thafs threepence, isn't it? Are 
 you hlind ? " 
 
 " I've heered him say that afore," says Zachariah 
 Clod, "let's go an' have a shy at the cocoanuts." 
 
 The ground is exhausted and must be left in fallow. 
 No more fish in that pond ; no more food for the 
 Rotifer in thai drop. "No wish to unpeg the 
 pavilion, no desire to move — troublesome work mov- 
 ing. Huggins's people are at the next town. The 
 villages about here don't pay — horses are hobbled — 
 caravan wants a wheel mending; but it's no use, 
 Mary, we must go. Where's the soap 1 I wasn't 
 made to wear red half moons on a face of flour, was 
 I, Mary ? Wasn't a painted buffoon when you first 
 knew me, was I?" 
 
 "There is kind people in the world, though 
 Thomas isn't there 1 There's that gent as give five 
 shiUings last Thursday, and I believe it was a liking 
 for the ligimit drammer as much as anything. He 
 couldn't a' seen as we was in want of a meal's meat 
 underneath such a good colour as I always put over 
 it, could he ? And beside, he seemed orrstruck when 
 it come to where the bloodthirsty tyrant ketches 
 hold o' me and says, ' Now you're mine — mine ! ' 
 The old gentleman he outs with his pocket hand- 
 kerchief and mops hisself and actilly blubbers. I see 
 it as plain as I see our Billy amessing hisself with 
 the coloured soap suds." (After a pause.) " Thomas, 
 Thomas, perhaps he's the London Manager ! " 
 
182 LETTERS OE JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 " Oh dear no ; no such luck." — 
 
 Of course, this is the merest tornado of fancy, 
 making believe that there is a parallel between that 
 case and ours. 
 
 When the working power is low, and the Severn 
 murmurs over its pebbles, instead of rushing deep 
 over Sabrina and her train, then matters exaggerate 
 themselves into worse than that. 
 
 But still it is Founded in Fact. 
 
 The Squireen you will recognise ; but Squireens 
 like him are as one to a thousand. The Legitimate 
 Drama has but a poor chance where we are, and as 
 much depends upon Thomas Toothache, as on the 
 Mysterious Baron and the Wronged Beauty. So we 
 are tinkering our yellow wheel and sending out the 
 stage carpenter to the nearest towns, and trying to 
 find a line of migration. " What a fool you are,'' 
 says the gloomy brewer, " to let anybody know." 
 Thomas Toothache (with a slight inclination of the 
 head), " Yes, but you see I'm a Rotifer, and not a 
 ' Krorkindill.' " 
 
 To Mrs. M. C. TAYLOR, shortly after the death of 
 Mk. Tatlok. 
 
 Ongae, 5th August 1868. 
 
 I HAVE been over to Stamford Rivers, and seen 
 
 Isaac Taylor's tomb and house. With reverence I 
 
 thought what a pleasant thing it would have been to 
 
 walk with you over this as in old days. But I must 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 183 
 
 not incense memory either for you or us. God is 
 good. What He does is best. Yet a little while and 
 we shall see it, and acquiesce with triumphant joy in 
 the things which have tried us most. We have need 
 of patience, but " let patience have her perfect work, 
 that we may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." 
 Remember that the very element which would 
 have made it so pleasant to have borne news of Stam- 
 ford Rivers was an unearthly element. This life only 
 a "Saturday Evening.'' Its theory, the theory of 
 " Another Life '' ; and what makes Isaac Taylor's 
 grave (under the silent, or whispering, trees over the 
 wall which separates it from an ample farm-stead) so 
 well worth a pilgrimage is this, that there is " another 
 and a better world," of which among infidel philoso- 
 phers he was the champion, and we must not com- 
 plain if in due season the other life verifies and 
 asserts itself, and claims its population, selecting at 
 all ages its proper subjects with a full right to 
 
 Raise to glory all 
 Who fit for glory are. 
 
 The inscription round I. T.'s tomb is " Looking for 
 that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the 
 Great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ." 
 
 To T. A. 
 BoGNOE, Uh Aug. 1868. Friday, 6.40 p.m. 
 Scene — A lane ; on one side a wall seven feet 
 high ; on the other side a turnip field, a field of 
 
184 LETTERS 01? JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 wheat in sheaves, farms, and beyond, a line of silver- 
 gray undulating Downs. Overhead a cloudless sky ; 
 several larks up in it. Birds in the coppices ; and 
 one, in particular, which sounds like drawing a cork 
 that won't come out, but grates and squeaks. Over 
 the wall and the hundred yards breadth of mystery 
 to which there is " No entrance this way " is the 
 Sea. 
 
 Coming round farther to two mushroom-headed 
 gates, it is clear that the mystery of Laurel and 
 Poplar is a gentleman's seat with a coach road. I 
 scorn to inquire whose seat it is. He wants to be 
 secluded, or he'd not build walls seven feet high 
 round his seat, and say " No entrance this way." He 
 shall be the " Great Unknown " ; but whether short 
 (9 tall, young or old, fat or thin, married or bachelor 
 — or man at all, and not woman, spinster, or widow — 
 all this is involved in a haze of conjecture as obscure 
 as the age of "dateless old Hephsestus." 
 
 Nevertheless, on the other side of the mystery, and 
 between it and another — nay, on this side now, for 
 like a planet I have rounded the Poplar shades — on 
 this side there is a cooler lane, all trees and birds. 
 The songs in the shades of Poplar are so numerous 
 that the entire effect is that of a simmer, or rather 
 that of a quick boil of summer song. A roof of mossy 
 barn under a huge tree, the breath of a farmyard, 
 twelve milch kine hushed in by shelving thatch and 
 close growing fir trees, outer doors cut into the very 
 roof, Giles, with milk-pails over his shoulder, talking 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 185 
 
 to Jessy. A deeper lane, but trim and human; a 
 gate open to a placid meadow, four-square and lined 
 with fir trees ; a yellow sun fast setting, and all 
 entwined with other influence, with the pale gibbous 
 moon, with the scent of honeysuckle ; that which is 
 both whisper and moan and wonder, the diapason of 
 the sea. 
 
 (" Where has he got to now 1 " says T. A.) Well, 
 I've got a bit farther. I'm in a field. Stunted trees 
 all lean one way from the prevailing sea -winds. 
 There's the line of the sea itself. One sail far off; 
 for no ships dare come within ten miles of this coast ; 
 too many sunken rocks. Now I'm on the Marge — 
 "the beached Margent.'' The sea is steel-colour, the 
 horizon is lilac, and, above the horizon, a long film 
 of reddish-gray cloud spans all, like a flattened rain- 
 bow — a rainbow bankrupt, as it were, colour and 
 credit gone. The gibbous moon gathers its bright 
 night hue, as the sun goes away in the flats. Soli- 
 tude, silence all, except the " enchanted moan " 
 varying, multiplied, mufGled, and complicated with 
 shingle pebbles. 
 
 When I get free from the harness, and get time to 
 do it, then I think of Thee, 0. T. A. ! I thought of 
 thee on Wednesday evening. On Wednesday even- 
 ing it rained, but a topcoat and an umbrella and a lee 
 wall made two hours pacing to and fro possible. Now 
 Ally and I came down here on Monday. (Mamma 
 and the " chicks '' are coming to-morrow.) The half- 
 year was one of close labour ; no breathing time, a 
 
186 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 good deal of contest arising from money worry, 
 happily ended last week by a sudden wave of " sale 
 of stock " that overlapped our bills and left us before- 
 hand with cash; so made this change, needed by us 
 all, possible. Praise God for his goodness ! 
 
 Saturday, 7.10 P.M. — Walk round town, Georgey 
 and little Edwin with me. We hovered near the 
 circus, pitched for the day only, and which swallows 
 most of what Bognor has to spare of excitement or 
 interest. There is a curious quaint pleasure in hover- 
 ing round a fair or a circus. We have some Bulwer 
 and Dickens and even some Shakespeare in us, and 
 most legitimately. These circus men ! As a matter 
 of Art I would like to sit and smoke and make 
 acquaintance with these " Star Artistes," these " Bare- 
 backed Eiders," these "Champion Vaulters," these 
 "Lion Leapers," this "King of Clowns." 
 
 There is one of them lying in his human costume, 
 chill and lonely, in the grass behind the " waterproof 
 Pavilion,'' smoking his short pipe, melancholy as 
 Jacques — 
 
 Who was his Father ? 
 
 Who was his Mother ? 
 
 Has he a Sister ? 
 
 Has he a Brother ? 
 
 Or is there a dearer one 
 
 Still, and a nearer one 
 Yet than all other ? 
 
 There is a strange family likeness in these Eovers 
 with the paint off; a hardy look, an anxious look, as 
 if their eye were with their heart, and that far away. 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 187 
 
 They are a mystic people; they puzzle the senses. 
 At noon one of them was steadying himself on a throne 
 whose royal state surpassed the wealth of Strand- 
 Theatric-Ind, while his stately guards trembled, up- 
 right, firm as quivering rocks, in six places on the top 
 of the caravan drawn by six piebald Arab steeds. 
 His infant daughter drove her fairy car. All was 
 great and grave. Nothing was wanting of Scandi- 
 navian awful Kinghood but the reality. And ere long 
 in the bright arena, amid strains of melody, the trans- 
 migration of ideas will become more bewildering. 
 Mr. Pickwick vvdll stand lightly on two horses' backs, 
 his coat and white waistcoat will vanish. Shylock 
 will stand where Pickwick stood in the mazy ring 
 (and what becomes of the knife and scales ?) It is 
 not Shylock, bewildered brother, it is a Mohawk 
 
 Indian pursuing his deadly foe to the . No (by 
 
 the Horse powers), it is an Inca of Peru ; and even 
 while I look again, it is Mercury new lighted on a 
 heaven-kissing hill, a shame for ladies to look at, but 
 very pretty notwithstanding. No, no, it is none of 
 them ; it is Jacques, who lay in the cold grass and 
 smoked his short pipe, and looked as if he saw " the 
 Dacian mother, he their sire butchered " (as it were) 
 to make a Bognor holiday. 
 
 Suppose T. A. and J. S. to have been Circus-sians. 
 We might have been — T. A. would have been — " The 
 King of Clowns," J. S. the Pantaloon or Butt, now and 
 then soldered up into the Scandinavian king, big- 
 bearded, be-spangled, uneasy, placed there partly for 
 
188 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 length, partly for Quixotic gravity — partly because a 
 tumble from his throne would matter less than in any 
 other case. And yet, "down in the deep heart of 
 him," as Carlyle would say, there is love for his wife 
 — children — friends. 
 
 Whatever theory of life a man starts with, it will 
 bring him into difficulties. Let a man make prudence 
 his watchword, then you have a man like Griffiths, " a 
 safe man." But watch his course in various direc- 
 tions, and you will find that he makes few friends, 
 and that their affection for him is not enthusiastic. 
 But let a man try the other tack ; speak out all he 
 thinks and feels, utter all his mind, not keep it in tiU 
 afterwards, and he will land in another class of diffi- 
 culties. He may do it not from incontinence of 
 speech, but on some theory of Honesty or Chivalry, 
 disdaining what is sly and selfishly considerate. He 
 will express himself affectionately and win love, 
 plenty of it and widely spread, but the steady-going 
 years will run him down, if he doesn't mind. The 
 artist is very liable to have the pleasure of life spoiled 
 by the vast amount of love and friendship he gets, if 
 not wisely handled. He goes into a family at the 
 age of 20 and paints all the lot — father, mother, 
 children and dogs and cats too. His heart flows out 
 to all, and they swear him into eternal friendship, 
 and give him slippers and cigars as he mounts the 
 coach, and " he'll be sure to write." He is quite sad 
 for 10 miles. He gets to new quarters, among more 
 
1868 LETTERS OP JAMES SMETHAM 189 
 
 fathers, mothers, children, dogs, and cats. He writes 
 enthusiastically to the last lot, and they look for a 
 letter every month thenceforward for life. 
 
 But the second family group draws nigh to finish. 
 The sitters have all become endeared, and there is a 
 new compact of mutual affection. Two eternal friend- 
 ships, as it were. Well, a strong young man might 
 manage two — but two dozen ! two hundred ! In 
 twenty years the possibility of ewncing his attach- 
 ment is trodden down as hard as gravel. Each lot of 
 fathers, mothers, children, dogs, and cats has only 
 known ow faithless artist, while the faithless artist 
 is quite crushed with family circles. 
 
 Before, like an Abyssinian captive, I was delivered 
 by Prince Photograph I was getting into sad messes 
 of this sort. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 29<A OdoUr 1868. 
 Blessings of home ! Profound delights of books ! 
 What a world ! I admire thee, T. A., that thou lovest 
 a good BOOK. 
 
 A Book \ — a little world — with plains and gardens, 
 and deep solemn woods, and high mountains, and 
 ridges, and uplands, and fallows — 
 
 Fallows gray, 
 Where the nibbling flocks do stray — 
 
 and "silver horns" above them, and arching skies 
 above fhem, and stars above ihem. Those white 
 Margins, too, T. A. ! They % They're like silver 
 
190 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 sands round salt sea-pools — "For marginal notes," 
 says T. A. " For squares," says J. S. " Same thing," 
 says T. A. "Bow wow," says J. S. Well, we won't 
 quarrel over these quiet margins. We'll walk round 
 and survey them by our two selves. We'll be Johnson 
 and Savage arm in arm, hungry and poor, and out at 
 elbows, but hopeful and ardent, and determined to 
 "stand by our king and country." We'll be Addison 
 and Steele, with less liquor, and not spouting " The 
 Christian Hero " at that rate. What two won't we 
 be t We're free. We may run and rollick round the 
 margins, and halloo in the silence like two young 
 Mohawks in the moonlight, and no ' Charlie ' will take 
 us up. We may linger pensive in the glades, and 
 talk low and long, or rise high up the steeps and 
 survey mankind from Chayney to Peru ; free of the 
 whole domains. 
 
 One of the funniest, bewilderingest, charmingest, 
 things about a Book is that the letters keep in the 
 same place. You may stop at the word " in," or " on," 
 or " and," and you will find it all there when your eye 
 roves back to the place after you've put the book by, 
 and been all over the world, and grown gray — there 
 it is, just where it was. It is this petrified mind that 
 is so astonishing. 
 
 Wed. 6.20 p.m. — All quiet. Children gone to 
 Sunday school "treat." Treat at home in conse- 
 quence. Sir E. Walpole, comparing sketch of him in 
 Biog. Did. with the delineation of him in Macaulay's 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 191 
 
 Essays. Learn from his career not to love power too 
 mucli. There in 1692 (in the marginal gallery of 
 squares you see the fresco) — there under a tree at 
 Eton are two boys, one sturdy, the other of the 
 J. F. H. type of look. The sturdy boy is Bob 
 Walpole, the slim one is "Sinjohn." 
 
 My St. John leave all meaner things. — Pope. 
 
 It was too early for Gray to take " a distant prospect 
 of Eton College," or he might have watched those 
 two and sighed — 
 
 Ah ! why should they know their fate, 
 Since sorrow never comes too late, 
 And happiness too quickly flies ? 
 Thought would destroy their paradise. 
 No more : where ignorance is bliss, 
 'Tis folly to be wise. 
 
 " Their fate '' — thei/ did not know it ; we read their 
 lives backward. 
 
 There is old Sir Robert "Walpole, aged 69, like a 
 beleaguered old bull, standing up boldly against every- 
 body, you may say, except a few poor creatures that 
 would truckle to him — his head in danger, the power 
 just slipping from his grasp. 
 
 There is Viscount Bolingbroke, aged 36, muffled 
 and furtive, going to offer himself to the Pretender 
 because he, too, has lost jiower and wants it back. 
 
 There he is again, night by night his long Roman 
 sort of visage bent over books by a lamp, writing 
 against religion, or, as Sam Johnson said, "loading 
 
192 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 1868 
 
 his blunderbuss." He dare not fire it during his life- 
 time, but " gave half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman 
 to fire it off after his death." All that couldn't be 
 seen under the tree at Eton, but we can see it. 
 
 I saw Mm rise, I saw the scroll complete : 
 Noting, gray ohronioler, the silent years. 
 
 Those lines are in H. K. White somewhere. The 
 last is as fine as can be.^ 
 
 Macaulay's History — state of England in 1685. 
 What a delightful, unctuous, jolly piece of history, 
 Vol. I. ! Look at the life of the " Parson " of those 
 days. Fancy T. A. getting up before the pudding 
 and going into the corner to wait till called on to 
 return thanks. Fancy his marrying none but the 
 lady's maid at best. And then "f Squoire" and 
 Justice talking and acting " like a carter," only learned 
 in heraldry. One scarcely can think it possible to 
 have lived under such crushing circumstances as the 
 man of mind must have had to endure who did not 
 happen to be born a lord. 
 
 ' The fi-agment of Kirke WWte alluded to is as follows : — 
 
 Once more, and yet once more 
 
 I give unto my harp a dark-woven lay : 
 I heard the waters roar, 
 
 I heard the flood of ages pass away. 
 thou. Stem Spirit, who dost dwell 
 
 In thine eternal cell. 
 Noting, gray Chronicler, the silent years ; 
 
 I saw thee rise, I saw the scroll complete 
 
 Thou spakest, and at thy feet 
 The universe gave way. 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 193 
 
 What a change in 1867 ! We don't half value 
 our privileges. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 Do you know that as I live I become more and 
 more impressed by one word, and that word is 
 " Now." Between twilight and sunrise at Peniel 
 Jacob went through what he could never recall.' 
 " What saidst thou, Jacob, in that night-long con- 
 test 1 " Jacob could not have remembered that except 
 in its main lines. The veerings of hope and passion 
 and doubt and fear and intense stringent resolution 
 passed as the rolling night clouds passed, melting into 
 flecks and streaks of morning light. 
 
 It is the now that makes the sinner ; 
 It is the now that makes the saint. 
 
 Satan has great power over the past and over the 
 
 future ; he has less power over the Now. He has 
 
 terrified me many a time, as if to the gate of death, 
 
 by his power over the past, to make it lurid and 
 
 terrible and inexpiable. He has made heart and 
 
 flesh fail with the thought of all that lies before me. 
 
 But he has far less power over the Now. Here I am 
 
 more truly myself. I can dip my pen and go on 
 
 writing, and he can't compel me to do nothing or to 
 
 do wrong. Oh that I " could sport the oak " between 
 
 the past and the future very frequently and dwell in 
 
 the shrine of the present, forgetting the things that 
 
 are behind as far as they cloud the great work of 
 
 the Now ! 
 
194 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 I find that the elixir in the hidden crystal vase 
 down in the depths of the frame somewhere is very 
 low after the half-year's usage, during which it has 
 been plentiful and sparkling. When you have to 
 begin to force yourself to paint there is something 
 wrong. Many painters, who have not learned the 
 great arts of revulsion, idle for weeks together and 
 wait till the working power comes of its own accord, 
 which it will often do with the rush of a "bore" in 
 the Ganges some fine morning, or, more often, on 
 some tempestuous morning when the rain streams 
 down the pane and the wind roars in the chimney. 
 But there is a better way than this. Change is more 
 powerful than rest, and the art of life consists in pro- 
 viding a sufficiently large area of change for all 
 possible moods, so as to husband the forces and turn 
 the freaks of fancy to account, and, as the modern 
 chemic science does, make the very dust and waste 
 yield back their original riches. The art can't be 
 had for wishing. It must be cultivated. 
 
 When people have had " a good schooling " and 
 are "genteel" and yet have no ideas and no tastes, 
 you will notice that they keep up gentility and 
 consideration by fine words, which mean just what 
 plain ones mean, but which are as velvet paletots to 
 plain broadcloth. 
 
 "And so," says the young man, "we found an 
 excellent hostelry, and mine host gave us some 
 delicious salmon and cucumber, and a salad com- 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETIIAM 195 
 
 pounded with a great variety of ingredients, and we 
 discussed the viands set before us with considerable 
 relish and imbibed a quantity of the vinous fluid, 
 etc." Actually the man thinks he has been talking 
 to you in a refined and genteel way, whereas it is, 
 when analysed, nothing more than the well-washed 
 pig grunting over his trough -with a more or less 
 Latinised grunt. But Latin pigs are only pigs 
 after all. 
 
 To Mks. steward. 
 
 There is a small picture in the National Gallery 
 to me very full of interest. When Eaffaele was about 
 15 he seems to have made great progress with 
 Perugino, and to have been " pluming his wings and 
 meditating a flight, and thinking, so heaven help 
 him, of immortality," like Milton, and to have had a 
 waking vision of the Choice of Hercules sort. He 
 represents himself as a young sleeping knight to 
 whom Pleasure and Labour present their inducements 
 and rewards in the midst of an Italian landscape of 
 thin trees and light brown and blue hills. But the 
 interesting thing is that the bit of bluish ribbed paper 
 on which he made his design in light pen and ink 
 strokes, now gone brown, and which he had pricked 
 through for the purpose of tracing the design on to 
 the panel, is framed in the same glass cabinet. He 
 left it about, not thinking that in 350 years it would 
 be under glass in the distant city of London, stared 
 
196 LETTEES OF JAMBS SMETHAM 1868 
 
 at by Englist roughs, who would say, " Sithee Bill," 
 he's pricked it a' through with a pin, and spilt th' ile 
 on it ! " for there are two or three of those umber- 
 coloured blurs which come from a sketch being 
 inadvertently put down on a palette knife. 
 
 To HIS Beothee. 
 
 About 1849 I read Ruskin, and saw the logical 
 and verbal force of what he said, and determined to 
 put it to the proof, painting several pictures in the 
 severely imitation style, and deriving much of both 
 proiit and pleasure from it. After a fair trial I saw 
 that words and pigments are not at all the same 
 things. As he, after fifteen years' close study of 
 painting, found his eyes opened to the Venetians, who 
 upset half his former theories, so I by sheer experi- 
 ment saw that truth for the nineteenth century art 
 lay between Holman Hunt's work and Titian's work ; 
 that absolute imitation of nature with twelve pigments 
 is simply impossible, that there was a flaw in the 
 logic about "resemblance to nature," that the true 
 basis of a painting may be defined thus : " the expres- 
 sion of the feeling of an individual man about nature, 
 needing some good amount of culture on the part of 
 the observer to understand his language," and must 
 therefore for ever be laid open to endless varieties of 
 opinion, being in fact a Fine (aerial, attenuated, subtle, 
 imponderable) Art. Then with much thankfulness 
 to John Ruskin for his great services in so eloquently 
 calling the attention of the British public to the sub- 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 197 
 
 ject, and for many wonderful fruits of his own obser- 
 vations of nature and pictures, I retired once again 
 into my own lines of operation, conscious of my 
 position, and disabused of many early dreams of 
 perfectibility and public recognition of Art. 
 
 Said J. R., in early days, "any man with proper 
 pains may arrive at perfectly certain judgments." 
 But at what expense'! I ask. Look at the reply. 
 "For fifteen years I was blind to the greatest work 
 of all, though daily and ardently engaged in close 
 and profound study of this one thing." What of the 
 busy puisne Judges and Barristers? What of Sir 
 Benjamin Brodie and his followers ? What of the — 
 the anybody, but the son of a wealthy merchant born 
 with "this art gift of mine,'' buttressed with money, 
 emancipated by leisure, urged on by taste, and passion- 
 ate desire for Turner's defence against a world of 
 antagonists and depreciators, who had to be told by 
 a knight on horseback that Turner was the greatest 
 landscape painter the world ever saw ! But to be told 
 this is next to nothing, and the people who would not 
 have bought a Turner in 1849 will now give £3000 
 for one not intrinsically worth £500, and to them 
 no more than a Creswick would be. They know no 
 more of Turner now than in 1849. The conclusion of 
 near thirty years' experience and gradual disenchant- 
 ment has been that no one knows the difference 
 between a moderately good picture with no glaring 
 errors in it, and a transcendent picture, except artists 
 who are themselves producers. 
 
198 LETTERS OP JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 Gkben Lanes, on way to Railway Station, 
 8th June 1868. 
 
 It is true that to spend five days over a head and 
 three days over a broomstick handle doesn't come 
 home to one's own purpose, though Sandys spends 
 a week over a hand, and wisely. Nothing is more 
 exquisite in mental process than to go about enjoying 
 and adjusting the end to the means, and reorganising 
 that adjustment. The Dutch painters were not poets, 
 nor the sons of poets, but their fathers rescued a 
 Republic from the slime and covered it with such fair 
 farms that I declare to this day I like Dutch cheese 
 as well as any, because it sends one in imagination to 
 the many-uddered meadows which Cuyp has embossed 
 in gold and silver. What savoury hares and rabbits 
 they had in the low, blunt sandhills and how the 
 Teniers boor snared them, and how the big-breech'd 
 Grunn-Mann (I haven't any knowledge of Dutch, but 
 I am sure that must be the Dutch for " sportsman ") 
 banged off his piece at them, and then how the shin- 
 ing Vrow saw them in the Schopp and bargained for 
 them. The Schopp had often a window with a green 
 curtain in it and a basso-relievo of Cupids and goats 
 beneath, with a crack across the bas-relief, and iron 
 stains on the marble, and a bright brass bulging bottle 
 on the sUl, and such pickling cabbage as makes the 
 mouth water. 
 
 " Donner and Blitzen ! " says Gerhard Dow in 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETIIAM 199 
 
 passing, " Pots-tausen ! but I will baint that Fraulein," 
 and the vine leaves gave a conscious flutter. 
 
 If Art is to be really good there must not only be 
 the basis of poetry but the basis of true representa- 
 tion. 
 
 This requires prodigious labow, and as (they say) 
 you must have races to develop horse power, so in 
 each direction of science or art, some must carry a 
 given principle to the utmost, and so yield their con- 
 tribution to the world's progress. Here is a young 
 painter impatient because his great picture of " Ulysses 
 pottering in Nausicaa's washtub " takes him a whole 
 month. Let him go to be cured at S. Kensington, 
 Let him realise the studio of Mieris, Ostade, or Ger- 
 hard Dow. Let him see what reverent conceptions 
 of a carrot one of these men entertained, and what it 
 took to realise them. Nothing but an almost religious 
 estimate of S(mp could have buoyed them up. You 
 may say so, but that was not all. Look at Ostade's 
 "Physick." Here you have a wise leech peering 
 through the ruby texture of the globular bottle in his 
 hand held against the light, you have " simples " 
 drying on the wall, and tomes open on the table, and 
 severe, long superseded instruments on the sill. 
 
 No. They were thoughtful men. It was not all 
 Art plus Gastronomy. It was not Gastronomy that 
 let us in among the sheds and shealings of Tamers, 
 with the venerable boors at labour and the barn door 
 fowls scratching among the chaff. Art is not the 
 moulder of a nation's life and sentiment : it is its 
 
200 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 expression. So the trumpeters of Terburg, the solemn 
 dances on the wax'd oak floors of sunny interiors by 
 De Hooghe, and his bowlings on the lawn, the cud- 
 chewing, tufted yellow banks of Cuyp- with screens 
 of silver cloud above the windmills, the clash and 
 burly chatter of the night guard, with heroic, light- 
 haired captains in buff of Rembrandt, and his school : 
 these render back the rich Republic in a way in which 
 men might realise it, if they cared to do so, with an 
 accuracy equal to contemporaneousness, as far as 
 aspect is concerned. 
 
 Thank you, Jan Van Huysum ! 
 
 Thank you, Mr. Thomas Hope ! 
 
 Thank you, Albert the Good ! 
 
 Thank you, curators of the S. K. Museum ! 
 
 Thank you all, gentlemen, with all my heart ! As 
 to you, dear old Jan Van Huysum, you have edified 
 me beyond expression. You teach me that a man 
 can't be too careful as to his work, be it what it may. 
 That if a picture takes as long to build as a house, 
 and is as valuable, it is proper to take as varied 
 pains over it, carving timber and stone, and having 
 all manner of ledgers and day-books and wage-books 
 and little wooden houses on wheels with " office '' 
 over the door. 
 
 Mr. Slapdash whips out his pocket-book, scribbles 
 for five minutes on one page, and from that memor- 
 andum paints with the aid of the depths of his 
 consciousness the whole of his picture. Not so the 
 true follower of Gerhard Dow and Jan Van Huysum. 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 201 
 
 To him the silent surface with the " white ground " 
 is a sacred place that is to tell on after ages, and bring 
 pleasure or power or knowledge to hundreds of thou- 
 sands as silently. No eyes, emperor's or clown's, 
 telling the other that they have been there. It is 
 worth this man's while to spend a whole sketch-book, 
 if need be, over one twelve-inch panel. 
 
 Jan Van Huysum, your pearly dewdrops on the 
 fresh gathered cool green things of the earth refresh 
 me. Your tiny ants on the petals of the pink teach 
 me in their minute completion to be like the star, 
 " Ohne Hast, Ohne Rast." How cool and calm and 
 cheerful and confident you are, Jan ! 
 
 A writer in the Daily Telegraph, reviewing Holman 
 Hunt's " Isabella and the Pot of Basil," compares him 
 to Gerhard Dow. "He is Gerhard Dow en grand." 
 That's all very well, but he pours contempt on " the 
 little rubbishing Dutchmen " who were not as good 
 as Gerhard Dow, and names Mieris. That is a hateful 
 style of criticism. For the sake of carrying your 
 point you abuse those who work in an opposite 
 direction. "Shame, shame, turn him out — put him 
 under the pump ! " 
 
 I mean the critic, not the man he abuses. When 
 a boy I remember the entrancement of the Biographies 
 of Painters in the London Encyclopcedia as I lay on my 
 father's study floor, aged 11, reading them. The 
 Arabian Nights Untertainments were nothing to them. 
 How Van Huysum would never let anybody into his 
 studio, and guarded against dust with dragon watch- 
 
202 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 fulness, and made his own colours and brushes 
 because none were good enough ; and how the 
 pictures with white grounds were most prized, and 
 how only the men of enormous wealth could get 
 them. 
 
 All about Gr. Dow and Mieris and Ostade and 
 Teniers and Rembrandt. What a charm ! More 
 than the rainbow in the very sound and sight of 
 their names. "And are there any of these match- 
 less works in England ? " Yes, to be sure ; the great 
 Dutch merchants, the Hope family, have some of 
 their choicest works. " But I shall never see them 
 unless, perhaps, / become a great painter and go to 
 London." This was long ago, and long ago. 
 
 But now, in the Magic Halls which belong to you 
 and me as much as to Queen Victoria, the Prince and 
 Princess of Wales, and all the Eoyal Family — in the 
 South Kensington Museum yesterday I found myself 
 hanging enraptured over these very things. What 
 eyes have gazed at those two Van Huysums since he 
 finished that flourishing name and date, done as a 
 writing-master might chisel it in marble, and drew 
 the curtain and let the burgomaster in to have the 
 first sight of the marvel and hear him offer his 1500 
 guilders for it ! How little the crowds that move 
 past those pictures know what they are looking at, 
 and what a sUr each of those canvases has made in the 
 clean Dutch Republic and in the saloons of England 
 ever since the days of Charles the Second ! As little do 
 they see the embalming of human thought and labour. 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETIIAM 203 
 
 To the stuffy old white-waistcoated squire with 
 the gold eyeglass, port-wine face, loud voice, and air 
 which implies that Mulberry Park is the centre of all 
 things, visible and invisible — to him a flowerpiece is 
 a flowerpiece. " Pretty flowerpiece that, eh V Jan 
 Van Huysum's heart " hears it and beats though it's 
 earth in an earthly bed." To him (the old squire of 
 Mulberry Park) and to the obstinate-headed man of 
 words and thoughts-in-words, who believes that 
 thought divorced from words is homeless — to these 
 all pictures are as like " as my fingers are to my 
 fingers " (one of the silliest sayings I ever saw in a 
 sensible article where that topic was introduced). 
 
 " Pretty flowerpiece that ! " He comes round to 
 the other 1 500 guilder picture and says, " Ha ! I see ! 
 Yes ! another flowerpiece ! " and passes on to the 
 Ostade. 
 
 His "faculty" is not equal to the occasion. Now 
 suppose that things pleased only as long as. they are 
 new. Grant it, for it is true. Then comes the 
 question. How long is a given entity "new"? The 
 power of evolution is one thing, and the matter 
 evolved is another. Kingsley picks up the pebble, 
 and to him it is enough for an eloquent lecture. 
 "O yes," says Squire Mulberry, "your man of genius 
 (with a sneer as if it meant ' stable boy ') can make 
 sunshine out of cucumbers." Thai's true, Squire, but 
 it is not a case in point. The pebble was too much 
 for Kingsley, though too little for the squire. 
 
 I shall here refer to one of Mr. Spouter's [his own] 
 
204: LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 poetical effusions written in the year 1850, in which 
 the same thought is touched on — 
 
 The full-orbed mysteries of the sky, 
 Which here in glittering fragments lie, 
 And all our baby wonderings try ; 
 
 While now with glee, and now with dread, 
 In small experiment we tread 
 Among the living and the dead. 
 
 Peering into the daisy's crown 
 Until its wonders deep have grown 
 A mighty gulf to drinJc us down. 
 
 Let us " hark back.'' How long is a given entity 
 new ? That depends on what is in it as well as what 
 is in the observer. That Van Huysum ! The husky 
 " pretty -pret-ty " of Squire Mulberry dies along the 
 Museum distances, and we can stoop over the rail 
 and poke our nose to within two inches of the picture 
 (closely watched though by X55, and creating a 
 transit in the keeper's motions ; X55 and the keeper 
 narrowly looking for the pin or penknife which is 
 going to Fenianise the colours that began to bloom 
 among the Amsterdam tulips before the last century 
 was born). What is in it ? Why, there's a dewdrop 
 in it. That's a novelty and will please little children 
 for 1 minute 30 seconds and 12 parts of a second. 
 See how the light strikes it ! See how it is just going 
 to roll off ! See how the green of the leaf is reflected 
 on the under side of it ! That dewdrop was not done 
 with a brush ; now was it 1 It couldn't be. (X55 and 
 the keeper exchange looks and walk yards asunder. 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 205 
 
 one to his perpendicular reverie on Mary Hann, the 
 other to his melancholy nail-paring and tender wonder 
 what there will be for dinner.) 
 
 There was a day when Jan Van Huysum said (it 
 was a cool summer morning about 9.30 a.m.), "I think 
 I will put a dewdrop there. Gretchen ! " (at the top 
 of the stairs) " Gretchen, go and gather me a brocoli 
 leaf out of the shade with the dew on it, and mind 
 and don't shake it, and tell your missis I can't go out 
 with her, shopping, this morning." He met Gretchen 
 at the door — for none must enter that still studio — 
 and then — then it's all a mystery, for no one ever saw 
 how Jan Van Huysum did it. (X55 is attracted by 
 the talk, and stands close by, hands in white gloves 
 crossed as on drill, head on one side, smile of de- 
 precation and interest, twisting mouth and eye.) 
 " But you don't mean to say that you're going to 
 clap on a Novelty Scale, with such an observation as 
 that as the unit ? Don't I though ! If Squire Mul- 
 berry looks at one picture and calls it a "flower piece,'' 
 and at another picture and calls it a "cow piece," and 
 passes on, all I can say is that his universe is in a 
 nutshell. (I strongly suspect that at any rate it 
 is in a globe a little larger, the north pole lying 
 level with his elbow and the south a little above the 
 OS coccygis.) 
 
 I've not the least objection to cede the question. 
 I'm a hahy, and am only pleased with what is new. 
 There ! will that do ? Sir Isaac Newton went so far 
 as to say he was an infant (was it infant or child Vj on 
 
206 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 1868 
 
 the sea-shore, etc. Let's have it out. Let's go the 
 
 whole baby — 
 
 Here dear, 
 Little one, 
 Go slow, 
 Do not run — 
 
 and don't think it a slur merely on secular things 
 that they must be " new " if they are to please. The 
 sweet poet of The Christian Year knew better : — 
 
 New mercies each returning day 
 
 Hover around us while we pray. 
 
 New perils past, new sins forgiven. 
 
 New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven. 
 
 And don't think that Keble was the first to perceive 
 this, for 
 
 His mercies are iiew every morning and repeated every 
 evening. 
 
 I can only compare these fruitful writing moods 
 to a fen full of wild ducks, widgeon, and teal, wing- 
 ing and clanging till you bring them down. One 
 could wish them to be turned to account somehow, 
 yet my ducks and teal die if I try to domesticate 
 them. 
 
 There are many forms of conceit. There is the 
 conceit of empty and light-minded men, which is 
 flighty and irritable, and the conceit of the serious 
 and able man which is calm and deep. When Mal- 
 volio parades the garden "practising behaviour to 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 207 
 
 his own shadow," in his ridiculous yellow stockings 
 and cross garters, we laugh at him for a fool. " I 
 thank thee, I will smile," he says, and he smiles in- 
 effable self-approval. Yet if we collate his whole 
 character we see that he was no fool. He " thinks 
 nobly of the soul." He knows the doctrine of Pytha- 
 goras. He is shocked at all misbehaviour. He is a 
 "full solemn man." We see our Malvolios now and 
 then, some trifling local dignity will develop them. 
 The hat brim becomes broader, the coat longer tailed, 
 the yellow stockings and cross garters are translated 
 into the modern equivalents. The head goes in- 
 sensibly on to the tilt, the mouth is pursed into a point 
 of distance, or expands into a smile of toleration or 
 condescendency. His shadow has not grown less, 
 but larger, according to the Eastern good wish, and 
 he begins to practise behaviour to it. Very ridiculous 
 behaviour it is, but the last man to see it, or be con- 
 scious of it, is Malvolio. 
 
 To R. S. 
 
 What is true of the body is true also of the soul. 
 The laws of God are to the moral powers what the 
 laws of nature (so called) are to the physical powers. 
 Obedience to the laws of nature preserves the bloom 
 and life of the body ; obedience to the law of God 
 preserves the bloom of the soul. 
 
 "In all these things is the life of thy spirit." 
 Moral death, ever enlarging itself, is as inevitable 
 upon a course of sin as speedy mortality upon a 
 
208 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMETHAM 1868 
 
 course of vice. When sin enters it brings forth abun- 
 dantly after its kind, and death is not so much its 
 arbitrary award as its inevitable procreation. 
 
 To 0. M. 
 
 No doubt sin is a great evil — the greatest evil — 
 the evil. But its treatment is a thing which only the 
 " good and kind Physician " knows. I read a sermon 
 by Archbishop Manning on " I, if I be lifted up from 
 the earth, will draw all men unto me ; " very eloquent 
 and fine, but as different from the sweet gospel voice 
 " singing in silence " as the lurid flaming of Sinai 
 from the soft light which shone on Peter's face from the 
 sepulchre of his wronged and risen Saviour. With 
 this school of theologians there is no doubt a strong 
 sense of the evil of sin. But it is like the sense of 
 sin which the lost have in its fulness : Merlin, with 
 his hand on his aching heart, pacing for ever in en- 
 chanted forests, crushed and haunted and vexed for 
 ever by dim unappeasable foreshadowings of doom — 
 whispers of the inexpiable, the irretrievable, the 
 gone, the lost, the harvest past, the summer ended, 
 the sin to be dragged slowly out by years of torturing 
 fear and pain and penance, the sum of which is to be 
 "carried over " into "doleful shades" of Purgatory. 
 This is the mere enchanter's gospel. Ah, how different 
 from the gospel of our Lord and Saviour. 
 
 I have had enough of the presentment of sin, 
 enough of the miserable wandering in the mazes of 
 the dark woods of moral metaphysics, enough of the 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 209 
 
 terrible unrolling of the scrolls of doom. But I do 
 thank God that you and I have been saved from the 
 clutches of these darkeners of God's counsel who, with 
 temptations like ours, and consciences awake and 
 starting like ours, would have clawed and rolled us 
 as we might imagine a wild solemn -eyed Sphinx 
 might have smitten down and terrified a wanderer in 
 Egyptian deserts, laying her huge paw on his chest, 
 and gazing awfully into his eyes till reason failed and 
 death relieved him from the incubus. 
 
 How different are the voices we love, like the 
 charming voices of children singing " Hosanna ! 
 Peace on earth, goodwill to men ! " Angel voices, 
 sweet and swift ! 
 
 See all your sins on Jesus laid ! 
 The Lamb of God was slain ; 
 His soul was once an offering made 
 For every soul of man. 
 
 Analyse your sins? No, nail them to the Cross. 
 Weep tears of blood, sweat drops of oozing agony 
 in secret chambers, in lonely walks 1 Oh no — 
 
 Jesus my salvation is ; 
 Hence my doubts, away my fears ; 
 Jesus is become my peace. 
 Happy soul who sees the day, 
 The glad day of gospel grace ! 
 Thee my Lord (thou then wilt say), 
 Thee will I for ever praise. 
 
210 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 August 1868. 
 
 Two of my boys and myself liave been for a fort- 
 night to Shelley, near Ongar, to visit Mrs. Steward. 
 The influences of the country were very soothing — 
 fields, fields, fields, beautiful brooks with flag and 
 water-lily and rush and water-flowers in abundance, 
 and indoors good books and good talk in abundance ; 
 the only objection to the talk being its suggestiveness 
 and excitements. One wants to mump and muse in 
 holidays and talk to clods and pikestaves. There's 
 no need of excitements ; life never drags, is never 
 dull. The only difficulty is to fetch out of the fragrant 
 clods of the valley the steaming strength of nerve and 
 muscle which gives fuel to thought and labour. I 
 had to write for three weeks when the painting 
 power had dropped off merely to find employment 
 for the unharnessed faculties, and even then it was 
 not easy to repress the clamorous thoughts which 
 wanted to be back at the easel and fumed and fretted 
 not a little. 
 
 And I feel how humble it becomes me to be, in 
 the thought that all my planning and contriving may 
 come to naught. Yet what can any man do but use 
 his reason and will and working power to the utmost 
 and then be content to " leave it " ? I wish I could 
 be content to see the possible result of utter failure. 
 Who am I that I should escape the lot of many a 
 better man 1 How many, especially in the arts, have 
 actually been beaten by the insuperable necessities of 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 211 
 
 their position. Wordsworth dreaded this. (See his 
 poem on " Resolution and Independence," or some- 
 thing of that sort.) 
 
 I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, 
 
 The sleepless soul that perished iu his pride ; 
 
 Of him who walked in glory and in joy, 
 
 Following his plough along the mountain side. 
 
 By our own spirits we are deified. 
 
 We poets in our youth begin in gladness. 
 
 But thereof come in the end despondency and madness, 
 
 etc., and got cured by the firm-mindedness of an old 
 leech-gatherer on a lonely moor. 
 
 This is what one would like, not to bargain with 
 Providence that there shall be success, but to learn to 
 be content to bear what so many have to bear, and do 
 bear manfully. 
 
 It is a great help, nevertheless, to know when you 
 are really at your post- — ^a great help even in 
 prospect of defeat. Now I know that whether it be 
 bailiffs or ill-health or disablement or death itself, it 
 is my business to finish the work in hand to the best 
 of my ability, and that if this won't do nothing will. 
 
 I used to think that "fortification," etching, or 
 other possibilities might, if I only bestirred myself, 
 carry us clear of the risks of painting. I tried them 
 faithfully and long. I see they won't. It's no use 
 "taking on'' and wishing I had taken some other 
 trade. I've no more doubt about being in my right 
 place than you have. 
 
 And it's no use looking to this or that individual 
 quarter. It isn't a friend or two that can undertake 
 
212 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 to prop you up on and on. This increases the need 
 of patience, and Satan would like to put you out of 
 temper, like that man in Samaria who was trodden 
 down when the plenty came. The Lord has all sorts 
 of windows. I didn't see our way to any holiday this 
 summer, but here's Mrs. Steward invites us for a 
 fortnight, and his uncle sends for Johnny, and another 
 friend sends for Ally into Warwickshire, all unre- 
 quested. So if there are not windows, there are pigeon 
 holes, and we mustn't cry out before we are hurt. 
 Dinner ready. 
 
 \1th August. 
 
 Painting power beginning to tap at window and 
 be up to his tricks, but won't come in, like Master 
 Slender — 
 
 " Come, gentle Master Slender, come, we stay for 
 
 you." 
 
 SI. " I'll eat nothing, I thank you, sir," etc. 
 
 Much encouraged this morning by a letter from 
 Shields. Agnew bought a ten-inch study of mine 
 not long since. Shields called to inquire if it had 
 sold. " Yes, readily." Very thankful. If that class 
 of work (viz. the scriptural) goes "readily,'' then 
 that is where I am furnished for a hundred years 
 to come, and that is what I should best love to do, 
 and to do in that medium way ; not ambitiously, a 
 la Holman Hunt, not in shadowy indication, a la 
 Blake, but with solid finish of the broad sort, and 
 say sixteen inches long in panel, so that a week 
 would suflSce to realise an idea. 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 213 
 
 Don't you remember — for your life is pretty well 
 running abreast of mine — (and may we reach the 
 " blest shore " in due season!) — that just when you 
 were shedding your mere youth and entering on the 
 golden age in which most men begin, if ever, to make 
 themselves, there appeared what was considered a 
 starry group of poets, soon, and most unfairly, 
 obscured as " the spasmodic school " ? Professor 
 Aytoun it was who did it ; and the chief men of the 
 little cluster were Alexander Smith and Sydney 
 Dobell. Mind you, I can't say that I was ever 
 carried at all off my feet by them. I was too 
 early sealed to Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, 
 Keats, Tennyson, and the older poets, Chaucer, 
 Spenser, and others, readily to admit more into the 
 warerooms. So not having hoorayed for them, I had 
 not the shame of being a renegade and guffawing 
 when Aytoun sneered and laughed. It was probably 
 just so with you. Therefore we can the more tenderly 
 recognise and enjoy the full meaning of these Last 
 Leaves of Alexander Smith and the memoir attached 
 by P. P. Alexander. The Memoir is instructive. 
 Alexander Smith was a fine fellow. It is written 
 with a smell of Carlyle about it, and of all odours 
 none is so like stinking fish in all literature where it 
 does not come from the blubber of the huge whale 
 himself — the great Gothic whale lumbering and 
 floundering in the Northern Seas, and spouting his 
 "foam fountains" under the crackling Aurora and 
 the piercing Hyperborean stars. The Last Leaves are 
 
214 LETTEKS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 good essay --writing, and the essay on " Essayists " is 
 worth reading. The essay on " Sydney Dobell " is 
 touching as a gentle attempt to reply after long 
 silence, and when Aytoun mists had exhaled, to the 
 sneer about "Spasmodic." I used to dislike the 
 " Festus " and " Balder " tone considerably, and the 
 only book I ever flung to the other side of the room 
 was "Festus." I never could get far enough into 
 Dobell to come across his real merits, but I declare, 
 in its way, I know nothing so fine as the ballad that 
 A. Smith quotes here. It is of the supremest order 
 in that line. In music, in acute suggestiveness, in 
 unearthliness of imagery and humanity of sentiment. 
 I really couldn't match it in the same space by any 
 quotation. Here, I'll write it for thee, and thou 
 canst read it thy best for thy friends, only mind that 
 nobody needs to come in with the coal scuttle, or 
 " wants missis if you please." Twilight would be 
 best, coming home from a picnic, when you can only 
 half see to read, but fill up with memory. 
 
 KEITH OF RAVELSTON. 
 
 The murmur of the mourning ghost 
 
 That keeps the shadowy kine. 
 Keith of Kavelston, 
 
 The sorrows of thy line ! 
 
 Eavelston, Ravelston, 
 
 The merry path that leads 
 Down the golden morning hill, 
 
 Ani through the silver meads. 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 215 
 
 Eavelston, Ravelston, 
 
 The stile beneath the tree, 
 The maid that kept her mother's kine, 
 
 The song that sang she ! 
 
 She sang her song, she kept her kine. 
 
 She sat beneath the thorn, 
 "When Andrew Keith of Ravelston, 
 
 Rode through, the Monday morn. 
 
 His henchmen sing, his hawk-bells ring. 
 His belted jewels shine. 
 
 Keith of Ravelston, 
 The sorrows of thy line ! 
 
 1 lay my hand upon the stile, 
 The stile is lone and cold, 
 
 The burnie that goes babbling by 
 Says nought that can be told. 
 
 Yet, stranger, here from year to year. 
 
 She keeps her shadowy kine. 
 Keith of Ravelston, 
 
 The sorrows of thy line ! 
 
 Step out three steps where Andrew stood ; 
 
 Why blanch thy cheeks for fear ? 
 The ancient stile is not alone, 
 
 'Tis not the burn I hear ! 
 
 She makes her immemorial moan, 
 
 She keeps her shadowy kine. 
 Keith of Ravelston, 
 
 The sorrows of thy line ! 
 
 I call it very lovely, and gathering steadily, as he 
 ■was doing, strength during another twenty years, 
 who knows what a strong author and poet he might 
 have become ! 
 
216 LETTERS OF JAMBS SMBTHAM 1868 
 
 But what matter, there are books enough, more 
 than enough. Men need to use what there is. Yet, 
 like coral insects, we must work and die, and leave 
 our tiny bone to build the rising reef on which the 
 palm groves are to flourish in ages how far away ! 
 
 The twilight is dimming my paper, and the calm 
 of the " Saturday Evening " is gathering and deepen- 
 ing. What we wish for the Alexander Smiths — the 
 poets and the prose writers — is that they should 
 not only leave their inevitable modicum imbedded in 
 the reef, but that they should find a happy place of 
 their own in the eternal "fitness of things." 
 
 The following was written a few days afterwards : — 
 
 Just as my beginning to you about the Rotifer led 
 further than I thought, so these reflections led me to 
 take out half a quire of paper and begin a sort of 
 essay review on Alexander Smith's Last Leaves. I've 
 been running on the spring-board for a month, and 
 have ventured to leap at last. Most probably, there- 
 fore, no more ventilation, except through the press, 
 for nobody knows how long. 
 
 It was at this time the article on Alexander Smith published 
 in the London Quarterly Review, already mentioned, was 
 written. It was immediately followed by the one on Blake. He 
 afterwards received the following letter from D. G. Rossetti on 
 the subject of the essay. 
 
 Penkill, 27a Octolen- 1868. 
 My deak Smetham. — The L. Q. K arrived yesterday, and 
 I read your article aloud, which gave us all a great deal of 
 pleasure. It is full of real stuff in every paragraph (by the 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 217 
 
 bye, it is a pity the paragi'aphing and punctuation are not 
 better ; this I suppose is the printer's fault), and is as just in 
 criticism as it is excellent in style and rich in imagery. I was 
 specially delighted with what you say about Dobell's "Keith 
 of RavelstoB," not only because you have so flatteringly lugged 
 in my name in connection with it, but because I have always 
 regarded that poem as being one of the iinest of its length by 
 any modern poet — ranking with Keats's " La Belle Dame sans 
 Merci," and the other masterpieces of the condensed and hinted 
 order so dear to imaginative minds. "What a pity it is that 
 Dobell generally insists on being so long winded when he can 
 write like that ! There is a snatch of sea song (about the Betsy 
 Jane) in ' ' Balder " which is fifty times as good as anything in 
 Dibdin, who is nevertheless not contemptible. 
 
 Our circle here, though small, is a highly appreciative one, 
 and I assure you you could not have been in better hands. Our 
 ladies are Miss Boyd and a charming old lady, an aunt of 
 hers who (as I thought in reading) exactly realises what you 
 say of old age in your review, and who has a great love of poetry. 
 
 The weather begins to break up here now, and I shall be 
 soon returning to town to see what I can do towards work — not 
 very hopeful, I am sorry to say. 
 
 Affectionately yours — D. G. R. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 Luke XII. — " Bemerton Church ! Ah ! See how 
 the swallow darts in and out of the rafters ! Hear 
 how the bee hums in and out of the casement ! How 
 sweet that blowing breeze ! How cool that ancient 
 marble ! How peaceful that little storied urn — that 
 animated bust — (well, I don't know, he looks a flat, 
 but let that pass), and those few simple good folk ! 
 Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so " 
 
 George Herbert (with a look). " I have observed, 
 
218 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 my friends — pardon me that on this occasion I do not 
 at once proceed to divide the bread of life — that it 
 is one part of a minister's duty to bring, by such 
 simple arts as he may possess, the minds ' of his 
 hearers to a posture of reverence and receptiveness. 
 The work of the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Holy of 
 Holies, is sweet and deep. There is, nevertheless, 
 needful to it a prior labouring of the soul, something 
 superliminare, some pausing on the threshold, some 
 preparations of the heart, that the answer of the 
 tongue may not be empty and vain ; or our minds 
 will be as that Swallow, drifting over our heads ; as 
 that bee, humming half in, half out of the Holy 
 Temple ; as that breeze, passing no-whither and is in 
 danger of being insensate to the words of Truth ; as 
 that cold marble vase and burial urn, or that bust 
 which hath indeed the features of a man, but is not 
 informed with a living soul." 
 
 Luke xii. — Here George Herbert, glimmering out 
 of the Past for a moment, melts into the blue air, 
 and the ripples of the beech and ash recall me to the 
 page with which I began. " The old is better.'' Yes, 
 these squares were enclosed seven years ago, perhaps; 
 and that little one three-quarters of an inch long — 
 I don't remember when it was first made, as the 
 thought, contained in it, tolled like a bell high up in 
 the starry midnight of Thought. It was rude at 
 first; the merest germ. A line now, a line then, 
 have made it more and more distinct. But still it 
 is rude and obscure to the outer eye ; to the inner 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 219 
 
 eye (whicli is " tte bliss of solitude ") it represents a 
 close farm-yard, and a bordering wheat field over 
 which the twilight is "falling brown," and "some 
 one pacing there alone." What is this? and who is 
 he 1 I know him well. In a hundred even-falls he 
 has rebuked me when " the cares of this life," if not 
 "the deceitfulness of riches," crowded round me to 
 choke the good seed and render it unfruitful. When 
 I was inclined to murmur at my lot — to make haste 
 to get rich, to let the lusts of other things entering 
 in displace the life of God, I felt — and as I, pausing 
 for a word even now, shade a very little in between 
 the darkening barns where there is laid up much 
 goods for many years — I feel as if the square were 
 a Holy Thing, a solemn and sad thing; for as a 
 living voice to me is the voice of that man in the 
 twilight, like a late bird chirruping : " Soul, take 
 thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry ; " because I 
 know he is singing his death-song, and that he will 
 come no more to the haunts where he has worn out 
 and expended the life of his spirit. 
 
 But above it is another, and over it the word 
 "Consider," — a figure stooping reverently over a 
 tall lily (to my eye all graceful and finished as if 
 Jan Van Huysum had lent his pencil in his secret 
 studio, bringing it me finished as by miracle — 
 though a scribble of pen and ink to the Miss who 
 has "learned drawing under the most eminent pro- 
 fessors " : Professor Jones to wit, who was greatest 
 in poonah painting, and Professor Bobbins, whose 
 
220 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 greatest maxim was " to put the lights and shades 
 and colours in their right places "). And above 
 that a little bird on a spray, " not forgotten before 
 Grod ; " and then a head — shown in the back view 
 because the point of the record is that "the very 
 hairs of your head are all numbered." And then a 
 single hair, and then the section of a hair, and then, 
 above that, a square with the rude sketch of the 
 wheel of a Rotifer. (That awful sight I saw one 
 day in Mr. Budgett's microscope has haunted me 
 ever since. I see it now ! Those transparent cilise 
 whirling round and round and making an infini- 
 tesimal vortex ; each mysterious spoke, no doubt, as 
 hollow and organic as that tubular hair, which to 
 the spoke-tube would be as huge as the large main 
 drainage pipes to the leaden pipe from our cistern. 
 And the spoke-tube, no doubt, as large relatively to 
 other tubes in the microcosm as the cistern pipe to 
 the hollow hair.) Then a bit of the Atlantic Cable 
 lying in the ooze and bottom of the sea among the 
 forms of life brought up by lines of endless fathom 
 in a bit of sludge sent to W. K. Parker, the greatest 
 and profoundest fathomer of the unfathomed life 
 of the deep's unknown, who under his microscope 
 (received from the Microscopical Society itself, 
 because he could see farther than any of them, and 
 was the best boy of the -lot) resolves that sludge in 
 glittering rows — imbedded in lines and blots of 
 Gum or Canada Balsam — glittering rows of the most 
 bewitching shells, who "never expected the gentle- 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMBTHAM 221 
 
 man to look at them " from above, with bigger than 
 Brobdignag eyes, but were content in the un- 
 " turbulent profound" to pass away their days of 
 love beyond ken, love possibly as strong as that 
 which swells in the bosom of a — whale. 
 
 To Mrs. TAYLOR. 
 
 I CAN conceive no greater mingling of spiritual 
 and intellectual blessedness than to have at length 
 the whole letter and meaning of the Bible trans- 
 ferred beyond the encumbering machinery of study 
 into the substance of the mind itself, for the purpose 
 of meditation and use. Some portions of the Word 
 attain this lodgment early. The parable of the 
 Prodigal Son, for instance, may be said to have thus 
 fixed itself in all Christian minds. Indeed, most of 
 Christ's parables are so fixed. Well, to have the 
 Epistles dwelling there as clearly and orderly, with 
 as distinct detail and as ready generalisation, would 
 be unspeakably pleasant, and in course of time it 
 may be done. The Philippian Church ought to be 
 as distinct as a Methodist Circuit. Philemon is 
 circuit steward at Colosse, Epaphros is the " Super," 
 Onesimus is. a Class Leader; there "a faithful and 
 beloved brother," though at one time he was only 
 so so. Euodias and Syntyche at Philippi did not 
 get on well together, like some folks at Stoke 
 Newington and elsewhere. 
 
 The plan I am at present following is this : The 
 Philippians I have thus gone through, first squaring 
 
222 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 the substance of it, then reading through Alford, 
 Wesley, Clarke, Howson, and Conybeare, and the 
 Horse Paulines ; I get through a commentary on an 
 Epistle like winking when once the squares are 
 made ; for a jotted word or added square gives it 
 all a perfect vital relation. Then I add the various 
 readings, the important words in the original, all 
 forms of generalisation, so as to get big "scopes" 
 and little "scopes"; lateral "scopes" and the other 
 sort ; so that at last the thing is transferred bodily 
 out of the book into the mind, and "all the building 
 rises fair,'' just like a translucent house of crystal, 
 where you see all through it at a glance — a house of 
 light with no corner dark, and the pillars and grounds 
 of the Truth firm and soaring and opalescent all at once. 
 As to Studio work, the large landscape of 
 " Hesper " is in a manner done, and is laid by to 
 get mellow, and wait for "toning," etc. Since then 
 I have been at work on the " Shadow of the Cross," 
 and have got over the hill-summit in respect to it, 
 having, as I think and my friends think, mastered 
 the real diflSculty of the picture, which is the central 
 face. 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 If a painter, having made a good design and got 
 it to look finished as a picture, will then mentally 
 convey himself into one of those remote Chinese 
 villages where all the long days and evenings a 
 Chinese artist constructs the "laborious orient ivory, 
 
1868 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 223 
 
 sphere in sphere," learning that same continuance in 
 ■welldoing, and not beginning a new thing till the 
 old is finished, he will take a new sort of delight, 
 and his work can scarcely fail to be valuable in one 
 way or another. Most failures lie in not going on 
 long enough. 
 
 I heard a man in a meeting in the country long 
 ago, say that one of the most encouraging verses he 
 knew was a verse of common metre to this effect — 
 
 Go on, go on, go on, go on, etc. 
 
 It is one of the signs of the true connoisseur not 
 to talk much in the presence of pictures. The gabble 
 and fribble, the shallow exclamations of delight, 
 and the presumptuous hasty censure of the E.A. 
 crowd, who come more to be seen than to see, mark 
 out the persons to whom pictures are like bracelets 
 and bugles more than like Sibylline books. One of 
 the finest expressions we ever see on a human face 
 is that with which a good judge of painting looks 
 at a picture. Reynolds on one occasion was painting 
 the portrait of such an one. The sitter would keep 
 turning his head to look at a picture on the wall, 
 and the look and posture were so fine that Sir 
 Joshua took a new canvas and began a new portrait. 
 
 Sir Joshua, when West had painted the " Death 
 of General Wolfe," and had ventured to clothe his 
 heroes in the dress they actually wore, sat before 
 the work for a whole half-hour and spoke never a 
 word. And then flowed the oracular sentence, 
 
224 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1868 
 
 " West has conquered, this picture will create a revo- 
 lution in art." 
 
 I don't know whether it is wholly a benefit or a 
 hindrance that ventilation has to be chiefly confined 
 to fighting my own battle. I am so full of interest 
 in other things, characters, people, events, books — 
 all sorts of things. Yet the genius of ventilation 
 rebukes me if I wander far from the battle of life 
 to-day. It has to be fought either in cloudy thought 
 or by the tongue, or at the point of the pen ; and 
 the last is far the mightiest — mightier than the 
 sword. In the long run, truly, it touches most of 
 the great human subjects of interest, because man 
 is a microcosm and his life " an image of the mighty 
 world." "If I have told you of earthly things," 
 how that I am meek and lowly of heart, that my 
 kingdom is not of this world, that a lily is arrayed 
 more gloriously than Solomon, that what men prize 
 and strive for is precisely what is worthless, that 
 covetousness is idolatry, that content is true riches, 
 that care is curse, that predominance is slavery, that 
 pride is meanness, that it is more blessed to give than 
 to receive, — and ye believe not ; how can ye believe 
 if I tell you of heavenly things? — of mysteries of 
 Divine manifestation, of heavenly repose and one- 
 ness with the Father, of the " quiet seats above the 
 thunder " in undying bliss, of the rapturous and 
 seraphic affections of finished love, of the perpetuity 
 of joy and the pleasure for evermore ? 
 
1869 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 225 
 
 To Mrs. TAYLOR he writes as follows concerning the pro- 
 gress of his painting : — 
 
 Uh March 1869. 
 
 I AM now at the last stage of the " Hymn of the 
 Last Supper," where no single day's work, however 
 laborious, would be apparent to a strange eye, 
 though thousands of minute touches are added ; but 
 the accretion of these subtleties makes the work 
 very different in time. The tension of the faculties 
 required in the carrying fully out of such a picture 
 is more than could be told. For you to know every 
 touch, so that you lose all sense of freshness and 
 are liable to think your picture too dark, too light, 
 too strong in colour, not strong enough, twenty times 
 a day, and have to bridle yourself in, and reason 
 from point to point, screwing along as if you were 
 going to take Magdala. Yet it is delightful toil, 
 and the love of toil grows on you. I hope when 
 this is done, which will be in another fortnight, if 
 all is well, to go on with the " Shadow of the Cross,'' 
 which is advanced since you saw it. 
 
 The only other pursuits in the way of study I 
 allow myself are the Odes of Horace, which I go 
 over in all sorts of ways, endlessly, hoping ere long 
 to be quite at home in them as Latin poetry, and 
 the Epistle to the Romans in the Greek, which I 
 treat in the same way. In these two I have set up 
 my (intellectual) rest for perhaps a year or two. I 
 mean to leave neither till I know them as well as 
 I know the multiplication table (which I do know up 
 to 12 times 12). 
 
 Q 
 
226 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1869 
 
 I know you will like this detail of my work better 
 than general news, not to say that I don't know 
 about anything else but (1) my picture; (2) Horace; 
 (3) the Eomans. And inquiries on these three 
 heads will command my best attention. 
 
 To THE Same. 
 
 8th April. 
 On the evening before Good Friday, i.e. on the 
 evening of the Last Supper, as we commemorate it, I 
 got "The Hymn'' finished; but without at all trying 
 to complete it by then. I was rather pleased at the 
 coincidence. On the Saturday morning Mr. J. S. 
 Budgett came and offered me my price (300 gs.) for 
 it. Since then it has been in Eossetti's studio for 
 a week, where it was seen a good deal and proved 
 a complete success. One who saw it was G. F. 
 Watts, one of the "Hangers" at the RA. this year. 
 I must tell you the summary of his opinion as re- 
 ported by E. — "It must be called a great picture 
 though it is a small one." On Tuesday I went to 
 see Watts myself. He confirmed the words spoken 
 to Eossetti, and promised to serve me in any way he 
 could. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 BoGNon, ith Augvst. 
 Just had a bathe in the Sea — the Sea, the open 
 Sea, the blue, the fresh, the ever free. 
 
 The little joys of life give more satisfaction than 
 
1869 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 227 
 
 one would think You recollect at supper time that 
 you " got your hair cut to-day " ; too long delayed, 
 but done at last. What a serenity steals over you 
 as you sit down to supper ! You give your razor 
 and knife to a grinder, and to-morrow morning what 
 a delight it is to find that your razor cuts. You cut 
 your pencil, and for a week you feel like a free man 
 as you handle your penknife. 
 
 Got Havrthorne's Notes. His minute notice of 
 small incidents suggests what a blessing it is to be 
 able to sketch. There are points in N. Hawthorne I can 
 well understand (the same in Landor), viz. the being the 
 slave of impression at certain times. It is a hindrance 
 in some directions, a strength in others. It made N. 
 H. silent, and W. S. L. furious, the only two avenues 
 of relief. But the first is safe, the second dangerous. 
 
 I like the description of N. H. sitting" all the 
 evening, and never saying anything but taking in 
 every little fact. 
 
 Your habitual talker may have a Johnsonian 
 amplitude of diction, and get into certain ruts and 
 formulae which will look like extempore power — just 
 as in speech-makers you may find out where the "It 
 has struck me, Mr. Chairman " soon merges into the 
 MS. But where a subtle fancy and acute taste, and 
 strong feeling blend, as in N. H., it stops the clapper, 
 and his talk is as prosaic and ordinary as N. H.'s 
 account of Rydal and Grasmere, which any one who has 
 been there sees is just like a school-girl's journal — 
 
228 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1869 
 
 except that he sees "the new moon over his right 
 shoulder," which was a revengeful touch of his genius. 
 
 I'm often inclined to burst out in mere enjoyment 
 of squaring. What it has become after twenty-two 
 years — but perhaps it is useless. No new principle 
 has been developed this ten years. It is the wondrous 
 combination, the startling or soothing chords, or its 
 diapason, which brings such exquisite deUght. For 
 example, every walk is "squared," and these things 
 that N. H. notes in words are put in much more 
 efficiently in form. Here is a twilight walk, and by 
 inflections of slight shading I can record the sentiment 
 " andante," " con spirito," the very time and tune, as 
 in music. In fact, in addition to its veraciousness of 
 fact, it has become musical, so that there be bass 
 squares and treble squares, and all sorts of echoing 
 influences, humming as in the Isle of Prospero round 
 the simple facts of life, none of which (within certain 
 analysed limits) are too trivial to record. So that I 
 live close to my kind habitually. 
 
 It has all grown insensibly, as all sorts of scented 
 and curious things grow under the oaks of the dim 
 unfathomed forest. 
 
 I delight in W. S. Landor's theory of Proportion, 
 and how there ought to be a place for every orna- 
 ment, solid and full of relation. 
 
 Unity, mystery, majesty, grace, 
 
 Stone upon stone and each stone in its place. 
 
 The thing that honest Old Time shows us is that if 
 
1869 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 229 
 
 your temple be large it must be lare, if it be finished 
 and elegant it must be small. 
 
 To T. A. 
 BooNoa, Wednesday, 12.15 p.m. 
 
 As I write there pass coaches and four, half a dozen 
 of them (one with postilions in blue), going to Good- 
 wood races. [Here is an illustration.] 
 
 That is a "swell young man" with a horn, the 
 Honourable Somebody, no doubt. Coaches clean, not 
 dusty, as when we saw them return last evening; 
 dresses clean and stylish ; horses spanking and skit- 
 tish. The drivers are swells : some young swells, 
 others old swells, with white reins. As they pass 
 the Hon. Mr. Hornblower sees me standing at the 
 toy shop door, and he thinks to himself — seeing one 
 whom nature marked out for an aristocrat, but who 
 is reduced to a perambulator and two little children 
 to take care of at a toy shop door — "How that 
 fellow envies us ! How he wishes he were going to 
 Goodwood, poor devil ! I'll treat him to a taste of 
 my horn '' — and so he holds it straight out, and makes 
 it say, Tootle-tootle-too-oo-oo-oo-oo ! which was very 
 kind of him, and may he never want a horn to blow, 
 and an elegant middle-aged party standing at a toy 
 shop door to admire him. What the angels who 
 excel in strength think of him and the Goodwood 
 races, and all that system of things of which the four- 
 horsed coaches form a part, is another thing entirely. 
 
 In the twilight last evening, walking on the 
 
230 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1869 
 
 promenade, I heard a trumpet and a viol, and looking 
 across, saw windows open and a party of a dozen 
 seated at dinner, attended by near a dozen liveried 
 servants : white cravat, spotless linen, black dress, 
 faces fresh and glowing, hair crisp and wavy and 
 nicely parted, and brushed smoothly and clingingly to 
 the smooth forehead. Every face, whether it were a fat 
 face like Monsieur JuUien's, or an ApoHonic face like 
 Byron's, was what we understand by an aristocratic 
 face — not disturbed by cares of the petty and common 
 kind, with a manner properly and gently restrained. 
 How this dozen got over the hours between 9.30 
 P.M. and this morning I don't know ; but here they 
 are again, fresh as out of bandboxes, and imagination 
 follows them to Goodwood, and sees the phenomena of 
 the racecourse, and their return, not so dusty to-day 
 as yesterday, for it rained this morning — sees the 
 Wednesday's dinner, the pattern of Tuesday's — sees 
 the solemn tides roll in opposite their window on the 
 twilight sands — sees the days speed by, and the little 
 black moustache turn gray, and the square-chested 
 guardsman in 1895, possibly on Bognor pier, recalling 
 this very week, when he is 75, as the tide of that 
 year and day rolls in, solemn, whispering — sees his 
 escutcheon in the little country church — sees the 
 black paint on it crack and turn gray — sees it decay, 
 and asks in a sort of bewilderment, " How is it that 
 the gray tide is so regular and constant, and as it 
 were sly and reticent, as if it were always going to 
 say something, and yet never does say it ? " 
 
1869 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 231 
 
 I never did say, I don't say it now, that there is 
 any virtue in only having a perambulator by way of 
 carriage. I don't say that riding in a four-horsed 
 coach with postilions in blue jackets and white hats 
 sharpens the avenging angel's sword. What I say is 
 that the gray tide has a very wonderful way with it, 
 and rolls on longer than coaches to Goodwood, and a 
 wonderful wise saying strikes me as I write — quite a 
 sweet thing in sayings, which is this — 
 
 They who live longest will see most ! 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 Fblpham, Friday, 7.30, 
 
 Heke is the shore where dear old Blake the 
 painter in his four years' residence used to wander, 
 seeing Moses and the prophets. 
 
 I am reading at intervals D'Israeli's Venetia, which 
 is, as you probably know, based on the life of Lord 
 Byron. There do not seem to me, as yet, any great 
 strokes of genius in it, nor much polish of style. 
 
 In holidays a good burst of changeful light reading, 
 all in one vein, is not a bad plan ; so I mean to follow 
 this up with Vivian Grey, The Young Duke, etc. 
 Even the boyish work of a man who had force enough 
 to become Prime Minister can't be trash, and must 
 contain in solution much drawing from nature. There 
 is no question as to the delightfulness of good novels, 
 at any rate for holiday hours. Novels are bad, not 
 because they are novels, but only in so far as they 
 
232 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1869 
 
 falsify Nature and Life. This is true also of 
 
 painting. 
 
 1th August, 1. 30. 
 
 On shore. Reading The Young Duke, a wilder- 
 ness of wicked vitality, no doubt substantially true, 
 "when George the Fourth was king." The brilliant 
 sketching in his own razory manner is in some 
 chapters wonderful. He never reaches Bulwer in a 
 sort of starry amplitude and genuine sense of the 
 ineffable, but he is more dazzling in rapid penetra- 
 tion and brief certainty, and his wit and humour are 
 finer and more native. Bulwer has a sort of stilted 
 patrician and quixotic strut, not void of real nobility, 
 but while witty in a cultured sort of way, he seems 
 so from a sense of duty. 
 
 Tuesday, 5 p.m. 
 
 Got into Contarini Fleming which was spoken of 
 to me as an interesting description of the education 
 of a poet. DTsraeli himself in a recent preface speaks 
 well of it. The singular way in which he ducks and 
 dives from the craziest romance to the most frigid, 
 drawing-room, keen finish of acquaintance with " good 
 society " is very noticeable. If a young man of no 
 connections wanted to know how to comport himself 
 in " Society," I should say read Bulwer and D'Israeli 
 very closely. B. and DT. both helieve in " Society," 
 and never suspect their creed. They therefore per- 
 ceive its elements, as painters catch aspects and sports- 
 men have an eye alive to game. The animus of this 
 school of manners may be often worthless, but the 
 
1869 LETTERS" OF JAMES SMETHAM 233 
 
 Art of it is valuable — just as while the sensuality of 
 the Venetian School may at times be great, their 
 method is always nearest the grand truth. 
 
 Just now the Epistle to the Galatians is a kind of 
 Mont Blanc in importance and attractiveness. What 
 bears on it in profane literature acquires interest from 
 that cause. Because Cicero and Caesar and Pompey 
 indirectly had to do with the Galatae they seem some- 
 body. I am never tired of going over the ground, 
 nor of squaring any fraction of it, nor of laying down 
 any new analysis of it, nor of delving nor tunnelling. 
 It is as important to me as if I were proprietor of the 
 province. Yet if the question were asked, " What are 
 you going to do with it?" all I can say is — (1) Feed 
 on it ; (2) Teach it to half a dozen young journeymen, 
 and think myself abundantly repaid if they will attend 
 regularly. 
 
 And all I crave is an increase of this principle of 
 concentration, it is the best way to get a little, and 
 do a little good. 
 
 And how little of genuine good we can either get 
 or do in this little bit of life ! To do a thing with 
 one's might is a serious business. No labour seems 
 too great, no reiteration too frequent, if one can but 
 really grasp such a piece of work as the Galatians so 
 as to give it over, simplified and impressive, into the 
 hands and hearts and heads of half a dozen others. 
 What are the dreams of classic poetry and mythology 
 which lull and stimulate alternately the imagination 
 
234 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1869 
 
 to the granitic vastness, length, breadth, depth, and 
 height of such high arguments as are found in Paul's 
 Epistles ! It is the difference between living and 
 dreaming. 
 
 The following is written in acknowledging the receipt ot 
 Matthew Arnold's St. Paul and Protestantism. 
 
 Thank you, my dear boy, for the book just come, 
 and which I shall read, though I have my unfathom- 
 able doubts as to M. A.'s fitness to give a new inter- 
 pretation to St. Paul, whose Epistles I have only 
 lately got to some extent generalised so as to be open 
 to future meditation. Whatever I have studied of 
 them, and this has been for many years, and with as 
 much yearning eagerness and breathless awe as I have 
 felt in nothing except the words of the Lord Jesus, 
 has tended to the confirmation of the old evangelic 
 interpretation of them, in which perhaps I should not 
 have seen my way so clearly but for their accordance 
 with my own " experience." All that unutterable 
 sense of sin, that terrible deadly fight with e^al, those 
 strivings of the Spirit I went through, and more ; all 
 that deliverance, that liberty of the Gospel, that being 
 justified by faith in Christ, that peace with God, that 
 shedding abroad by the Holy Ghost of the love of 
 God in the heart, that coming in of the "new 
 creation " ; all the shades and lights of experience 
 since then. Twenty-three years of such experience, 
 which inwardly is as great and as simple a fact as the 
 facts of seeing and hearing, make me unable to re- 
 
1870 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 235 
 
 ceive, even to perceive, any other interpretation. 
 And I have met with such scores and hundreds who 
 strike hands with me in life and death on these great 
 matters that it is settled "without controversy" to me. 
 
 I believe if I could have been doubtful I should 
 have been. My mental habits, my tastes, everything, 
 would have led me away from the Puritans. 
 
 Thus much for myself. As to others, their sincerity, 
 their safety, I positively withhold all judgment. I 
 leave them to my Master and theirs. He does all 
 things well and will " do right." 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 SouTHPOET, 29th Janimry 1870. 
 
 Have read three vols, of The Ring and the Booh, 
 with a curious mixture of impatience and admiration. 
 The holding-out of so much thought, effort, power, 
 over such a long course is like Captain Somebody 
 walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours. The 
 penetration reminds you of the Bow Street runner : 
 "Wherever did the man get his information?" (not 
 always correct. Hophni for Uzzah, Peter's wife's sister 
 for her mother). 
 
 Then to iind every character thinking and talking 
 Browning, is like strong coffee that swells the nerves 
 and causes a dull ache over the eyes. Pompilia, full 
 of ellipses and obscurity, is so different from the niode 
 of the sweet creature he has consummately set before 
 you. Peruvian bark, strong coffee, tea at 10 p.m. 
 that keeps you staring all night with intense repro- 
 
236 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 duction of the events of tiie day, the scarlet verbena 
 you saw in the conservatory ever enlarging its image 
 among all. Yet the book is a mine of intellectual 
 wealth. 
 
 I7th February 1870. 
 
 Greatly relished the pictures to-day. Perhaps 
 the most haunting impression produced by the Eem- 
 brandt landscapes. Painting puzzles me as much as 
 ever, though all my life has been spent over it ; I 
 mean as to what constitutes its spell. It is a thing 
 you may sicken over, a thing requiring a line fresh- 
 ness of the mind and senses, fine conditions of contact, 
 cautious uses of it, as of wine ; but its nameless, 
 weird power is enormous : that dusk and glimmering 
 river bank shelving and sloping, those Dutch peasants 
 hauling their nets in the foreground, at once obscure 
 and distinct, as if only as much lived of them as 
 Thought willed to live, those trees leaning here and 
 there in the darkness — "forests and enchantments 
 drear," — that church rising dark by the dark village 
 against the troubled-pensive gleams in rolling clouds. 
 And again, those mysterious flats on either side the 
 shadowy, solemn river, and the heights beyond them, 
 with the distance moving off into loneliest remoteness, 
 the eye able to stay nowhere, but obliged to wander, 
 like "the gloomy brewer's ghost" or the "Flying 
 Dutchman. " 
 
 The sublimity of homely melancholy, composed of 
 gravest reason, flitting imagination, and most deep 
 fireside love and affection : these effects are not 
 
1870 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 237 
 
 tricks of Eembrandt Van Ehyn, they are humanity 
 ■working out its own image in its own way, and with 
 its own materials. 
 
 The pre-Raifaelite dicta of ten years ago would 
 have laid these landscapes dead. The "awe of 
 observation " peeping and botanising and protesting, 
 and putting the screw on square inches, would slay 
 all such art, and it is the grandest of all. 
 
 And the only answer to all mere verbal logic of 
 imitation in this direction is a Flanders hurricane of 
 disgust whistling over the wolds. 
 
 To HIS Beothek. 
 
 Jiine 1870. 
 Just got home from a country excursion. I left 
 on Tuesday to meet the Budgetts at Faversham in 
 Kent. Last year I spent a similar week with them 
 in exploring Surrey. They took the coachman with 
 them, a pair of horses, and a waggonette, and the party 
 consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Budgett, Miss Budgett, and 
 myself. Our route, after I joined them, was not over 
 the best ground, not comparable for beauty to last 
 year in Surrey, but I think the enjoyment was greater 
 and the intercourse of the pleasantest sort, in- 
 volving all the best elements — religious, intellectual, 
 and social, yet unexciting because of its simplicity. 
 At Rochester we learned from the verger of the 
 Cathedral that Charles Dickens had been seized at 
 dinner with a fit on Wednesday evening. On our 
 way we had to pass his house at Gad's Hill — stopped 
 
238 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 opposite to it for a moment, and saw two physicians 
 evidently in consultation at the bay window. This 
 was at 4.30, and at that moment he was dying. He 
 expired at 6 or soon after. It was affecting to see, 
 for the first time, his country house under these 
 circumstances. A few weeks ago I passed him as he 
 walked in a weary sort of way, and wrapped in his 
 own thoughts, from the Eoyal Academy Exhibition 
 and down Piccadilly. 
 
 Did I tell you that Cassell offered to pay me for 
 the right to copy the " Hymn " as a " first-class broad- 
 sheet wood engraving" to give away with a new 
 edition of their Family Bible ? I agreed to give them 
 the Copyright if they would make it a good thing. It 
 will be a capital advertisement, and the subject must be 
 of use in setting in motion good and useful thought. 
 
 To Mes. steward. 
 One of the amazing things of life is the mingling 
 of the occult and the obvious in the relations of man 
 to man. Nothing expresses it better than the circle 
 and its radii. The centre knows A B C D E F, but 
 B and T> don't know each other, nor F and C nor A 
 and E. All operate on the centre. The centre oper- 
 ates on all. But that is only the beginning, ABC 
 D E F are all centres of new circles, of various sizes 
 and potencies ; some mechanical, others magnetic ; 
 and they commingle in a way too rapid to follow. 
 We can only know them by knowing " what God and 
 
1870 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 239 
 
 The one central point of bliss from which alone 
 one dare safely look out on life and meet the 
 600,000,000,000,000 of waves per second, is a heart- 
 felt faith ; and this, one feels more and more, is just 
 " the gift of God," and can't be reasoned away from the 
 outside. Its real nature can no more be defined than 
 life can be defined, or than light can be defined. The i 
 best that David Livingstone could make of it, in re- 
 citing his conversion, was that it was as when a blind 
 man's eyes are opened to see colours. He can't 
 explain further to the blind ; those who see under- 
 stand without explanation. 
 
 How it is that its power and beauty cannot be 
 much enhanced by reason, and how it is that the 
 many waters of unreason cannot quench, and scarcely 
 dim it, is as wonderful as most questions are when 
 gone into. So we say "The man is a great philoso- 
 pher and an eminent scholar, and yet a humble 
 believer;" and we say, "Betty Foy is as silly an old 
 goose as you'll meet in a sandy lane, and yet every 
 one knows her to be a saint such as there isn't one 
 greater in the parish." 
 
 The philosopher's saintliness is found on exactly 
 the same plane as Betty Foy's, and marked by the 
 same tokens. The difference is not a matter of 
 degree but of kind : one can't be measured by the 
 other. 
 
240 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 21st July 1870. 
 
 On the beach under Hunstanton. The sun a 
 round plate of red gold dipping near the Sea among 
 lilac-gray clouds — the Sea itself steel colour with a 
 touch of yellow in it. Due north it is grand to 
 think there is nothing between yourself and the ice- 
 bergs. 
 
 Secret continuanee sublime 
 
 To tlie Sea's end. 
 
 (N.B. — Always spell "Sea" with a capital S. It 
 is only right.) 
 
 The feet make no sound on the flat wide sands. 
 You hear the sound of your pencil as you write. All 
 human beings have become distant black dots. A 
 gull wings low by the edge of the tide. There is a 
 lighthouse on the cliff above which has a tall white 
 flame seen far up the North Sea. And now the sun 
 is like the red golden dome of the Kremlin at Moscow, 
 or rather of the church of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg 
 as described to me by W. B. Pope ^ (whom I love to 
 think of, so good and wise is he). And now there is 
 no sun of to-day. There are some fiery wings spread 
 over where he was, whose feathers thin off into the 
 upper skies where there are no clouds, and no muta- 
 tions. A muffled sound of artillery comes over the 
 Sea. Can it be that the hosts have broken into war f 
 
 If outward circumstances could produce the highest 
 happiness it would be mine just now. The enumera- 
 
 ^ Dr. Pope of Didsbury Theological College. 
 
1870 LETTERS OP JAMES SMETHAM 241 
 
 tion of blessings seems almost too solemn to array — 
 and these vast sweeping, simple sands ; this sound of 
 the Sea ("The same sound is in my ears, which in 
 those days I heard ") ; this sky of crimson and amber 
 and lofty blue are all favourable to large perceptions 
 of life and its bearings. And I am, thank God, 
 reasonably happy. But since we came (and this is 
 generally the case for the first few days of one of 
 these grand Sea holidays), a languid, listless depression 
 hangs over the faculties, like the mist by the ocean in 
 the last Arthurian battle by the shore, and even the 
 soul partakes of it. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 This morning we had a row on the Sea. It is the 
 height of hoHday joy for a father to take his boys 
 with him in a boat and row with them. No joy more 
 sweet and pure than to see them get brown in the 
 sun and grow stronger in the Sea air. 
 
 There are no dreams like "Sea Dreams." How 
 grand it was last night after sunset to walk a quarter 
 of a mile beyond our lodgings and find myself in a 
 solitary white road \vith barley and wheat fields on 
 each side, a hint of vast distance eastward, the Sea 
 westward, the lighthouse with its steady white star, 
 the lightship out at Sea with its red ]ight going in 
 and out, the first stars appearing, the soft fresh night 
 breeze blowing, the hush, the calm, the sublime calm, 
 " the rising mind," the sense of God ! 
 
242 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 To F. J. S. 
 
 30th July 1870. 
 
 How mucli attention and thought is claimed by 
 the state of the continent just now ! You will 
 scarcely remember the congratulations on the Era of 
 Peace which were so general in 1851 when the great 
 elm trees under the glass of the first Crystal Palace 
 grew green in the May weather. It is distressing to 
 recall the universal tone then and to glance along the 
 Rhine now, and think of how little at present science 
 has done for peace ! 
 
 What of our most peaceful art during these days 
 of suspense and trouble ? In Prussia the passenger 
 trains are looked on with contempt as a sort of 
 impertinent lumber ; so just now people won't care 
 very much about pictures, with such a tempest about 
 to blow. A thousand trumpets will drown the piping 
 of Arcadia. 
 
 2iid August 1870. 
 What a venerable old man must Stothard have 
 looked in his later years ! The bust in the vestibule 
 of the National Gallery is to my mind almost awe- 
 striking. It is like Old Father Thames when seen 
 from a point where the shaggy eyebrows drop over 
 the deep-set eye. It would have been memorable to 
 hear him talk. He used the polite, stately, and 
 deferential "Sir "in many of his sentences. "That 
 is all glazing. Sir," he said to a friend as they re- 
 clined under some trees through the tops of which 
 the filtering yellow light produced that transparent 
 
1870 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 243 
 
 effect obtained in oil pictures by the process techni- 
 cally termed "glazing." "It looks very unfinished, 
 Sir," he said to Constable when that painter showed 
 him the picture of " The opening of Waterloo Bridge," 
 a most strange and unlikely subject for Constable. 
 
 One of the exquisitely pleasant crofts and paddocks 
 of painting is found in the sketches and studies of 
 Stothard. We see his wondrous pen trying a variety 
 of attitudes for so small a design as a book plate. 
 The suggestive grace of these deliberative thinkings is 
 bewitching. Next to these come his smaller works, 
 oil studies about six or eight inches long. In these 
 his sense of colour, the grace of attitude and composi- 
 tion, are seen quite as well as on a large scale, while 
 his deficiency in expanded natural detail is not seen. 
 It is seldom that so refined, sensitive, and contem- 
 plative a nature rises into that force of perception of 
 surface detail which marks men like Dickens, and 
 men like Meissonier. It cannot come down to be 
 curious about it. It does not care for knuckles and 
 veins. These things also consume endless time — 
 require endless and exhausting labour, and when 
 expressed have little intellectual force or meaning. 
 What has a well-imitated silk stocking or shoe-buckle, 
 taking a week of consummate toil to realise — what has 
 this to do with such thinking as that of Stothard ? 
 True, there is a medium. Stothard's "drawing" was 
 one of his greatest gifts, but it was not the drawing 
 of Wilkie or of Dadd. It was far more noble than 
 that of Wilkie, though far from being so " racy." It 
 
244 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 was less express than that of Dadd, but it had not 
 the fever of acute and consuming observation upon 
 it. It was cool and sweet as the dark bowers where 
 his ladies sit on the grass, or where his nymphs 
 hide by the sedge of their fountains. But alas ! not 
 one in a thousand can enter into the breathing beauty 
 of a little Stothard. Any one can criticise the size, 
 shape, colour, of a shoe-buckle or a silk stocking. 
 
 Such men as Stothard give a venerableness and 
 solidity to art. Erskine once got him into a 
 witness box and tried to bother him with mathe- 
 matics. What about this angle and the other 1 But 
 the calm old Triton put things so well that Erskine 
 said, " It's no use angling here, I find." 
 
 There is nothing produces a more lovely impression 
 on the mind than one of those " glimmering bowers 
 and glades " where Stothard's Desdemona-like ladies 
 are engaged with book, or lute, or dance : when the 
 thin trees shoot lightly against an obscure glooming 
 of the groves, and leave a sort of infinite whispering 
 sensation on the imagination. You have to leave ofi' 
 at a certain point with him. He was the Quaker 
 of Art, and the Charles Lamb conception of the 
 Quakeress with all its doveiness was embodied in his 
 work. But of broad brim and cut collar, and sup- 
 pressed, shrewd innocence — of spotless brown and 
 speckless gray silver — you may have just enough, 
 and that ere long. Life of the best sort is forceful 
 as well as reticent, and has no peculiarities or tiny 
 shibboleths. 
 
1870 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 245 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 The proper place for the right seeing of Thomas 
 Stothard's work is at the rate of three in a parlour, 
 and that parlour the parlour of the Vicar of Wakefield : 
 no one to see them without going there, and drinking 
 in the influences of the Vicar's household first, and 
 taking a " dish " of the vicar's wife's tea, or a glass of 
 her cool cowslip wine. Were I a despot I would thus 
 distribute Stothard all over the kingdom into the 
 nooks of this kind. No one should have more than 
 three. These would mostly be done on a millboard 
 and framed in plain flat with no moulding, and they 
 would run from 6 inches to 12 inches, or even as high 
 as 14 inches. When Stothard gets beyond that we 
 feel a want, when he keeps within that key no Arcadian 
 shepherd of the Golden Age ever piped a sweeter 
 song. He excels Raff'aele, he transcends Phidias in 
 pure immortal " Grace." 
 
 Monday, 9.15 a.m. Crowded in a Brake to Broad Street on 
 way to Westminster. 
 
 What deductions from the mere intellectual force 
 of life come from the " conscience that makes cowards 
 of us all." The "native hue of Resolution is sicklied 
 o'er with the pale cast of Thought." The moral forces 
 are to the intellectual what the higher phenomenal 
 forces of nature are to the lower. Fancy a garden in 
 the Bahamas, the growth of years, suddenly desolated 
 by a hurricane. It is clear that no small calculations 
 
246 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 will serve in reckoning up the sum of life. Your 
 "Key to all the Mythologies," your sour wincing 
 under the strokes of Mr. Carp, about your " tractate," 
 your "Excursus on Crete." Poor old Thomas 
 Aquinas ! A little "fatty degeneration of the heart" 
 is enough to end all those. Your foot slips on the 
 mere splashing of the kitchen grease of existence. 
 It is enough to rouse all the powers of anguish and 
 make the deep of the heart to boil ; for what is your 
 life? 
 
 We go out and take Science by the throat and 
 shake her; "You only lead me to face and enter the 
 blackness of darkness, you tell me nothing, you 
 sorceress ! What care I for your ghastly researches 
 among the slimy ' dragons of the prime ' 1 Is there 
 no voice nor any that answers ? " 
 
 I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. 
 
 Voices ? Yes ; they began " crying in the wilder- 
 ness." They broke out of the darkness over 
 Bethlehem — 
 
 Peace on earth. Goodwill to men. 
 
 The earth broke forth with singing, the trees of the 
 field clapped their hands. The Voices took wing — 
 dove-voices that no devil-hawks could swoop on. 
 They spread abroad, the trembling gold of their wings 
 glittered against the cloudless cope of Infinity. They 
 lodged on every pinnacle and parapet of Time, and 
 among the rest, "as doves to their respective windows," 
 
1870 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 247 
 
 a good number flew into the dovecot of Wesley's 
 Hymns. 
 
 While Jesu's blood through earth and skies 
 Mercy, free, boundless mercy, cries. 
 
 The Truth ("I am the Truth") is this, that the 
 "covering cherub" for all the clashing accidents of 
 Thought and Time is the sweep of the Atonement. 
 "The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice, let the 
 multitude of isles be glad thereof " ; or else perhaps 
 
 A still small voice says unto me. 
 Thou art so full of misery. 
 Were it not letter not to be ? 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 It matters little among various allowable methods 
 what a man does if he will only follow it up long 
 enough. You have your man with his " Common- 
 place Book," his "Index Eerum," his "Squaring." 
 All depends on going on. Galton reminds the real 
 traveller not to wish to get to his journey's end, not 
 to go too fast. "Three miles a day,'' says he, "ivill 
 take you across a thousand miles in a year." Only 
 go on. In due time you will 
 
 Gaze at the Pacific, and your men 
 Stare at each other with a wild surmise, 
 Silent upon a peak in Darien. 
 
 This touch from Galton has so impressed me that I 
 use the word ' Galtonise " for the not making haste — 
 
248 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 Breathed, as it were, 
 To an untiring and continuate goodness. 
 
 "Three miles a day," but all mastered, all rich, all 
 satisfying ! 
 
 26ft Oaoher 1870. 
 
 The yellow fog again from early morning till now 
 10 P.M. 
 
 "You seem to have many hindrances in your 
 calling," says the Observer. At times, it seems all 
 hindrance. The vexing influence of the one element 
 of Light, which is related to Painting as silence is to 
 Music, might be enough to take the heart out of an 
 impatient man. In a chorus at an oratorio a few 
 whispers, even a little chat, does not make much 
 difference, but in a Jenny Lind trill you must be able 
 to hear a pin drop. For certain parts of pictures the 
 light, and the eye, and the hand, and the mind, and 
 the model must all combine into a thrilling serenity 
 of mutual action — passion governed to the point of 
 perfect repose. When this state is broken in upon 
 from without, the man is never more liable to be in a 
 towering passion. We should excuse an astronomer 
 if, when, having waited for the long-coming moment 
 of occultation, he were engaged in some delicate 
 observation, and some paltry interruption threatened 
 him, he were to lose temper. In the painter's work 
 these hours of exigency are frequent ; yet because 
 they are not distinguishable from the outside, suffi- 
 cient allowance is not made for the efi'ect of interrup- 
 tion. Indeed, the variety of occupation and moods 
 
1870 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 249 
 
 demanded by a picture leads to misapprehension. 
 His painting is like an Oratorio : while his choruses 
 are drumming and banging and roaring, the painter 
 is prepared to take things easily ; but when the more 
 delicate solos are being sung, he is in a fidget ; and 
 as the one phase runs so rapidly into the other with 
 no time to explain, it does give the sense of being 
 assaulted when his varying moods are misunderstood. 
 This is one reason why some painters will never 
 admit any one to their studios. 
 
 To J. S. B. 
 
 27id November 1870. 
 How puzzling to the mind is the difference be- 
 tween the individual and the great abstract entity of 
 a public event — a war ! e.g. A is a Prussian aged 
 thirty, height six feet, square -shouldered, fresh, 
 strong, thoughtful, accomplished; knows, after years 
 of the gymnasium, several languages. It cost him 
 much to get, at first, the inflections of a single 
 irregular verb, but he did get them, and has them 
 down in bins in the cellars of his mind. Also 
 Botany ; so that on the Hartz Mountains in last May 
 he told " Gretchen " wonderful details about a very 
 little flower got high up on a steep place — told her 
 the result of many lamplight, midnight hours. There 
 is no end to what that man knows. He was mobi- 
 lised in July — saw Wissenburg and Worth, saw the 
 Emperor surrender, and knew, as an individual, as 
 much about the war as one head could carry. See 
 
250 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 him now helping at his gun, all his blood up, his eyes 
 glistening with the excitement of battle as the shells 
 fall near him. Such is A. 
 
 The scene was laid on October 28th at 3 P.M. 
 The battle ended at 5. At 5.30 the camp kettles 
 were steaming, and there came the news of the capitu- 
 lation of Metz, which was what A's eyes and mind 
 were straining to see and hear. " We shall hear of 
 it before noon to-morrow," said he. But at 3.10 (and 
 20 seconds) a shot from a chassepot went into the 
 temples of this man — into the penetralia of his mind's 
 temple, "the dome of thought, the palace of the 
 soul," and lodged close against the fibres which on 
 the one side held fast the irregular verb and on the 
 other the Hartz flower. He fell straight by the 
 simple force of gravity ; and there he lies. In a few 
 seconds B was called to his place at the gun. And 
 where is the warl It goes on as briskly as ever. 
 The Germans once more conquer. Moltke's steam- 
 hammer works, and A is only one of the sparks that 
 fly upward. The Daily Telegraph gives a vivid sum- 
 mary of the action, city men rattle it off; the work- 
 ing man misspells it ; and the old squire down in the 
 Queen Anne's Hall among the woods describes it 
 huskily over the walnuts and port. 
 
 One has got into a web somehow about it. A 
 seemed so real ; and one thinks so much of a man 
 who is ready with his irregular verbs ; and the stamen 
 of a Hartz flower is such an astounding thing with 
 
1870 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 251 
 
 its gums and dews on it, and its miraculous look 
 under the microscope. The fairy tales of science are 
 so very important that it is hard to understand such 
 sudden foreclosing and endings because of a chasse- 
 pot bullet, of the destiny of which the man who fired 
 it had not the slightest idea. Is one not to stop to 
 think about A and try to unravel a little t But the 
 clock strikes eleven, and one almost "feels con- 
 demned " for having thought about A and puzzling 
 at all when a piece of duty on canvas lies spread 
 sternly before the eye — as much a duty to think over 
 and wonder about and strain after as A's sixty- 
 pounder, or the foregone irregular verb, or the little 
 flower on the Hartz Mountains. 
 
 One dare not follow A any farther because there 
 glimmer on the mental disc such strange images 
 going and coming as in dissolving views. Yet they 
 will go and come — exhalations of thought, ten thou- 
 sand on ten thousand images and thoughts. The best 
 way to finish the self-raised history of A is a pine- 
 wood on a height — 
 
 And one far off divine event 
 
 To which the whole Creation moves. 
 
 But whatever should have brought up the next image 
 out of the vasty deep? Is there any rational con- 
 nection, or even proper sequence of perplexity, 
 in a view of "Napoleon the third taking soup at 
 Wilhelmshohe"? 
 
252 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1870 
 
 To F. J. S. 
 
 December 1870. 
 
 A HAPPY new year to you ! 
 
 You are doing a service in protesting against those 
 abominable French influences which more or less are 
 lowering the moral perceptions of some of our own 
 artists, and which, if suffered to prevail against what 
 they are pleased to call " puritanism," would rapidly 
 poison us as a people, and bring us where the French 
 now are. 
 
 "Lust hard by hate" has been the dominating 
 genius of the French school for long past. So their 
 canvas either drips with blood, or glows with false 
 passion. It would be better for us to have no name 
 in Art among the nations, or to go on with our harm- 
 less domestic subjects — our little girls with sashes, 
 saying, "Come and tee me dump" — than that this 
 reek of hot blood should steam up from our studios. 
 
 Sometimes in the darkest hours an idea for a 
 picture will start up like Aurora, and begin a new 
 day for the mind. I believe I owe much of my 
 health to the ever-springing changes and surprises of 
 the Imagination in the course of my work. Painting 
 has this enormous advantage that it blends the ideal 
 and the mechanical so completely. After weeks of 
 real drudgery over one picture the imagination which 
 had ceased from invention has been couching beneath 
 in the quiet caves, not overdriven by constant irrita- 
 tion, and comes forth with the dew of its youth upon 
 
1870 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 253 
 
 it. One of the richest characteristics of imagination 
 is that it does not lessen with age, but grows in real 
 power. " Something which men call their Imagina- 
 tion," said D. G. Rossetti to me once, "may decline 
 as the animal spirits lessen, but the genuine thing 
 grows with age." This is quite true. Imagination 
 is the twin sister of common sense, and not the fret- 
 ful and excitable bantling of overstrung nerves. The 
 delirious dreaming of a fidgety fancy is no more 
 Imagination than the grotesquerie of St. Vitus's dance 
 is wit. 
 
 The years of available and happy life which have 
 been already enjoyed ought to be the cause of thank- 
 fulness, even if " the days of darkness " were many. 
 "The sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering 
 happier things,'' says Tennyson. Surely, in the 
 sphere of Faith at least, there is some mistake here. 
 "For what we Juwe received the Lord make us truly 
 thankful." 
 
 Beauty, grandeur, subtlety, delicacy of perception, 
 are commonly supposed to be attained by those who 
 pick and choose and disdain. Never was a greater 
 mistake. It is the man who knows nothing common 
 or unclean that wrings the fine essences out of Nature. 
 The dilettante is he who misses the mark. Nathanael 
 Hawthorne attained to wonderful subtlety of expres- 
 sion and perception, but his power was gained by his 
 reverence for the commonest things. He had no need 
 to " scale the Andes' clifty side " to see vast horizons. 
 
254 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 " Poor woman, she is beset with fears and doubts, 
 and had she fallen into the hands of the Methodists 
 must soon have fallen into a state of despondency." — 
 Mrs. Hare, Memorials of a Quiet Life. 
 
 One is penetrated with sadness at seeing people 
 stand in the Christian Church on each side of impass- 
 able gulfs of misunderstanding, neither of them able 
 to join hands. Think of the mistake above indicated, 
 awful in its separating powei-, grotesque in its mis- 
 apprehension ! 
 
 He received this letter from Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 OxFOED, 1st January 1871. 
 My dbak Smbtham — I cannot easily tell you how glad I am 
 to have your letter, how more than glad to know of your tranquil 
 and honourable life. Long may it thus continue. But let me 
 have a line sometimes to say that it does so. If I cannot answer, 
 you will know it is only because my hand is weary, or the power 
 of the dog gone before its task is done. — Ever affectionately 
 yours, J. EusKiN. 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 Gth April. 
 
 David Cox was not farther off the world of 
 
 Meissonier and Ger6me than I. Yet a D. Cox fetches 
 
 as much as a Ger6me. Gerdme would be a babe on 
 
 the wild fields and, moors, and under the impending 
 
 storms of D. Cox. D. Cox would be a babe among 
 
 the marble and carved steel of Gerdme. As Thomson's 
 
 " Seasons " to a levee at St. James's, so is D. Cox to 
 
 Ger6me. The loose, solemn, sweet and windy thought 
 
 and fluent rapture of Thomson, swelling with the soul 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 255 
 
 of nature and "musing praise," that is Cox. The 
 reception of Sir Garnet Wolseley in orders and stars 
 at the levee, that is Ger6me. You can bring D. Cox 
 and Ger6me to no sort of common element except 
 that they are both " authors " (as Turner called him- 
 self) and need the chromatic gamut of the twelve 
 pigments to write their books. 
 
 To me the Life of D. Cox is a " revival service " of 
 the highest order. He was a quiet, calm apostle, who 
 spoke as Paul at Lystra and as the sixty-ninth psalm 
 speaks. Men don't listen to that side of truth much, 
 but some are sent to proclaim it, and keep God's work 
 before God's world, and I rise to a higher life as I see 
 this grand old husbandman out early and late in the 
 former and the latter rain, having long patience, 
 waiting for the precious seed. 
 
 And his £5 notions of pay come home to me with 
 the moral majesty of the true evangelist's rebuke 
 of the calling "gain godliness," and the unheroic 
 Christianity of so many Christians. I go to his 
 "inquiry room" subdued and ready to learn, and 
 rise with renewed energy. 
 
 As to the relative advantage or importance of oil 
 or water colours, I am obliged to leave that to pure 
 feeling. By closely watching the course of work I 
 have noticed that for three or four months together I 
 can pursue oil painting with delight ; but that often, 
 most suddenly and unexpectedly, a strong disgust of 
 the senses will set in, and that then I am thankful to 
 escape to the land of Water Colour. In like manner 
 
256 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 on finding how tedious and laborious some water- 
 colour pictures become towards their close, and that 
 it will in certain parts take several days to execute 
 in water what might be done in a few hours with oil 
 colours, I am ready to vow that I will never work 
 except with oils. Practice equalises their claim some- 
 what, and each is found to have its special charms. 
 The fascination of water colour is in its soft, silent, 
 insensible, thought -like operations, in the ease of 
 retouching it without disturbing the surface, in the 
 pleasant sense of protection and glimmering veiling 
 produced by the needful glass over the picture's face, 
 which dreads no dust, and never gets "ruined" in an 
 Exhibition. Water colour never gained so much on 
 my love as during the latest spell of it, beginning 
 about a month ago; and when I think of Samuel 
 Palmer and Boyce and Dewint and David Cox, and 
 the exquisite "bits" we see yearly in all the exhibi- 
 tions by unknown men, when I recall the outdoor 
 delight of a twelve-inch drawing " on the spot," and 
 the creeping silence (as of a moving sunbeam on the 
 wall) of the pencil, the rapid drying of colour under 
 the brush, as dew from grass at sunrising, the cor- 
 rective possibilities, the portfolio conveniences, the 
 comparative unpretentiousness of this medium, and 
 add to this the demands of the drawing-room for 
 bright decoration as compared with the demand for 
 oil pictures, it sometimes seems as if water colour 
 would win the day. 
 
 The framing, too, is so pliant that most men could 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 257 
 
 afford a mount, and bead, and glass, which is sulKcient 
 to house the stranger from the Thought Land. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 iZth May 1871. 
 
 On Tuesday I was at Eed Hill, at Linnell's. The 
 old man in the true boy-spirit took me up alone to 
 show me the picture the E.A. had rejected (in 1867 ?) 
 and some other "great shames,'' in which I heartily 
 agreed with him, for he has been shamefully treated. 
 Few know how essentially great his landscape is. I 
 could so well enter into his fresh, confiding, outspeak- 
 ing way of talking. It is just the way of the truly 
 imaginative artist oppressed with those mystic inward 
 workings which cluster round his own consciousness, 
 and make him seek relief in this impulsive expression 
 of the bubbling thoughts and feelings. 
 
 When showing me some of his Scripture work he 
 
 said, " I paint to live, it is my profession, but my life 
 
 is in these things " — referring to his Bible studies. I 
 
 felt a similar glow to that of Correggio when he cried, 
 
 "I also am a painter," but my echo was to dear old 
 
 Linnell's sentiment, and I thought of my squared 
 
 Bible at home. 
 
 To 0. M. 
 
 10th June 1871. 
 
 The windings of the river of study are charming 
 — sometimes half odd. For example, I found myself 
 squaring Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii. scene 3, 
 in following out Isa. xxiv. 8. Bible study, indeed, is 
 all study in its possibilities. 
 
258 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 9.10, Broad Street. "Ter-rain!" "Why here I 
 am on the wrong platform,"'— hasty run — out of 
 breath — just catch it — get seated — make reflections 
 on "absence of mind." I really don't see how a 
 painter of imaginary scenes is to get over the occa- 
 sional fits of absence. So far from being "wool- 
 gathering " it is nugget-digging. Since I set off to the 
 railway I have had a good picture subject presented 
 to my mind with great vividness. It will be painted 
 some day and be worth £50. A man can't both see 
 pictures in the mind and signboards over the shops. 
 What he does see outwardly is usually only some 
 accident of the passing object, the effect of rain on 
 the roof, the gradation of gray in the church in the 
 mist, something that will tell in a picture some day. 
 This is the painter's practicalness. If he did not 
 even indulge the concentrated absence of mind to 
 what usually catches the attention of men he would 
 be a lazy dreamer. 
 
 A painter of this class has a right to be angry at 
 the ignorance of those who expect as much prompt- 
 ness and clearness in externals from him as from a 
 man whose whole life is a study of current events. 
 
 To F. J. S. 
 
 Truly I do enjoy this quiet writing almost more 
 than face to face. The reason is simply that somehow 
 the fibre of my physique is not quite strong enough, 
 and the very delight of direct intercourse with many 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 259 
 
 of those I love at once generates a sort of acid that 
 eats into the fibre. And, if the elements are con- 
 genial, as where in the case of F. J. S. art is combined 
 with all else dear to me, it is almost worse. Looks, 
 tones, gestures, the very eyelashes and the "accidents," 
 in general are etched deep with this aquafortis, which 
 does not get at the mental conditions except through 
 this here " fibre " ; then, reflexly, it touches them so 
 far as to create reaction. No amount of experiment 
 does more than modify this. I went to Ford Madox 
 Brown the other evening, and though I took a small 
 dose, yet B.'s beautiful geniality and ingrained kindli- 
 ness, and that of his family, Arthur Hughes's face 
 and retiring gentle power. Burton's kind greeting (he 
 reminds me of Thackeray's Colonel Newcome, some- 
 how), E. B. Jones's " wide blue eyes as in a picture,'' 
 Morris's rum and indescribable " deportment " (not at 
 all like Turveydrop's) — all these things not simply 
 pass ; they bite. They always did ; and if I let the 
 acid stay on too long, there is a bubble and a sharp 
 fume, and a black ragged line, instead of the sweet 
 incision of event. The remedy has always been in 
 the mechanical adoption of a life like that of the 
 Lady of Shalott. She weaves continually. She dare 
 not stop her weaving, either night or day, so is not an 
 idle hussey. At the same time, she is not cut off 
 from the outward world. She sees all, but it is in a 
 glass. Shakespeare, too, has it in perfection : 
 
 The idea of her life shall sweetly creep 
 Into his study of imagination, 
 
260 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 And every lovely organ of her life 
 Shall come apparelled in more precious habit, 
 More moving, delicate and full of life. 
 Into the eye and prospect of his soul, 
 Than when she lived indeed. 
 
 This, indeed, has become a sort of life-motto with me. 
 It is not that life is a mere voluptuous dream. My 
 "weaving" goes on. I have just, in fact, come to 
 the end of my Bible "squaring," which has cost me 
 twenty years of leisure, having tunnelled through 
 the whole Book. My work in the Church is just as 
 continuous and direct. I keep up correspondence 
 with all my friends, and, as Von Moltke fights battles 
 in his cabinet and knocks armies really to pieces, so 
 do I conceive of this Camera Obscura life laid on me 
 unwillingly by this defect of "fibre." 
 
 I could say more, but I see I have taken too long 
 a radius in my compasses. At this proportion I shall 
 never be done. 
 
 I sympathise with your long toil. I see you ex- 
 hausted on the 8th, and know what it means : that 
 occult, reiterated, breathless labour which is appre- 
 ciated by one man in 2000 — even of the intelligent. 
 That having things "right" at "the price of blood." 
 Still it tells in the long run, and you will come out 
 Conqueror. In two different ways I see and admire 
 the stern toil of F. M. B. and D. G. E. No one 
 knows what work costs these men, and how profitable 
 it is to see their example. 
 
1871 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 261 
 
 About this time he received the following from D. G. 
 Rossetti. 
 
 The Manor Hottsb, 
 Kelmscott, 
 
 Leohdale. 
 
 Morris is here now from Iceland, and has brought a fund of 
 anecdote, of course, though the country seems pretty well 
 barren of aU else, as far as I can judge. However, such things 
 will not do at second hand ; the face and voice of the man who 
 was their "pars magna" are the life and soul of them. An 
 Icelandic pony for his two charming little girls is the tangible 
 result of the journey. It carried him, incessantly almost, for 
 many weeks, and is now grazing with unexpressed, but I should 
 think unquestionable, relish in the English river-meadow behind 
 this house. 
 
 There is much in your letter which is quite beyond the scope 
 of a hasty answer like this ; but I cannot help reverting with 
 real sorrow to what you say so reservedly but poignantly of 
 your professional difficulties. That picture of the ' Hymn ' should 
 have met with better recognition, but it is among the Works 
 whose audience is limited ; and it is sad to see how little per- 
 manent hold it seems to have given you on hanging committees. 
 When in London again I must absolutely bring Graham to 
 you, i.e. when he also returns from his present holiday in Scot- 
 land. Davies told me of a picture you were doing from Comus, 
 which he seemed to think very successful in tone and method. 
 I want to see it ; but more to see you, and hope ere long to try 
 and get you to Chelsea again — as my stay here cannot last 
 much longer — and to renew old ideas and discussions. 
 
 My health is not brilliant in any way, but I push on as yet. 
 Do you get news of Shields ? Not that I ask this question to 
 burden you with more correspondence, but hope to see you soon 
 in a Studio new swept and garnished, though a devil or two may 
 be there yet. — Ever yours, D. G. R. 
 
262 LBTTEES OP JAMES SMBTHAM 1871 
 
 To D. G. R. 
 
 13th September 1871. 
 
 I MUST indulge myself for awhile in a little con- 
 versation with the pen in reply to your welcome 
 letter. I am not quite sure whether I am not more 
 healthy and happy under the veil of correspondence 
 than in much face to face intercourse with vivid 
 actual life. What your tapestry at Kelmscott is to 
 you — fixing your goggle eye trancedly on some huge 
 problem on Samson's shoulder — the phenomena of 
 visible intercourse are to me. All is so great, so 
 pleasant, so wondrous. Deep calls to deep, and I 
 haven't got the physical grit to take it easy. But in 
 the studio with the pen it is like being in a Camera 
 Obscura ; all silent yet moving, life and dream 
 together. 
 
 My explanation about the Article ^ related more to 
 myself than to you. I felt sure on the whole that 
 you would see the motions of the thing ; but as I 
 have never been careless or capricious in regard to 
 undertakings I felt bound sometime to account for 
 the arrest of what under other conditions would have 
 been truly a labour of love. I am profoundly grate- 
 ful for your settled confidence in my affections for 
 you and . . . thank you most kindly for your offer 
 of help. But the fact of the case is that we are not 
 in actual want of money, nor are likely to be for some 
 time to come. Ever since we were married we have, 
 
 ' Proposed review of Rossetti's poems. 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 263 
 
 one way or other, been able to pay our way. It is 
 true that a sense of the exceeding precariousness of 
 painting, and of late a sort of awakening to the per- 
 ception that my instrument was elaborately set to 
 tunes that were not popular, have made me faint and 
 sicken with fear as to the possibility of getting 
 hemmed in by debt or dependence, but the day has 
 not yet come. This summer I have been pulling my 
 organ to pieces, and pricking new tunes on the barrel : 
 " Polly put the Kettle on," " 'Tis jolly to hunt in the 
 six-foot fern," "My Heart's in the Highlands," etc., 
 i.e. I have been sketching out of doors heather and 
 fern and country, sort of English scenes, which are 
 to be tenanted by live rustics, instead of the other 
 sort. I have not yet had time to finish anything in 
 this style, but my ambition now is to drop all preten- 
 sions to " 'igh Art," and take my place among the 
 labouring classes. I love these wood walks and lanes 
 and banks as intensely as anything else, and it will 
 be no cross to come down if I can do it, which remains 
 to be seen. What I want is to produce something 
 which will have a kind of strict market value, not 
 of the fancy kind. I believe that moderate-sized 
 pictures from 20 to 50 guineas and from 18 inches to 
 3 feet are strictly in demand if they suit the taste of 
 the typical English householder of the Upper Middle 
 Classes. Then I'm their man if I can suit as to work. 
 I've no qualms as to being an ill-used professor of 
 better things, for the joy of life has long risen above 
 this sort of nonsense. My doubts relate to whether 
 
264 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 I can take my place in competition with those who 
 have stuck their heads into heather and fern all their 
 lives. Truly the very thing I want is that Wallis, 
 Agnew, Vokins (or Nokes or Stokes, or Styles or 
 Brown or Thompson) should give me 20 — 25 — 30 — 
 guineas for a two-foot oil " View in Surrey," having 
 a shepherd boy with an oak branch in his hat. Then 
 as to the Academicians and their hangings — " Bless 
 their old gaiters ! " I care as little as I care for the 
 permission to dine given to all the rest of the world 
 by the Emperor of China or Japan after he has got 
 his own tuck-in. . . . 
 
 To 0. M. 
 
 Tone in a picture is one of the noblest of all its 
 elements, but it has a sort of spiritual entity ; it has 
 no existence in itself. It has no parts, yet it is a 
 reality as much as the most precise piece of form in 
 the picture. It is the overruling element. It is the 
 kingly element. It brightens and subdues and ignores 
 and adjusts. It has a splendour, but it is the splendour 
 of Law, of subordination, of strong repression and 
 cautious exaltation. It is felt by the observer as the 
 pressure of authority is felt ; but its motions can only 
 be seen by the initiated. Correggio and Titian were 
 masters of it, and it is this which crowns their art 
 and makes it magical. 
 
 It is exactly in painting what the overruling per- 
 ception and purpose is in life. 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 265 
 
 I ENTERED into every turn and winding of word, 
 thought, feeling in your ventilator, and feel happy on 
 your behalf ; for it shows that you have hold of the 
 golden chain of life which is " content," and is " great 
 gain.'' How great none can tell, and making com- 
 pound interest every hour. 
 
 What is content 1 The true answer to that is a 
 world of bliss and rest. It is not helpless submission 
 to necessity. It is not the fulfilment of our roving 
 desires. It is a sublime condition, the product of 
 knowledge and faith and hope and love. One of its 
 conditions is the perception of our jvpoper^ place in 
 the universe, and the belief that we have s trictl y a 
 vocation. Another is that cheerful humility of spirit 
 which honour upholds, and which makes no extrava- 
 gant demands on the Universe or on Providence. 
 Another is the alchymic eye to see much in little — 
 the spirit which made the old woman say to Bishop 
 Burnett, as she held up her crust, "AU_this_and 
 Ghimt." 
 
 See how it is "great gain'' when a crust is El 
 Dorado ! 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 I WENT down to Dulwich last week to have a look 
 at the Gallery. It is the most delightful gallery in 
 arrangement and surroundings that I know, or know 
 of. You don't turn out of a hot street, where on the 
 hot pavement you meet hot and discontented people 
 coming out in lavender and straw-coloured gloves, 
 
266 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 irritated with British art, like a bull that has seen 
 a red rag (the ingrates !). You walk along a breezy- 
 quiet road—" This way to the Picture Gallery " ^f=" 
 — under green trees, after green fields, and you give 
 a little gravelly side turn, and — "The Picture Gallery 
 is now open." How kind ! How civil ! How silent ! 
 You write your name in a visitors' book, and see that 
 yesterday John Ruskin was here. Then you begin 
 your lounging round, and note the thin browns of old 
 Teniers' "Caves of Temptation," and Gerhard Dow's 
 " Old woman and porridge pot," and Gainsborough's 
 "Mrs. Siddons." All is sober and uncrowded, and 
 well lighted, and profoundly still. And there is a man 
 of sixty in gray suit with nankeen coloured waistcoat, 
 and red flower in buttonhole, and white hat, and 
 tasselled cane, and silver spectacles, and ruddy, 
 thoughtful face. He has a blunt mouth, and somehow 
 reminds one of Sir Joshua. You get into conversation 
 with him. He has a real Vandevelde at home. His 
 mother brought him here fifty years ago ! I saw him 
 muttering to Titian's " Europa '' (it must have been 
 about his mother and the flight of Time). I learned 
 his name afterwards from the visitors' book, but if 
 you think I am going to tell it you, you never were 
 more mistaken in your life. The keeper of the 
 Gallery comes and peers at you over his spectacles. 
 He is not quite sure in his little room which are the 
 pictures and which are the visitors, and he's come to 
 see. I could have told him that the gentleman in 
 gray and myself were certainly mere pictures walking 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 267 
 
 in a vain show, soon to disappear, and that fifty more 
 years will see that little boy yonder with his mamma 
 coming an old man in gray to recall the impressions 
 of to-day and of his mother. But he won't find us. 
 
 It is always "Jacob's Dream" which turns the scale 
 as to whether I come to Dulwich or no. Hazlitt 
 wrote about Jacob's Dream in the London Magazine 
 somewhere about 1824. Hazlitt! Where's Hazlitt 1 
 But " Jacob's Dream " is there ; every tint and every 
 scratch of the pencil in the trees is there. That 
 picture was painted between Rembrandt's breakfast 
 and his tea, on a late October day, when the wind 
 was sighing and the leaves falling. I know it was. 
 
 A reference to this picture dates as far back as 1848. It is 
 as follows : — 
 
 Did you ever see the Jacob's Dream in the 
 Dulwich Gallery 1 He is a Dutchman, and an old 
 clothes' man, for any refinement that he has about 
 him. But what a vision he sees ! A scrap of desert 
 — a distant hill — a stunted bush shaking at intervals 
 with the night wind is all the material he has about 
 him; but in the dream and vision of the night he 
 sees shapes which hardly separate themselves from 
 the pensive glory and the rolling volume of cloud. 
 Neither bird white-plumaged, nor angel white-winged, 
 nor any other shape distinguishable in member, joint 
 or limb — and yet a shape — sealing instruction as un- 
 utterable as the form is dim. " It stands still ; he 
 cannot discern the form thereof ; an image is before 
 
268 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 his eyes, there is silence." It is like a passage out 
 of the deep book of Job. 
 
 To J. E. V. 
 
 See poem to Gladstone on " Use and Beauty " by 
 " H." This eternal confounding of confusion on the 
 question of Use and Beauty is enough to appal any 
 one who has studied the subject. All you can answer 
 is this, Ugliness never did, and never can do any 
 good. On the other hand, Beauty won't save the 
 soul, only Christ, who is the " Primeval Beauty," can 
 do this. But these two poles are found in everything. 
 Ignorance can't save the soul, and knowledge can't. 
 And plain gowns can't, and gowns at thirty guineas 
 can't, and discord can't, and music can't, nor mathe- 
 matics, nor Irish bulls. If you want to be warm you 
 must make a fire and stand near it, and not be under 
 some stupid delusion that extracting a square root or 
 measuring laughing gas with a two-foot rule has, 
 somehow, something to do with being warm. 
 
 Then I saw that it is of much more importance to 
 preserve a fresh and tender love to man and to God 
 than to turn a corner of an art career ; also, that the 
 opinion of a small circle in a parlour won't be altered 
 supernaturally ; that Providence works by natural 
 events, natural opinions, and elements, and that the 
 victory which overcomes the world is not that which 
 makes the world succumb, but that which rises above it. 
 
 God is angry with the wicked every day. Well, 
 but is He angry with thy industry, thy truthfulness. 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 269 
 
 thy obliging ways, thy affectionateness 1 Go to the 
 wise woman of Abel Beth Maachah, and she will 
 show thee that Joab has no need to batter down a 
 whole town for one rebel's sake ; and will teach thee 
 just where the whole secret lies. Pitch Sheba's head 
 over the wall and thy city shall be safe. 
 
 Ignorance is so crass. Preach your throat dry 
 and men won't be convinced. " Smith of Chichester " 
 made £2000 a year, while Eichard Wilson took 
 picture after picture to a low dealer, who heaped them 
 up saying, "Look here, Dick, I can't sell those I have 
 got.'' Yet " Smith of Chichester " is now a byword, 
 and Richard Wilson a renown. People look to men 
 in power. So Reynolds overshadowed Wilson with his 
 bland jealousy. People wait for one another's opinion: 
 " What do you think, eh 1" "Is it or is it not 1 " i.e. 
 they wait tiU the cry of the mob has been raised and 
 then they say, " Hooray ! Wilson for ever ! Smith 
 down the river ! " and would fain buy Wilsons when 
 they are only to be had for great sums. If anything 
 couU sour a man who has the support of such a 
 delightful pursuit, it is to feel sure of all this, as 
 Richard Wilson was, and watch the timid ignorance of 
 a public professing to care for art while in reality caring 
 only for name. 
 
 To T 1? TT 
 
 ■ ■ ■ 1st Odoier 1871. 
 
 You seem interested and amused by my theory of 
 Ignorance in relation to art. But one of the first 
 flights oflF the mere clods of art into the Empyrean is 
 
270 LETTERS OE JAMBS SMBTHAM 1871 
 
 the dictum that one of the most "snobbish" things in 
 painting is perfection — that one necessity of the best 
 kind of art is imperfection. 
 
 The analogy between Art and Eeligion is just that 
 between earthly and heavenly things; but if these 
 earthly things be obscure, a fortwri, much more 
 obscure are the heavenly. Note one part of the 
 analogy. In Christ's kingdom all was " bouleverse- 
 ment," and a Spartan, a Eoman, a Greek, seeking after 
 wisdom, of course could not receive the " kingdom of 
 God.'' In their eyes the Christian was a sneak : 
 " poor in spirit." Yet the servant was as his master. 
 He could call twelve legions of angels, yet he did not 
 invoke one ; not even in the hour and power of dark- 
 ness. The apostle said, " when I am weak, then am I 
 strong." Frightful paradox to the pugnacious gladiator 
 in the arena with the knuckle-dusters on. " Never- 
 theless I live," said Paul. As the life of electricity 
 to the life of mechanism, however complex, so is true 
 life in all kingdoms ; and to grasp at a glance the true 
 equations of art, so as to separate the precious from 
 the vile, requires the swift disintegrating and reunit- 
 ing power of intuition. 
 
 It is just that which throws men out so in the 
 region of art. They are always receiving the shocks 
 of Electric Paradox, and often get angry and say there 
 is nothing in art because their mechanics fail them. 
 They buy a mill and put a principle in it to grind. 
 It won't grind and they smash their miU. They don't 
 see that the solutions are effected by an invisible Power, 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 271 
 
 conducted by innumerable wires en rapport with the 
 Universe. Cogs and wheels are next to nothing. 
 
 Put your medal in a solution, and all the silver 
 flies to it in invisible flakes and molecules which won't 
 obey any mechanical spirit — will only obey the proper 
 spell, and come out of their holes to the music of the 
 world, as the rats to the piper of Hamelin, trooping 
 in drifts of invisibility to the design of Wyon, the 
 Demiurgus "in wavering morrice." 
 
 But then nothing comes amiss to the true life. In 
 the most prosaic picture the thrilling sensibilities of 
 the higher powers fetch out the particles of poetry. 
 Things are not discriminated by names. You don't 
 say "Blake is poetic and Nasmyth is prosaic, there- 
 fore give us a Blake — give us a Nasmyth." 
 
 Gruide-posts serve men who don't know the way 
 itself. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 2?jrf October. 
 
 I FANCY from the barometric observations on all 
 hands that the northern iceberg system of rigour and 
 Polar frost is near to dissolution. I hear mysterious 
 cracks across the snow-fields, and hope presently that 
 the bergs will float away all glistening and melting 
 "where the monstrous narwhal spurts his foamy 
 fountains in the sea." 
 
 But what if it is not so ? " Shall we go mourn for 
 thai, my dearf I was too happy among the solemn 
 North Seas with the Auroras crackling round the skies 
 to be too anxious for mere coddling and comfort. 
 
272 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 What I was going to say indicates a change in the 
 air. It is three years since I read anything, i.e. with 
 more than the intention to distract the mind. This 
 week I have actually read and squared Timon of 
 Athens, and Coriolanus. Dr. Johnson says that "the 
 tragedy of Ooriolanus is one of the most amusing of 
 our author's performances.'' No one writes a sen- 
 tence like that nowadays, any more than they wear 
 cocked hats and breeches. " Amusing " had a 
 different meaning then. Shakespeare stands the 
 wonder of all time. Now why ? He had small 
 Latin and less Greek. Ben Jonson had large Latin 
 and much Greek; but who really cares for Ben 
 Jonson except literary fogies who pity your ignorance 
 if you say so ? It is just this : Shakespeare was all 
 alive, a nimble spirit like the lightning, who could put 
 " a girdle round the earth in forty minutes " and not 
 feel that he had done anything particular, but at the 
 age of 46 to go to Stratford and buy a bit of property, 
 and loll over the gates, talking to farmers and graziers, 
 and Bill the butcher's boy, and the Squire at the 
 Hall : at home with the Universe. His sort of care- 
 lessness in his plays reveals the man. When his 
 blood is up he makes heaven and earth bend and 
 deliver up what he wants on the instant, and goes 
 crashing through the forest of words like a thunder- 
 bolt, crushing them out of shape if they don't fit in, 
 melting moods and tenses, and leaving people to gape 
 at the transformation. If the grammarians object, 
 he goes on like the hero of Jabberwocky 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 273 
 
 frabjus day ! Calloo, Callay ! 
 He chortles in his joy ! 
 
 He's not going to stop and put their heads on straight. 
 They should have kept out of his way. 
 
 The truth is he did not conceive things in words 
 at all. He was a Seer. He first saw the thing or the 
 character, as if he had got out of himself into it, and 
 then with the " noble mould of Marcius" he just drove 
 the words together with a voice of thunder. 
 
 The poet's eye in a fine phrensy rolling 
 
 Did glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. 
 
 Do you think he was a talker ; talking people down 
 with his small Latin? He talked, yes; but so as to 
 make everybody "unbolt to him," and he had them 
 ere they were aware by the gift of sympathy. He had 
 what is reported of Mirabeau, le don terrible de la 
 familiariti, and caught them without guile. Sure am 
 I of this, that Shakespeare was like putty to every- 
 body, and everything, the willing slave, pulled out, 
 patted down, squeezed anyhow, clay to every potter. 
 But he knew by the plastic hand what the nature of 
 the moulder was. Your weak-strong man hutts and 
 asserts himself, and gets to know nothing and 
 nobody. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 iWi October 1871, 
 Breakfast Room, 4.45 P.M. 
 
 Piano in this room, accordion in that; hoiih going; 
 also mamma explaining aloud to three youngest some 
 
 T 
 
274 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 " squares " I drew in margin of W. M. Bunting's life. 
 I never like to stop the dear home-noises when directed 
 to any end, even when they reach a " fair "-like clash 
 and confusion. " Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, 
 this way up to the giant." "Bang !" says the gun. 
 " Clash ! " go the cymhals. " Yo Ho ! " says the speak- 
 ing trumpet. Then he has a turn at us. " Never 
 mind the parson and picter-maker. There they go ! " 
 What a blessing to be well enough to write quietly ! 
 (I forgot to mention the linnet in the cage ; bless his 
 little throat.) 
 
 But the row will be over soon enough, and there 
 must be no memories of painful and threatening 
 " hushes " and stoppages of the torrent of innocent 
 childish noise. 
 
 Bless God likewise for hard work, and even for re- 
 pression in progress. This is a dangerous thing to 
 say ; it is like inviting further testing. Only we 
 have not got a High Priest who is provoked by our 
 speeches and ventilators to catch us and trap us. 
 One of the sublimest and most calming thoughts is 
 that He reads the heart and the life straight through. 
 "Lord, thou knowest all things." Peter cut the 
 knot. It would have been a poor case for Peter in 
 argwnunt. We are better off with our Saviour's 
 omniscience than with all the best efforts of our best 
 friends. To them I, for one, feel I could never make 
 the crooked straight. We say too much to this man, 
 too little to that. Our promise is greater than o.ur 
 performance, our impulses than our acts ; not to men- 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 275 
 
 tion our varying passions, our mobile loves, and 
 angers, and resentments, and indolences. We mean 
 well, nay, we mean the best, but tbere is neither time 
 nor power to put things right all round. But Om- 
 niscient Love cleaves all like lightning and ends all 
 at a glance. 
 
 Love, how cheering is thy ray ; 
 
 All pain before thy presence flies. 
 
 DuKiNG the last week my fancy has been full of 
 the early boyhood of Charles Dickens. My little 
 Edwin, who is near ten years of age, roasting chest- 
 nuts, and Georgey, near twelve, compounding for a 
 piece of my pear, represent that terrible period of his 
 life. Both are childish. Only think of one between 
 those ages having to fight all his own battle without 
 any help of any kind ; " no adviser, no consolation, 
 no guidance, so help him God ! " 
 
 The entire character, life, work, of Dickens, and 
 its total bearings on the interests of the race, form a 
 problem to which my thought is not equal. But this 
 I know, that no good comes from wholesale denun- 
 ciation and darkened sympathies. "Pure love to 
 every soul of man " is the only basis of true judg- 
 ments of men. The green fibre of the tobacco plant, 
 the root of the vine, the fires of the volcano, the gases 
 of the slow-running drainage at Londesborough Lodge, 
 are all a part of His work whose " sober spotless mind " 
 constitutes " our heaven on earth.'' The one thing 
 defined for us is to have that mind. 
 
276 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 The following are selections from a note-book written about 
 
 this period : — 
 
 Wth November 1871. 
 
 A GOOD day at my picture. Grlanced at the Life 
 
 of Wilkie by Allan Cunningham. This book, given 
 
 me by my father in 1843, has been one of the most 
 
 secretly delightful books in all the world. It has 
 
 been read and re-read ; and I could now sit down and 
 
 read over the journals of work in the first volume 
 
 with appetite, though, like a child with a fairy tale, I 
 
 know " what is coming " at every step. How long it 
 
 took to paint the little picture of " The Jew's Harp " 
 
 I have several times reckoned up, and should like to 
 
 do it again. None but a professed painter who has 
 
 made painting his life-work knows the peculiar savour 
 
 of such inquiries. 
 
 I know each lane and every valley green, 
 Dingle, or bushy dell of this wild wood, 
 And every bosky bourn from side to side. 
 My daily walks, and ancient neighbourhood. 
 
 But of late years, the occasional reviving of appetite 
 for Wilkie's Life (so well bethumbed) has raised 
 questions like a flight of fieldfares — questions so 
 solemn, so practical, so home-thrusting, that I often 
 feel as if I were before some judge and jury, and 
 bound to go through them all in self-defence. 
 
 Miss Landon, who was popular when I was a 
 youth, and who wrote a poem about Maclise's " Vow 
 of the Peacock " at a time when Maclise took the 
 public by storm — as the public took against him at 
 a later period — Miss Landon wrote some verses 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 277 
 
 headed "We might have been." If one wanted a 
 bit of fun for social purposes one might write a reply 
 headed, " Why were we not 1 " Every new touching 
 of WUkie's Life, not to speak of a thousand incita- 
 tions, raises these two trains of thought. But why 
 Wilkie ? To me, for many reasons. The book came 
 out and was given to me just at the beginning of my 
 career as a painter. It is the most express and de- 
 tailed painter's life I know anything of. It unfolds 
 the whole secret of success, and the price which must 
 be paid for it ; and Wilkie was the absolute type of a 
 man devoted solely to one object in life, and pursuing 
 it with the pertinacity of a bloodhound up to his latest 
 hour on board the steamer from Malta. He was the 
 absolute type of the successful worker. He sowed 
 for what he reaped, and he reaped in full measure 
 that which he sowed. Turner might be placed with 
 him fully in these two respects. 
 
 I saw all this at the age of twenty-two ; and felt 
 it with as total a force as ever since. My early ad- 
 vantages in some respects were not equal to Wilkie's. 
 He studied at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh 
 and at the Eoyal Academy in London. He was only 
 fifteen when he went to the former. At fifteen I 
 went to Lincoln to study Architecture under E. J. 
 Willson. At school between the ages of eleven and 
 fifteen I had drawn Eaffaele's Cartoons and many 
 good things in Indian Ink from the engravings in the 
 Annuals of that period (and delicious things those 
 gem-like steel engravings were). At the age of six- 
 
278 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 teen I began to paint in oil, and from life. At 
 eighteen I essayed portraits ; and from that time 
 have maintained myself by painting. I studied for a 
 little while at the Eoyal Academy, quite enough, as 
 I think, for I had been well practised in drawing, and 
 I distinctly remember the keeper speaking of my 
 drawing as "masterly," as well as being told by 
 Phillips the E.A. something as encouraging, and by 
 Jones that " in or out of the Academy I was sure to 
 succeed." From eight years of age and even before, 
 as I can clearly recollect, all my nature was enchained 
 to painting, not simply as an amusement but in a 
 rapturous and enthusiastic way, as high-minded in 
 feeling as if I " rode a horse with wings that would 
 have flown." This full tide of enthusiasm has run 
 through my whole life, and I feel it now as strong as 
 ever. 
 
 Putting all these things together, it might reason- 
 ably have been expected that, like Wilkie, I should 
 have lived a life of unmixed devotion to painting, 
 and that the result would have been some amount of 
 fame and fortune. 
 
 Let me examine my course. 
 
 Have I been idle 1 Not for an hour. 
 
 Have I been triflingly employed 1 I have been on 
 full stretch with the highest employments I could set 
 before my mind and hand. The crucial question 
 comes next. Have I suffered my energies to be 
 diverted from the one object of painting 1 Answer. 
 Yes and No. 
 
1871 LETTEES OF JAMES SMBTHAM 279 
 
 But I will not answer any more questions before I 
 have had time to speak about Wilkie and his career. 
 What did his success cost him 1 Read his life and 
 you will have a minute account of the way in which 
 his time was spent daily. He did nothing but paint. 
 What he read was only by the way ; and though his 
 mind no doubt was "piercing in its energy of investi- 
 gation " in his own line, yet he was no better than 
 the average small tradesman out of it. Witness his 
 " Lectures " and the small style of his observations 
 generally. Witness his small love for " the great.'' 
 " To sit at their tables, mon, it is grand." Weak and 
 watery to a great degree outside his art, his life was 
 commonplace except within it. He reaped as he 
 sowed, and we reap the benefit of his sowing also, 
 with untold delight. No blame therefore to Wilkie, 
 and great gain to us. 
 
 Perhaps it was no part of his biography to speak 
 of his soul's history, nor was Allan Cunningham the 
 man who could have done it. I see no evidence in 
 his writings that in his youth or manhood his soul 
 was ever awakened within him. There is nothing to 
 distinguish him from the good-natured, moral, canny 
 Scotchman of the world. No doubts as to his course 
 seem to have retarded him for an hour. He leaped 
 into fame at a bound at the early age of twenty-one. 
 He was joined at once to polite society ; to the 
 society, in fact, of "the great," and there he dwelt 
 all his years on the' earth respected and respectable. 
 His religion, as far as appears, might be summed up 
 
280 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 in the concluding sentence of a sermon heard by my 
 friend Mr. Chubb from the lips of Sydney Smith 
 (whose preaching, by the way, Wilkie much adlnired), 
 " Finally, my brethren, if you wish to die respected, 
 be respectable." 
 
 Beyond this depth I see nothing deeper in Wilkie's 
 soul ; and I seem to hear an echo, faint and watery 
 as in a cold old mossy well, " Well ! what more would 
 you have 1 " It is this " what more " that is the key, 
 the cross, the crown of my whole history from that 
 year 1843 to this present time. 
 
 2&th November 1871. 
 
 Have got Leslie's Life of Constable. The half- 
 rapturous zest, secret and exceeding, of such a book, 
 every inflection of which is delightful ! I love the 
 concentrated love of Constable. The rambling, 
 travelling, widespread, insatiate, hasty spirit misses 
 of art's greatest aim (so named by Wordsworth), 
 Tranquillity. If Pascal read one book (Montaigne), 
 surely one Sussex Valley is enough for one life. A 
 couplet from the " Farmer's Boy " quoted in an old 
 Academy Catalogue has stuck to me for thirty years. 
 
 Small was Ms charge, no wilds had they to roam, 
 But bright enclosures circling round their home. 
 
 When we consider that a whole sky, through all the 
 seasons, is open to one vale, with its stars and sun 
 and moon and clouds of all measures and manners 
 and colours, what more can an immortal mind desire ? 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 281 
 
 The same tree, well-beloved and honoured, is twenty 
 trees from twenty different points of view. But in a 
 valley there are many trees, and so, many different 
 combinations. Add the hills, the stream, the cot- 
 tages, the bridges. Eing the changes on sky and 
 earth in the sheltered, single vale, and what more can 
 you long for? If eight bells will yield so many 
 changes, what of a Sussex valley ? 
 
 SOth November, 9 p.m. 
 Reading Constable's Life with varying feelings. 
 To me the pinch of such reading is in the confirmation 
 of certain conclusions about the practice of painting in 
 England. The variations and uncertainties of opinion 
 for its own sake I care nothing for; they do not 
 agitate me. They are interesting, and so much is to 
 be said on all sides. But when I see that the most 
 highly -cultivated intellects are often the feeblest 
 possible judges of painting ; that success may be 
 kept down for a lifetime, and opportunities and en- 
 couragements denied for want of a fair judgment; 
 that critics are largely " handled " and used indirectly 
 by the men of push and ambition ; and that without 
 their aid, large or even moderate success is next to 
 impossible ; that any measure of original thought is 
 looked on coldly, even among the best judges, till it 
 prevails by very gradual acceptance (note Sir G. 
 Beaumont's entire difference from Constable, as to 
 the soundness of his art, and compare Sir G. B.'s 
 opinions with those of Leslie on this subject) ; that the 
 
282 LETTERS OP JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 painter's strength lies in waiting and in silence (seek- 
 ing for commissions only defeating its own object) ; 
 there is apt to creep over me a feeling almost weird 
 and shuddering, such as is symbolised by such a cir- 
 cumstance as the being locked at twilight in a solitary 
 building about which a man has been happily and 
 long wandering, and which he entered as a treasure 
 house of science or art, or as when an imperfectly 
 informed settler finds himself enclosed by dangers 
 of the woods or hostile tribes where he expected to 
 found a peaceful settlement. 
 
 2m<? December 1871. 
 
 Bought a new box of water colours ; then walked 
 on to National Gallery and studied Constable's " Corn- 
 field." Constable was fifty years old when he painted 
 it, and it is in the maturity of his solemn, sober, 
 russet way of thinking among " hamlets brown and 
 dim discovered spires," hearing " their simple bell." 
 
 No eloquence could express my personal thankful- 
 ness for the National Gallery and the Museum at S. 
 Kensington. To have examples of all the best masters, 
 ancient and modern, at command, as free of access as 
 if they were hung in your own house and better 
 illuminated, is so delightful that to a painter no 
 mental feast is equal to it. In the lives of Wilkie 
 and Constable we read of the occasional privilege of 
 studying a few of these very things at " Angerstein's," 
 "Sir Geo. Beaumont's," "Peel's," etc. There is a 
 pleasant notice in Constable's Letters of a visit to 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 283 
 
 Coleorton, the seat of Sir G. Beaumont, and of his 
 rapture at being in daily converse with Claude's 
 "Narcissus and Echo," his "Annunciation," his 
 " Cephalus and Procris," and the Field Study with the 
 piping shepherd. Yet for years and years I have 
 conned these very works with the utmost leisure. 
 One of the rarest privileges of 25 years ago was to 
 know some one who knew some one else who had been 
 permitted to go and see " Turner's Gallery " in the 
 mysterious house in Queen Anne's Street, with its 
 blind, windowless frontage — a haunted house to all 
 young painters. The ear drank in the lightest echoes of 
 report as to the material of the Gallery. But for years 
 aU the Arcana have been laid bare — nay even his 
 sketches and his studies are all anatomically arranged 
 on the walls of those fairy rooms at South Kensing- 
 ton, and "The Grossing the Brook," "The Frosty 
 Morning," and all the mystic contents of " Turner's 
 Gallery " are largely assimilated by many minds. 
 
 To run in to the National Gallery in passing, 
 merely to see, for example, the relative depth of coloiu' 
 in the corner of that little Claude (The Annunciation) 
 which Sir G. Beaumont loved so well that he carried 
 it with him whenever he removed to his various 
 residences, gives the feeling of the Fairy Tales having 
 come true. And then the sketches at S. K. which 
 fit themselves to every conceivable mood, done in 
 pencil, in pen and ink, in water colour, in oil, in 
 sepia — done elaborately or slightly, in every sort of 
 temper and manner, from the very earliest uncertain 
 
284 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 scribbles of a first thought to the cautious preliminaries 
 of the picture itself ! Sketches in chalk are here 
 which Gainsborough used to make in his tranquil 
 evenings at home, now framed in battered, smoke- 
 toned, old-fashioned frames, brought out of dusky 
 rooms in town and country ; Wilkie's fastidious 
 scratchings of various ways of putting in the back- 
 ground of " Duncan Gray," and his not facile attempts 
 to hit off Scottish harvest-women in pencil, at which 
 work many a score of our draughtsmen for periodicals 
 would beat him hollow in these days ! But in this 
 direction nothing can equal those ebony stands in the 
 Sheepshanks rooms, in which, as in a revolving black 
 letter-book, are mounted the studies of Mulready the 
 Conscientious, the man who, from the day when he 
 knocked at the door of Banks the Sculptor and wiped 
 his feet so carefully that he won the heart of the old 
 housekeeper when he was a boy, down to the green 
 old age when he worked as patiently as Gerhard Dow 
 at the later pictures in the Vernon Gallery, thought 
 of nothing but how to "paint it well.'' 
 
 All this is such a store of wealth to the painter that 
 tongue cannot utter it. Certainly as I write the 
 pleasure grows " for ever rising with the rising mind," 
 and I am led to recall almost in a spirit of devotion the 
 inscription so appropriately gilded round the dome 
 of the Eoyal Academy — 
 
 The hearts of men which fondly here admire 
 Fair seeming shows may lift themselves up higher, 
 And learn to love with zealous humble duty, 
 The eternal fountain of that heavenly beauty. 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 285 
 
 No poem I know gives so good an image of the 
 pleasures of painting, especially of Water Colour 
 painting, as " The Brook " by Tennyson. It comes 
 very near the expression of the changeful inward 
 delight which sings on under all skies, and in all 
 weathers, to the Sea. 
 
 Men may come and men may go ; 
 But I go on for ever. 
 
 When, after a new phase of work, say a summer 
 evening churchyard with the last gleams slanting up 
 the steep roof, the solitary old rustic with his " short 
 and simple annals " standing in the shade, and reading 
 the inscription on the wooden memorial of " the village 
 Hampden'' whom he knew in his boyhood — when 
 after finishing such a work, his pencil loitering, as the 
 light declines in his studio, over the ivies and brier- 
 bindings of the heaving mossy resting-places, or stain- 
 ing the lichens more deeply on the stones, he at length 
 writes his own name on tomb or grassy hillock, to 
 remain there for perhaps two centuries, there is a 
 thrill of pleasure which has a whispering and weird 
 power in it. " To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures 
 new." Next week, he solemnly records his name in a 
 snowdrift, the winds driving, the sheep huddling, the 
 "shepherd blowing his nail." From change to 
 change — 
 
 I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance — 
 never twice the same. There are bitternesses in the 
 
286 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 pursuit of Painting at times, but its joys are indescrib- 
 able and endless. 
 
 Men may come and men may go ; 
 But I go on for ever. 
 
 To C. M. 
 Long habit gives a charm of antiquity to the charm 
 of action. To get out a new ventilator and date it 
 outside, or being stirred in spirit to make a new square, 
 there to remain and become a rich, ripe, old one, to 
 mark its solemn boundaries, the hedges and bulwarks 
 of the idea then first beginning its outward life — 
 these two confluent and effluent habits have become, 
 perhaps, the most enchanting resorts of mental life 
 in the course of years. 
 
 The other day I went to see one of our older 
 members who is sick and not likely to recover. Small 
 cottage, neat and tidy room. She is deaf, the wife of 
 a bootmaker (cobbler, let us say), and has had a strug- 
 gling life of hard work with a large family, who have all 
 " turned out well." I have seen two of them die happy, 
 and now God calls her home, and she has no words to 
 express her joy and the sense of having every blessing 
 and abounding. She is afraid to boast, for "she feels 
 herself so sinful ; but then, looking to Jesus is so easy." 
 She is " never lonely, night or day." Here is a soul 
 to whom " an abundant entrance " is being ad- 
 ministered, and .here is a life that has fulfilled life's 
 noblest ends. 
 
1871 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 287 
 
 All this with no adjuncts reads well, and God, and 
 Christ, and the angels, and the cloud of witnesses 
 inquire no more. But Satan, and fallen man, and 
 the world and its fashions and ways go farther and 
 inquire, "How did the daily life of these people 
 look?" Look? Why, mean and depressing, of 
 course ; without a spark of outward attractiveness. 
 She had a quiet, homely, self-contained dignity for a 
 small tradesman's wife, but all was of the lowliest 
 and, except to the purged eye, forbidding. 
 
 One of the truths that is opening out more and 
 more to me is the relation of taste and culture to the 
 religious life. Without care we are entangled in a 
 sense of discrepancy, as if they were opposed, and when 
 we see — what is an awful and undoubted fact — that 
 the poor and despised dwell in the light far more 
 than the rich and wise, it becomes still more puzzling. 
 The key seems to be furnished in the central idea of 
 true culture. I am told that Goethe defines genius as 
 " being a right appreciation of the situation " — i.e. I 
 judge, a perfect sympathy. Here is the detector. 
 Any touch of " Stand off, I am holier, wiser, more 
 refined, more respectable than thou," is like a green 
 precipitate which shows false culture somewhere : and 
 it abounds. Antagonism — exchange of merits, admire 
 me and I'll admire you — is the rule. 
 
 But the supreme correlative of this is in the one 
 "perfect gentleman" (as Eousseau calls Christ), the 
 " fairest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely," 
 who "had not where to lay his head," and whose best 
 
288 LETTERS OS JAMES SMETHAM 1871 
 
 reputation was that He was " the friend of publicans 
 and sinners.'' We see Him near to the dying woman 
 I have written about, as if He had laid aside all 
 interests and histories but hers ; so He comes to each 
 of us, in our own way. 
 
 I have been commanded to be smitten on the 
 mouth on the subject of art a thousand times : its 
 desirableness, its relative value, its actual uses. Men 
 of science have been insensible and indifferent. Good 
 men (and those often alive to percentages) have been 
 solemnly " dead " to it. The only one who, since I 
 iirst felt the delightful stirrings of it at five years 
 old, up to now, has never interposed one thwarting 
 thought out of His omniscience, is the Lord Jesus, 
 and He shows me now more clearly than ever that 
 true art, as opposed to its neglect, is the best prepara- 
 tion for the class-room, and the closet, and the sanctu- 
 ary ; for it is simply a more and more complete 
 " appreciation of the situation " ; tending, therefore, 
 to an universal simplicity of life, and to a full recep- 
 tion of all impressions. False culture is confined to 
 partial regions of the nature ; the flesh, the eye, the 
 pride of life. True culture reaches all the powers, 
 the conscience, and the soul. 
 
 It might sound strange to start the thesis in a 
 church assembly, with such material as we have, but 
 I make no doubt of it (as I look on the question) that 
 perfect Science and Art, and perfect Holiness, as 
 existing in a given being (for of course Holiness is not 
 objective), mean pretty much the same thing. 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 289 
 
 (Cries of Oh ! Oh ! from the opposition on both 
 sides.) 
 
 After a visit to the Old Masters Exhibition at Burlington 
 House, he writes in his note-book : — 
 
 5th January 1872. 
 If any Art teaches by example rather than by 
 precept it is the Art of Painting. When Turner was 
 visitor at the E.A., and was asked "How?" by a 
 student, his reply was " Suppose you look." To 
 those who have the power of looking and the will to 
 look Academies of Art are useless ; often worse than 
 useless, for they bind burdens on the shoulders of 
 sensitive and original men which oppress without 
 enriching them. In what school of Art did Constable, 
 Turner, Danby acquire their peculiar powers ? All 
 the vocal, or written, or printed instructions in the 
 world could not empower a man to feel, and to paint 
 such a piece of sublime rusticity as Constable's 
 " White Horse," or (and what an intellectual ocean 
 lies between these two works !) Danby's "Calypso 
 mourning the departure of Ulysses." Yet which, on 
 the whole, is the finer and more important work? 
 A saying of Constable's best answers this question : 
 " Fine pictures neither need nor admit of comparison.'' 
 CoUins's " Cherry Seller '' differs from the two former 
 by an almost equal distance, though there is per- 
 haps more essential affinity between the Collins and 
 the Constable than between the Collins and the 
 Danby. But what dogmas would express the essen- 
 u 
 
290 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 tials of any of the three? In what consists that 
 solemn reflective grandeur of rural peace — "ancient 
 peace" — in the two cottages, the river bank, the 
 disappearing barge with the white horse in it, not 
 pulling it ? Men might paint ten thousand pictures 
 with two cottages by a river, a barge and a white 
 horse, and they should be feeble and worthless. Nay, 
 more, hundreds of painters since Constable could have 
 united the material of the picture better. That is a 
 blotch, and not much like a dock leaf in the fore- 
 ground, and the rest of the work is equally obscure 
 as a mere matter of photographic resemblance. 
 Whence then, that mystic overruling charm 1 Have 
 we not felt something of the same influence when in 
 some recess of life, far away in the country's heart, 
 on a gray afternoon we have dreamily watched the 
 rain-waggons of the sky, the large clouds of silver 
 gray, slow moving, drawn by their slow " White 
 Horses " 1 Who shall tell these influences on the 
 moralising day-dreams of the hour and place. But 
 in this picture we have their echoes fixed and trans- 
 lated on canvas. If they have never been felt, and if 
 the picture has no meaning to the spectator, it is little 
 matter, the picture will never complain, it will 
 hang on the wall in pathetic silence for centuries ; not 
 bating a jot of that which it has, and is ; nor modi- 
 fying its measured life laid there by Constable long 
 years ago, faithful to its grave trust : the same as 
 when Archdeacon Fisher resolved to buy it : the same 
 as when it "lit up that side of the room just above 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 291 
 
 the ogee moulding " in the long since departed Arch- 
 deacon's home, and when his wife glanced from it to 
 the garden and " saw the same kind of look in both " : 
 the same as when the Parisians of 1825, or there- 
 abouts, crowded round it, and the Parisian critics 
 fought over it, and it, with others of Constable's work, 
 began to form a French school of landscape when as 
 yet in his mother country her rustic son was unre- 
 garded and depreciated. Its life is secretly defended. 
 It is forbidden to perish. We may bum our copy of 
 Shakespeare, but we must not lay hands on Constable's 
 " White Horse " when the hoary tints of true fame 
 gather (as the lichens and weather stains encrust and 
 gild an abbey) over a picture that has touched the 
 heart of the world. What man in his senses dare be 
 more than its reverent custodian to pass it forward to 
 the hands of posterity 1 All teaching of the secrets of 
 such works is vain, all analysis except of the eye and 
 the soul is vain. The kings of Art (the men who 
 " can ") read such books with thoughtful ease. But 
 all such learn in no school, nor can they be taught. 
 
 One of the settled mental comforts of a painter's 
 life is when by a " scientific use of the imagination " 
 he sees into the silent real life of a picture. Take 
 the " Portrait of an old lady " by Eembrandt in this 
 Old Masters Exhibition. Conceive of its inception, 
 the "sittings," the completion, the signing which 
 marked it the child of Eembrandt for age on age. 
 Fancy the Burgomaster's positivity as to its defects, 
 and the Artist's friends applause of its merits, while 
 
292 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 it hung with just the same melancholy unchangeable 
 look surcharged with mind which had arranged its 
 pigments at their proper angles. P^ollow the Burgo- 
 master to his marble tomb and lay him silent, long 
 ago, and the Artist's friend to his wooden cross and 
 green turf. Grow up a new generation of observers 
 for whom the canvas presents the same melancholy 
 face and the pigments at the same angles of incidence ! 
 How impassive it is ! Hear the passionate praise and 
 the full blowing blame of ages, both collapsing into "the 
 portion of weeds and worn-out faces.'' At length in 
 December 1871 the canvas is ordered out, like Eossell, 
 on a raw morning, to be fired at at Burlington House 
 by " the largest circulation in the world." The Critic 
 heaves and blows like "the huge bush -bearded 
 Baron." Then he mites and prints, and " the largest 
 circulation in the world " brings it me for a penny, 
 and the following is part of his heaving and blowing : — 
 " That this picture must have been painted under 
 some mental distress like Scott's Count Robert of 
 Paris," and that "there is much yet to be unravelled 
 in the life of Eembrandt." As if from the expression 
 of the faces of his pictures, or their execution you 
 co\ild make out the history of a painter ! 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 SouTHPORT, iUh January 1872. 
 Received your post -card. The sight of your 
 hand-writing has so long been dear to me that it is 
 among my life treasures ; and I say or write no such 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 293 
 
 things sentimentally or extravagantly. Life, and its 
 " lines in pleasant places," is far too sweet and solemn 
 to trifle with, even in trifles ; and so Personage, and 
 Interview, and Looks, and Smiles, and Tokens, and 
 Communications, and all that makes up the sum of 
 earthly Unions, Friendships, Loves, are no mere 
 passing accidents, but monumental things which can 
 never, never pass away. 
 
 Even in our ashin old is fire-y-reke. 
 
 As to the Hates, Dislikes, Apathies, and Anti- 
 pathies of life (the two last are good things), its 
 Recriminations and vain Reprisals, there is no room for 
 them towards any, when once the soul thus catches 
 sight of the good of life. The bush burns rosy and 
 lambent, and is not consumed. 
 
 Mr. Stead's dining-room ; alone. 31st January. 
 Theee is actually gone a whole twelfth of another 
 year ! Something of the bewilderment of the dream 
 comes across the mind, as when dissolving views wrestle 
 with one another till we know not which is to prevail, 
 except by our knowledge of sequence. What, as I 
 wrote, brought up the figure of you across the disc, as 
 I saw you years ago 1 In which of the four chambers 
 of the brain has that image been lying all these years ; 
 only now and then coming and sitting and sinking 
 and fading into its safe retirement ? All the tears of 
 the muses cannot express these wonders — this pathos 
 of life. It would be too great but for a little faith. 
 
294 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 There is an infinite sea, and an endless shore, and 
 that h'ttle dot (vastly too big in my square) is Humanity 
 among the numberless sands, the countless waves, 
 and the diapason of Eternity. 
 
 Doth not all that is 
 Press on thy head and heart, 
 And Tisibly, invisibly, 
 Weave its mysterious chain 
 Eternally around thee ? 
 
 Now and then this small speck, replete with sensa- 
 tion and sensibility, is caught as by a whirlwind from 
 the devious life of the sands and plunged into the 
 billows of the sea in storm, and tosses as helpless in 
 the waves, as lonely on the sands. Yet it does not 
 perish there. By some power it is lifted out of the 
 stomi and restored to its ordinary life of wandering 
 alone. But it cannot choose its lot, nor resist the 
 powers that surround it. Why does its littleness not 
 drive it to despair : cause it to curl like a sand-worm 
 into some small grave on the windy wastes and dis- 
 appear ? " What is man that Thou takest account of 
 himV Here is the glory and loveliness of the 
 strength. " Thou takest account of him." So here is 
 life. This is life. That little dot on the shore is 
 small as a mathematical point ; but such a point is 
 the centre of a circle of power and beauty whose 
 lines of radiations go out to the ends of the earth and 
 beyond it, never reaching the circumference — 
 
 Whose margin fades 
 For ever and ever, as they move — 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 295 
 
 Powers, which are not appendages, strike through 
 every living line, and Man is safe in God. 
 
 To F. J. S. 
 
 Last night read Carlyle's Niagara, and after that 
 heard James Calvert of Fiji tell an unvarnished tale 
 of what simple faith in Christ had done among men- 
 eaters and murderers. It is j)leasant to be catholic 
 and give honour to whom honour is due. Still it is 
 right to be just to our own judgment. I see nothing 
 in Carlyle that I don't see much better said in the 
 New Testament, and with the unspeakable advantage 
 of an infallible recipe for doing it. A friend of mine 
 writes, "The advantage of the Gospel is that it 
 enables the humblest man to do what only the hero 
 can do without it." 
 
 Carlyle's Drill — all the world marching and wheel- 
 ing and getting ready to fight ! Whereas the fisher- 
 man Peter lays bonds and yokes on men which drill 
 a man from vMhin, and he fears God and honours the 
 King, and knows his place, and doesn't put sham 
 work into his harness or his buildings. I know such 
 men by scores and hundreds, and feel sure that there 
 are tens of thousands. 
 
 We don't want eloquent howling to show man 
 " what is good,'' or to do justice, or love mercy, or 
 walk humbly with God and man. I will back James 
 Calvert of Fiji against a troop of Carlyles for the 
 actual accomplishment of the chief good. 
 
296 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 All this with much admiration of Carlyle never- 
 theless. 
 
 llth February. 
 
 For a long time past I have seen into a something 
 most wondrous, in what I fear so many think the 
 accident of our circles of friends. It is no accident. 
 If it be true, " He that receiveth you receiveth me," 
 in one sense, it is also in this. God draws nigh in 
 our friend-circles. 
 
 Why hast thou cast our lot 
 In the same age and place 1 
 And why together brought 
 To see each other's face ? 
 
 We are sent to operate on each other and to be 
 operated on; "diamond cut diamond.'' It is not 
 good for man to be alone. The effect of this view 
 ought to be most important both in respect to our 
 esteeming of the heavenly gift and in respect of our 
 behaviour. We must " show ourselves friendly." 
 For want of this recognition of " God with us " in 
 our friends great harm is done. Temper is allowed 
 to thwart God's intentions, neglect is allowed to run 
 it to waste, insensibility to miss its profoundest 
 lessons ; so life remains a mean and weary thing. It 
 is well to study all this deeply, to watch the pillar of 
 cloud and fire. Contented limitation is one of its 
 elements, an unambitious spirit in regard to it— the 
 not-too-much, the not-too-many. 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 297 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 Touched with a sympathy ■within, 
 He knows our feeble frame. 
 
 Every believer realises by experience that Christ is 
 the only perfect sympathiser. " I'm not perfectly 
 understood," says everybody in fact. But if you are 
 a believer you are perfectly understood. Christ is 
 the only one who never expects you to be other than 
 yourself, and He puts in abeyance towards you all 
 but what is like you. He takes your view of things, 
 and mentions no other. He takes the old woman's 
 view of things by the wash-tub, and has a great 
 interest in wash powder; Sir Isaac Newton's view 
 of things, and wings among the stars with him ; 
 the artist's view, and feeds among the lilies ; the 
 lawyer's, and shares the justice of things. But He 
 never plays the lawyer or the philosopher or the 
 artist to the old woman. He is above that littleness. 
 
 lOft April 1872. 
 
 Perhaps some suffer greater alternations of 
 pleasure and pain than others. Things come with 
 a cutting force from books and life and thought. In 
 Thomas Cooper's Autobiography, last night, I got the 
 poor Leicester " stockingers," who only earned 4s. 6d. 
 a week, dug into me. These and the like images 
 make the simple enjoyment of life a thing to be 
 held in motion by the strong hand of reason over- 
 mastering feeling and imagination. "You won't 
 
298 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 mend matters by being miserable about what you ■ 
 can't help." 
 
 How much depends on the way you put things to 
 yourself. In the family read that part of the Sermon 
 on the Mount which forbids care, and went to work 
 humbly and thankfully, glad to be able by ever so 
 much labour to paint a picture worth a few pounds. 
 "Another Gospel" might have made me look on 
 myself as a neglected "genius," and I might have 
 sworn bitterly all day, or dropped work in disgust 
 and gone off loafing to a studio to infect some other 
 "genius" with pride and discontent. But "Bless 
 the Lord, my soul ! " No ; quite the reverse. 
 How carefully I painted my market woman with her 
 hens in a basket, thankful not to be a Leicester 
 stockinger at 4s. 6d. a week ; and when a tired 
 feeling came over me a flush of divine philosophy 
 (not harsh nor crabbed as dull fools suppose, but 
 musical as is Apollo's lute) sent me on spinning 
 again, running and not weary, walking and not faint. 
 
 But the foundation of all this is the foundation of 
 the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being 
 the chief corner stone. Whence else could come all 
 this renewing of the youth and strength but from 
 these deep springs, and whence the access of the 
 living waters unless the rock be smitten by discipline 
 and chastening? 
 
 29th April. 
 
 The strong ambitious young man envies the 
 establishment, the wealth, the fame of the old. The 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 299 
 
 old envies the strength and freshness of the young. 
 They each want to" conjoin the two ends of life, and 
 have the joys of both ends. They can't. Indeed, 
 each life must he cast into an equation of all its 
 elements as related to its great purport, which is 
 eternal. It matters little at what stage of his little 
 round of life a man is just now found. If he be just 
 now young, he is fast coming to age ; if old, he has 
 had what the young are now having. 
 
 I remember, when I think, 
 That my youth was half divine. 
 
 No man has two youths : no man has less than one. 
 Will a thinking man beg for the probation of youth 
 twice over? The proper Ego from the centre of 
 volition, which is fairly located equidistant from the 
 various periods of his allotted life, is that which 
 yields up the full answer of life. The Ancient of 
 Days, as in Blake's grand design, takes His golden 
 compass. He alone knows what Radius will touch 
 all the possibilities of volition, some natures needing 
 more expansion than others. With that radius He 
 strikes the circle of individual life, and volition 
 decides its own destiny. 
 
 ^t'h May. 
 
 Now I say. Make a science of your love. Search 
 out your loves, for there is the fulfilling of your law 
 of life. You love Tennyson's Glaribel ; another man 
 swears at you for it, and turns again and rends you. 
 Never mind him. The "golden furze brings tears 
 
300 LETTERS OF JAMES SMBTHAM 1872 
 
 into the eyes of Linnaeus," and the City man wants to 
 know what the driveller is blubbering about, and 
 asks for a vote for the ward of Grubbery cum Cash, 
 and that you should join him in a " nip of brandy." 
 Never mind him. He'll be down a steep place into 
 the sea ere long, and the world will spin smoothly on 
 its axis as before. This light of love will develop 
 wonders. There is no fear in love. What is your 
 beloved more than another man's beloved 1 
 Nothing ; but it is yours. 
 
 One can't paint after the first day at the R A. One 
 ought not to try, the impressions are so powerful and 
 multitudinous. Millais's landscapes alone are like a 
 discharge of a park of artillery. The consummate 
 intelligence of his observation is inspiriting. That is 
 just how things look to a keen, unprejudiced eye, not 
 ruled by convention nor overruled by subjective feel- 
 ing or poetic passion. " Dreams that wave before the 
 half -shut eye " are another life, live in another world. 
 But the eyes of Millais are wide open to this world, and 
 they will most fully recognise the truth and beauty of 
 his work who love Nature most and know her best. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 leth June 1872. 
 
 Spite of resolutions not to read at all, the volume 
 of Middlemarch from Mudie's tickles me like a trout, 
 and at last George Eliot lays me gasping on the 
 grass. She is like Thoreau, who was en rapport, in a 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 301 
 
 sort of mesmeric way, with the spirit of Nature. He 
 could fetch up any fish he liked with his hand, show 
 it, and let it swim again. The iish came to him. 
 What attracted me in this book was what attracted 
 me to Bethnal Green Museum again, and will take 
 me yet again — some instances of true or curious art. 
 Many a man can take a six-foot canvas and paint 
 you two deer lying down in a bit of forest, and you 
 shall not be able to find a single fault. Nay, if the 
 painter's friend has fetched you to see it you shall 
 say, "Those ferns are wonderful, look how he has 
 done the cold skylight on the tips and the golden light 
 shining through," and next you (as I heard at the 
 R. A. concerning the ferns in Vicat Cole's " Noon "), 
 the "fat-faced Edward Bull," shall say in a voice 
 welling up through thick oil, " Those ferns are ofly 
 jolly, they are glaw-yus." But the painter's friend 
 is not contented, and says with illogical ellipsis, 
 "What's the matter with the deer?" But you turn 
 in mild surprise, concealing a half yawn with your 
 catalogue, and answer, " I never said anything about 
 the deer ; they are very well done indeed." 
 
 But Rosa Bonheur shall take a twelve-inch panel 
 and put a drift of thin brown over it and paint you — 
 not by any means in a juggling way, but rather with 
 simple, childlike pains — two deer which you shall 
 never forget. 
 
 "But what's the difference?" Shall I begin to 
 explain the difference between the art of Harrison 
 Ainsworth and George Eliot 1 
 
302 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 Good art is stimulating : bad is depressing. When 
 I go to some of my art friends I come away in a wet 
 blanket. Going to D. G. R, to Brown, Burne Jones, 
 Boyce (appetising Boyce, he has a charm of his own), 
 Shields, the Linnells — all is charm and zest and 
 appetite, kindling pleasant electric shocks of life. 
 None of these men can touch paper, pen, lead pencil, 
 chalk, or brush, but something fresh, natural, power- 
 ful, oozes out at their finger ends. So with George 
 Eliot's pen : 'tis all Nature. She does not prejudice 
 you by comment, yet how you love or hate her 
 characters with more or less of that veiling prudence 
 which life compels in loving and hating ! The book 
 is crammed with wisdom, wit, and tenderness, and the 
 style is pellucid and free from strain. 
 
 18th June. 
 
 Our way there is a preponderance of lions. On 
 some of the grandiose villas they are of marble, and 
 they stand up as large as; life. Lion and Lioness, on 
 either side of Mr. John Jones' classic door. And the 
 temper they show ! Nothing will pacify them. To 
 all the guests they show their teeth, and one wonders 
 what there is our way to put them out of temper to 
 that extent. It's not the sublimity of the Nemean 
 lion "'gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his 
 prey." It is sheer nastiness, and it weighs on me. 
 
 But, as a rule, our lions are not like that. They 
 are large and round in the head, short in the body, 
 most amiable in temper. They are vegetarians, with- 
 out the least doubt : for as to their eating a lamb, or 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 303 
 
 even such a thing as a lamb chop, look at their faces 
 and you will see the impossibility at once. This wants 
 accounting for. I place it to domestication on door- 
 steps, to the mollifying influence of babies, nurse-maids, 
 perambulators, and the incidents of suburban door- 
 steps generally. There are other influences, among 
 which I put coats of paint in a high rank. Boiled oil 
 and drab paint are wonderful mollifiers. I know one 
 lion who has been on the same door-step for eighteen 
 years. How much longer I dare not say. Every spring 
 he has received his boiled oil and drab, and he is a sort 
 of boiled lion. He glistens for three months always, 
 after that he has nine months of comparative dulness. 
 But the sense of twenty coats of the best oil paint 
 makes him all we could wish to see in a lion. And 
 yet, I don't know how it is, there is a something below 
 all this which restrains you when you are thinking too 
 lightly of him, a warning twinkle, a feeling that it 
 might be possible to go too far, and that the bound 
 once passed, it were a pity of your life. Prima facie, 
 or a priori — for I love to set forth a classical spirit — 
 you would not have predicated that Stoke Newington 
 was " arida nutrix leonum " ; but misconceptions of 
 that nature are prevalent among men. We often 
 misjudge both persons and localities. 
 
 ZUh July. 
 
 Finished Middlemarch, Part IV., to-day. All 
 
 " like life," but in a far other than the Dickens sense. 
 
 You are not simply amused by it, you are made to 
 
 think and feel and laugh and wonder and pity ; and 
 
304 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 if you are not rapped on the knuckles it is because 
 you are an exception to the weak folks, the proud 
 folks, the indolent folks, of which the world is full. 
 You stand a glorious exception. 
 
 One of the phases of life George Eliot is masterly 
 in treating, viz. Eeasoning and Action on suppressed 
 premises. Life is full of fine snares and pitfalls for 
 the unwary, and G. E. has an eye for them. Casau- 
 bon's life-work is a grand parable — a man not sure 
 of himself, whose " Key to all the Mythologies " won't 
 go into the keyhole. 
 
 Glad to get your friendly letter. It was like the 
 coming of Titus [2 Cor. vii. 6]. I think Providence 
 in these days often sends Titus by post. 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 30th July. 
 Chapel. Long before time. 
 
 I SUPPOSE I ought to reckon (and do reckon) to- 
 day's intellectual enjoyment perfect. 
 
 Painting, painting in water colours, point by point, 
 an Arcadian vale, with a shepherd and nymph, with 
 all the sensations (probably) of Theocritus. I don't 
 forget or undervalue this element of life. But fancy 
 Theocritus a methodist Glass Leader, inwardly exam- 
 ining his conduct, his heart, his " way," and not able 
 to be satisfied with many things in it, — and the father 
 of six children whose " conversion '' is to him the 
 principal thing. But this was the fact ; the one a 
 running accompaniment of the other. Theocritus, 
 "piping down the valleys wild," catching every 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 305 
 
 breath of Nature, its glooms, its exhilarations, its pen- 
 si veness, its haunted influences — comes as near perhaps 
 to my typical and professional mental state as need be. 
 
 " The grace of God which bringeth salvation hath 
 appeared unto all men," Theocritus included ; is as 
 eminently fitted to save him as the Philippian jailor ; 
 and indeed his Idyllic joys are vastly enhanced by it. 
 There is no clashing in his mind. But the union 
 is hard to explain to "small shopkeepers.'' What 
 matter ! The green pastures, the still waters, are 
 eminently poetic, pastoral, and idyllic. 
 
 There comes in old Father Barnes. He looks 
 like Fagin. He is eighty-six. Can hardly speak for 
 coughing. Yet I much question, whether, if his soul 
 were shown instead of his body, we should not all look 
 poor beside him. 
 
 When Job said, "Though He slay me yet will I trust 
 in Him," no wealth could enrich him after that. He 
 had reached his climax. " The mind in its own place." 
 
 To learn the art of protracted patience, to learn to 
 do work well for its own sake, to learn to be contented 
 with very moderate remuneration, and not to be 
 betrayed into excited hopes or greedy desires — this is 
 better "than thousands of gold and silver.'' Yet this 
 is easier to talk about than to practise. 
 
 To T. A. „„^, ,r , 
 
 27ot November. 
 
 He (Coleridge) raised a mortal to the skies, 
 
 She (George Eliot) drew an angel down. 
 
 X 
 
306 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 In reading a page or two before breakfast of a 
 careful essay by Sbairp of St. Andrews on Coleridge, 
 in which he shows how Coleridge, broken down by a 
 sense of sin, accepted Christ as a Saviour, and found 
 the peace of God, the setting forth of redemption so 
 quietly and soothingly suited my soul, strengthening 
 me for work and for enjoyment, and I rode high on 
 the white horse of salvation. 
 
 But when last evening in the quiet retirement of 
 the studio I read Part VII. of Middlemarch right 
 through, a counter -current ran through me, and 
 agitated the soul. The subtle entanglements of sin, 
 holding a man by its cords, the fatal proclivities of 
 evil, beginning in weakness or bolstered up by pride 
 (Fred Vincy, Lydgate) ; the decline and fall of the 
 sinner ; coarse and brutal worldliness which raps out 
 oaths and lives in wine and wantonness, yet does 
 nothing unbecoming " a gentleman," and so de- 
 nounces the evangelical hypocrite (Hawley, etc.) ; the 
 slippery, and, so to speak, greasy sin of the more 
 brutish among the people (Bainbridge, Horrock, 
 Raffles) taking up its parable against Bulstrode ; the 
 cold, helpless complications of home life where a 
 shallow nature is linked to a grand one (Eosamond, 
 Lydgate) bringing down the Huxley sort of strength 
 to opium and billiards and borrowing, thwarting 
 all the intellect and defeating the life — even the 
 nobility of the Garths becomes mainly a rebuke 
 all round : — the intense vividness and power and 
 beauty of the handling of all this I must say had 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 307 
 
 a wretched eflfect on my mind and robbed me of 
 some sleep by the bitter outflowings of its applica- 
 tions. 
 
 Down I fell from my white horse into the mud. 
 The truth is, that with all my deep joys of salvation, 
 the 
 
 Meddling intellect 
 Misshapes the beauteous forms of things, 
 I murder to dissect. 
 
 Alas, how little a young man, who lets his heart cheer 
 him in the days of his youth, knows of the rays of 
 Bethlehem which are to " blind the dusky eyes " of his 
 sins as the light increases ! 
 
 I hope in your preaching you will well set forth 
 this sowing to the flesh and its necessary harvest, as 
 a preliminary to the full salvation which is over against 
 it : Naaman's leprosy replaced by the flesh of a little 
 child. 
 
 It is strange how in the life of the soul two 
 opposite conditions may co-exist. "Lovely peace 
 with plenty crowned " may walk hand in hand with 
 " confusion of face " ; and certain of the natural off- 
 shoots and consequences of sin may spring among the 
 "flowers of Eden, fruits of grace." A certain class of 
 sorrows comes with Evangelical Eepentance and Faith. 
 Your Hawleys and Bainbridges pass on easily and un- 
 rebuked ; your Peters are twitted even by maids of all 
 work : " Thou also ! " Mrs. Dollop, at the Tankard, 
 knows more about " some folks " than " they would 
 like to say prayer for," and Crabbe, the glazier, " by 
 
308 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 what he can make out," doesn't see why Peter should 
 reprove a man for swearing and lying. 
 
 All right. " Put it down in thy Gospel, Mark, 
 that I denied Him with oaths and curses, and that I 
 went out and wept bitterly, and that, though now I 
 see Him not, yet believing, I rejoice with joy unspeak- 
 able and full of glory." 
 
 11.30. And now I go to my work, shorn of my 
 beams, not glorying. I don't know whether to thank 
 Gr. E., or any one, for Art like this, — for Vivisection 
 with no touch of the Healer. But do thou, T. A., 
 the more preach the grace that brings salvation. 
 
 To F. J. S. 
 The more I ponder your kind letter the more I 
 am pleased with it. If I had wanted in a few words 
 to say what I (intellectually) live for, have lived for, 
 mean to live for, it is just what you have struck in 
 the bull's eye. While intending to be faithful to my 
 gifts, to sketch and study from nature continually, 
 even for the smallest things — weeds and stones, and 
 the mere winkings of nature — I propose not to suggest 
 any measure or manner of competition for the prizes 
 of art. Let this man do this better and the other 
 man do the other better, I will spend thought and 
 breath in his praise, but I will not set up against him. 
 I utterly disclaim more than a certain amount of 
 regard for technical excellence in any single direction. 
 The white umbrella at Bettws-y-Coed shall have my 
 most respectful bow in passing, but I never dwelt 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 309 
 
 under it, and never meant, or mean to do. No " Pro- 
 perties " will ever adorn or cimiber my studio, nor apt 
 models grow rigid while I do the Pronator Eotundus 
 more expressively (yet I have models for all that is 
 of any importance). No, my whole life has begun at 
 another end. If such a conception be allowable, it 
 is as if thirty years ago I had built a burning fiery 
 furnace in a " black country," all shale and cinder to 
 the foot of the traveller, into which everything was 
 cast, "coats, hosen, and hats." Out of this in due 
 time comes this composite something which you have 
 so well recognised ; an " impression." To my own 
 thought and desire this is the only sort of thing which 
 I inwardly denominate Art. I know it is open to 
 objections, to depreciations, to misapprehensions, to 
 all sorts of challenge and scorn. And certainly the 
 market element of it has been my sorrow and fear and 
 suffering. 
 
 To J. S. B. 
 No man of art ever received such an apotheosis as 
 Turner has received from Ruskin, so it is impossible 
 to expound him further. But to know him is more 
 than a library full of Euskin. It is as the Queen of 
 Sheba's exclamation, " The half has not been told." I 
 have had the good fortune to see several collections 
 of his works : that of Fawkes of Farnley near Leeds, 
 of Windus, of Euskin, and others scattered here and 
 there. Fawkes even showed me what he is so chary 
 of showing, and what he wouldn't sell for any money 
 to Ruskin^a locked-up collection of Turner's studies, 
 
310 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1872 
 
 quite marvellous. So with certain splendid Turners 
 in the possession of Miller of Liverpool. 
 
 It is the sum total of Turner that knocks you over. 
 No landscape painter ever came near him as a whole. 
 To know and have before the mind what he did gives 
 an incessant thrill of awe. What " large -browed 
 Verulam, the King of those who know," was to litera- 
 ture, that Turner was among Landscape Painters. I 
 don't love Turner. In seeing Lord Thurlow, who 
 " looked wiser than any man ever was," one might 
 stare and stare with wonder and a sort of fear, but 
 one's heart would be far away somewhere else. The 
 unfaltering, unflagging, unresting energy of Turner is 
 appalling; yet I see scarce a trace of the love of 
 humanity in his work. Men, women, children, to him 
 were figures. He put them in crowds, and seemed to 
 hate them, or to despise them. He never knew just 
 the right bend and attitude of thought, or tender 
 regard, or noble gesture. A wooden, soul-less appre- 
 hension of their ways runs through all. As masses, 
 as colour, as composition, as natural occupants of the 
 scene, he placed them well ; but he loved them not. 
 I distinguish, observe, as between mind, of which his 
 work is only too full, and soul and heart. 
 
 To Mrs. T. 
 
 What I should greatly deprecate as a member of 
 the Church of Christ, especially as a Methodist class- 
 leader, would be to live a life exceptional at all. 
 There is nothing for which I feel more thankful than 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 311 
 
 the fact that I have hold of the sympathies of many 
 to whom I could not in the least explain what I have 
 been writing. To see a perplexed look on the faces 
 of my members — especially on those of the postman, 
 policeman, carpenter, servant-girl, or chestnut-seller, 
 would be a great pain. But I never do see it, and 
 hope I never may. Out of the complex experiences 
 of my own life has come a better understanding of 
 the lives of others — of the essential as separable from 
 the accidental — of what really is "the pillar and 
 ground of the truth," and I have much boldness in 
 the faith of Christ as the result of the difficulties, 
 moral and mental, through which I attained it, and 
 hold it. 
 
 For between thirteen and fourteen years I have 
 been a class-leader, and have found in the work an 
 unfailing and an increasing peacefulness and rest. I 
 trace much of my enjoyment and calm equable experi- 
 ence in the class to these quiet evening hours with 
 my books. They keep my work constantly up before 
 my mind and heart. Indeed I carry this aspect of 
 the subject much further ; for my hymn books, Bible, 
 and other repositories are full of secreted " squares " 
 of individual class-meetings and other occasions, dated, 
 and with the members sitting as they sat, and with 
 budding squares from them of any subject that gave 
 special vitality to the occasion. These things do not 
 perish. I often come across them when after other 
 game, in the " lands where not a leaf is dumb." In 
 this way life becomes a closely-woven web, "Each 
 
312 LETTERS OF JAMES SMBTHAM 1872 
 
 part doth call the furthest brother," and it is partly 
 in this weft and woof that I reach the amount of 
 equanimity which, in spite of my chances against it, I 
 do in fact enjoy. I have such a multitude of escapes 
 that in alternations of dogged labour, of excited 
 imagination, of inward fun (the more precious for 
 repression), of steadily recurring engagements — 
 
 I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance. 
 
 Now ventilating to Mansford, to Mrs. Hall, to J. F. 
 Hall, to Mr. Stead, to Mr. Akroyd, to Rossetti, to 
 Shields, to Mr. Budgett, to you ; now squaring : 
 sometimes in the London Encydopmdia, which is a 
 Hyrcinian forest; or in the Biographical Dictionary, 
 which is a forest of Ardennes ; or in my Bible, which 
 is a vast Holy Land ; or in my hymn books, which 
 are a sort of Italy ; or in my historical or chrono- 
 logical books, which are a sort of British Museum ; 
 or in Smith's Dictionaries, which are like " the world 
 as known to the ancients " ; or in lexicons or diction- 
 aries, which are like deserts of pebbly words ; or 
 among the poets, which are like walking in groves 
 and meadows and by streams. This, and going to 
 exhibitions and to my friends' houses, with now and 
 then a dinner-party, gives such organised variety to 
 life that it would cure an inveterate hypochondria. 
 
 To C. M. 
 The sight of W. B. Scott's studio last Friday was 
 inwardly as romantic and affecting as the two little 
 
1872 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 313 
 
 biographies of Liversedge and Burnet which, at 
 seventeen years old, I used to read among the old 
 helmets and breastplates in E. J. Willson's study at 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Passing out at the back of W. B. S.'s house, you 
 walk under a winding covered verandah to his studio. 
 The windows are to the north, and their bottom ten 
 feet from the ground. A profound silence reigns, 
 just such as the painter needs. The roof has been 
 raised high with dark oaken rafters, the walls are 
 dark. But what gives the solemn charm is that 
 three of David Scott's ambitious, imperfect, yet grand 
 unsold works (for he sold but little), hang on three of 
 the studio walls. On one, " Achilles swearing by the 
 manes of Patroclus.'' Another I forget the subject 
 of ; the third hangs high in the dusk over the door, 
 "Lady Macbeth" smearing the grooms with blood 
 from her dripping dagger. There they are ; deep in 
 colour, blistered with the sun, mildewy, brown, in 
 solemn, energetic, heavy epic, needing the interpreta- 
 tion of much knowledge and sympathy. There is 
 scarce any one who would buy them, though many 
 would admire and be impressed by them. They are 
 too big to buy at random. Where are they to be 
 put? They are not perfect enough to represent 
 National Art, as Etty's do at Edinburgh, yet they 
 show as much high intellectual power : the shortcoming 
 is in execution. They are too austere and rough to 
 please and satisfy, and so instead of being known by 
 a nation — by the nations — as Etty's ".Combat," 
 
314 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 "Judith," and "Benaiah" are, here they are in a 
 dark corner, behind an old house in Chelsea, unnoticed, 
 unknown. The gradual broadenings of Biography and 
 History may yet fetch them out to take their place 
 in the history of progress. 
 
 Glance at p. 83 of Sartw Resartus, passage about 
 " Capabilities." How well it might be woven in with 
 an Essay on David Scott ; and, also, the thought of 
 some one as to the " Waste in Nature's Workshop." 
 Run a comparison between Millais and D. Scott. D. 
 Scott immensely the greater man of the two — Millais 
 one of the most successful men who ever lived. Ask 
 the Why ? and the Wherefore % Analyse, go into the 
 country green, and think it out, and you will have a 
 fine time of it. 
 
 To J. S. B. 
 
 \%th September 1873. 
 
 I QUITE envy you your first reading of Ruskin. 
 Euskin is a revelation of a new world ; and it only 
 wants the remove of a century to show him in his 
 colossal proportions, though now, as must be the case 
 with all such men, he has at length roused the dogs 
 and wolves on his trail. Beside this, I think his fibre 
 was too delicate to sustain 
 
 The thousand shocks that come and go, 
 The agonies and energies. 
 The overthrowings and the cries, 
 
 And undulations to and fro — 
 
 which such intense perceptions of Nature, Truth, and 
 
1873 LETTERS OP JAMES SMETHAM 315 
 
 Beauty laid upon Mm, having more on hand than he 
 could wield with perfect health and power. 
 
 I do not think his theories of life will work, yet I 
 do esteem him one of the very noblest creatures that 
 ever breathed God's vital air; a man not a whit 
 behind the Sir Philip Sidneys and the Chevaliers sans 
 peur et sans reprodie who have cropped out like the 
 ilower which blooms once in a hundred years. I 
 shan't soon forget the silent farms and solitary ways 
 where I first drank in The Modern Painters, The Stones 
 of Venice, and The Seven Lamps, and would give a 
 good deal to have it all over again. I have not read 
 anything of his for years. 
 
 What is Art "i The interpretation of Nature. 
 
 What is Nature? One of the voices of God to 
 Man, and that a mighty voice. 
 
 But what is Interpretation % Now suppose a man 
 stood up to interpret, and were to read over the 
 exact words of the chapter and then sit down ! 
 Would you call that interpretation? Yet that is 
 just what ninety-nine hundredths of painters do, or 
 try to do. What do they explain or enforce ? No 
 wonder if pictures are so often thought and called 
 " furniture." 
 
 Now Danby gives us, as no other man ever gave, 
 the poignant beauty and pathos of Nature in the 
 borderland, where she is felt as 
 
316 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 A presence that disturbs us with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky and in the mind of man. 
 
 "In the mind of Man," for Art is one of "The 
 Humanities." It is relative. Nature is all things to 
 all men. To the hungry food ; to the cold fuel ; to 
 the speculator possession ; to the botanist a flora ; 
 to the naturalist a fauna ; to the fool Nothing. And 
 so Art is nothing. 
 
 Danby must have watched on lonely hills, in silent 
 vales, the last spark of great Day die out and the first 
 rise ten thousand times before he could find the secret 
 of that pathetic dream of Nature which makes his 
 works unique. 
 
 Top of Omnibus going to Westminster. 
 
 To address myself once more towards making the 
 requisite distinctions, I must use comparisons. Here 
 is a man with a beard and a cherry pipe, and a slouch 
 hat, who sings in a mellow bass voice, " I am a Friar 
 of Orders Grey," or the song of " Simon the Cellarer." 
 He gathers his traps together, and his white umbrella, 
 and he goes to Bettws-y-Coed, and he paints "The 
 Old Mill at Bettws " for the 3456th time. He gets 
 every stick and stone and stump " on the spot " ; and 
 off the spot he is just nothing. As to " the inner eye 
 which is the bliss of solitude," he says it is " all my 
 
1873 LETTERS OF JAMES SMET.HAM 317 
 
 eye " (I deny that : it is not his eye. It may be 
 Wordsworth's eye, but it is not Simon the Cellarer's). 
 Yet his " Old Mill at Bettws " brings him 250 or 300 
 guineas, and actually the imitation and manipulation 
 are made the standard for the man who has the 
 inner eye. 
 
 Now how shall we compare the two sorts of pro- 
 duction ? 
 
 Take a sonnet of Shakespeare's, Collins's Ode to 
 Evening, Gray's Elegy, Tennyson's Come down, Maid, 
 and consider what went to their production. Then 
 read in the Daily News " Our Correspondent at Eams- 
 gate," and consider what went to its production. 
 That gives but a faint image of the two sorts of 
 work. Billy Button's journey to Brentford, as com- 
 pared with Sir John Franklin's Arctic Voyages, is 
 not more apart than the true poetic from "The Old 
 Mill at Bettws." 
 
 But unfortunately, in the pursuit of " the poetic," 
 unless a painter can live independently of his art, he 
 runs the risk of perishing on the mountains. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 Zrd October. 
 
 Reading Timon of Athens. I seldom read Shake- 
 speare of late years. It is too rich food. I have to 
 feed on biscuit and water in order to keep calm and 
 cool. The felicitous Titian-touch which turns every- 
 thing into idyllic beauty with such simple unconscious 
 ease — as a stroke of Titian's brush gathers into golden 
 
318 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 knots just at the right point tint and pigment, and 
 thought and thing inextricably mixed and left, in the 
 passing of the wizard hand : the motion of genius 
 indeed, which can't get wrong and finds right most 
 easy — this is Shakespeare, and it is too precious. 
 After reading a play of Shakespeare one feels stuck 
 all over with jewels like the Shah, and wants to put 
 on the comfortable old happy gray coat. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 The well-governed city — 
 
 Piety and fear, 
 Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, 
 Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood. 
 Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades, 
 Degrees, observances, customs, and laws. 
 
 TiMON OF Athens {Act iv. So. 1). 
 
 Was ever a picture of social weal drawn with such 
 power in so few words 1 To feel its full force you 
 have to halt at every word. How seldom you have 
 to do that with any author ! Somehow the richness 
 underlying the simplicity of this passage suggests the 
 state of one of those German towns of the fifteenth 
 century, where all was quaint law and mediaeval 
 repose. Certainly it has a " Tory " air about it. 
 These few lines have swarmed with life to me during 
 the last week. Baron Leys's pictures give you the 
 colours and shapes for it. The line beginning 
 " Domestic awe " is wonderful. You see the furred 
 
1873 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 319 
 
 grandparents and the house-father hke Sir Thomas 
 More, and the son that "carfe before his father at 
 the table,'' the " Mother Severe " with her face sharp- 
 cut out of a shroud-like head-dress, and the demure, 
 mitten -armed daughter, and the sharp -scolded ser- 
 vants. In " Night-Eest " you see the dim town and 
 the belfry of Bruges in the misty moonlight; you 
 hear its soft-clanging chime and the strange-rhymed, 
 godly night -cry of the watchman with his bill and 
 his lantern. And how comprehensive is the word 
 " neighbourhood " ! " Who is my neighbour 1 " 
 
 By the way, this illustration of what may be got 
 out of a bit of a good book will carry forward the 
 thought I was trying to express yesterday in this 
 ventilator. Why move further : why 1 
 
 If we have souls, know how to see and use, 
 One place performs, like any other place, 
 The proper service every place on earth 
 "Was framed to furnish man with. 
 
 One of the causes of continual pity in all directions is 
 the innate restlessness and ignorant discursiveness of 
 men. They have no "blissful centre," no repose. 
 
 Talk with a policeman — one of our members : sub- 
 ject. Emigration. His way of pronouncing "situa- 
 tion " is " sitchivation." 
 
 How differently, as a human being, you feel accord- 
 ing to your " sitchivation " ! Walking alone in a quiet 
 lane, walking from the train to your office, walking in 
 
320 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 a procession (as perpetual Grand Monster of the Odd- 
 fellows, etc., with apron and blue ribbons a foot wide). 
 But there is one sort of walking quite peculiar, viz. 
 making your way in one stream of men and women on 
 an illumination night. Where be your airs and graces 
 then ? Where your fast paces ? You beat with the 
 pulse of the street whose life blood creeps. No temper 
 but good temper is of any use, and that is. 
 
 Now in studying Shakespeare your mind, if it is to 
 apprehend his, must be content to move in that way 
 to get a good look at the illuminations and to appre- 
 hend his knowledge of Nature and man — a snail's pace, 
 occasional long arrests when you "grow to marble 
 with too much conceiving," for he is too many for 
 you. 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 ith October 1873. 
 
 All that the Press can utter about Sir Edwin 
 
 Landseer will be as nothing to the mental history of 
 
 such a man, for which he paid so dearly — ■ 
 
 And learned in sorrow what he taught in song. 
 
 I am sure all their interpretations will be wrong. No 
 " master bowman " can ever hit the mark. Just see 
 the glimpses at the raw material of his nature — a per- 
 ception so keen and strong that it hit everything, like 
 Eobin Hood's arrow or the pathfinder's bullet — a sen- 
 sitiveness so acute that the groaning of creation was 
 audible to every nerve, a something infused with his 
 sunshine-spirit which was like the Scottish "second 
 
1873 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETIIAM 321 
 
 sight" — Ossianic, misty, ghostly, as though he con- 
 stantly 
 
 Saw a hand you cannot see, 
 and 
 
 Heard a voice you cannot hear. 
 
 And this from twelve years of age, when he might be 
 called already a great painter, to the age of seventy-one. 
 The wonder was, not that he spent so much time in 
 the forlorn vale of madness, as that he lived to be of 
 the age of man and painted to the last. 
 
 Even in Sir Walter Scott's palmy days Landseer 
 had a world-wide reputation, and is noted with rever- 
 ence in those wondrous romances. I think there is a 
 sort of impertinence in the praise of Landseer, if 
 people did but know what his work implies. 
 
 I couple Landseer and Sir Walter Scott together. 
 They had the same delicious romance of Nature, the 
 same ease of power about them, the same universal 
 power to charm. Strange that both had the same love 
 of high life, coupled with sympathy for low life. The 
 former was the weakness of both ; it lost the grand 
 central man in the gentleman. 
 
 There is such a thing as having the heart over- 
 charged, not only with "surfeiting and drunkenness," 
 but "with cares of this life.'' My faith has been 
 severely weighted by the apparent rejection of my 
 attempts to follow a high and useful line of work 
 instead of trying after what was likely to make money, 
 and the more so as one disillusionment after another 
 Y 
 
322 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 shows me that men praise thee chiefly when thou doest 
 well to thyself, and take all manner of advantage of 
 the helplessness of poverty. These things form the 
 boisterous wind in which faith is in danger of sinking. 
 But again and again when I have cried out " Lord, 
 help me," a strong hand has been stretched out, and 
 all has been calm and still. My most precious recol- 
 lections are of these storms and succeeding calms, and 
 when I am safe landed in the ship with Christ I can 
 see deep and far. 
 
 I NEVER before saw, as I have since I tried to get 
 into it more, the humbling influence of the life of 
 Christ. A greater than Jonas — Jonas was a can- 
 tankerous, conceited, querulous, travelling preacher as 
 ever quarrelled with the stationing committee, and yet 
 was a far more successful preacher than his Lord — all 
 our Lord's miracles could not satisfy : " Show us a sign 
 from heaven." You're an earth-demon, a thaumaturge, 
 a mere juggler. He only sighed deeply in His spirit, 
 did not turn round and destroy them, as Elisha the 
 children. Love and pity and patience and silence, as 
 when a sheep before her shearers is dumb. If the 
 image of all this does not break our stony hearts, the 
 Cross itself will hardly break them. The life in Naza- 
 reth alone, with its "thundering silence," is enough 
 when well meditated to cure all worldliness of aim. 
 "He grew, in wisdom, in stature, in favour with God 
 and man." People liked Him, and God loved 
 Him. 
 
1873 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 323 
 
 The Christ life is no Nirvana, no dim and diill 
 absorption into unconsciousness. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 One effect of the autumnal years of life is the 
 Indian summer of thought and study. You see through 
 what used to excite and run away with you. Only, 
 to have the soft, tranquil, golden light lying level 
 over all, there must be the right world. Autumn is 
 not a manufacture ; it is a season, and depends on 
 the "operation of the orbs,'' on a vast axis, on an 
 enormous orbit, on the silent signs of heaven. It 
 filters downward into every cranny impartially, gild- 
 ing our lane, but it comes in its essence from afar, 
 "bound by gold chains about the feet of God." So 
 is life. When a man is past fifty, if he have been a 
 real student, he must feel that he has had enough, 
 more than he can ever use. He sees that things 
 come round and meet again. The youth who has just 
 passed his B.A. examination is far cleverer than he, 
 and many a thing that he was smart about at twenty- 
 five lies in the mud, like Stephenson's old steam- 
 engine, rusting. A new generation is crowing all 
 round him, not wise, but thinking itself so because it 
 speUs cock-a-doodle-doo with a K (kokadoodledoo) ; 
 yet he is not disgusted nor cynical, for knowledge and 
 wisdom excel folly, as light excelleth darkness, though 
 man at his best estate is altogether vanity. If he 
 be subject to vanity he is subjected in hope, and 
 
324 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 has in his heart, if his axis -be right, the "Hope of 
 Glory." 
 
 Uth October 1873. 
 
 To allay the Imagination by a square is a sort of 
 bliss. It preserves the otherwise fugitive conception 
 as in amber. Yet it consumes no time, and wastes no 
 money, and piles no unfinished canvases against the 
 wall. Indeed by simply going on, squaring has 
 become so glorious that I can't help prating about it. 
 Suppose a sportsman — a fisherman out among the 
 reeds and rushes, and " many-knotted water flags '' of 
 some vast land of meres where the wild swan rises, and 
 the wild ducks make letters on the sky — casts his line, 
 and ere long his float dips suddenly and vigorously, 
 and he "strikes," and finds a noble fish secure ; that's 
 not a hundredth part so delightful as roaming along 
 the endless margins of books, and as you pass by a 
 corner, down dips the float of imagination and out 
 comes with a catgut whistle a splendid glistering 
 " subject " which is immediately laid on the bank, the 
 margin, the beached margent, in the form of a square, 
 and left there till called for — not even the trouble of 
 carrying it home being appended to the sport. 
 
 To W. D. 
 
 14ft Octoier 1873. 
 
 Such a happy, healthy fitness of various elements 
 has matured in my life that there is no weariness (ex- 
 cept the occasional shrinking in of vital force, which 
 
1873 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 325 
 
 only repose renews). What with painting, what with 
 squaring, what with ventilation, what with outlets for 
 art in class work, and Home life, and Friend life — all 
 " co-operate to an end," each relieving the other, like 
 the divine watchers. I don't know what to add on 
 to life. . . . 
 
 Am reading Jtdius Cmsar. The various respects in 
 which excellence is excellent form one of the charms 
 of study. Every now and then one underscores three 
 or four lines of Shakespeare ; the expression is so over- 
 whelming. But in other respects you could not 
 underscore his excellence. It is as the broad spaces, 
 the main lines of a picture. It is not the exquisite 
 imitation, as in Landseer, of miraculous fur and 
 feather : it is the mystic Whole. Nay, in some of the 
 greatest art there is a rather poor perception of the 
 pungent individual Part. I take Francis Danby as a 
 case in point. His very name is precious to me, and 
 represents the highest posture of the specific poetic 
 feeling in landscape. Men might paint " Calypso " 
 better, but none could paint it so well Large parts 
 of the very grandest pictures are mere " flatting " at 
 5d. a yard, and not well done either, for there are 
 lumps and knots in it, a shame to be seen. It is in 
 seeing these distinctions that the groundlings are dis- 
 comfited. It is so in religion. Men don't see the 
 Methodist Soul burning in the rude gnarled bush that 
 is not consumed, nor the Church of England Soul in 
 the blossomed glory of the fragrant bush, which 
 perhaps it, after all, was, but which would have gone 
 
326 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 without memorial but for the God that spake out of 
 its midst. 
 
 3.30 p.m. 
 Alone in E. B.'s room, looking at Life of Fara- 
 day, aet. 21. Exquisitely quaint, childlike, simple, 
 yet with the innate lungeousness that betokens the 
 leviathan he afterwards became. This I take to be 
 the token of genius, as distinguished from the steady 
 priggish up-growths of talent. 
 
 Friday, 11.30. 
 
 Another priceless morning. Been round Canon- 
 bury; now in the lane. One ought to be out all 
 day such days as this. Stothardizing slowly, slowly 
 with sketch book. 
 
 I found a wonderful image in Coriolanus, both in 
 conception and utterance, and have begun it on a 
 twelve-inch panel. 
 
 Like to a lonely dragon whom his fen 
 Makes feared and talked of more than seen. 
 
 Certainly these twelve-inch idylls are the flos florum 
 of my life. Why do people want them larger ? To 
 my mind it is a shame to want them more complete 
 or exact. Fine art of a certain kind is most generally 
 killed by completion. These twelve-inch things do 
 all for you that can be done. They quicken and 
 suggest. When you first saw them you said " How 
 appetising ! " That was just it. The right word 
 for other sorts is, " How gorging'' (not gorgeous). 
 
1873 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 327 
 
 Age cannot ■wither her, nor custom stale 
 Her infinite variety. 
 
 Now what that "Serpent of old Nile" was to 
 Antony (only without her wickedness), that, I think, 
 such art as I affect ought to be to the dinted and 
 dusted Antonys of commerce and law and what not. 
 
 This full-fiowing river of ideas is, in reality, not 
 an excited state of the mind in the present; it is 
 the legitimate outcome of thirty years of orderly 
 and organic study. The picture I paint to-day was 
 often, in fact, conceived twenty years ago, and has 
 been in a state of fusion with thousands more ever 
 since. But the price was paid fully down for it. If 
 it were historic or Scriptural, it came after the 
 hundredth meditation upon it — turned over in all 
 sorts of moods, and then, perhaps, suddenly taking 
 form at once. This makes part of the delight of my 
 work. It is a quiet reaping of what was so long 
 since sown, and which I have watched in all weathers 
 with "long patience." 
 
 "ifimd October 1873. 
 
 They have opened two new astounding rooms 
 at South Kensington ; in one of which is a cast from 
 the pillar of Trajan itself, only it is in two parts. 
 Round the column runs a spiral bas-relief. I know 
 not what the subject is, yet every figure is no doubt 
 a study, with eyes, nose, mouth, action, horses and 
 men. Did any man ever see it all 1 Who designed 
 it? Here in London is the very substance of his 
 thinkings for years. However, let that rest. My 
 
328 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM ISJ-S 
 
 thought in starting was this. Though you only- 
 look at a figure or two of all these winding crowds, 
 yet it is needful that all should be finished ; and the 
 assurance that beside the two or three figures you 
 looked at are hundreds more as good, which you 
 might look at ; this reflection fills you and elevates 
 you. You have seen a grand monument. Seen it 1 
 "What do you mean, Sir 1 What is the two hundredth 
 figure from this end of the procession like ? Or the 
 tenth fi'om that ? what is the last figure of all doing 1 
 Has it any significance 1 
 
 When did the sculptor lay down his chisel and 
 say " Done " 1 Did he collapse like Gibbon 1 
 
 I ask a few questions, and am not going to reply 
 to them, nor even to knit the reasoning beneath 
 them. 
 
 But be sure of this, that though no single man 
 on earth will ever behold a 10,000th part of what 
 you have .done, and though the sculptor himself who 
 did those figures could not after ten years tell you 
 which was which, yet if your work is faithful in the 
 least it will have its final and grand wholeness. 
 
 These figures were done by him ; and though we 
 know not his name nor place, he is here, winding 
 round the pillar of Trajan. What is any one worth 
 except for what he says or does 1 What's in a name 1 
 
 The actions of the just 
 Smell sweet and blossom in the dust — 
 
 and every day since A.D. 112 thousands of minds 
 
1873 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 329 
 
 have been touched, moved around that spiral column 
 of thought — 
 
 1873 
 112 
 
 1761 
 
 years. 
 
 365 
 
 
 8805 
 
 
 10566 
 
 
 5283 
 
 
 642765 
 
 days. 
 
 Now for the spectators, the rabble with their 
 exclamations, the soldiers who fought in Trajan's 
 wars, the musing philosophers, the poet. 
 
 The pulsations of reflex thought thus created in 
 each mind 1 
 
 The silent towering of the pillar, at dawn, at 
 twilight, under the moon. 
 
 The things it saw at its base (which was not the 
 base of Pompey's statue, or it might have seen the 
 fall of Caesar, only it was born too late). The 
 dignity and order of some regions, the fury of others, 
 the Gothic shouts later on, the line of popes, all of 
 whom knew the pillar well. And how would a pope 
 look at a pillar of Trajan ? 
 
 The far view, the near view, both enhanced in 
 solemnity by the consciousness of its workmanship. 
 
330 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 Charlemagne, the "man of iron," stood and looked at 
 it, and it said nothing; but the procession went 
 winding up to the skies, as his armies wound up the 
 passes of the Alps in 800 A.D., near 700 years after 
 that man in my square was gone, the time of the 
 duration of a majestic nation. 
 
 Charlemagne and his Paladins knew of Trajan's 
 pillar as being a wonder and a sign ; a part of the 
 stateliness of Rome the proud. 
 
 The lesson of these spasmodic dartings of the 
 imagination o'er " the dark backward and abysm of 
 Time." 
 
 This : "He that is faithful in a few things is 
 faithful also in much." That's one, and ihe upper- 
 most to-night. 
 
 "The wark is the man." That's another. That 
 you should be reckoned the means of doing this or 
 the other good — what could that do for you ? But 
 to be the means — what can that fail to do for you ? 
 It will be found to praise, and glory, and honour at 
 the glorious appearing, when the true solution of 
 these mystic problems of name and fame will be 
 given, and when some will wake to discover the 
 meaning of shame and everlasting contempt, and 
 some will shine as the stars for ever and ever. 
 
 It is deeds that will do that. Then shall every 
 man have praise of his own work. 
 
 Cheer up, then, Soul ! We count them happy 
 that endure. 
 
1873 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 331 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 22n(i Oaoher 1873. 
 
 Been walking and ventilating in tie lane. Feel 
 fresh and happy. Thought of the leaders' meeting 
 last night. There was the superintendent. There 
 was a gardener, a baker, a cheesemonger, a postman, 
 and myself. We sat till near 10 p.m. Now what 
 were the topics ? When is the juvenile missionary 
 meeting to be 1 When the society tea- meeting ? 
 How best to distribute the poor money 1 etc. Here 
 were six people delightfully sitting in a quiet room 
 to forward these ends. What is proposed by each 
 of those ends? "Peace on earth, goodwill to men." 
 The very heart and substance of the angels' song, 
 and not a particle of anything else. No wonder 
 that being so privileged as to get into such healthy 
 air I have so often come home cured to the core — 
 come home, as last night, so fresh, so calm, so 
 delivered from all my fears and troubles. True, 
 the gardener cares less than nothing for what forms 
 the staple of my life's work ; so much the better — 
 better — better ! as the White Queen says in Alice 
 through the Loohing-Glass — nor the postman, nor the 
 baker. Why, the point of the thing is to forgei — to 
 merge. To find a common denominator, all sweet 
 and calm, like sun and air, in which man agrees with 
 man, and all men with God. And this once found 
 bliss runs through all. The art that would other- 
 wise over -heat and dissatisfy, and make querulous 
 and dilettanteish and ex -human, becomes as a soul 
 
332 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1873 
 
 absorbed into the soul of all. No longer its slave, 
 it finds that art becomes a slave itself with its 
 wonderful lamp. Perhaps the magical stories of 
 Solomon meant something of this sort. Whether 
 or not, here is the true secret, the " Open Sesame," 
 and till a man has found it, be he John Stuart Mill, 
 or Lord Byron, or Goethe, "the glorious devil large 
 in heart and brain who did love beauty only,'' all 
 other secrets are null, and no good spirit will ever 
 open to their spell. What does open let 
 
 The shadow waiting with the keys 
 tell. 
 
 The river is green and ranneth slow ; 
 We cannot tell what it saith, 
 It keepeth its secrets down below, 
 And so does death. 
 
 I was appalled with a grand answer given at the 
 " Sombre close of her voluptuous day," to Cleopatra 
 by Enobarbus. Isaiah asks, "What will ye do in 
 the end thereof 1" So, when the star of Antony has 
 fallen, and Csesar marches against the gates, she 
 says, " What shall we do, Enobarbus t " I really 
 don't know from what abyss of thought and ex- 
 pression Shakespeare fetched the answer of Eno- 
 barbus— "THINK AND DIE!" 
 
 Our Lane, 1st November. 
 
 Wind chill as a snow wind, yet fresh ; light glary 
 
 roads, damp and with a spotted plage of decaying 
 
 leaves in the mud ; the pebbles washed clean on the 
 
 watershed of the roads, the sand washed from them 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 333 
 
 lying in the valleys by the kerbstone and "ribbed as 
 is the lean sea-sand.'' 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 19th November 1873. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Cowper- Temple came to-day and 
 stayed from 2.30 till dusk. He bought the small 
 "Hymn" for 120 guineas. I never enjoyed showing 
 my work, more than to them. They were so apt and 
 so alive to the nicest shades of things. I gave them my 
 usual sermon on monumentalism, and their response 
 to all was of the liveliest perceptiveness. What hours 
 have I spent (like John Willett in Barnahy Budge 
 when he tried to hammer "imagination" into his 
 son Joe) in trying to expound my views on that 
 subject ! But these two awakened souls caught 
 every spark as fast as it fell. 
 
 Eossetti has sent me a letter from G. F. Watts 
 
 to him in which he says : — 
 
 Being in the country it was not possible for me to go to see 
 the pictures at Stoke Newington, which I certainly should have 
 done had I been in town, for I recollect the former pictures 
 proving very remarkable artistic faculties. 
 
 Life does not consist in externals, and I do hope 
 that if more sunny days are in store I may not lose 
 one spark of that blessed inward rest which has been 
 the support of my days of struggle and labour. 
 
 '^° ^- ^- 1874. 
 
 The great importance of the historic study of the 
 Psalms is that it individualises them to the mind. 
 
334 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 Once get Ps. 142 with its array of words driven into 
 the Cave of Adullam, and sealed with its number 
 over the mouth of the cave, and those words will 
 never run in among the Temple songs. 
 
 One of the greatest hindrances to spiritual profit is 
 confusion of memory. 
 
 Read, therefore, some Psalms by the red light of 
 Ziklag; others in the piercing solitudes of Engedi; 
 others in the blaze of the Temple sacrifice ; and the 
 119th on a Sunday evening, "when quiet in your 
 house you sit." 
 
 Nay, if possible, stretch out the eras of time be- 
 tween Psalm and Psalm. Go to Midian in 1490 B.c. 
 for the solemn, vast, desert sounds of Ps. 90. Join in 
 the 150th with the joyful procession round "Jeru- 
 salem Delivered " in 445. 
 
 1490 
 445 
 
 1045 
 
 A thousand'years in Thy sight ! 
 
 Think of a Saxon Psalm written in the year 874, 
 say by Alfred the Great, and a Psalm written by the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury in 1874 ! Yet this only 
 represents the state of things between Ps. 90 and Ps. 
 150, and the mental posture ought to be accordingly. 
 
 2(ith March 1874. 
 As an instance of the sort of vexatious delays in 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 335 
 
 the progress of a picture is this — I want a dead lamb 
 for my "First Passover," and I must have a model. 
 I vrant it soon. I send to our butcher. He "does 
 not kill lamb yet ; it is too expensive ; in a week or 
 two he may, and will let me know." This morning 
 his man says he can't, when they kill, bring the lamb 
 here, for " unless the skin is taken off while it is warm 
 they can't take it off." So I shall have to go to it, 
 and be quick about it. At every turn, and about the 
 least things, this is the way. Madox Brown's models 
 for " Cromwell " make quite a nice tale : the horse, 
 the lamb, the pigs, the ducks. The pigs cost him 
 50s. in donations and travelling expenses. The duck 
 had to have its bill held open by the servant, and 
 then was killed for its wing. The little pigs squealed 
 the whole time, and bit the man who held them till 
 the blood came. The bother about sunlight com- 
 plicated the complications. Anything more delightful 
 than painting in itself cannot be found — even these 
 delays as to models, etc., would be interesting if time 
 and money did not matter. At best it is slow, very 
 slow. 
 
 To J. S. B. 
 
 21st March 1874. 
 
 Blake is certainly a teaser. He remains in Eng- 
 land, where alone he is known, the very best test I 
 know of a man's capacity for seeing the highest 
 essentials of art, the perception of sublimity and 
 beauty when utterly denuded and divorced from 
 externals, " defecate of sense," nay, full of infirmity. 
 
336 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 his "bodily presence weak and Ms speech contempt- 
 ible.'' If a man can see and feel that which makes 
 Blake what he is, he can see and feel anything. 
 
 " In the Spirit he speaks mysteries." But one must 
 not say this of any of his works, which were very 
 numerous and uninviting in method, material, and 
 style ; now and then positively ugly and awkward, 
 or tame and flat, often childish, dreadfully mannered, 
 monotonous beyond most men in style. He lived to 
 be an old man, was very diligent, always producing, 
 going right ahead through all sorts of highways and 
 byways, bogs and dens and caves, and finding it hard 
 to get 30s. for a drawing, living the external life of a 
 journeyman watchmaker, fully happy in his vocation 
 as a designer and utterly indifferent to worldly ends 
 and aims. One needs to take his life and works as a 
 whole. The man is not separable from his works. 
 A Titian speaks for itself or a Correggio, but a Blake 
 does not. The right understanding of him becomes a 
 kind of second sight. He was " intromitted into the 
 spirit world," as Swedenborg said he was, which 
 means simply that he had the ghostly sensibility, the 
 apprehension of what is supernatural, not only in the 
 representation of angels, spirits, demons, but of the 
 spirit that is in man on the earth. His men and 
 women have ghosts inside them, and that's what can 
 be said of not so many. Their impulses, gestures, 
 relations, are not earthly ; they are like " the gods, 
 whose dwelling is not with the flesh." They are 
 above carnal household motions and habitudes. A 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 337 
 
 sheet and a turnip-lantern would not alarm before it 
 is found out unless there were some signs of the ghost 
 about it, and Blake often collapses under the daylight 
 gaze, like this apparatus of the sheet ; but anybody 
 could tell a ghost from a turnip in the daytime : 
 you want darkness and its appropriate surroundings. 
 Blake should not be sought "by day, when every 
 goose is cackling." 
 
 These are some of the considerations which wrap 
 him round and make him so profound a test. The 
 groundling, hearing that it is a great name, will fly 
 into raptures over every bald, gray, Indian-ink group 
 he sees, and the inapt and imperceptive will show him 
 the door. It is just in the power of steering through 
 his works, and rightly discriminating, that the art- 
 illuminated soul is discoverable. 
 
 ith May 1874. 
 
 The conditioning of English art has come to be 
 dramatic and striking. The silent brotherhood dis- 
 perse over Europe and further : to Damascus, Cairo, 
 Algiers. They go, each apart, to solitary places, and 
 to places desolate of old ; to little Italian towns, 
 quaint German villages, Scotch glens, bare twilight 
 vales in the Hebrides, and a long hush falls upon 
 them. May comes round, and all is changed. It is 
 as when we stood in the barge at the Boat-race, only 
 instead of the fleeting dream of dark and light blue 
 we have a nation lining the banks, restless and glitter- 
 ing, and waiting for the galley of Cleopatra as on the 
 Cydnus of old. Artillery are in waiting at intervals, 
 z 
 
338 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 and all is expectation. At last comes the golden 
 galley of art high out of the water, with regular 
 pulses of silver oars moving to "flutes and soft 
 recorders." She reclines in pomp under the silken 
 sail swollen to fulness. There is a deck above her 
 on which stand in glittering armour, with sash and 
 plume, the great painters and sculptors of the year, 
 and Lehind them, but raised on another deck, crowd 
 princes, statesmen, warriors fresh from the field, " with 
 station like the herald Mercury new-lighted on a 
 heaven-kissing hill.'' Eight beneath you, as it seems, 
 and close over you, suddenly burst and boom the 
 guns of fame, and shake the air and the earth and you. 
 
 You, what are you doing, at your age, in the 
 empty barge moored at the brink ? Why are you 
 not on the galley 1, Are you not filled with envy ? 
 AViU you not throw some mud as it passes? No, 
 indeed ; I've brought three laurel wreaths to throw 
 aboard — one for MUlais, one for Watts, one for some- 
 body else, I won't say who — settle it among your- 
 selves, only don't let Hart get hold of it. The only 
 mischief I am inclined for is to put hollow hand to 
 mouth, like Eossetti's "Hector," and yell out, "Where's 
 old Brown? What have you done with Gabriel 
 Eossetti ? Yah ! " 
 
 I've nothing to say against the galley, and cheer 
 with the loudest, and shall delight myself with every 
 touch of these men, and those also who are not there. 
 
 Still, yon know the working of the old problems, 
 and each time the galley sails up the Cydnus I am 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHA.M 339 
 
 obliged to ask my heart the old set of questions, and 
 my heart replies with no hesitation as of yore, "I 
 would not have it otherwise. If all were to do over 
 again, I would do just the same." 
 
 Only I say this with more rest and gladness than 
 ever, with more entire contentment, with deeper 
 thankfulness to God and to man. 
 
 To D. G. R. 
 
 Ith May 1874. 
 
 Went to-day to the E.A. Exhibition, and after- 
 wards to Christie's to see the Landseer sketches which 
 are to be sold to-morrow. In looking at one of them, 
 there was a piece as big as a shilling knocked off, 
 showing the white ground — a little finger with a ring 
 on it fell rapidly into the abrasion. Thought I, 
 "That's an artist's hand and trick; nobody but an 
 oil-painter would do that." I looked up, and it was 
 Millais. He was shortly afterwards saluted by some 
 one. "I hope you're well." " Oh yes ; I'm always well, 
 thanks." I wish you could say that, or Shields. Yet, 
 " who knows what is good for man upon the earth 1 " 
 
 Millais's "North-west Passage" is a very fine, 
 manly, strong thing every way. His "Still for a 
 Moment" is as good as one of the old masters or 
 Reynolds. His landscapes I was sorry to be disap- 
 pointed with in comparison with his "Chill October." 
 They are powerful, but too coarse and raw and un- 
 feeling. 
 
 I am glad you are taking it easy. I hope you 
 
340 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 pound your talk very small, and He on your back 
 looking up into vacancy. Vacancy is one of our best 
 friends at times. 
 
 In looking at some of the coarse, bold, effective 
 canvases at the Academy there comes the temptation 
 to do six pictures for one, to get into a hold mood. 
 "Boldness" always takes in a crowd, and but for a 
 whole fortress of squares, where in years past every 
 such question has been arraigned, I should in some 
 moods be in danger of betrayal. But I am sure that 
 for lasting usefulness and acceptance it will be found 
 that the quiet, well-thought-out way is best. It is in 
 art as in life. Your bold, loud, fluent man carries all 
 before him in a big meeting, but it's the man alive to 
 difficulties, and conscious of the vast area of things 
 and the feebleness of his own nature, and who looks 
 on life as a whole — it is he who survives and grows 
 and conquers at length. 
 
 The following is illustrated by a group of ferns with curled- 
 up fronds, as seen from the breakfast-room window. One of 
 these fronds is taller than the rest, over-topping them, as it 
 were : — 
 
 Friday, 9.35 A.M. (Lower Room). 
 
 We have been wondering at and admiring this 
 
 group of ferns at a certain -stage of growth. It is 
 
 like a highly respectable family : mother and six 
 
 daughters — one of Anthony TroUope's Barchester 
 
 families living in the Cathedral Close. Look at the 
 
 resemblance to a bishop's crozier, and call them the 
 
 Miss Croziers or the Misses Crozier and their lofty 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 341 
 
 mamma. They are of a splendid brown-gold colour. 
 Higher on the bank is another family, distantly related 
 to the Croziers, and standing about to be noticed — a 
 pale green washed-out family — the Hart's-tongues, of 
 no position ; the best of them have to get good situa- 
 tions as governesses, which the Croziers help them to 
 —not so much that the cathedral has taught them 
 charity unfeigned, but for their own credit's sake. 
 Note the green trimmings of Mrs. Crozier. There is 
 in a nook of the hills yet another and a smaller branch 
 of the same family. These are scarcely green at all ; 
 they are gray, with faint assumptions of green, know- 
 ing that there is a bishop in the family. I don't know 
 their names; the Croziers call them "those people." 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 10th JuiieWn. 
 
 To be too much liked is one of the great evils of 
 life. If one friend speaks well of you to another, and 
 he to a third, you are, by this progression, in a mess 
 in no time, especially if you are of the "amiable" 
 sort. " Come and play with me," says the butterfly 
 to the busy bee. Observe the butterfly never says, 
 " Busy bee, I like you, and will come and watch you 
 work." Then if you don't go and play, the butterfly 
 goes winging among the dragonflies, and says you are 
 not half so pretty as she thought ; that your black 
 and yellow bands are in bad taste ; and that you are 
 only a hum-drum sort of honey-bagger, always after 
 your hive. When prejudice sets in, then it is well 
 
342 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 ■with the honey-bee ; and if the bee every now and 
 then sting savagely, so much the better. The fact 
 will be that you are just in reality what you are, and 
 that what the butterfly and dragonfly say won't alter 
 the fact. Perhaps you are conceited, proud, self- 
 suflScient, vain. If you're not, the butterfly and 
 dragonfly can't make it be so. If you are, the sooner 
 it is commonly understood the better. 
 
 One naturally thinks, " the more friends the better." 
 "The wider spread is your good name the better.'' 
 This delusion mil last till fifty. Then a little touch 
 of wisdom breaks in, and you see from the other end 
 of the telescope. 
 
 To be told at twenty or thirty "Such a person 
 can't bear you" has an uncomfortable effect. At 
 fifty there is something of a dulcet sound in it in 
 comparison. 
 
 To T S P> 
 
 J.UJ. o. u. soth June 187 i. 
 
 As in talking with some men your eye glances 
 restlessly from top to toe, your ear quickly curious at 
 every tone and inflection, your observation alive to 
 every gesture, posture, quality, you form your con- 
 clusion of the man's whereabouts ; so with books and 
 claims in general. You watch this man and say, "He's a 
 bit of a fool, but has no touch of the rascal." You look 
 at the other and say, " Clever fellow, but I would not 
 trust him further than I could see him." Yet if in either 
 case you are asked Why 1 you can't exactly tell. It's 
 a number of very little things put together. You leave 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 343 
 
 a margin and say, "I may after all be mistaken," but 
 you don't think you are, and you act accordingly. 
 
 Is not our conviction as to the credibility of the 
 G-ospels and Epistles pradically based on this subtle 
 moral instinct 1, " This must be true. It is impossible 
 that either fool or rascal could have invented the 
 lith of John or the 12th of Romans. They are 
 honest to the bone." 
 
 Some one read to me out of a book of Dean 
 Stanley's what, if I remember rightly, was cited as a 
 specimen of the best of the pretended gospels, and 
 one thought, " If that is the best one can't answer 
 reasonably, but only print the word Bosh in letters 
 twenty feet high." 
 
 Anyhow, if I'm not to make short work of my con- 
 victions it's a poor case ; and my case is better than 
 that of millions. Directly after breakfast and walk 
 comes work : only an hour a day at most when thought 
 can withdraw itself to verify these great matters. 
 Am I to go plowthering and sniffling for years in the 
 immeasurable mass of "Evidences"? Then God help 
 me and help ^ of the race ! 
 
 But my full heart, it replies with the distinctness 
 of a golden bell, " Eabbi, Thou art the Son of God. 
 Thou art the King of Israel." 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 8ft September 1874. 
 
 Have been "snatching a fearful joy" over the 
 
 Duke of Argyle's lona this morning. His way of 
 
344 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 fixing you in the period is fine and poetic. In such 
 processes the mind " forgets itself to marble," " the 
 monumental caves of death look cold," "the cities 
 desolate of old " swarm, time plays at fast and loose 
 with you, "the fallings from us — vanishings" are 
 numerous as the "atom-streams running along the 
 illimitable inane." You glance wildly at Emperors 
 and Popes, as if you ought to know them, you do in 
 a sense ; " I think I've seen you before." Gregory the 
 Great frowns in passing. " Knowest thou not me 
 yet 1 " as Coriolanus said. Theodore stalks to his grave 
 in Eavenna and lies down in silence. Patient monks 
 write and illuminate through long centuries. Grim 
 hermits are going by mountain passes to their clefts 
 in the rock. The sea bristles with Scandinavian 
 fleets, Benedict sets up his long monastic line on 
 Monte Casino; and Columba knows nothing about 
 it, but labours, no one knows how, among the Picts. 
 The world of the Past quakes and moves as in 
 Ezekiel's vision. Tell you about it? Nay, I can't 
 do that. I'm no teller of dead men's tales. I 
 simply live, looking on and watching the phantoms 
 pass. They glower and pass on, as the lion that 
 met Csesar in the street of Rome did, and "went 
 surly by." Let other men draw conclusions, and 
 evolve principles, and coolly tell you what the 
 Middle Ages were. 
 
 Tell me what a back street in a Pictish town was, 
 and how the people knew that Columba was going to 
 preach a Charity Sermon, and how he and his congre- 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SIJETHAM 345 
 
 gation looked when they met each other with ancient 
 eyes. 
 
 These visions are greatly helpful while living the 
 daily life. Who can be vexed with the gossip in the 
 next street, "the cackle of the bourg," or much dis- 
 contented with his daily life, if he have food and 
 raiment ; or be greatly concerned how he stands vidth 
 the penny papers if he be in sight of the solemn Past 
 — the deeply silent Past 1 
 
 But this very silence, and dim multitude and con- 
 fusion, teach the one lesson, 
 
 Thou, in this Thy Day. 
 
 What hope elsewhere? Famel What worth? Eiches? 
 What profit? But the Duty of to-day, the nearest 
 thing, the nearest person, the holy impulse of the hour 
 — that is life and joy and peace. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 IZth September. 
 
 Have read through the Duke of Argyle's lona : 
 a very delightful little book. There is something un- 
 utterably pathetic in the relations of time. Columba 
 makes lona. You stand where Dr. Johnson stood, 
 his " piety growing warmer," and look for monuments 
 of Columba. You see old walls rent by the sea-blasts, 
 and stare into antiquity. But see now, that ruined 
 Chapel is the oldest thing there. Who built it? 
 Queen Margaret of Scotland built it in fervent memory 
 of the good Columba. But fancy her peering back to 
 
346 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 the days of Columba, as far as we have to do, to reach 
 Chaucer or Edward the Third. " So long ago lived 
 my Columba," says she, as she paces the moonlit 
 shores. " Who can flit across those five centuries 1 " 
 says she. How were they filled up in that "dark 
 backward and abysm of time " 1 A little she knows 
 of history among the northern seas, but it is weird 
 conjecture mainly, it is the "long ago" and little more. 
 "And Christ lived twice as far back in the world's 
 events.'' But many, many moonlights since have shone 
 on the Sound of lona and all its "finny drove." We_ 
 look much further back on Queen Margaret than she 
 on Columba; for she died in the year 1093. 
 
 And what imagination can deal with the 200 years 
 of quiet monastic life in lona after the death of 
 Columba 1 — 200 years ! When only a single sail came 
 to bring an Irish saint, or a little fleet bearing some 
 Scandinavian king to be buried in the Holy Isle ! 
 The Monks — who were theij ? Where did they come 
 from 1 What was the history of only one of them from 
 boyhood till his old age, when he went on penning the 
 Gospel text, or writing a slow chronicle, or keeping 
 the farm accounts % But if these calm 200 years 
 baffle us so, what of the succeeding 300 years when the 
 heathen came out of their cold hard hills and brought 
 fire, famine, and slaughter to every British coast, 
 and spared no holy hairs, and no shrine of peace ? 
 
 Have you and I to face the world of the past as 
 well as the world that now is, and see the dead, small 
 and great, stand before God ? 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 347 
 
 One of the most dreadfiil Old Testament pictures 
 is that of Joram on the -wall of Samaria, 2 Kings vi. 
 25-33, in sackcloth. 
 
 Some think these entertaining old books are given 
 to be exercises in ingenious research and criticism, 
 and others scorn them as impudently as Jehoiakim. 
 When they have read three or four leaves they cut 
 it with a penknife and cast it into the fire till the 
 whole roU is consumed, and think no more of it till 
 they are carried to Riblah and bound before Nebu- 
 chadnezzar. What ! Is not a high fever, a hollow con- 
 sumption, a falling beam, a thousand occurrent evils, 
 as sure and awful as "the worst of the heathen," 
 even though a smooth English doctor moves across 
 the scene, and his varnished brougham waits in the 
 street ? He that is wise and will observe these things 
 sees them to-day. Is it conceivable that the God 
 who made the Seven Stars and Orion, and who is 
 without variableness or shadow of turning, played off 
 caprices on the narrow seaboard of Asia Minor in 
 the centuries before our era, which, having come to 
 another mind, or being weary. He has ceased to enact 
 in modern days, cowed and overfaced by steam and 
 penny newspapers reeled off without stopping 1 Is 
 the Strength of Israel lying or repenting now the 
 world has waxed older and wiser and more scientific, 
 and is clothed in cloth, and builds magnificent club- 
 rooms in Pall Mall, where His name goes for 
 nothing ? 
 
348 LETTERS OE JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 To T. A. 
 To say that " all men are vain " (Thackeray) is a 
 slight accusation, a matter of course. One is vain of 
 his wealth, another of his good looks, another of his 
 accomplishments, another of his piety. The grace 
 of God does wonders all round. " Half beast, half 
 devil," was John Fletcher's view of human nature. 
 The beast and the devil disappear — are cast out — the 
 dumb devil, the unclean devil, the cruel devil, the 
 avaricious devil. The vain devil is such an insigni- 
 ficant Skip Jack that he is often left in a corner, and 
 combs his hair at sixty at the bottom of the pulpit 
 stairs. 
 
 At first we know too little to teach, all is mist and 
 confusion. Then we know too much, all is intensity 
 and disproportion. It is only when knowledge has 
 settled down and "grown incorporate into Thee" 
 that we teach at once with authority and with sim- 
 plicity. Our knowledges are then dislinked from 
 our display of them. They may be fresh to the 
 hearer, they come natural to the speaker. He thinks 
 more of the kernel than of the long-since-cracked 
 shell and husk. He is not afraid of being tripped up 
 by a tacit question, or a slippery blunder. " Clearly 
 he sees and wins his way." 
 
 A FALLEN king may become a beggar. That's 
 allowable. But he must not become a greengrocer 
 or an oilman. Aut Caesar aut Oilman is not good 
 
1874 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 349 
 
 Latin. There are no stages between Caesar and 
 Nullus. 
 
 Sunday, 10 a.m. 
 DAY most calm, most bright ! 
 Landseer's Hunted Stag in "The Sanctuary," 
 where "nor hound nor huntsman shall his lair 
 molest," among the peaceful echoing evening hills 
 and the lonely rush of the disturbed wild ducks from 
 the water flags into the amber air. This is not 
 seldom the feeling with which I escape from the 
 howling pack of week-day cares. 
 
 To C. M. 
 John Crome. Born in Norwich, 1769-1821. 
 Apprenticed to coach builder. 
 Became Drawing Master. 
 Painted in leisure. 
 When I was a boy he was known among small 
 dealers as "Old Crome.'' He was only 52 when he 
 died. The name brought up the image of a venerable 
 old fogey painting up to extreme old age. During 
 the last ten years his pictures have been brought to 
 the front, and he is called "John Crome." Some 
 of his works are in the National Collection, and at 
 sales his pictures fetch large prices. 
 
 Had an hour of delightful dwelling on his unknown 
 career last evening. The works are the man, and if 
 the man be able to put soul into them, whether he 
 paint in a little house in Norwich or in a London 
 studio matters little — nor how his picture is first sold. 
 
350 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1874 
 
 It may be bought after much talk by some little 
 householder for £5. That is a vast sum. It hangs 
 for years on years in the glimmer of the little back 
 parlour, and no man knows much about it. Whether 
 John Crome were married or single I know not ; but 
 probably he was married and his family large. Being 
 a coach painter at first and a good deep painter after- 
 wards, he could not be much beside. But what 
 matter ? Where would his scraps of Latin and Greek 
 have been now ? While he lived he might have made 
 better way with a transitory forgotten squire if he 
 could quote Horace, but he and the squire are a prey 
 to dumb forgetfulness — except — except what found 
 its way to the point of his brush ; his serious, sunny, 
 all simple, all rich and happy views of the grandeur 
 of the nooks of nature ; the solemn, quiet corners 
 where gray palings become impressive because of 
 their weather marks and boundary marking and 
 other subtle associations with nature and humanity. 
 
 You meet him in your morning or evening walk, 
 a little dingy, not at all gentlemanly, not like 
 " quoloty " who pass him on horseback to their tombs 
 among the forgotten. He has his leather-backed 
 sketch-book out, and is taking a memorandum of 
 some little black pool under oak roots, his bosom 
 quietly glowing with the sense of grandeur and un- 
 utterable solemnity. He pockets his book and walks 
 on ; the black pool and its weird growths rendered 
 through the crucible of feeling and thought, and not 
 wholly "like nature" (nature involved with man, 
 
187i LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 351 
 
 which is art and poetry) — this picture now moves all 
 kindred souls in now one exhibition, now another. 
 Docks and weeds and peaty waters were nothing to 
 talk about, but moving as the haunts of Keats's Pan 
 when shaped by the coach painter's stubby brash, too 
 manly to condescend to thin lines and photographic 
 dottings. So whether he were communicative or 
 close, shy or genial, good tempered or bad, a man 
 with many friends raining "Good mornings" all 
 round, or a sort of water hen scarce known except to 
 his quaint kind — a few of the same sort — ^what has 
 that to do with it now 1 Mark it with your brush, 
 seal it in a monument. Arthur himself "passes." 
 So with contemporary opinion. What thought the 
 wealthy Norwich lawyer, with his frill and his 
 weight, at Norwich dinner parties in 1800? "Mr. 
 Quiddity, I should like to know what you think of 
 the oil pictures of my daughter's drawing -master." 
 "What, Jack Crome? I knew him when he went 
 'prentice to old Axletree, and a lazy young dog he 
 was. His oil paintings, ma'am ? I'm no great judge, 
 they look rather rough and fuzzy to me. Ought to 
 go to Italy and see some of the Claudes I saw there 
 in the year 1770." 
 
 "Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his 
 cases, his tenures, and his tricks," and his opinion 
 of Jack Crome ? 
 
 " Crome — Crome — Crome ! " blows the solemn 
 wind of Fame, eerier than ever — and the black pool 
 with its crooked roots and strange overgrowth and 
 
352 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1875 
 
 "pipey hemlock" looks, all silent and revealing 
 nothing, into the face of new generations. 
 
 I AM glad to have been gradually forced down 
 from Eoses of Dawn to the Foxglove and Eabbit 
 dingles and dells, to Aylmer's field. If it succeed 
 we will be in no hurry to get to the heights again, 
 for the study of nature among the wild briar and the 
 vine and the twisted eglantine is so soothing and 
 sweet, and will be so useful for background purposes, 
 that it never can be time lost. 
 
 One of the sweet Stothard habits was to stand 
 among the honeysuckle hedgerows, drawing in sketch- 
 books with various coloured inks the tendrils, leaves, 
 blossoms, etc. Wax crayons were not invented in 
 those days. But if Stothard could see my brown 
 paper books he would say, "Sir, you have by experi- 
 ment attained to the whole series of requirements 
 necessary for the sufficient notation of those facts of 
 nature which are needed when you come to paint 
 small subjects in the studio." 
 
 To J. S. B. 
 
 6th JanvMry 1875. 
 
 Got your kind letter this morning. I am glad to 
 hear good news of you all, and to know where you 
 are, and what you are about. Davies will be glad 
 to hear that you are among his friends, and enjoy- 
 ing the antiquities and art of Kome. I should say 
 cultivate Hemans. He is a mine of learning, and a 
 
1875 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 353 
 
 simple, quaint, unworldly man, with no back-thought 
 of self-interest or littleness. 
 
 To say I envy you the rich associations of Rome 
 would be true, and yet mi true. I shrink from Italy, 
 though so much thought has been given to it in the 
 course of my life. It is too rosy, and odorous, and 
 relaxing, as it proved to the Goths and Huns. I 
 love the northern grayness, and hardihood, and re- 
 pression, and hindrance, and vexing discipline, and 
 sublimity. 
 
 Bright, and fierce, and fickle is the South ; 
 And dark, and true, and tender is the North. 
 
 Also, without being a rabid anti-popery man, I am 
 obliged by all that I live by, and live for, to tremble 
 at the dismal cloud that rests on Italy and Spain, and 
 is only shattered in France by rebellious lightnings 
 which are not the still, small voice of God. At a 
 distance I can be calm, but the more piercing and 
 beautiful the " Miserere " above in the darkness, and 
 the more enchanting the silver trumpets, the worse 
 I feel. I think this has operated on me all my life, 
 and though I formed no resolution or vow not to 
 "see before I die the palms and temples of the 
 South," it has kept me from the brisk desires and 
 proposals which carry young men ta Rome, dearly as 
 my mind clings to the refined and easy-going life 
 which I hear of there. 
 
 2a 
 
354 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1875 
 
 29ft March 1875. 
 
 " Light and Shade " is the atmosphere of painting, 
 and varies as the sky and weather, vary. Certain 
 phases of it are fixed, and amenable to science and 
 calculation ; others are real and beautiful, but TWt 
 amenable to science, e.g. in a landscape we never see 
 shadows falling opposite ways ; nor one shadow 
 lengthy, as at evening, and another gathered up, as 
 at noon. Also the slope of things fixes the form of 
 their shadows, and the direction of the light the 
 direction of their shadows. In Seddon's " Jerusalem " 
 at South Kensington we see a piece of literal and ex- 
 quisite representation, of harmonised lighting, which 
 is quite correct — perfect indeed, yet which looks as 
 flat as a photograph, though it has much feeling 
 wrapped up in the treatment of details. They are 
 not harshly, nor coldly, but delicately painted. In 
 Collins's "Seaford," in the Sheepshanks Gallery, we 
 have in the foreground a simple lighting of figures 
 and sandbank, as the way of the light dictates. In 
 the middle distance we have a fine effect of a transi- 
 tory kind produced by shadows of clouds on flat 
 sands ; and the combinations of fixed shadows and 
 accidental ones, woven together by composition with 
 the cloud forms, constitute the light and shade of the 
 picture. But though in Collins there is a scheme of 
 light and shade in relation to the picture as a whole, 
 instead of the flat accuracy of Seddon, Collins's cloud 
 shadows are as true as his sandbank shadows. There 
 should be, in order to good effect, the unity of both 
 
1875 LETTERS OF JAMES SMBTHAM 355 
 
 these requirements, the shadows that must be with 
 the shadows that may be, and these united by the 
 unsearchable faculty of "Composition." But how- 
 ever bold, or deep, or striking effect may be, there 
 must, in order to grand work, be no lying ; nothing 
 impossible. And even the admission of the improb- 
 able becomes a ticklish question, and may make a 
 work " outr6 " or " queer," and so ruin it. 
 
 In these combinations of the must and the may, 
 and their varying degrees of success, we have an 
 enchanting region of unexhaustive delight, always 
 remembering that there lies behind them the universe 
 of God's handiwork. 
 
 To T. A. 
 
 27th April 1875. 
 
 People hesitate to purchase by the usual faint- 
 heartedness which seeks too much evidence before it 
 strikes, e.g. they would like to feel sure that they are 
 bujring a Turner, an " Old Crome," a David Cox, a 
 Collins, a Constable, forgetting that this element of 
 universal " Name " has taken time to ripen to its 
 present value. The Turner-, Linnell-, Cox-, Con- 
 stable-, CoUins-work, now at a premium, was all in 
 full flower when I was born. "Old Crome" had 
 done all his work and died, and when I was twenty 
 years old, no one would give more than £10 or £20 
 for an Old Crome (which was sold on Saturday for 
 £1575). Turner then sold for £100 what yester- 
 day fetched £7350. As to Constable and Linnell, at 
 fifty years of age their houses were full of unsold 
 
356 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1875 
 
 work; no man cared for it. The unshrewd and 
 unreflective buyer of to-day is deluded for want of 
 biography. He forgets the element of Time, does not 
 draw distinctions between cases, thinks " Name " to 
 be another entity from that which it is, secretly wants 
 the low price, and the universal certainty of name ; 
 not seeing that the two things cannot go together. 
 
 Instead of buying an unsinged and undipped 
 long-legged filly from a remote Yorkshire pasture by 
 the keen eye for hock and shoulder-blade, which sees 
 an " Eclipse '' or a " Gladiator " through its foolish 
 foalhood, he wants to be assured (1) That this present 
 filly won the blue ribbon of the turf ; and then (2) 
 To make a 'cute bargain for the filly with the York- 
 shire farmer. Can't be done. 
 
 To J. S. B. 
 
 Uth May 1875. 
 
 At Kew Bridge Station. Sketched this man [a 
 profile] in pocket-book. The real points of differ- 
 entiation between man and man (for the historical 
 painter's purpose) are comprised in just that much of 
 his frame. The facial angle, the brow, nose, nostril, 
 eye, lip, chin. Why sketch his ear, or his hat, or 
 anything else about him? Ears are the same, hats 
 are the same. If he have a set of the shoulders very 
 individual, then sketch that ; not otherwise. See 
 liitle enough. This seems a simple discovery, but it 
 has taken a ton weight off my mind since I saw this 
 and the like truths. 
 
1875 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 357 
 
 ith June. 
 
 Like other truths that lie inward after long prac- 
 tice, this note on re-reading needs an explanation. 
 Of course everything, ears, hats, etc., have to be got 
 from nature, but for historic purposes you may any- 
 where get a model for an ear or a hat ; whereas the 
 peculiar facial angle must be sketched there and then, 
 or not at all. For you see it unexpectedly, and only 
 for a short time, as a rule ; and sometimes it is a 
 magistrate or J. P. who wouldn't accept your eighteen- 
 pence an hour ; and if you can't " bag " his nose, eyes, 
 eyebrows, lips, and chin in a moderately short time 
 in your pocket-book, you can't get him at all, for the 
 finest chances are momentary. Now, when you have 
 reduced that which it is incumbent to sketch to a 
 minimum, leaving out ear, hat, etc., your chances are 
 improved manifold, and you can seize him and bear 
 him ofi" with a chuckle : " I've got you, old gentleman, 
 anyhow, you'll do capitally for the villain of the piece." 
 Hogarth used to do this on his broad thumb-nail. 
 One sees very weU that Hogarth's faces must have 
 been caught unawares. No one ever consciously sat 
 for those marvellous expressions. 
 
 But as to painting, fresh crops keep springing out 
 of the fallow-field after seasons of stoppage, such as 
 the recent one. The most noticeable product of the 
 past period of reflection and search is an increased 
 resolve as to painstaking. 
 
 I don't mean mere hard work, for that is often, in 
 art, waste of time ; but hard study and forethought ; 
 
358 LETTERS OE JAMES SMETHAM 1875 
 
 a whole brown-paper book full of sketches, where one 
 or two sketches are often thought sufficient. Light 
 on this subject increases greatly. The real work of 
 the picture should be done off the canvas. And to 
 make yourself see this and do it, is breaking the iron 
 sinew in your neck. There is such a strong instinct 
 to get at your canvas, and to mix your palette. Pro- 
 perly, the putting on of the paint ought to be a mere 
 adjunct to manly study. Every line, mass, colour, 
 expression ought to be known and felt off the canvas. 
 When once this light has dawned a new world of 
 pleasure is opened. 
 
 Again, as men get older, there is a danger of rest- 
 ing on their oars, of living on past knowledge. Just 
 the wrong plan ! The right plan to perpetuate youth 
 and joy is to assume that you never yet knew any- 
 thing, that you have all to learn. This will not 
 actually enfeeble you, for your work will include the 
 results of past knowledge. But the posture of mind 
 will be far grander, because far nearer to the child ; 
 which, in the kingdom of art, as in the kingdom of 
 Heaven, is the only Prince. 
 
 To W. D. 
 Happy hour when I made my first square ! I 
 remember it well. It was on 18th February 1848 
 at 11 P.M., if you wish to know. It introduced me 
 to a new life. But for many years, twenty perhaps, 
 I was afield among the ancients. Now Brother C. is 
 more to me than Themistocles or Abbot Sampson, or 
 
1875 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 359 
 
 Boethius, and T. A. is more than Pericles or Alex- 
 ander the Great. The glory and dignity of a living 
 man grows and grows more and more. What ! make 
 crael fun of a living man who may die to-morrow and 
 mount high above you in the "air of glory whose 
 light does trample on your days." Nay, a redeemed 
 man is a resplendent thing to meet in a lane, or in 
 a parlour, or anywhere. "Your brother whom you 
 have seen." If you love not him, a fortiori, how can 
 you love Him whom you have not seen ? 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 10ft June 1875. 
 
 Walked to Fitzroy Square, and called on F. 
 Madox Brown, who is a delightful man, cram-full of 
 all that makes my mental life sweet and pleasant. A 
 visit to him is like a walk on a breezy shore with the 
 scent of cockles, and mussels, and sea-weed. M. B. 
 described some pictures by Millet now exhibiting in 
 Bond Street. Walked there and saw them. They 
 are a sort of finished studies in oil ; rough, bold, be- 
 stowing all attention on action, composition, sentiment, 
 colour, and putting in no detailed form. Much what 
 I expected. Instructive and interesting. 
 
 I said to Madox Brown, "Millet only exhibited 
 twenty-eight pictures in thirty years. " F. M. B. 
 "But that was a large number." But of what sort 
 were these of which one a year was enough ? Now 
 I see. The subject was amazingly simple ; e.g. a 
 peasant in a gray nook of the village chopping wood, 
 
360 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1875 
 
 wedge and mallet, all alone, profoundly alone. Eough, 
 colour fine, action exact, the right moment ; all things 
 primeval, woods dark, obscure, solemn ; features ex- 
 pressed as you see them at sixty yards off, fingers 
 not to be separated by the eye, i.e. they are roughly 
 indicated, yet the Main Thing is held to scrupulously; 
 the poise of the mallet, the crook of the knee, the 
 " go" of the whole action together. And so, with the 
 combined effect, whites, grays, browns ; with touches 
 (or patches, for there is no " touch ") of blue or bit 
 of red — the Wholeness is the thing, and the Homeric 
 simplicity, force, directness. 
 
 The mutually distinctive effects of certain pursuits 
 reconcile one to much imperfection in the ideal of 
 life, e.g. The Mathematical and Imaginative modes of 
 action are clearly cross currents, and though a man 
 might say, " How happy could I be with either," he 
 must put one or other away, or be as double-faced as 
 Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy. 
 
 9.Zrd June 1875. 
 About twelve years ago there were woodcuts in 
 Good Words and other periodicals with " F. W." in the 
 corner. These were of a better sort than the rough 
 and ready scribble usually seen. Then the " F. W." 
 found its way into the Cornhill under Thackeray, and 
 was attached to illustrations of Thackeray's Philip. 
 These illustrations were very admirable in quality. 
 Among the studios, e.g. from J. C. Moore, came in- 
 
1875 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 361 
 
 formation. " Walker ? Fred Walker ; yes, I know 
 him. You wouldn't think he had anything in him, 
 but he has a fine head, a sort of Greek head, you 
 know. His family is humble. He hasn't much to 
 say for himself, but he's a clever fellow, and he takes 
 such pains. I heard that when he wanted a small 
 bell handle for one of his woodcuts he heard of one 
 at Hampstead and went over on purpose to draw it. 
 So with everything." 
 
 1864-65 ? " Have you seen Fred Walker's draw- 
 ing at the 'Old Water Colour,' from Philip : 'Philip 
 in Church'?" 
 
 " Yes, and a splendid piece of execution it is." 
 
 1868. At D. G. E.'s — a goodish painter, but an 
 intolerable " swell," well connected, to Howell : — 
 
 " Oh, by the way, you're the man, Howell. You 
 see — aw — I've asked Fred Walker to supper, and I 
 want to entertain him, and you see — aw — I can't 
 very well ask my own set — to — to meet him — aw, 
 his sisters I'm told keep a bonnet shop somewhere — 
 aw " — etc. 
 
 1869. " Frederick Walker, Esq., A.E.A." 
 
 " Have you seen Walker's ' Ploughing ' at the 
 E.A?" 
 
 " Yes : very powerful. I like it best of anything 
 there." D. G. R, "I say ! I'm told that Graham 
 has given Walker 1000 guineas for his 'Bathers,'" etc. 
 
 1875. "Died at the early age of forty-two, 
 Frederick Walker, A.R.A. We can ill afford to spare 
 men so conscientious in all they did," etc. 
 
362 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1876 
 
 June 1875, at'R.A. J. S. looking at the last 
 picture F. W. sent to the E.A., " The Eight of Way": 
 Vagrant mother, little boy afraid of sheep. 
 
 Well-dressed visitor to companion: "Now there's 
 a picture ! Very bad, wretchedly executed. Look 
 at that sheep ; its legs are as long as a pig's ! Look 
 at the grass ! Abominable ! " 
 
 What a Requiem ! 
 
 J. S. " Walker of course. Not one of his best. 
 Very fine in quality. Exquisite perception of grays 
 in sky and distance." 
 
 J. S. at " Old Water Colour," June 1875 :— 
 
 " The Old Gate."— F. Walker. " Wonderful, deli- 
 cate, tender, true, powerful. What a world of study 
 it must have cost ! What mental and moral endur- 
 ance and concealed excitement and energy ! " 
 
 " Yes, this sort of strain probably killed him." 
 
 We saw together his "Mower" in the "Alms 
 House Grounds," and thought it meant, 
 
 There is a Reaper whose name is Death : 
 the old man — the chirping, feeble old men who sat 
 beyond the daisied lawn, cram-full of character and 
 power of the Shakesperian sort, " Second childishness 
 and mere oblivion": one "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans 
 taste, sans everything. 
 
 His big manly voice 
 Turning again toward childish treble pipes, 
 And whistles in the sound." 
 
 Another, keeping up to the last, an old, old, chirping 
 Eobin with a red, full breast, who "had a grand- 
 
1875 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 363 
 
 father, bless your soul, as lived ten year longer ! " 
 The Mower has mown F. W. down at last; but 
 every touch of those careful woodcuts — the bell 
 handle included — every faint gray wash and stipple 
 of his water colours, every palette-knife stroke of his 
 larger canvases survives ; " for the artist never dies." 
 And we shall either die in the midst of our days, 
 or we shall come to this " second childishness and 
 mere oblivion " if we survive our strength. In the 
 sunshine, with chin on breast, we shall look vaguely, 
 half cheered, at the daisies, and recall days long fled. 
 It will be very important to carry down into those 
 
 Vast solitudes and awful cells, 
 Where heavenly contemplation dwells, 
 And ever-musing melancholy reigiis, 
 
 some abiding "patience and comfort" better than 
 vague recollections of pleasures long gone, ambitions 
 long thwarted or fulfilled and decayed. 
 
 " He gained from Heaven, 'twas all he wished, a 
 friend." That is a short allowance, and all a man's 
 eggs had better not be in one basket, for change and 
 death hold such at their mercy. Only Supreme 
 Wisdofn can pick us out our friends, and then they 
 are made as slowly as geologic formations ; or if not, 
 with the same mighty powers of central fire and up- 
 heaval ; but mostly deposit, with supervening strokes 
 of elemental heat or shaking. 
 
 Let any man take a case in his own life — see how 
 it has been brought about. It may begin in a trifle. 
 
364 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1875 
 
 One of my oldest friendships ^ began at the age of 
 fifteen, in a childish taste for acid-drops. So wan 
 acid-drop, and you grow not only a friend but a whole 
 circle of his friends, who uphold your soul for a life- 
 time. Who would think of beginning a deep and 
 true friendship with an acid-drop ? (Though many 
 an unguarded acid- drop ends a friendship which 
 nothing can replace.) Innumerable delicate circum- 
 stances of relation of age, residence, family environ- 
 ment, temper and temperament, pursuits, etc., create 
 such a web of material as only the great Designer 
 can put on the loom. 
 Thank God for friends. 
 
 To J. S. B. g^^ Decmnler 1875. 
 TE Frost aud Snow, praise Him and magnify Him for ever. 
 
 How are we to strike the balance between the sense 
 of beauty and grandeur, which must arise if we look 
 on God's great ways in nature at all, and their frequent 
 accompaniments of the groaning of creation? The Lord 
 help us to preserve an even balance and give us to see 
 a little "light in His light." At best we can see but 
 little — very, very little. May that little not' be all 
 mistake, and misapprehension, and misquotation. 
 
 Work has gone on first-rate — four months uninter- 
 ruptedly. I've even found out a maxim of painter's 
 philosophy which defeats the dark days ; viz. that 
 for certain elements in a picture the worst days are 
 1 With Mr. "W. T. Bolton. 
 
1876 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 365 
 
 the best. For "effect" certainly; for the linking of 
 the greater lines and forms and masses into a whole. 
 One is apt to see too much on bright days. As to 
 mode of work, I am finding entirely new and satis- 
 factory grooves. I never enjoyed work more. I 
 never saw the deep meaning of Audrey's remark in 
 As you like it, "What is Poetry? Is it honest in 
 deed and word 1 Is it a true thing ? " as I have seen 
 it the last three months. I should like to have 
 known that woman. She was a true Briton. 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 2ith January 1876. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. Notice of death of Jean 
 Fran9ois Millet. Aged 60. 
 
 What is fame ? How obtained 1 
 
 This man is unknown, yet well known. Unknown 
 to the populace, well known to the man of culture. 
 Yet he lived half his life in a village in France, going 
 among the hamlets of France as solitary as a coot ; 
 in barns, in wide waste-fields, among potato -heaps, 
 on portentous evenings, when the labourer hove up 
 against the bars of fading horizon light and looked 
 solemn at him. Wherever Labour stooped in 
 patience to endless tasks that only yielded bare life, 
 there he was drawn to dwell and watch with the eye 
 of Johnsonian compassion and melancholy — 
 
 (When lonely want retired to die : 
 Of every friendless name the friend) 
 
 and with Johnsonian powers as a painter he brought 
 
366 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1876 
 
 the mind of ^schylus, and a sort of Phidian sense 
 of the sublime-at-rest, into the potato-field and the 
 out-house, and transfigured a chaff-cutter, a sickle, or 
 a mallet, till it became the hammer of Thor, or the 
 "thrashing instrument having teeth," which Amos 
 might pass in a Vale of Ephraim, while his prophetic 
 word became too heavy for the land to bear. 
 
 Millet was a pupil of Delaroche. I never saw 
 much of his work ; only two pictures ; but they were 
 enough. "Ex pede Herculem." I know them all. 
 
 I know little of Millet's history, but it might well 
 be this. " I come from the fifth estate of man ; the 
 Brown Land, where the sky is gray and cold, with 
 none but ominous gleams, and a few quick-passing 
 shafts of sunlight travelling along the furrows — nay, 
 from the very borders of the sixth estate, where the 
 light is darkened in the heavens thereof, and where 
 none but God and good angels follow the retreating 
 forms of the inhabitants into the mysterious glooms 
 where no man cares for their souls. I came from the 
 very womb of toil and hardship, and because of the 
 ascetic strength of soul which God gave me, I went 
 upward to fetch the implement of art, that I might 
 monumentalise what the dwellers in the first, second, 
 and third estates will not consider or care for. I will 
 compel some of them to reflect, and force them to see 
 the furrows of the vast estate where all the roots of 
 their comfort and prosperity lie forgotten, while on 
 the side of the oppressor there is power." 
 
 So in the "Exposition," and in the Collector's 
 
1876 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 367 
 
 "Gallery," and in the "Cabinet," he took French 
 society by the throat unaware, making them look by 
 the force of his genius. 
 
 To J. E. V. 
 
 1st July 1876. 
 
 The life of Harriet Martineau is strong on me at 
 present. When the "Orthodox" begin to frown and 
 curse and maledict, and send everybody into black- 
 ness of darkness who does not hold their precise 
 creed, that is more from beneath than from above, 
 and never does any good. And I must say that the 
 lives of some "professors" are below the moral 
 elevation of many who do not see the evangelic 
 scheme at all. What shall we say to these things 1 
 Our position is simple. If Harriet Martineau has a 
 right to avouch her unbelief, we have as much right 
 to avouch our belief. We can do no other. When 
 we have done this, and have exemplified it as far 
 as human infirmity permits (Alas, for my failures 
 here !), then our responsibility ceases. George 
 Herbert gave me twenty -five years ago a strong 
 watchword, "Thou shalt answer. Lord, for me," and 
 it is enough. God knows if H. M. was true to the 
 core — I don't. I can't unwind her seventy-four years 
 of act and thought, and if I could, who made me 
 a judge or a divider 1 Shall not the Judge of all the 
 earth do right 1 He grasps her now, and not an 
 atom shall be wanting in the justice of Divine love. 
 But all her strength of mind and will and honesty of 
 avowal and nobility of action does not shake me : 
 
368 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1876 
 
 What we have felt and seen 
 With confidence we tell, 
 And publish to the sous of men 
 The signs infallible. 
 
 We have something far better and sweeter to do than 
 howl at Harriet Martineau. We have a right to 
 our little tale, as she had to hers, but she must 
 excuse our being shaken and ashamed. Batter down 
 Revelation vpith the eighty-ton guns, and you have 
 empty shrines, and empty hearts, and dark homes, 
 and ghastly gaping walls and bulwarks. 
 
 But we don't jmd this. Walk about Zion and 
 consider. Z don't see a shot-hole. I see the "temple- 
 haunting martlet" building even on the "coign of 
 vantage " ; for the air is delicate : " the swallow finds 
 a nest for herself where she may lay her young," and 
 even the callow nestling, like Brother Fosket, whom 
 I hope to meet in class to-morrow, is as safe as in the 
 groves of Dodona. 
 
 I've been poking about Zion for near thirty years, 
 a poor limping tramp, let in and tolerated as yet, and 
 I can't but aver that I see nothing but strength and 
 beauty in Zion ; green pastui'es, still waters, strong 
 towers, vines and olives and shady fig-trees, quiet 
 resting-places, springs that bubble more and more 
 brightly and spring up like Jacob's well. I am 
 " deluded," am I? But I know as sensible men in 
 Zion, as I know out of it, and we compare notes, and 
 must speak as we find. We " can no other." 
 
1876 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 369 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 ISth September 1876. 
 
 After a good day's painting, as I lay on the sofa 
 tired, my experience was the whole Book of Psalms 
 at once — ^the joys and the anguish both going on at 
 the same time ; the strange sense of pressure ; the 
 restless storming of the soul; the flashes of peace, 
 joy, thankfulness; the deep-down under-stratum of 
 rest, with the apparently intolerable sense of hin- 
 drance and vexation; the' pleading for deliverance 
 with the acquiescence in the blessedness of trial — 
 "Oh, who can explain this struggle for life,'' and yet 
 the sense of steadfast calm ? 
 
 Does the road wind uphill all the way ? 
 
 Yes, to the very end ; 
 And must I travel all the day ? — 
 
 From morn to night, my friend. 
 
 Chkistina Rossbtti. 
 
 One help in the way of endurance is to look for no 
 remission. 
 
 Don't, as you read this, confuse studio despondency 
 with personal despondency. The two things run a 
 little into each other, but are entirely distinct. The 
 higher satisfactions of my life are built far above the 
 marshy lands of professional success. 
 
 ith November 1876. 
 
 I SHALL never forget one hour in the Highlands. 
 
 We dismounted from our " pownies '' and climbed to 
 
 the summit of " Dark Lochnagar." We went across 
 
 a desolate field of huge stones smoothed by the rains 
 
 2b 
 
370 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1876 
 
 and weather of age and age. The guides took us to 
 the brink. We saw only mist. After waiting for 
 half an hour the mist swirled up, as if boiling — dis- 
 parted in drifts — and we saw wild jagged teeth of 
 ancient rocks, and a terrific precipice and a dim lake 
 far below, and glimpses of immense distance. But in 
 a minute all was a wall of mist again. 
 
 In this fashion, through rendings of a misty veil, I 
 now and then catch glimpses of the absolute good of 
 trial — I see a success better than success, I mean in 
 every respect. 
 
 And in spite of the torture of "no results,'' one 
 sees that steady work day by day must keep us from 
 ruin at least, and justify us in the sight of God and 
 man. 
 
 In the wakeful dead of night, when dark thoughts 
 gathered, I burst away from them — hearing the wind 
 whistle and the cold sleet fall — to pray for the poor, 
 the needy, the tried, the tempted, the sick, the dying. 
 The relation of such prayers to the mode of their 
 answer is a great perplexity to the understanding, 
 but I found that for the offerer himself they brought 
 immense soothing and deliverance. 
 
 To J. F. H. 
 
 14ft November 1876. 
 
 I HAVE been all the happier lately from a height- 
 ened perception of two reasonable truths. 1, That 
 there is a sort of greediness and unfairness in expect- 
 ing to gain, not only the transcendent inward joys of 
 
1876 LETTEES OP JAMES SMETHAM 371 
 
 painting and general study and the ravishing delight 
 in Nature which' they evolve, but also the same 
 money rewards or rewards of fame which men obtain 
 who find no interest in their daily work, except for 
 what it brings. 2, "Count it all joy when ye fall 
 into divers tribulations "■ — a strange proposition to 
 any principle but that of faith, and an impossible one, 
 but one of the most blessed and most simplifying 
 principles if it can be received. It is alHed with the 
 beatitude which turns reviling, persecution, and all 
 manner of evil to gold and pearls, yet its blessedness 
 is partly to be reasoned out. U.g. you are poor. 
 But poverty arrests your pride, your sloth, your 
 sensuality. It makes men ride over your head ; they 
 drive you here and there, but they drive you to for- 
 bearance, meekness, submission, tenderness. If they 
 drive you over the edge of life, then after that they 
 have no more that they can do ; they have let slip 
 the leash and can hold you no longer, and you are 
 with God. But short of that, they can only benefit 
 you by their oppression, etc. The simplicity of such 
 truths, when really seen into and realised, is that 
 they cut away all entanglements at once. Half the 
 worries of men consist in some contest with neigh- 
 bours for the acres or the percentage or " the pas " 
 (the highest room at feasts), or the establishment of 
 a name or a family or some other futile good, whereas 
 even Diogenes saw into the philosophy of the tub 
 and the hollowed hand instead of the cup. The im- 
 perfection of the stoical escape from evil was : 1, That 
 
372 LETTERS OP JAMES SMETHAM 1876 
 
 it was not the escape of love, but of grim resolve ; 
 and 2, That the cartilaginous old salts who were able 
 to carry it out were only able to compel themselves. 
 They could not teach the many to do it — the weak 
 to do it. But the faith of the Gospel, instead of 
 making "cowards of us all," would make heroes of 
 us all, and without the misery of conscious heroism 
 would bestow the content and blessedness of the thing. 
 However, the Gospel neither preaches stoical 
 principles nor stoical barrennesses. It leaves the 
 varying framework of life from king to beggar 
 untouched, except by an inward power and life 
 which would equalise all. 
 
 FRAGMENTS 
 
 December 1876 (Saturday, 4 p.m.) 
 Eeturning from Bethnal Green Museum. Enjoyed 
 the visit to the full. All the Dulwich pictures here 
 and loan pictures from modern collections — interesting 
 in ways so subtle as to baffle all words. A lot of 
 small Stothards, both in oil and water-colour ; a large 
 Flaxman of " Aurora leading up the Pleiades " ; an 
 Indian-ink drawing, two feet long, which fills me — as 
 sublime, as mysterious, as lovely as night crowned 
 with stars. Even Blake did not reach this kind of 
 unutterable quality. Milton and Shakespeare did, 
 and Tennyson at his most ethereal. 
 
 The humanity of the place, too ! The torrents of 
 
1876 LETTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 373 
 
 influence flowing to the East of London fill me with 
 deep satisfaction. 
 
 " my wondrous Mother-age." 
 
 Whereas a little vine leaf by Mieris (over a 
 marble bas-relief, with every crack and stain and 
 broken Cupid's nose in it elaborated by a month of 
 labour) has each rib and worm-hole carefully painted, 
 and one of Turner's vine leaves is, when looked at 
 near, only a dab with a palette knife; yet I know 
 one of Turner's solid landscapes moves you deeply, 
 while Mieris only excites a sort of microscopic interest 
 in certain moods, and becomes a pain and burden in 
 other moods. Even so it is, I affirm, of all true 
 finish and great life projects. Rembrandt said, " A 
 picture is finished when the painter has expressed his 
 intention." 
 
 No Christian believer, however much he may feel 
 the benefit of trouble, ought to make a single one for 
 himself. The doctrine of penance is from beneath. 
 But he ought not to murmur at a single one made 
 for him. 
 
 One cure for difficulty is to have more of it. " A 
 soul inured to pain, to hardship, grief, and loss," is a 
 fortunate soul. 
 
 Truth is often inverted more than people believe. 
 They believe that riches, luxury, ease, are blessings, 
 whereas they are nothing of the sort in most cases. 
 
374 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1876 
 
 Certain airs are alterative — certain medicines — 
 certain Truths. 
 
 Thomson's Seasons read six times will drive out the 
 overplus of Tennyson-ity. As by certain foods you 
 may make your cattle what you will, so with the food 
 of the mind. These facts prove a great responsibility. 
 
 In his Journal is the following : — 
 
 Walk before breakfast — past old house with 
 rockery. 
 
 What unspeakable beauty is there in these half- 
 natural, half-invented combinations of stones and 
 mosses mellowed by time, with all their varied tints 
 of grays innumerable, greens innumerable, purples in- 
 numerable, yellows innumerable, brown yellow, and 
 butter yellow, and straw yellow, and red yellow, and 
 green yellow, and crust-coloured yellow — a world of 
 colour — dream-like tones in the chromatic scale, filling 
 the sense with unutterable harmony — immortal, vague 
 thoughts of the colour world — little piled poems, rich 
 in diction, new in thought, suggestive in idea ! 
 
 Every picture, large or small, will give delight to 
 those to whom it will give it, or can give it ; whether 
 the painter get £1000, or £2, or nothing. And 
 morally and intellectually here is the proper painter's 
 reward. Ich Dien. Here is both the Law and the 
 Gospel of that subject. And what a delivering truth 
 is that I came across, not for the first time, and 
 recorded above : Ich Dien ! 
 
1876 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 375 
 
 I see a Wesse'd little eight-inch David Cox in oil at 
 S. Kensington, or at Liverpool, or in a private house. 
 What is it ? A little fixed vision of some turn in a 
 lane, some old gate to a common with cottage tops 
 seen over sandy mounds, with some human exquisite- 
 ness of joy infused into it. E.g. a kite flying and 
 leaving you to guess who flies it. Done for pure love 
 and "nothing for reward." 
 
 A Beethoven sonata, a strain of Mozart, a lyric of 
 Milton, or Keats, or Tennyson. It bewitches you. 
 
 Some fat fellow, with thick gold dangling in front, 
 well brushed, etc., " spanking," begins to rave about 
 David Cox ; " Skies full of wind, Sir. Good deal of 
 go in Cox. Fetches high prices now. That little 
 thing that you're looking at fetched two-fifty at 
 Christie's at Sniggen's sale. Going up in the market. 
 I'm told he only got £3 : 10s. for it." 
 
 If dear old David Cox only inwardly realised the 
 delight which can never pass into nothingness given, 
 were it only to one, and never forgotten, he would 
 have felt himself well repaid. What care I what he 
 got for it ? He got hold of me, and cast a spell over 
 me I shall never lose. 
 
 It is the fat man's song which so many are taught 
 to sing, alas ! And as humming-birds are hunted to 
 death for a fading bonnet's sake, so is the Ariel of art 
 chased into every corner of the Isle of Prospero to 
 imprison him in the pine. 
 
 While the aesthetic temperament undoubtedly 
 
376 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1877 
 
 brings sublime joys, and has many joyful compensa- 
 tions, it must be kept in view that it has to be taken 
 for better or for worse ; and that there come times 
 when it is like the nigger's wife, who was taken back 
 to be unmarried, for she was, "all worse and no 
 better." 
 
 Lancashire Proverb.^ — " It takes three generations 
 to get from clogs to clogs,'' i.e. Clogs the grandfather 
 rises early, works fast, works late, saves his pence, his 
 shillings, his pounds, buys a second loom and farms 
 it, a third loom, a dozen looms, a weaving shed, a 
 factory. His son is brought up severely and gets 
 three factories and a big fortune. His son goes to 
 college, to the dogs, to the devil, and his son back to 
 Clogs — clogs — clogs — clogs — clogs. '• 
 
 To C. M. 
 
 30ft January 1877. 
 
 Just finished Part I. Imperfect Genius: William 
 
 Blake, by H. G. Hewlett. It is a piece of minute 
 
 dissection, intended to show that Blake did not realise 
 
 the fundamental characteristics of the highest rank 
 
 of genius. 1. Originality, 2. Fertility, 3. Equability, 
 
 4. Coherence, 5. Articulateness. He goes about his 
 
 work well, and dissects minutely ; but when the parts 
 
 are laid out and labelled, it leaves me precisely where 
 
 it found me — a delighted admirer, full of solemn 
 
 wonder and unwearied relish. I scarce deny a single 
 
 ' Clogs are the woodeu-soled shoes worn by working people in 
 Lancashire. 
 
1877 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 377 
 
 accusation, or contradict a single criticism. A certain 
 portion of Blake's poetry has a pure charm about it 
 (felt by Wordsworth and many others). A good deal 
 of it is ungrammatical and childish. His prophetic 
 books are the most misty nonsense, with floating fine 
 bits not worth fishing out for a busy man. The 
 serious efforts of the Swinburnes and Eossettis to 
 explain and exalt this part of Blake rouse not even 
 curiosity in earnest. As to Blake's designs, I am 
 ready to concede most, not all, that can be said against 
 them in regard to style and execution. Even the 
 charges of plagiarism, thickly studded in Hewlett's 
 criticism, I shrug my shoulders and let pass : Ossian, 
 the Gnostics, Swedenborg, Shakespeare. Even the 
 question of "mad or not madi" My verdict is, 
 " mad but harmless." (This opinion of mine is quoted 
 by W. M. Eossetti in his life of Blake prefixed to the 
 Aldine edition of his poems from my article on Blake 
 in the L. Q. B.) Yet after every such concession' I 
 feel precisely as a loving daughter feels whose genius 
 of a father is permanently touched with softening of 
 the brain, yet who, if she keep him going at seaside 
 places, out for six hours a day, may yet be saved. 
 She knows how people regard him in passing, how he 
 does queer things which make young people laugh 
 and old people cry ; that one hour he will write like 
 an angel and the next "talk like poor Poll." The 
 love flows high over all ; and even if a letter in the 
 Southport Visitor describes him as having insulted the 
 writer on the promenade, and as having promulgated 
 
378 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM ' 1877 
 
 " dangerous doctrines," calculated to upset the frame- 
 work of society and to poison the minds of the young, 
 she only glances at it with a sigh : " It will blow over." 
 I regard all such analysis as this of Hewlett's as show- 
 ing utter incapacity to sound the depths of such a 
 case. Not exactly cruel, but about as if we were to 
 run to earth that old surgeon friend of W. K. P.'s 
 who found out the " sixth sense " and get Sergeant 
 Ballantyne to " tackle him." 
 
 Blake before the magistrates for addressing a crowd 
 on the promenade with the doctrines of " Thel " ! — 
 Blake brought to book and cross-questioned till he 
 broke into a fury and got committed for contempt of 
 court ! — Blake leaving the court with a shake of his 
 fist at the bench, and crying " Amen ! huzza ! Selah ! " 
 — Blake revenging himself when he got out by com- 
 posing a mystic book in which the Bench figured 
 among spectres of heaven and hell, serpents and genii, 
 and grand Titianesque cloud spaces, and- peddling 
 flowers, and crookly ornaments, such as Edie would 
 draw. But are these the things that lower my estimate 
 of Blake 1 Of themselves they don't raise, but, taken 
 alongside with his /oJ^and his Ancient of Days, they do. 
 
 It is the easiest thing in the world to go on with 
 the "Look at that leg" style of criticism ad infinitum. 
 Neither is there any objection to the overthrow of mis- 
 taken friends, where they claim a kind of superiority 
 for Blake to which he has no claim. 
 
 Flaxman, Fuseli, Varley, Linnell, these men saw 
 the soul in Blake, knowing that the body of his art 
 
1877 LKTTEES OF JAMES SMETHAM 379 
 
 could scarcely contain it. This anatomist, with his 
 "origin and insertion" of muscles, murders to dissect 
 the body. 
 
 5th February. 
 In train on way to Westminster. To so many 
 people nothing is " worth while " — not worth while 
 telling, not worth while writing, and yet the incidents 
 of life are pretty similar to all — the same sort of 
 people to see and meet, the same troubles and cares 
 and fears. To most men life seems one dull round, 
 out of which Httle can be extracted. And why? 
 Chiefly because they have a low opinion of small 
 things. They don't see the dignity of the little. A 
 neighbour is nothing. A man must be Sir Garnet 
 Wolseley or Captain Nares or Charles Dickens to make 
 them care to see him. Not so did Dickens iind 
 Sloppy and Kit and Smike and little Nell. 
 
 To F. J. S. „.,, ^ 
 
 30ot Jime. 
 
 Good work is such fearfully slow work ! How 
 angry I feel with any one who wants to lure me away 
 from the easel ("unless, marry, the prince be will- 
 ing!") r spent all yesterday in — 1, Levelling in 
 cobalt and rose madder the clouds in " Going Home," 
 which looked too " worsted like." Clouds are light 
 and airy, and don't show brush marks ; and to efface 
 brush marks over a large screen of modulated cloud is 
 as if, instead of flagging a piece of causeway, you were 
 required to pave it with cherry stones one by one. 
 
380 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1877 
 
 2, In " smoothing the ravendown of darkness till 
 it smiled " in " Saturn and Vesta," infusing more gold 
 into the dim flesh tints by infinitely small touches. 
 
 I feared a bad night, for oil and water produced 
 "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble," and "What to 
 send to exhibitions" supervened. However, by 2 
 A.M. I somehow lost myself in foolish fancies, and 
 waking upon the middle of the night knew I had been 
 asleep and should sleep again. Not but that the 
 garden choir sang shrill, and two or three cocks, 
 taunting, far away, lifted up their voices on stilts out 
 of the dawning, crying, " Cock-a-doodle-doo ! There's 
 a man in Park Lane ! Cock-a-doodle-doo ! Who 
 for twenty years ! Has been trying to get on ! And 
 never will as long as he lives ! Cock-a-doodle-doo ! " 
 And then the cock's big cousin, the steam-whistle, 
 screamed in far perspective, "Just what I always 
 said myself ! " And then the muffled rumble of the 
 train to the north murmured, " Let us leave him to 
 his devices ; he doesn't do what we always told 
 him ! " 
 
 But two verses seemed given me for my comfort. 
 
 I shall triumph evermore. 
 Gratefully my God adore — 
 God so good, so true, so kind ; 
 Jesus is a thankful mind. 
 
 I shall suffer and fulfil 
 All my Father's gracious will. 
 Be in all alike resigned : 
 Jesus is a patient mind. 
 
1877 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 381 
 
 Sth July. 
 As hurricanes in the Tropics destray many a fair 
 building, and uproot many a painfully -cultivated 
 garden of bliss, so the storms of life, as life goes on, 
 sweep against one's studies. One of the George 
 Herbert's tempests falling all night will make you 
 forget a deal of Horace. Who is Horace when the 
 soul is being blown about by the winds of Eternity ? 
 Even as to painting, I take more and more pains just 
 because I live more and more above it. Conscience 
 is better than taste as a cloud-compeller. If life is 
 short, if art is long, if the night cometh, more reason 
 why I should fiee from daubing or haste. Let us get 
 one picture done, round and sound, and see it 
 solemnly launched on its voyage, and then let us fit 
 out another on the stocks, lay 
 
 The keel of oak for a noble ship 
 Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong. 
 "With timbers fashioned strong and true, 
 Stemson and keelson and sternson knee. 
 Framed with perfect symmetry. 
 
 Here is the difference between the men of faith 
 and the men of sense and time. One would think 
 that the glories of heaven and the fires of hell would 
 kill all art and science and poetry and wit and 
 humour. My witness is that, all other things being 
 equal, Godliness is profitable unto all these things. 
 
 Where Reason fails with all its powers, 
 There Faith prevails and Lore adores. 
 
382 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1877 
 
 He thus describes his last visit to Scotland : — 
 
 To Mks. TAYLOR. 
 
 27tt July (5 r.M.) 
 
 The scenery, of course, is of the grandest kind. 
 The Lord of the Isles describes the region, and in the 
 camera obscura of memory such scenes are the very 
 finest on which to feed poetry and painting. We 
 had always in view the hills of which Christopher 
 North has this exquisite line — 
 
 Morven, and morn, and spring, and solitude. 
 
 The Island of Mull, purple-peaked, was behind us. 
 Ben Cruachan, chiefly invisible, was before us, seven- 
 teen miles away. 
 
 The weather was treacherous and perfidious to 
 the last degree. If we climbed a hill we had to come 
 in with boots sopping and soaking, and clothes which 
 had to pass half their time before the fire. The boots 
 got hard and unpleasant, and it was not easy with so 
 much drying to get it thoroughly done. Again, the 
 winds of Morven and elsewhere, gusty, wailing, are 
 good in Ossianic poetry and around moated granges 
 in which you don't reside and only write about ; but 
 in an attic with the window open, when you don't 
 sleep on the first intention, these night winds and re- 
 sounding rains are another thing : they become storm 
 spirits. Then come those piercing chirrups, which, 
 just as you are dozing off, slit the thread of drowsi- 
 ness, and then the huge cock-crows and the hollow 
 lowings of the farm make your heart within you 
 
1877 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 383 
 
 desolate, and cast such forlorn lines over your life as 
 you never have in daylight, or when you can move 
 about. Let me record, to the praise of grace, how- 
 ever, that in my wakeful nights, which were several, 
 I found deep within a sweet something which assured 
 my heart, and which would have made the waking 
 hours pleasant but for the resulting depression of the 
 next day. 
 
 When at 8.10 A.M. on Thursday morning I found 
 myself on the majestic Chevalier in the morning light 
 and morning air, the pale green and white wake of 
 foam streaming a mile behind us from the powerful 
 paddles, the bow of the vessel " flying, flying South," 
 my spirits rose 75 per cent. Yet so very kind and 
 considerate and affectionate were all the friends that 
 this winged exultation seemed almost ungrateful. 
 
 As I sit in the silence of this sweet July evening, 
 having eased off the sense of travel, I am profoundly 
 thankful, on the one hand, that we are favoured with 
 such a circle of friends among the very excellent of 
 the earth, and, on the other hand, that I am safely 
 home again. 
 
 To F. J. S. 
 
 ZOth July. In garden, 7 p.m. 
 I GOT sixty small sketches and other memoranda 
 during my boatings and goings among the islands on 
 the coast of Scotland. Ever since I was sixteen this 
 habit of constant seizing of something rather than 
 nothing has been my chief resource for landscape in 
 
384 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 1877 
 
 the studio. And indeed, for passing effects or inci- 
 dentally epic lines, this is the only way. Other men 
 go, as friends of ours now are going, for two months 
 to Arran with boards 2 feet 6 inches long or more, 
 and they sit for a week and paint " The Goat Fell, 
 Arran, as seen from Water-Colour Creek," or " Ben 
 Much Whisky from the foot of Ben More Whisky." 
 When they come home they mount a dozen large and 
 careful " views " and make up a good portfolio. And 
 what can anybody do but admire the serene gray 
 hills and rocks with boats and nets drying, while a 
 Highlander smokes a short pipe just where " the 
 figure is needed " 1 I can't do the like o' that. No ; 
 it isn't in my way at all. What I do is to grasp 
 right and left at everything striking which promises 
 some day to rise into what I think a solemn or sweet 
 distance ; or to give a rock for Sir Bedivere to clank 
 his iron heel on. But lo you ! while Mr. Briggs will 
 buy the view of Ben More Whisky, because that was 
 where he shot the monarch of the glen, and felt as if 
 his foot was on his native heath, and rejoiced over it 
 at the " Cuil Fail " with Tonald and much whisky : I 
 say Mr. Briggs won't even look at Sir Bedivere ; 
 never heard of the gentleman ; thinks he was a 
 cracked friend of Burne Jones's, who did those 
 confounded fish- coloured pictures at the Grosvenor 
 Gallery, and says he must be going. 
 
 We may here allow the reader to take leave of our friend in 
 a cheery mood. Not too long did it last. He returned home 
 
LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 385 
 
 weary and somewhat over- excited by his journey. Insomnia 
 commenced. Dark clouds hovered over and around him. His 
 later letters are touched with a solemn pathos — the low wailing 
 of a minor key seems to make itself heard in them. He saw the 
 dark valley before him, and, as it were, mentally gi'asped the 
 hands of those who loved and watched over him in a prelusive 
 farewell. No need to follow him in his sad bereavement. His 
 latter years were spent in gloomy though peaceful and painless 
 inaction. But they are past, too, now ; and he has learnt the 
 meaning of those transcendent words, clearly or dimly inscribed 
 on every human heart in its upward yearning : 
 
 " In Thy light shall we see light." 
 
 20 
 
POEMS 
 
*»* Of the following poems the first was composed in child- 
 hood, and may be worth preserving for the Blake-like simplicity 
 pervading it. The next, "Oh let me die at Dawn," was com- 
 posed in youth, and printed, together with some others, in 
 Blackwood's Magazine for the month of September 1841. The 
 third, "Restless clouds of dusky gray," was also written in 
 early manhood. The rest are the productions of his maturer 
 years. 
 
POEMS 
 
 LINES COMPOSED AT THE AGE OF NINE YEARS 
 
 Little birds that sing so sweet, 
 They deserve to taste their meat ; 
 With their little eye-peeps see, 
 Singing on the cherry-tree. 
 
 In the eve they close their eyes : 
 Lord of heaven and earth and skies. 
 In the morning they do sing 
 Praises to their God and King : 
 
 Sing to Him their joyous notes. 
 Warbling with their little throats. 
 They've no storehouse, bam, nor com. 
 But God feeds them night and mom. 
 
 Oh let me die at dawn, 
 
 The stir of living men 
 Would call my waning spirit back 
 
 Unto its home again. 
 
390 POEMS 
 
 But at tlae early light 
 
 Existence seems afar, 
 Back in the depths of parted time 
 
 As fading planets are. 
 
 Let me go forth alone 
 
 Before the sun uprise, 
 And meet the springing of the morn 
 
 In its own distant skies. 
 
 Yes ! let me die at dawn. 
 The stir of living men 
 
 Would call my waning spirit back 
 Unto its home again. 
 
 Bestless clouds of dusky gray 
 Fill the sky at shut of day, 
 Wandering on in solemn hosts. 
 Flitting dark and purposeless 
 As a vessel in distress ; 
 Flitting on like unlaid ghosts. 
 
 Where the gusty south wind passes. 
 Bending all the tufted grasses. 
 Sighing in the bladed sedge, 
 By the moorland water's edge. 
 Making every bulrush whistle, 
 Blowing down from every thistle. 
 
 On the slope of every hill 
 Seems to shudder every tree, 
 Every poplar seems to be 
 Sighing loud against its will ; 
 Little riplets sweep the river. 
 Blinding every clear reflection, 
 Driven in this and that direction 
 As the curdling waters shiver. 
 
POEMS 391 
 
 Where the sky has any light, 
 'Tis a wild and fearful gleam, 
 Like the spiritual beam 
 Of the lonely northern night, 
 Where the muffled sledges go. 
 Flying shades in wastes of snow. 
 
 Not a star can pierce the cover 
 
 Where those wide-winged shadows hover ; 
 
 Not a note of any bird 
 
 When the wind a moment ceases, 
 
 And the sand-drifts fall to pieces ; 
 
 Not a chirrup can be heard. 
 
 Oh, how very strange and lonely 
 To be walking in the meadows, 
 As a shadow blown with shadows ; 
 As it were a spirit only. 
 
 Not a memory of the sun 
 Crosses the gray waste of thought, 
 But the silent dead are brought 
 From their coffins one by one. 
 
 She round whom thy arm would twine 
 When the summer eve was sinking, 
 And your mutual eyes were drinking. 
 Thou from hers and she from thine : 
 
 He whose voice long since would utter 
 What thy lips unconscious mutter. 
 Words of sweet and solemn warning 
 Spoken till thy heart was stilled. 
 And ye paced about the iield 
 Silent in the breezy morning : 
 
 All the fragrance of the clover, 
 And the glimmering hedge-roses 
 Closing as the daylight closes, 
 Come and flood thy memory over ; 
 
392 POEMS 
 
 For the clover and the daisies 
 Which the dew unthinking raises, 
 Seven new springs have blown above her, 
 She the lost to thee the lover. 
 
 Many bells are tolling slow, 
 Midnight past two hours ago. 
 Lightly echoing drips the rain ; 
 Ghostly lies the window pane 
 Slanting on the shadowy walls 
 Where the street lamps' radiance falls. 
 Sleepless I am staring wide, 
 Thought and Silence at my side 
 Wave the hand but close the lip, 
 And in floating fellowship 
 Lead my spirit here and there, 
 Wavering like a gossamer 
 Over London dim and vast, 
 Lengthened street and ample square, 
 Park and garden, tower and stair. 
 Spire and dome and creaking mast. 
 Dreadful London, vast and dim. 
 What thou art no man can tell. 
 Brain and sense and reason swim. 
 Scarcely dare my spirit dwell 
 On thy mingled heaven and hell — 
 Scarcely watch, 
 
 That dark river's quivering lamps 
 Struggling through its folded damps. 
 
 THE LITTLE POOL 
 
 There is a little pool in fields remote 
 (Not many seek it, or admire when found). 
 Thick set with rushes and broad-bladed flags 
 In all its creeks among the twisted roots 
 
POEMS 393 
 
 Of gray old willow-trees ; and half cream&d o'er 
 With pulpy weed, and five-leaved water-flowers ; 
 And in its opening centre, deepening down 
 Into the fathomless inverted heaven. 
 Small dwarf oaks, and the crimpy hazel, shake 
 On breezy days beside the fragrant thorn 
 That hems it in ; and many a little bird — 
 Quick robin, timorous wren, coquetting iinch, 
 Shy blackbird — in among their trembling boughs 
 Have sung and loved for twenty summers past. 
 The oxen's bellow is the loudest sound 
 Heard by this brink, save when with sudden roar 
 The thunder stoops and bellows on the ground 
 Among the pastures, and its fiery breath 
 One ghastly instant shows the startled trees 
 Nodding with terror o'er the blackened wave. 
 All other sounds are soft and sweet and low ; 
 Light winds pass flute-like all the afternoon 
 Among the reeds ; and wild bees, as they pass 
 To neighbouring clover, bring their soothing hum 
 To vibrate in the airs that fan its breast ; 
 The cuckoo, when the days are warm and still 
 Comes quietly above, and satisfied 
 With two plain notes, repeats them o'er and o'er ; 
 While stock-doves, hidden in the dusky firs 
 Of belting thickets, tremulous reply. 
 The coot has made her nest within a cove 
 Guarded by tangled roots and hanging grass, 
 And he, who in the hot mid-day will come 
 Slily across the thistles, there may see 
 The fleet of four black chicks securely sail 
 Into that harbour at her bagpipe call — 
 One plaintive anxious note — herself unseen ; 
 Or, sitting for awhile upon the bank. 
 May watch the little world of happy life 
 Beneath and on the surface ; down below 
 The glossy velvet tadpoles wriggle round 
 
394 POEMS 
 
 Tlie entangled water-weeds, while on the top 
 
 Flies numerous dart along, or steer across, — 
 
 Some in a coat of green and purple mail, 
 
 The roving corsairs of their little sea. 
 
 Some trembling on their long tenacious legs, 
 
 Swaying like tiny chariots hung with springs, — 
 
 Or spiral troops of ever restless gnats 
 
 Whirl round and teaze the eye to dizziness. 
 
 So full and vital is this nameless pool, 
 
 And yet so quiet, that its life might be 
 
 Made to portray the tranquil life of thought 
 
 Where glittering images sport noiselessly 
 
 And fancies chased by reeison flutter o'er 
 
 The depths through which the heaven of the heart 
 
 Lies, the calm reflex of the eternal heaven. 
 
 OBLIVION 
 
 Oblivion claims and equals all 
 
 Of that which was and that which is ; 
 
 I hear the distant torrent fall 
 And crumble in the dumb abyss. 
 
 I see the foaming ages sweep 
 
 To perish in the utter deep. 
 
 Why, throbbing heart, wilt thou impose 
 Thy treasured toil on thankless death. 
 
 Who neither aim nor value knows ; 
 But flings the jewelled drop beneath 
 
 The tear-drifts ever plunging down 
 
 As rich, as fruitless as thine own 1 
 
 For dying ever, ever born, 
 
 Much done and nought accomplished, 
 
 Man is his own, his fellows' scorn, 
 He envies and laments the dead. 
 
 And, panting still for something new. 
 
 Nought does but they were wont to do. 
 
POEMS 395 
 
 The circuit of the whirling winds 
 
 Scoflf rudely at his vague desires, 
 Which neither law nor fulness binds, 
 
 Whom the sweet course of nature tires ; 
 Who, where broad rivers greet the sea, 
 Mourns only their monotony. 
 
 Oh, cease thy dread o'er-labouring course. 
 Thou myriad-tongued, relentless Time ! 
 
 My soul is crushed beneath thy force 
 Of countless motions raised sublime 
 
 Before the view of human thought, 
 
 Whose order it inherits not. 
 
 Here, stretched upon the mountain grass, 
 
 I see the imperious sun ascend. 
 And watch the sparkling moments pass, 
 
 As from the giddy zenith tend 
 Those fiery wheels, till he in haste 
 Has like a gasping racer pass'd. 
 
 Then anguished in the twilight see, 
 With brimming eyes, the lofty sage, 
 
 Who watched in deep antiquity 
 That sun fulfil his pilgrimage ; 
 
 His hopes, his tears, with mine the same, 
 
 Earth bears no echo of his name. 
 
 I bless the dead, whose scattered dust 
 Has joined new forms of shifting life ; 
 
 I bless the soul escaped its trust. 
 Its bonds, its wonder, and its strife ; 
 
 Thee, Christ, I bless, who Death o'erthrew, 
 
 Whose Spirit maketh all things new. 
 
396 POEMS 
 
 A THOUGHT OF GOD 
 
 As children dip their fingers in the waves 
 
 And feel a shuddering gladness while they see 
 
 Their dazzling myriads glitter to the shore, 
 
 And hear the wide pervading consonance 
 
 That never ceases either night or day, 
 
 But fills the hollow caverns of the soul 
 
 And makes them sound with vague and wordless thought, 
 
 That seeks, but never finds, an utterance : 
 
 Even so, O Lord, is any thought of Thee. 
 
 Like the deep powers that clothe us when the woods 
 
 In summer midnights rest beneath their leaves. 
 
 When the full moon stands steadfastly in heaven. 
 
 And white stars tremble through the blackened firs 
 
 Above a steep and gurgling ravine 
 
 That throbs with passion of the nightingale, 
 
 And strong imaginations lift us up 
 
 To float in visions never seen by day : 
 
 So wondrous, Lord, is any thought of Thee. 
 
 As in the hamlet meadows, while the sun 
 
 Sinks through rich elms and humming sycamores, 
 
 And gilds the mosses of an ancient oak 
 
 Where coos the ring-dove — gilds the chestnut flowers 
 
 And turns the countless gnats to sparks of gold, 
 
 And pensive flushes o'er the low church tower. 
 
 Whence beats the voice of Time in rings of sound 
 
 That seem to vanish in Eternity ; 
 
 So sweet, O Lord, is any thought of Thee. 
 
 As o'er a vast and blossoming champaign, 
 Its countless fields, its orchards, and its cots 
 Lashed round with roses, mounts the gladdening sun. 
 Dances on every brook and window pane ; 
 
POEMS 397 
 
 While all at once the woods burst forth in song, 
 And every flower-bank waves its fragrances, 
 And early labourers whistle to the morn, 
 And curly milkmaids sing among the herds. 
 And every daisy opens wide its cup 
 To drink the sunbeams and the flashing dews, 
 And gleaming gossamers sow the earth with light : 
 So glad, O Lord, are all who think on Thee. 
 
 So fathomless, so wondrous, and so sweet, 
 So glad, Lord, the thoughts of dying men 
 Who meditate on Thee amid Thy works : 
 Thou, who didst make the mystery of the sou], 
 And set therein the mystery of the world. 
 Teach us to see Thee ever, that the abyss 
 Of craving and unsatisfied desire. 
 And longings that o'er-arch the firmament. 
 May rest in widening fulness till the hour 
 That makes Thy universe complete in Thee. 
 
 IMMOETAL LOVE 
 
 Who knows the endless wealth of love ? 
 How far its winged odours move ? 
 When Mary brake with breaking heart 
 
 Her spikenard o'er her Master's head, 
 She chose, as erst, the better part ; 
 
 Embalmed at once the quick and dead. 
 
 We smell on earth its fragrance stiU, 
 It curls and wreathes on Zion's hill ; 
 For as its incense rose sublime. 
 
 From heart and alabaster riven. 
 It fiUed the ample house of time. 
 
 And every golden hall of heaven. 
 
398 POEMS 
 
 THE REST 
 
 Servant, cease thy labour : 
 Thou hast borne thy burden ; 
 Thou hast done thy task ! 
 In the violent morning, 
 When the blast was bitter. 
 And thy fellows sleeping, 
 Thou wast out and doing. 
 With thy stubborn ploughshare 
 Eiving up the hillside — 
 Get thee home and rest ! 
 
 In the sweltering noonday. 
 When thy mates were lying 
 By the purling runnel 
 In the pleasant shadow. 
 Thou, with arm wide sweeping, 
 And with trenchant sickle, 
 Filledst thy broad bosom 
 With the tossing corn. 
 
 While from highest heaven 
 To the western sea-rim 
 Slowly wheeled the great sun. 
 White and fierce and cloudless. 
 Every blazing moment, 
 Eager and unresting, 
 Didst thou clasp the harvest — 
 Haste thee now to rest ! 
 
 While the west grew ruddy. 
 And the birds were chanting 
 Softly, softly, " Cease ye, 
 Cease your toil, ye mortals," 
 Stook on stook behind thee 
 Didst thou leave to ripen ; 
 
POEMS 399 
 
 But thy arm is drooping, 
 And thine eye is heavy — 
 Thon shalt work no longer : 
 Get thee home and slumber, 
 Get thee to thy rest ! 
 
 Cross the lengthening shadows 
 Of the peaceful fir-groves, 
 Cross the quiet churchyard, 
 Where the mossy hillocks 
 With their folded daisies 
 And their sleeping lambkins 
 All say, " Eequiescat," 
 Lay thee down beside them, 
 Till the bells chime to thee. 
 Simple bells that tell thee 
 " Rest thee, rest thee, rest thee " ; 
 Till they bring thee rest ! 
 
 While the huge moon rises. 
 And the large white planets 
 Wheel and glow above thee. 
 Till the cottage tapers, 
 Swallowed by the darkness. 
 Leave no human symbol 
 Underneath the sky. 
 
 Sleep a dreamless slumber. 
 For thine eye shall never 
 See the gates of morning 
 Lift their awful shadows. 
 Nor the gold and amber 
 Of the heavenly dayspring 
 Sparkle on the heather 
 Of the purple moorland. 
 
 Thou shalt wake no more ! 
 
 August 1855. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Academy, pictures in, 18, 27 ; 
 
 of 1874, 339 
 Anger, divine, 268 
 Appeal, modes of, in art, 375 
 Arnold, Matthew, 128, 234 
 Art, good V. tad, 301 ; good 
 art imperfect, 269 ; public 
 opinion of, 197,269,281 ; art 
 as related to nature, 196, 317; 
 aims in art, 308 
 
 Battle of life, 224 
 
 Bible, appropriation of the, 
 
 221 
 Birthday, 121 
 Blake, W., 231, 335, 376 
 Blessedness of the religious life, 
 
 131 
 Bognor, 183, 226 
 Boliugbroke, 191 
 Books, delights of, 189 
 Boswell's Tov/r to the Hebrides, 
 
 110 
 British Artists' Exldbition, 119 
 Bronte novels, 75 
 Brook, Tennyson's, 285 
 Brown, F. M., 259, 359 
 Browning's Ming and the Book, 
 
 235 
 Burne-Jones, E., 96, 168 
 
 Caees of this life, 321 
 
 Carlyle, T., 110, 295 
 Charles Xll., 84 
 Chatterton, 58, 211 
 Cheerfulness in religion, 156 
 Christ the sympathiser, 297 
 Christmas, 59 
 Circus, the, 186 
 Class-leading, 310, 331 
 Clown and his wife, the, 181 
 Coleridge, 306 
 Collins, 119, 289, 354 
 Colossians III., 74 
 Communion with friends, 129 
 Conceit, forms of, 206 
 Constable, 243, 280, 289 
 Content and discontent, 265 
 
 298 
 Cooper, Thomas, 297 
 Cowper-Teniple, Mr. and Mrs., 
 
 332 
 Cox, D., 254, 375 
 Criticism discouraged, 82 
 Crome, 349, 355 
 
 Dahby, F., 171, 289, 315, 325 
 Death of friends, how to be re- 
 garded, 115 
 Despondency, 369 
 Dickens, C, 237, 275 
 D'Israeli's novels, 231 
 Dobell, Sydney, 214 
 Dulwich Picture Gallery, 265 
 
 2 D 
 
402 
 
 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 Dunoon, 137 
 Dutch painters, 198 
 
 Eastboukne, 72 
 
 English Art, conditioning of, 
 
 337 
 Etchings, 237 
 Eugenie Gucrin, 128 
 Eusemere, 132, 134 
 Evening walk, 67, 104, 120 
 Excursion in Kent, 237 
 Exhibitions, 119 
 
 Feens in the garden, 340 
 Finish in pictures, 373 
 Franco-Prussian War, 242, 249 
 French Art, 252 
 French Revolution, Carlyle, 111 
 Friends, 296, 341, 363 
 Friendships, 90, 188, 293 
 
 Gainsborough, 284 
 Galatians, Epistle to, 233 
 Galley of Art, 337 
 George Eliot's novels, 300, 303, 
 
 305 
 Gilchrist, A., 110 
 God without variableness, 347 
 Goodwood Races, 229 
 Go on, 223, 247 
 Gregory, Dr., first acquaintance 
 
 with, 9 
 
 Happiness increasing with years, 
 104 
 
 Hawthorne, N., 227, 253 
 
 Haydon, B. R., 57, 160 
 
 Hazlitt's "Essays," 11 
 
 Heavenly Wisdom imperson- 
 ated, 111 
 
 Hebrews, Epistle to, 170 
 
 Hemans, 352 
 
 Herbert, Geo., 217 
 
 Home attractions, 87, 353 
 
 Home noises, 274 
 
 Hours of work, 113 
 
 Human relationships, intricacy 
 
 of, 238 
 Humility of the Christ-life, 322 
 Hunstanton beach, 240 
 Hythe, 98 
 
 Ignorance in art, 269 
 Illuminated books, 109 
 Illustration work, 88 
 Imagination and religion. 111 
 Imagination in art, 253 
 Inadequacy of Science, 246 
 Indian snmmer of thought and 
 
 study, 323 
 lona, Duke of Argyle's, 343 
 
 Keats's Letters, 57 
 Keith of Ramlston, 214 
 Knowledge-books, 42 
 
 Landseek, E., 320 
 Lawrence, Sir T., 163 
 Leigh and its associations, 142 
 Leslie and his paintings, 147, 
 
 150 
 Lessons learned in trouble, 123, 
 
 371 
 Letter- writing, 90, 121 
 Light and shade, 354 
 Linnell, 161, 257, 355 
 Lions in stone, 302 
 Little Joys of life, 227 
 
 Martineau, H., 367 
 Maud, Tennyson's, 68 
 Memorials of a Quiet Life, 254 
 Micawber, Mr., 146 
 Millais's " Order of Release," 
 
 56 ; landscapes, 300, 339 
 Millet, J. F., 359, 365 
 Modem Painters, Ruskin's, 
 
 79 
 Monumentalism, 42 
 Moral instinct as a test of truth, 
 
 343 
 Moral law, 207 
 
INDEX 
 
 403 
 
 Mulready, 284 
 
 Name in art, 269, 355 
 Newspaper reading, 141 
 " Now," 193 
 
 Painteb, not a business man, 
 
 258 
 Painters' difficulties, 66, 125, 
 
 165, 212, 248, 334 
 Paintings — 
 Brookside, 14 
 Bird-oatcliers, 18 
 Christ at Emmaus, 18 
 Counting the cost, 18 
 Caedmon, 113 
 Flageolet, 18 
 Going home, 879 
 Hymn of Last Supper, 18, 26, 
 
 31, 226, 238, 333 
 Hesper, 27, 222 
 Lady of Shalott, 55 
 Moorland Edge, 18, 127 
 Pilate's wife, 27, 28 
 Frospero and Miranda, 27 
 Robert Levett, 18 
 Saturn and Vesta, 380 
 Women of the Crucifixion, 20, 
 27, 222 
 Parker, Prof. W. K., 19, 144, 
 
 220 
 Pathos of life, 294 
 Peace of God, 81 
 Permanency of a book, 155 
 Persistence, 223 
 Philippian church, 221 
 Pictures, price u. value, 355, 
 
 375 
 Place, its significance, 157 
 Poems — 
 
 Rotifer, 176 
 
 Little birds that sing so sweet, 
 
 389 
 Oh let me die at dawn, 389 
 Restless clouds of dusky gray, 
 
 390 
 Many bells are tolling slow, 
 
 392 
 There is a little pool, 392 
 Oblivion claims and equals all, 
 
 394 
 As children dip their fingers. 
 
 Poems — 
 
 Who knows the endless wealth 
 of love, 397 
 
 Servant, cease thy labour, 397 
 Poetic Idylls, 48, 152, 153 
 Portrait Gallery, National, 162 
 Price of a blessing, 174 
 Psalms, historic study of, 333 
 
 Raffaele's picture of sleeping 
 
 knight, 195 
 Religious studies, 170 
 Rembrandt, 236, 267, 291 
 Reverence for common things, 
 
 253 
 Reynolds and West, 223 
 "Ringing grooves of change," 
 
 161 
 Romney, 118 
 Rossetti, D. G., 29, 96, 102, 
 
 260, 262 ; letters from, 30, 
 
 32, 162, 216, 261 
 Rossetti's Marly Italian Poets, 
 
 114 
 Rotifer, the, 168, 176 
 Ruskin, 2, 61, 80, 102, 110, 
 
 113, 196, 314 ; letters from, 
 
 21, 23, 25, 95, 174, 254 
 
 Sabbath, the, 349 
 
 St. Paul's Epistles, 234 
 
 Salient points in sketching, 357 
 
 Scotland, last visit to, 382 
 
 Scott, D., 313 
 
 Scott, Sir W., 321 
 
 Scott's, W. B., studio, 312 
 
 Sea-dreams, 241 
 
 Shakespeare, 272 ; Timon of 
 Athens, 317 ; Julius Ccesar, 
 325 ; Qoriolanus, 326 ; An- 
 tony and Cleopatra, 332 ; As 
 You Lilce It, 365 
 
 Shields, F. J., 26, 252, 259 
 
 Silence before pictures, 223 
 
 Sin, 208 
 
 Sketching, modes of, 100, 357 
 
 Slow and sure, 247 
 
404 
 
 LETTERS OF JAMES SMETHAM 
 
 Small things, 227, 379 
 
 Smethan, James, his birth, 2 ; 
 at school, Woodhouse Grove, 
 3 ; apprenticed to Mr. Willson 
 of Lincoln, 10 ; goes to Lon- 
 don, 14 ; marries, 19 ; ac- 
 quaintance with Mr. Ruskin, 
 26, 61 ; his Mends, 29 ; ac- 
 quaintance with D. G.Rossetti, 
 29 ; his last illness and death, 
 32 ; his personality and 
 character, 34 ; conversation, 
 35 ; studies, 36 ; articles in 
 the LoTidon Quarterlyt 38 ; 
 objects of life, 40 ; corre- 
 spondence, 42 ; business in- 
 adequacy, 43 ; anomalous 
 position in art, 45 ; speciality 
 in art, 48, 151 
 
 Smith, Alexander, 213 216 
 
 Soldier's destiny, 249 
 
 Spiritual growth and evolution, 
 54 
 
 "Squaring," 42, 108, 158, 218, 
 228, 324, 358 
 
 Steward, Eev. G., 136 
 
 Stimulation of friends, 151 
 
 Stothard, 69, 242, 245, 352 
 
 Strain of social intercourse, 259 
 
 Struggles, 157, 369 
 
 Tastes differ, 300 
 
 Taylor's, Isaac, Saturday Even- 
 ing, 93 ; visit to his tomb, 
 182 
 
 Teaching at Westminster Col- 
 lege, 55 
 
 Tennyson's poems, 13, 68, 71, 
 154 
 
 Theocritus class-leader, 304 
 
 "Think and die," 332 
 
 Toasting-fork maker, 106 
 
 Tone in a picture, 264 
 
 Trajan Column, 327 
 
 Troubles not to be sought, 
 373 
 
 Truth abiding, 80, 105 
 
 Turner's landscapes, 82, 197, 
 283, 309, 373 
 
 Unpbetentiousness 
 
 Christian life, 287 
 
 Use and beauty, 268 
 
 of the 
 
 Vain, the, 348 
 "Ventilators," 42 
 Veronese, Paul, 84 
 Voltaire's Charles XII., 84 
 
 Wakeful nights, 138, 370, 
 
 380, 383 
 Walker, Frederick, 360 
 Walpole, Sir R., 191 
 Water v. oil, 255 
 Watts, G. F., 27, 333 
 WilMe, D., 159, 276, 284 
 Wilson, Richard, 269 
 Woman's opinion of beauty, 
 
 146 
 Wuthering Heights, 76 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clahk, Edinlurgh. 
 
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