There are in existence no less than four copies of the lecture, the earliest of which is entirely3 in the author’s handwriting. The others are type-written and contain many corrections and additions made by the author in manuscript. These have all been collated4 and the text here given contains, as nearly as possible, the lecture in the original form as delivered by the author during his tour in the United States.
Among the many debts which we owe to the supreme5 ?sthetic faculty6 of Goethe is that he was the first to teach us to define beauty in terms the most concrete possible, to realise it, I mean, always in its special manifestations8. So, in the lecture which I have the honour to deliver before you, I will not try to give you any abstract definition of beauty—any such universal formula for it as was sought for by the philosophy of the eighteenth century—still less to communicate to you that which in its essence is incommunicable, the virtue9 by which a particular picture or poem affects us with a unique and special joy; but rather to point out to you the general ideas which characterise the great English Renaissance of Art in this century, to discover their source, as far as that is possible, and to estimate their future as far as that is possible.
I call it our English Renaissance because it is indeed a sort of new birth of the spirit of man, like the great Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, in its desire for a more gracious and comely10 way of life, its passion for physical beauty, its exclusive attention to form, its seeking for new subjects for poetry, new forms of art, new intellectual and imaginative enjoyments11: and I call it our romantic movement because it is our most recent expression of beauty.
It has been described as a mere12 revival13 of Greek modes of thought, and again as a mere revival of medi?val feeling. Rather I would say that to these forms of the human spirit it has added whatever of artistic14 value the intricacy and complexity15 and experience of modern life can give: taking from the one its clearness of vision and its sustained calm, from the other its variety of expression and the mystery of its vision. For what, as Goethe said, is the study of the ancients but a return to the real world (for that is what they did); and what, said Mazzini, is medi?valism but individuality?
It is really from the union of Hellenism, in its breadth, its sanity17 of purpose, its calm possession of beauty, with the adventive, the intensified18 individualism, the passionate19 colour of the romantic spirit, that springs the art of the nineteenth century in England, as from the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy sprang the beautiful boy Euphorion.
Such expressions as ‘classical’ and ‘romantic’ are, it is true, often apt to become the mere catchwords of schools. We must always remember that art has only one sentence to utter: there is for her only one high law, the law of form or harmony—yet between the classical and romantic spirit we may say that there lies this difference at least, that the one deals with the type and the other with the exception. In the work produced under the modern romantic spirit it is no longer the permanent, the essential truths of life that are treated of; it is the momentary20 situation of the one, the momentary aspect of the other that art seeks to render. In sculpture, which is the type of one spirit, the subject predominates over the situation; in painting, which is the type of the other, the situation predominates over the subject.
There are two spirits, then: the Hellenic spirit and the spirit of romance may be taken as forming the essential elements of our conscious intellectual tradition, of our permanent standard of taste. As regards their origin, in art as in politics there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression. Yet, I think that in estimating the sensuous21 and intellectual spirit which presides over our English Renaissance, any attempt to isolate22 it in any way from in the progress and movement and social life of the age that has produced it would be to rob it of its true vitality23, possibly to mistake its true meaning. And in disengaging from the pursuits and passions of this crowded modern world those passions and pursuits which have to do with art and the love of art, we must take into account many great events of history which seem to be the most opposed to any such artistic feeling.
Alien then from any wild, political passion, or from the harsh voice of a rude people in revolt, as our English Renaissance must seem, in its passionate cult7 of pure beauty, its flawless devotion to form, its exclusive and sensitive nature, it is to the French Revolution that we must look for the most primary factor of its production, the first condition of its birth: that great Revolution of which we are all the children though the voices of some of us be often loud against it; that Revolution to which at a time when even such spirits as Coleridge and Wordsworth lost heart in England, noble messages of love blown across seas came from your young Republic.
It is true that our modern sense of the continuity of history has shown us that neither in politics nor in nature are there revolutions ever but evolutions only, and that the prelude24 to that wild storm which swept over France in 1789 and made every king in Europe tremble for his throne, was first sounded in literature years before the Bastille fell and the Palace was taken. The way for those red scenes by Seine and Loire was paved by that critical spirit of Germany and England which accustomed men to bring all things to the test of reason or utility or both, while the discontent of the people in the streets of Paris was the echo that followed the life of Emile and of Werther. For Rousseau, by silent lake and mountain, had called humanity back to the golden age that still lies before us and preached a return to nature, in passionate eloquence25 whose music still lingers about our keen northern air. And Goethe and Scott had brought romance back again from the prison she had lain in for so many centuries—and what is romance but humanity?
Yet in the womb of the Revolution itself, and in the storm and terror of that wild time, tendencies were hidden away that the artistic Renaissance bent26 to her own service when the time came—a scientific tendency first, which has borne in our own day a brood of somewhat noisy Titans, yet in the sphere of poetry has not been unproductive of good. I do not mean merely in its adding to enthusiasm that intellectual basis which in its strength, or that more obvious influence about which Wordsworth was thinking when he said very nobly that poetry was merely the impassioned expression in the face of science, and that when science would put on a form of flesh and blood the poet would lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration. Nor do I dwell much on the great cosmical emotion and deep pantheism of science to which Shelley has given its first and Swinburne its latest glory of song, but rather on its influence on the artistic spirit in preserving that close observation and the sense of limitation as well as of clearness of vision which are the characteristics of the real artist.
The great and golden rule of art as well as of life, wrote William Blake, is that the more distinct, sharp and defined the boundary line, the more perfect is the work of art; and the less keen and sharp the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism28 and bungling29. ‘Great inventors in all ages knew this—Michael Angelo and Albert Durer are known by this and by this alone’; and another time he wrote, with all the simple directness of nineteenth-century prose, ‘to generalise is to be an idiot.’
And this love of definite conception, this clearness of vision, this artistic sense of limit, is the characteristic of all great work and poetry; of the vision of Homer as of the vision of Dante, of Keats and William Morris as of Chaucer and Theocritus. It lies at the base of all noble, realistic and romantic work as opposed to the colourless and empty abstractions of our own eighteenth-century poets and of the classical dramatists of France, or of the vague spiritualities of the German sentimental30 school: opposed, too, to that spirit of transcendentalism which also was root and flower itself of the great Revolution, underlying31 the impassioned contemplation of Wordsworth and giving wings and fire to the eagle-like flight of Shelley, and which in the sphere of philosophy, though displaced by the materialism32 and positiveness of our day, bequeathed two great schools of thought, the school of Newman to Oxford33, the school of Emerson to America. Yet is this spirit of transcendentalism alien to the spirit of art. For the artist can accept no sphere of life in exchange for life itself. For him there is no escape from the bondage34 of the earth: there is not even the desire of escape.
He is indeed the only true realist: symbolism, which is the essence of the transcendental spirit, is alien to him. The metaphysical mind of Asia will create for itself the monstrous35, many-breasted idol36 of Ephesus, but to the Greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which conforms most clearly to the perfect facts of physical life.
‘The storm of revolution,’ as Andre Chenier said, ‘blows out the torch of poetry.’ It is not for some little time that the real influence of such a wild cataclysm37 of things is felt: at first the desire for equality seems to have produced personalities38 of more giant and Titan stature39 than the world had ever known before. Men heard the lyre of Byron and the legions of Napoleon; it was a period of measureless passions and of measureless despair; ambition, discontent, were the chords of life and art; the age was an age of revolt: a phase through which the human spirit must pass, but one in which it cannot rest. For the aim of culture is not rebellion but peace, the valley perilous40 where ignorant armies clash by night being no dwelling41-place meet for her to whom the gods have assigned the fresh uplands and sunny heights and clear, untroubled air.
And soon that desire for perfection, which lay at the base of the Revolution, found in a young English poet its most complete and flawless realisation.
Phidias and the achievements of Greek art are foreshadowed in Homer: Dante prefigures for us the passion and colour and intensity42 of Italian painting: the modern love of landscape dates from Rousseau, and it is in Keats that one discerns the beginning of the artistic renaissance of England.
Byron was a rebel and Shelley a dreamer; but in the calmness and clearness of his vision, his perfect self-control, his unerring sense of beauty and his recognition of a separate realm for the imagination, Keats was the pure and serene43 artist, the forerunner44 of the pre-Raphaelite school, and so of the great romantic movement of which I am to speak.
Blake had indeed, before him, claimed for art a lofty, spiritual mission, and had striven to raise design to the ideal level of poetry and music, but the remoteness of his vision both in painting and poetry and the incompleteness of his technical powers had been adverse45 to any real influence. It is in Keats that the artistic spirit of this century first found its absolute incarnation.
And these pre-Raphaelites, what were they? If you ask nine-tenths of the British public what is the meaning of the word ?sthetics, they will tell you it is the French for affectation or the German for a dado; and if you inquire about the pre-Raphaelites you will hear something about an eccentric lot of young men to whom a sort of divine crookedness46 and holy awkwardness in drawing were the chief objects of art. To know nothing about their great men is one of the necessary elements of English education.
As regards the pre-Raphaelites the story is simple enough. In the year 1847 a number of young men in London, poets and painters, passionate admirers of Keats all of them, formed the habit of meeting together for discussions on art, the result of such discussions being that the English Philistine47 public was roused suddenly from its ordinary apathy48 by hearing that there was in its midst a body of young men who had determined49 to revolutionise English painting and poetry. They called themselves the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood50.
In England, then as now, it was enough for a man to try and produce any serious beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen; and besides this, the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—among whom the names of Dante Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais will be familiar to you—had on their side three things that the English public never forgives: youth, power and enthusiasm.
Satire51, always as sterile52 as it in shameful53 and as impotent as it is insolent54, paid them that usual homage55 which mediocrity pays to genius—doing, here as always, infinite harm to the public, blinding them to what is beautiful, teaching them that irreverence56 which is the source of all vileness57 and narrowness of life, but harming the artist not at all, rather confirming him in the perfect rightness of his work and ambition. For to disagree with three-fourths of the British public on all points is one of the first elements of sanity, one of the deepest consolations58 in all moments of spiritual doubt.
As regards the ideas these young men brought to the regeneration of English art, we may see at the base of their artistic creations a desire for a deeper spiritual value to be given to art as well as a more decorative60 value.
Pre-Raphaelites they called themselves; not that they imitated the early Italian masters at all, but that in their work, as opposed to the facile abstractions of Raphael, they found a stronger realism of imagination, a more careful realism of technique, a vision at once more fervent61 and more vivid, an individuality more intimate and more intense.
For it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the ?sthetic demands of its age: there must be also about it, if it is to affect us with any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct individuality, an individuality remote from that of ordinary men, and coming near to us only by virtue of a certain newness and wonder in the work, and through channels whose very strangeness makes us more ready to give them welcome.
La personnalité, said one of the greatest of modern French critics, voilà ce qui nous sauvera.
But above all things was it a return to Nature—that formula which seems to suit so many and such diverse movements: they would draw and paint nothing but what they saw, they would try and imagine things as they really happened. Later there came to the old house by Blackfriars Bridge, where this young brotherhood used to meet and work, two young men from Oxford, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris—the latter substituting for the simpler realism of the early days a more exquisite62 spirit of choice, a more faultless devotion to beauty, a more intense seeking for perfection: a master of all exquisite design and of all spiritual vision. It is of the school of Florence rather than of that of Venice that he is kinsman63, feeling that the close imitation of Nature is a disturbing element in imaginative art. The visible aspect of modern life disturbs him not; rather is it for him to render eternal all that is beautiful in Greek, Italian, and Celtic legend. To Morris we owe poetry whose perfect precision and clearness of word and vision has not been excelled in the literature of our country, and by the revival of the decorative arts he has given to our individualised romantic movement the social idea and the social factor also.
But the revolution accomplished64 by this clique65 of young men, with Ruskin’s faultless and fervent eloquence to help them, was not one of ideas merely but of execution, not one of conceptions but of creations.
For the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially66. The discovery of marble quarries67 in the purple ravines of Pentelicus and on the little low-lying hills of the island of Paros gave to the Greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the Egyptian sculptor68 working laboriously69 in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite70 of the desert could not attain71. The splendour of the Venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. The progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim. The critic may try and trace the deferred72 resolutions of Beethoven [124] to some sense of the incompleteness of the modern intellectual spirit, but the artist would have answered, as one of them did afterwards, ‘Let them pick out the fifths and leave us at peace.’
And so it is in poetry also: all this love of curious French metres like the Ballade, the Villanelle, the Rondel; all this increased value laid on elaborate alliterations, and on curious words and refrains, such as you will find in Dante Rossetti and Swinburne, is merely the attempt to perfect flute73 and viol and trumpet74 through which the spirit of the age and the lips of the poet may blow the music of their many messages.
And so it has been with this romantic movement of ours: it is a reaction against the empty conventional workmanship, the lax execution of previous poetry and painting, showing itself in the work of such men as Rossetti and Burne-Jones by a far greater splendour of colour, a far more intricate wonder of design than English imaginative art has shown before. In Rossetti’s poetry and the poetry of Morris, Swinburne and Tennyson a perfect precision and choice of language, a style flawless and fearless, a seeking for all sweet and precious melodies and a sustaining consciousness of the musical value of each word are opposed to that value which is merely intellectual. In this respect they are one with the romantic movement of France of which not the least characteristic note was struck by Théophile Gautier’s advice to the young poet to read his dictionary every day, as being the only book worth a poet’s reading.
While, then, the material of workmanship is being thus elaborated and discovered to have in itself incommunicable and eternal qualities of its own, qualities entirely satisfying to the poetic75 sense and not needing for their ?sthetic effect any lofty intellectual vision, any deep criticism of life or even any passionate human emotion at all, the spirit and the method of the poet’s working—what people call his inspiration—have not escaped the controlling influence of the artistic spirit. Not that the imagination has lost its wings, but we have accustomed ourselves to count their innumerable pulsations, to estimate their limitless strength, to govern their ungovernable freedom.
To the Greeks this problem of the conditions of poetic production, and the places occupied by either spontaneity or self-consciousness in any artistic work, had a peculiar76 fascination77. We find it in the mysticism of Plato and in the rationalism of Aristotle. We find it later in the Italian Renaissance agitating78 the minds of such men as Leonardo da Vinci. Schiller tried to adjust the balance between form and feeling, and Goethe to estimate the position of self-consciousness in art. Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as ‘emotion remembered in tranquillity’ may be taken as an analysis of one of the stages through which all imaginative work has to pass; and in Keats’s longing79 to be ‘able to compose without this fever’ (I quote from one of his letters), his desire to substitute for poetic ardour ‘a more thoughtful and quiet power,’ we may discern the most important moment in the evolution of that artistic life. The question made an early and strange appearance in your literature too; and I need not remind you how deeply the young poets of the French romantic movement were excited and stirred by Edgar Allan Poe’s analysis of the workings of his own imagination in the creating of that supreme imaginative work which we know by the name of The Raven80.
In the last century, when the intellectual and didactic element had intruded81 to such an extent into the kingdom which belongs to poetry, it was against the claims of the understanding that an artist like Goethe had to protest. ‘The more incomprehensible to the understanding a poem is the better for it,’ he said once, asserting the complete supremacy82 of the imagination in poetry as of reason in prose. But in this century it is rather against the claims of the emotional faculties83, the claims of mere sentiment and feeling, that the artist must react. The simple utterance84 of joy is not poetry any more than a mere personal cry of pain, and the real experiences of the artist are always those which do not find their direct expression but are gathered up and absorbed into some artistic form which seems, from such real experiences, to be the farthest removed and the most alien.
‘The heart contains passion but the imagination alone contains poetry,’ says Charles Baudelaire. This too was the lesson that Théophile Gautier, most subtle of all modern critics, most fascinating of all modern poets, was never tired of teaching—‘Everybody is affected85 by a sunrise or a sunset.’ The absolute distinction of the artist is not his capacity to feel nature so much as his power of rendering86 it. The entire subordination of all intellectual and emotional faculties to the vital and informing poetic principle is the surest sign of the strength of our Renaissance.
We have seen the artistic spirit working, first in the delightful87 and technical sphere of language, the sphere of expression as opposed to subject, then controlling the imagination of the poet in dealing88 with his subject. And now I would point out to you its operation in the choice of subject. The recognition of a separate realm for the artist, a consciousness of the absolute difference between the world of art and the world of real fact, between classic grace and absolute reality, forms not merely the essential element of any ?sthetic charm but is the characteristic of all great imaginative work and of all great eras of artistic creation—of the age of Phidias as of the age of Michael Angelo, of the age of Sophocles as of the age of Goethe.
Art never harms itself by keeping aloof89 from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire. For to most of us the real life is the life we do not lead, and thus, remaining more true to the essence of its own perfection, more jealous of its own unattainable beauty, is less likely to forget form in feeling or to accept the passion of creation as any substitute for the beauty of the created thing.
The artist is indeed the child of his own age, but the present will not be to him a whit90 more real than the past; for, like the philosopher of the Platonic91 vision, the poet is the spectator of all time and of all existence. For him no form is obsolete92, no subject out of date; rather, whatever of life and passion the world has known, in desert of Jud?a or in Arcadian valley, by the rivers of Troy or the rivers of Damascus, in the crowded and hideous93 streets of a modern city or by the pleasant ways of Camelot—all lies before him like an open scroll94, all is still instinct with beautiful life. He will take of it what is salutary for his own spirit, no more; choosing some facts and rejecting others with the calm artistic control of one who is in possession of the secret of beauty.
There is indeed a poetical95 attitude to be adopted towards all things, but all things are not fit subjects for poetry. Into the secure and sacred house of Beauty the true artist will admit nothing that is harsh or disturbing, nothing that gives pain, nothing that is debatable, nothing about which men argue. He can steep himself, if he wishes, in the discussion of all the social problems of his day, poor-laws and local taxation96, free trade and bimetallic currency, and the like; but when he writes on these subjects it will be, as Milton nobly expressed it, with his left hand, in prose and not in verse, in a pamphlet and not in a lyric97. This exquisite spirit of artistic choice was not in Byron: Wordsworth had it not. In the work of both these men there is much that we have to reject, much that does not give us that sense of calm and perfect repose98 which should be the effect of all fine, imaginative work. But in Keats it seemed to have been incarnate99, and in his lovely Ode on a Grecian Urn16 it found its most secure and faultless expression; in the pageant100 of the Earthly Paradise and the knights101 and ladies of Burne-Jones it is the one dominant102 note.
It is to no avail that the Muse103 of Poetry be called, even by such a clarion104 note as Whitman’s, to migrate from Greece and Ionia and to placard REMOVED and TO LET on the rocks of the snowy Parnassus. Calliope’s call is not yet closed, nor are the epics105 of Asia ended; the Sphinx is not yet silent, nor the fountain of Castaly dry. For art is very life itself and knows nothing of death; she is absolute truth and takes no care of fact; she sees (as I remember Mr. Swinburne insisting on at dinner) that Achilles is even now more actual and real than Wellington, not merely more noble and interesting as a type and figure but more positive and real.
Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For to the poet all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept106, no past or present preferable. The steam whistle will not affright him nor the flutes107 of Arcadia weary him: for him there is but one time, the artistic moment; but one law, the law of form; but one land, the land of Beauty—a land removed indeed from the real world and yet more sensuous because more enduring; calm, yet with that calm which dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, the calm which comes not from the rejection108 but from the absorption of passion, the calm which despair and sorrow cannot disturb but intensify109 only. And so it comes that he who seems to stand most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best, because he has stripped life of what is accidental and transitory, stripped it of that ‘mist of familiarity which makes life obscure to us.’
Those strange, wild-eyed sibyls fixed110 eternally in the whirlwind of ecstasy111, those mighty112-limbed and Titan prophets, labouring with the secret of the earth and the burden of mystery, that guard and glorify113 the chapel114 of Pope Sixtus at Rome—do they not tell us more of the real spirit of the Italian Renaissance, of the dream of Savonarola and of the sin of Borgia, than all the brawling115 boors116 and cooking women of Dutch art can teach us of the real spirit of the history of Holland?
And so in our own day, also, the two most vital tendencies of the nineteenth century—the democratic and pantheistic tendency and the tendency to value life for the sake of art—found their most complete and perfect utterance in the poetry of Shelley and Keats who, to the blind eyes of their own time, seemed to be as wanderers in the wilderness117, preachers of vague or unreal things. And I remember once, in talking to Mr. Burne-Jones about modern science, his saying to me, ‘the more materialistic118 science becomes, the more angels shall I paint: their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality120 of the soul.’
But these are the intellectual speculations121 that underlie123 art. Where in the arts themselves are we to find that breadth of human sympathy which is the condition of all noble work; where in the arts are we to look for what Mazzini would call the social ideas as opposed to the merely personal ideas? By virtue of what claim do I demand for the artist the love and loyalty124 of the men and women of the world? I think I can answer that.
Whatever spiritual message an artist brings to his aid is a matter for his own soul. He may bring judgment125 like Michael Angelo or peace like Angelico; he may come with mourning like the great Athenian or with mirth like the singer of Sicily; nor is it for us to do aught but accept his teaching, knowing that we cannot smite126 the bitter lips of Leopardi into laughter or burden with our discontent Goethe’s serene calm. But for warrant of its truth such message must have the flame of eloquence in the lips that speak it, splendour and glory in the vision that is its witness, being justified127 by one thing only—the flawless beauty and perfect form of its expression: this indeed being the social idea, being the meaning of joy in art.
Not laughter where none should laugh, nor the calling of peace where there is no peace; not in painting the subject ever, but the pictorial128 charm only, the wonder of its colour, the satisfying beauty of its design.
You have most of you seen, probably, that great masterpiece of Rubens which hangs in the gallery of Brussels, that swift and wonderful pageant of horse and rider arrested in its most exquisite and fiery129 moment when the winds are caught in crimson130 banner and the air lit by the gleam of armour131 and the flash of plume132. Well, that is joy in art, though that golden hillside be trodden by the wounded feet of Christ and it is for the death of the Son of Man that that gorgeous cavalcade133 is passing.
But this restless modern intellectual spirit of ours is not receptive enough of the sensuous element of art; and so the real influence of the arts is hidden from many of us: only a few, escaping from the tyranny of the soul, have learned the secret of those high hours when thought is not.
And this indeed is the reason of the influence which Eastern art is having on us in Europe, and of the fascination of all Japanese work. While the Western world has been laying on art the intolerable burden of its own intellectual doubts and the spiritual tragedy of its own sorrows, the East has always kept true to art’s primary and pictorial conditions.
In judging of a beautiful statue the ?sthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us. In its primary aspect a painting has no more spiritual message or meaning than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a blue tile from the wall of Damascus: it is a beautifully coloured surface, nothing more. The channels by which all noble imaginative work in painting should touch, and do touch the soul, are not those of the truths of life, nor metaphysical truths. But that pictorial charm which does not depend on any literary reminiscence for its effect on the one hand, nor is yet a mere result of communicable technical skill on the other, comes of a certain inventive and creative handling of colour. Nearly always in Dutch painting and often in the works of Giorgione or Titian, it is entirely independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject, a kind of form and choice in workmanship which is itself entirely satisfying, and is (as the Greeks would say) an end in itself.
And so in poetry too, the real poetical quality, the joy of poetry, comes never from the subject but from an inventive handling of rhythmical134 language, from what Keats called the ‘sensuous life of verse.’ The element of song in the singing accompanied by the profound joy of motion, is so sweet that, while the incomplete lives of ordinary men bring no healing power with them, the thorn-crown of the poet will blossom into roses for our pleasure; for our delight his despair will gild135 its own thorns, and his pain, like Adonis, be beautiful in its agony; and when the poet’s heart breaks it will break in music.
And health in art—what is that? It has nothing to do with a sane136 criticism of life. There is more health in Baudelaire than there is in [Kingsley]. Health is the artist’s recognition of the limitations of the form in which he works. It is the honour and the homage which he gives to the material he uses—whether it be language with its glories, or marble or pigment137 with their glories—knowing that the true brotherhood of the arts consists not in their borrowing one another’s method, but in their producing, each of them by its own individual means, each of them by keeping its objective limits, the same unique artistic delight. The delight is like that given to us by music—for music is the art in which form and matter are always one, the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its expression, the art which most completely realises the artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring138.
And criticism—what place is that to have in our culture? Well, I think that the first duty of an art critic is to hold his tongue at all times, and upon all subjects: C’est un grand avantage de n’avoir rien fait, mais il ne faut pas en abuser.
It is only through the mystery of creation that one can gain any knowledge of the quality of created things. You have listened to Patience for a hundred nights and you have heard me for one only. It will make, no doubt, that satire more piquant139 by knowing something about the subject of it, but you must not judge of ?stheticism by the satire of Mr. Gilbert. As little should you judge of the strength and splendour of sun or sea by the dust that dances in the beam, or the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take your critic for any sane test of art. For the artists, like the Greek gods, are revealed only to one another, as Emerson says somewhere; their real value and place time only can show. In this respect also omnipotence140 is with the ages. The true critic addresses not the artist ever but the public only. His work lies with them. Art can never have any other claim but her own perfection: it is for the critic to create for art the social aim, too, by teaching the people the spirit in which they are to approach all artistic work, the love they are to give it, the lesson they are to draw from it.
All these appeals to art to set herself more in harmony with modern progress and civilisation141, and to make herself the mouthpiece for the voice of humanity, these appeals to art ‘to have a mission,’ are appeals which should be made to the public. The art which has fulfilled the conditions of beauty has fulfilled all conditions: it is for the critic to teach the people how to find in the calm of such art the highest expression of their own most stormy passions. ‘I have no reverence,’ said Keats, ‘for the public, nor for anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the memory of great men and the principle of Beauty.’
Such then is the principle which I believe to be guiding and underlying our English Renaissance, a Renaissance many-sided and wonderful, productive of strong ambitions and lofty personalities, yet for all its splendid achievements in poetry and in the decorative arts and in painting, for all the increased comeliness142 and grace of dress, and the furniture of houses and the like, not complete. For there can be no great sculpture without a beautiful national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that; no great drama without a noble national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that too.
It is not that the flawless serenity143 of marble cannot bear the burden of the modern intellectual spirit, or become instinct with the fire of romantic passion—the tomb of Duke Lorenzo and the chapel of the Medici show us that—but it is that, as Théophile Gautier used to say, the visible world is dead, le monde visible a disparu.
Nor is it again that the novel has killed the play, as some critics would persuade us—the romantic movement of France shows us that. The work of Balzac and of Hugo grew up side by side together; nay144, more, were complementary to each other, though neither of them saw it. While all other forms of poetry may flourish in an ignoble145 age, the splendid individualism of the lyrist, fed by its own passion, and lit by its own power, may pass as a pillar of fire as well across the desert as across places that are pleasant. It is none the less glorious though no man follow it—nay, by the greater sublimity146 of its loneliness it may be quickened into loftier utterance and intensified into clearer song. From the mean squalor of the sordid147 life that limits him, the dreamer or the idyllist may soar on poesy’s viewless wings, may traverse with fawn-skin and spear the moonlit heights of Cith?ron though Faun and Bassarid dance there no more. Like Keats he may wander through the old-world forests of Latmos, or stand like Morris on the galley148’s deck with the Viking when king and galley have long since passed away. But the drama is the meeting-place of art and life; it deals, as Mazzini said, not merely with man, but with social man, with man in his relation to God and to Humanity. It is the product of a period of great national united energy; it is impossible without a noble public, and belongs to such ages as the age of Elizabeth in London and of Pericles at Athens; it is part of such lofty moral and spiritual ardour as came to Greek after the defeat of the Persian fleet, and to Englishman after the wreck149 of the Armada of Spain.
Shelley felt how incomplete our movement was in this respect, and has shown in one great tragedy by what terror and pity he would have purified our age; but in spite of The Cenci the drama is one of the artistic forms through which the genius of the England of this century seeks in vain to find outlet150 and expression. He has had no worthy151 imitators.
It is rather, perhaps, to you that we should turn to complete and perfect this great movement of ours, for there is something Hellenic in your air and world, something that has a quicker breath of the joy and power of Elizabeth’s England about it than our ancient civilisation can give us. For you, at least, are young; ‘no hungry generations tread you down,’ and the past does not weary you with the intolerable burden of its memories nor mock you with the ruins of a beauty, the secret of whose creation you have lost. That very absence of tradition, which Mr. Ruskin thought would rob your rivers of their laughter and your flowers of their light, may be rather the source of your freedom and your strength.
To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance152 of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, has been defined by one of your poets as a flawless triumph of art. It is a triumph which you above all nations may be destined153 to achieve. For the voices that have their dwelling in sea and mountain are not the chosen music of Liberty only; other messages are there in the wonder of wind-swept height and the majesty154 of silent deep—messages that, if you will but listen to them, may yield you the splendour of some new imagination, the marvel155 of some new beauty.
‘I foresee,’ said Goethe, ‘the dawn of a new literature which all people may claim as their own, for all have contributed to its foundation.’ If, then, this is so, and if the materials for a civilisation as great as that of Europe lie all around you, what profit, you will ask me, will all this study of our poets and painters be to you? I might answer that the intellect can be engaged without direct didactic object on an artistic and historical problem; that the demand of the intellect is merely to feel itself alive; that nothing which has ever interested men or women can cease to be a fit subject for culture.
I might remind you of what all Europe owes to the sorrow of a single Florentine in exile at Verona, or to the love of Petrarch by that little well in Southern France; nay, more, how even in this dull, materialistic age the simple expression of an old man’s simple life, passed away from the clamour of great cities amid the lakes and misty156 hills of Cumberland, has opened out for England treasures of new joy compared with which the treasures of her luxury are as barren as the sea which she has made her highway, and as bitter as the fire which she would make her slave.
But I think it will bring you something besides this, something that is the knowledge of real strength in art: not that you should imitate the works of these men; but their artistic spirit, their artistic attitude, I think you should absorb that.
For in nations, as in individuals, if the passion for creation be not accompanied by the critical, the ?sthetic faculty also, it will be sure to waste its strength aimlessly, failing perhaps in the artistic spirit of choice, or in the mistaking of feeling for form, or in the following of false ideals.
For the various spiritual forms of the imagination have a natural affinity157 with certain sensuous forms of art—and to discern the qualities of each art, to intensify as well its limitations as its powers of expression, is one of the aims that culture sets before us. It is not an increased moral sense, an increased moral supervision158 that your literature needs. Indeed, one should never talk of a moral or an immoral159 poem—poems are either well written or badly written, that is all. And, indeed, any element of morals or implied reference to a standard of good or evil in art is often a sign of a certain incompleteness of vision, often a note of discord160 in the harmony of an imaginative creation; for all good work aims at a purely161 artistic effect. ‘We must be careful,’ said Goethe, ‘not to be always looking for culture merely in what is obviously moral. Everything that is great promotes civilisation as soon as we are aware of it.’
But, as in your cities so in your literature, it is a permanent canon and standard of taste, an increased sensibility to beauty (if I may say so) that is lacking. All noble work is not national merely, but universal. The political independence of a nation must not be confused with any intellectual isolation162. The spiritual freedom, indeed, your own generous lives and liberal air will give you. From us you will learn the classical restraint of form.
For all great art is delicate art, roughness having very little to do with strength, and harshness very little to do with power. ‘The artist,’ as Mr. Swinburne says, ‘must be perfectly163 articulate.’
This limitation is for the artist perfect freedom: it is at once the origin and the sign of his strength. So that all the supreme masters of style—Dante, Sophocles, Shakespeare—are the supreme masters of spiritual and intellectual vision also.
Love art for its own sake, and then all things that you need will be added to you.
This devotion to beauty and to the creation of beautiful things is the test of all great civilised nations. Philosophy may teach us to bear with equanimity164 the misfortunes of our neighbours, and science resolve the moral sense into a secretion165 of sugar, but art is what makes the life of each citizen a sacrament and not a speculation122, art is what makes the life of the whole race immortal119.
For beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds166 follow one another like the withered167 leaves of autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity168.
Wars and the clash of armies and the meeting of men in battle by trampled169 field or leaguered city, and the rising of nations there must always be. But I think that art, by creating a common intellectual atmosphere between all countries, might—if it could not overshadow the world with the silver wings of peace—at least make men such brothers that they would not go out to slay170 one another for the whim171 or folly172 of some king or minister, as they do in Europe. Fraternity would come no more with the hands of Cain, nor Liberty betray freedom with the kiss of Anarchy173; for national hatreds174 are always strongest where culture is lowest.
‘How could I?’ said Goethe, when reproached for not writing like Korner against the French. ‘How could I, to whom barbarism and culture alone are of importance, hate a nation which is among the most cultivated of the earth, a nation to which I owe a great part of my own cultivation175?’
Mighty empires, too, there must always be as long as personal ambition and the spirit of the age are one, but art at least is the only empire which a nation’s enemies cannot take from her by conquest, but which is taken by submission176 only. The sovereignty of Greece and Rome is not yet passed away, though the gods of the one be dead and the eagles of the other tired.
And we in our Renaissance are seeking to create a sovereignty that will still be England’s when her yellow leopards177 have grown weary of wars and the rose of her shield is crimsoned178 no more with the blood of battle; and you, too, absorbing into the generous heart of a great people this pervading179 artistic spirit, will create for yourselves such riches as you have never yet created, though your land be a network of railways and your cities the harbours for the galleys180 of the world.
I know, indeed, that the divine natural prescience of beauty which is the inalienable inheritance of Greek and Italian is not our inheritance. For such an informing and presiding spirit of art to shield us from all harsh and alien influences, we of the Northern races must turn rather to that strained self-consciousness of our age which, as it is the key-note of all our romantic art, must be the source of all or nearly all our culture. I mean that intellectual curiosity of the nineteenth century which is always looking for the secret of the life that still lingers round old and bygone forms of culture. It takes from each what is serviceable for the modern spirit—from Athens its wonder without its worship, from Venice its splendour without its sin. The same spirit is always analysing its own strength and its own weakness, counting what it owes to East and to West, to the olive-trees of Colonus and to the palm-trees of Lebanon, to Gethsemane and to the garden of Proserpine.
And yet the truths of art cannot be taught: they are revealed only, revealed to natures which have made themselves receptive of all beautiful impressions by the study and worship of all beautiful things. And hence the enormous importance given to the decorative arts in our English Renaissance; hence all that marvel of design that comes from the hand of Edward Burne-Jones, all that weaving of tapestry181 and staining of glass, that beautiful working in clay and metal and wood which we owe to William Morris, the greatest handicraftsman we have had in England since the fourteenth century.
So, in years to come there will be nothing in any man’s house which has not given delight to its maker182 and does not give delight to its user. The children, like the children of Plato’s perfect city, will grow up ‘in a simple atmosphere of all fair things’—I quote from the passage in the Republic—‘a simple atmosphere of all fair things, where beauty, which is the spirit of art, will come on eye and ear like a fresh breath of wind that brings health from a clear upland, and insensibly and gradually draw the child’s soul into harmony with all knowledge and all wisdom, so that he will love what is beautiful and good, and hate what is evil and ugly (for they always go together) long before he knows the reason why; and then when reason comes will kiss her on the cheek as a friend.’
That is what Plato thought decorative art could do for a nation, feeling that the secret not of philosophy merely but of all gracious existence might be externally hidden from any one whose youth had been passed in uncomely and vulgar surroundings, and that the beauty of form and colour even, as he says, in the meanest vessels183 of the house, will find its way into the inmost places of the soul and lead the boy naturally to look for that divine harmony of spiritual life of which art was to him the material symbol and warrant.
Prelude indeed to all knowledge and all wisdom will this love of beautiful things be for us; yet there are times when wisdom becomes a burden and knowledge is one with sorrow: for as every body has its shadow so every soul has its scepticism. In such dread184 moments of discord and despair where should we, of this torn and troubled age, turn our steps if not to that secure house of beauty where there is always a little forgetfulness, always a great joy; to that città divina, as the old Italian heresy185 called it, the divine city where one can stand, though only for a brief moment, apart from the division and terror of the world and the choice of the world too?
This is that consolation59 des arts which is the key-note of Gautier’s poetry, the secret of modern life foreshadowed—as indeed what in our century is not?—by Goethe. You remember what he said to the German people: ‘Only have the courage,’ he said, ‘to give yourselves up to your impressions, allow yourselves to be delighted, moved, elevated, nay instructed, inspired for something great.’ The courage to give yourselves up to your impressions: yes, that is the secret of the artistic life—for while art has been defined as an escape from the tyranny of the senses, it is an escape rather from the tyranny of the soul. But only to those who worship her above all things does she ever reveal her true treasure: else will she be as powerless to aid you as the mutilated Venus of the Louvre was before the romantic but sceptical nature of Heine.
And indeed I think it would be impossible to overrate the gain that might follow if we had about us only what gave pleasure to the maker of it and gives pleasure to its user, that being the simplest of all rules about decoration. One thing, at least, I think it would do for us: there is no surer test of a great country than how near it stands to its own poets; but between the singers of our day and the workers to whom they would sing there seems to be an ever-widening and dividing chasm186, a chasm which slander187 and mockery cannot traverse, but which is spanned by the luminous188 wings of love.
And of such love I think that the abiding189 presence in our houses of noble imaginative work would be the surest seed and preparation. I do not mean merely as regards that direct literary expression of art by which, from the little red-and-black cruse of oil or wine, a Greek boy could learn of the lionlike splendour of Achilles, of the strength of Hector and the beauty of Paris and the wonder of Helen, long before he stood and listened in crowded market-place or in theatre of marble; or by which an Italian child of the fifteenth century could know of the chastity of Lucrece and the death of Camilla from carven doorway190 and from painted chest. For the good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it. Its real influence will be in giving the mind that enthusiasm which is the secret of Hellenism, accustoming191 it to demand from art all that art can do in rearranging the facts of common life for us—whether it be by giving the most spiritual interpretation192 of one’s own moments of highest passion or the most sensuous expression of those thoughts that are the farthest removed from sense; in accustoming it to love the things of the imagination for their own sake, and to desire beauty and grace in all things. For he who does not love art in all things does not love it at all, and he who does not need art in all things does not need it at all.
I will not dwell here on what I am sure has delighted you all in our great Gothic cathedrals. I mean how the artist of that time, handicraftsman himself in stone or glass, found the best motives193 for his art, always ready for his hand and always beautiful, in the daily work of the artificers he saw around him—as in those lovely windows of Chartres—where the dyer dips in the vat27 and the potter sits at the wheel, and the weaver194 stands at the loom195: real manufacturers these, workers with the hand, and entirely delightful to look at, not like the smug and vapid196 shopman of our time, who knows nothing of the web or vase he sells, except that he is charging you double its value and thinking you a fool for buying it. Nor can I but just note, in passing, the immense influence the decorative work of Greece and Italy had on its artists, the one teaching the sculptor that restraining influence of design which is the glory of the Parthenon, the other keeping painting always true to its primary, pictorial condition of noble colour which is the secret of the school of Venice; for I wish rather, in this lecture at least, to dwell on the effect that decorative art has on human life—on its social not its purely artistic effect.
There are two kinds of men in the world, two great creeds, two different forms of natures: men to whom the end of life is action, and men to whom the end of life is thought. As regards the latter, who seek for experience itself and not for the fruits of experience, who must burn always with one of the passions of this fiery-coloured world, who find life interesting not for its secret but for its situations, for its pulsations and not for its purpose; the passion for beauty engendered197 by the decorative arts will be to them more satisfying than any political or religious enthusiasm, any enthusiasm for humanity, any ecstasy or sorrow for love. For art comes to one professing198 primarily to give nothing but the highest quality to one’s moments, and for those moments’ sake. So far for those to whom the end of life is thought. As regards the others, who hold that life is inseparable from labour, to them should this movement be specially dear: for, if our days are barren without industry, industry without art is barbarism.
Hewers of wood and drawers of water there must be always indeed among us. Our modern machinery199 has not much lightened the labour of man after all: but at least let the pitcher200 that stands by the well be beautiful and surely the labour of the day will be lightened: let the wood be made receptive of some lovely form, some gracious design, and there will come no longer discontent but joy to the toiler201. For what is decoration but the worker’s expression of joy in his work? And not joy merely—that is a great thing yet not enough—but that opportunity of expressing his own individuality which, as it is the essence of all life, is the source of all art. ‘I have tried,’ I remember William Morris saying to me once, ‘I have tried to make each of my workers an artist, and when I say an artist I mean a man.’ For the worker then, handicraftsman of whatever kind he is, art is no longer to be a purple robe woven by a slave and thrown over the whitened body of a leprous king to hide and to adorn202 the sin of his luxury, but rather the beautiful and noble expression of a life that has in it something beautiful and noble.
And so you must seek out your workman and give him, as far as possible, the right surroundings, for remember that the real test and virtue of a workman is not his earnestness nor his industry even, but his power of design merely; and that ‘design is not the offspring of idle fancy: it is the studied result of accumulative observation and delightful habit.’ All the teaching in the world is of no avail if you do not surround your workman with happy influences and with beautiful things. It is impossible for him to have right ideas about colour unless he sees the lovely colours of Nature unspoiled; impossible for him to supply beautiful incident and action unless he sees beautiful incident and action in the world about him.
For to cultivate sympathy you must be among living things and thinking about them, and to cultivate admiration203 you must be among beautiful things and looking at them. ‘The steel of Toledo and the silk of Genoa did but give strength to oppression and lustre204 to pride,’ as Mr. Ruskin says; let it be for you to create an art that is made by the hands of the people for the joy of the people, to please the hearts of the people, too; an art that will be your expression of your delight in life. There is nothing ‘in common life too mean, in common things too trivial to be ennobled by your touch’; nothing in life that art cannot sanctify.
You have heard, I think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the ?sthetic movement in England, and said (I assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some ?sthetic young men. Well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what Mr. Gilbert may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all. It is because these two lovely flowers are in England the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art—the gaudy205 leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy. And so with you: let there be no flower in your meadows that does not wreathe its tendrils around your pillows, no little leaf in your Titan forests that does not lend its form to design, no curving spray of wild rose or brier that does not live for ever in carven arch or window or marble, no bird in your air that is not giving the iridescent206 wonder of its colour, the exquisite curves of its wings in flight, to make more precious the preciousness of simple adornment207.
We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art.
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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collated
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| v.校对( collate的过去式和过去分词 )；整理；核对；整理（文件或书等） | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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comely
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| adj.漂亮的，合宜的 | |
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enjoyments
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| 愉快( enjoyment的名词复数 )； 令人愉快的事物； 享有； 享受 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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urn
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| n.（有座脚的）瓮；坟墓；骨灰瓮 | |
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sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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intensified
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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prelude
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eloquence
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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vat
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plagiarism
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bungling
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| adj.笨拙的，粗劣的v.搞糟，完不成( bungle的现在分词 )；笨手笨脚地做；失败；完不成 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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Oxford
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bondage
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monstrous
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idol
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cataclysm
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personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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stature
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perilous
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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forerunner
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| n.前身，先驱（者），预兆，祖先 | |
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adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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crookedness
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| [医]弯曲 | |
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philistine
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| n.庸俗的人；adj.市侩的，庸俗的 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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51
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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52
sterile
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| adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的 | |
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53
shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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54
insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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55
homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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56
irreverence
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| n.不尊敬 | |
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57
vileness
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| n.讨厌，卑劣 | |
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58
consolations
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| n.安慰，慰问( consolation的名词复数 )；起安慰作用的人（或事物） | |
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59
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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60
decorative
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| adj.装饰的，可作装饰的 | |
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61
fervent
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| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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62
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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63
kinsman
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| n.男亲属 | |
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64
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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65
clique
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| n.朋党派系，小集团 | |
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66
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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67
quarries
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| n.（采）石场( quarry的名词复数 )；猎物（指鸟，兽等）；方形石；（格窗等的）方形玻璃v.从采石场采得( quarry的第三人称单数 )；从（书本等中）努力发掘（资料等）；在采石场采石 | |
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68
sculptor
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| n.雕刻家，雕刻家 | |
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69
laboriously
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|
| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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70
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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71
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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72
deferred
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|
| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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73
flute
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| n.长笛；v.吹笛 | |
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74
trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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75
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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76
peculiar
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|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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77
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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78
agitating
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|
| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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79
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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80
raven
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|
| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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81
intruded
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|
| n.侵入的，推进的v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的过去式和过去分词 )；把…强加于 | |
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82
supremacy
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|
| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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83
faculties
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|
| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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84
utterance
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|
| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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85
affected
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|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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86
rendering
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|
| n.表现，描写 | |
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87
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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88
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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89
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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90
whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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91
platonic
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| adj.精神的；柏拉图（哲学）的 | |
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92
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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93
hideous
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|
| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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94
scroll
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|
| n.卷轴，纸卷；(石刻上的)漩涡 | |
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95
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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96
taxation
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| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
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97
lyric
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|
| n.抒情诗，歌词；adj.抒情的 | |
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98
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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99
incarnate
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|
| adj.化身的，人体化的，肉色的 | |
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100
pageant
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|
| n.壮观的游行；露天历史剧 | |
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101
knights
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|
| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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102
dominant
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|
| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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103
muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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104
clarion
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| n.尖音小号声；尖音小号 | |
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105
epics
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|
| n.叙事诗( epic的名词复数 )；壮举；惊人之举；史诗般的电影（或书籍） | |
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106
inept
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|
| adj.不恰当的，荒谬的，拙劣的 | |
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107
flutes
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|
| 长笛( flute的名词复数 )； 细长香槟杯（形似长笛） | |
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108
rejection
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|
| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
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109
intensify
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|
| vt.加强；变强；加剧 | |
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110
fixed
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|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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111
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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112
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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113
glorify
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|
| vt.颂扬，赞美，使增光，美化 | |
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114
chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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115
brawling
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| n.争吵，喧嚷 | |
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116
boors
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| n.农民( boor的名词复数 )；乡下佬；没礼貌的人；粗野的人 | |
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117
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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118
materialistic
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| a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的 | |
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119
immortal
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|
| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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120
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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121
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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122
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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123
underlie
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| v.位于...之下，成为...的基础 | |
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124
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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125
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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126
smite
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| v.重击；彻底击败；n.打；尝试；一点儿 | |
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127
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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128
pictorial
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|
| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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129
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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130
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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131
armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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132
plume
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| n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰 | |
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133
cavalcade
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| n.车队等的行列 | |
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134
rhythmical
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|
| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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135
gild
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| vt.给…镀金，把…漆成金色，使呈金色 | |
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136
sane
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|
| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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137
pigment
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| n.天然色素，干粉颜料 | |
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138
aspiring
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|
| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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139
piquant
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| adj.辛辣的，开胃的，令人兴奋的 | |
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140
omnipotence
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| n.全能，万能，无限威力 | |
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141
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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142
comeliness
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|
| n. 清秀, 美丽, 合宜 | |
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143
serenity
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|
| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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144
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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145
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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146
sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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147
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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148
galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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149
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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150
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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151
worthy
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|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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152
insouciance
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| n.漠不关心 | |
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153
destined
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|
| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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154
majesty
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|
| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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155
marvel
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|
| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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156
misty
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|
| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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157
affinity
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| n.亲和力，密切关系 | |
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158
supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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159
immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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160
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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161
purely
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|
| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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162
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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163
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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164
equanimity
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| n.沉着，镇定 | |
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165
secretion
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| n.分泌 | |
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166
creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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167
withered
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|
| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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168
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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169
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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170
slay
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| v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮 | |
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171
whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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172
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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173
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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174
hatreds
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| n.仇恨，憎恶( hatred的名词复数 )；厌恶的事 | |
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175
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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176
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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177
leopards
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|
| n.豹( leopard的名词复数 )；本性难移 | |
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178
crimsoned
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|
| 变为深红色（crimson的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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179
pervading
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|
| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的现在分词 ) | |
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180
galleys
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| n.平底大船，战舰( galley的名词复数 )；（船上或航空器上的）厨房 | |
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181
tapestry
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| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
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182
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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183
vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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184
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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185
heresy
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| n.异端邪说；异教 | |
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186
chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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187
slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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188
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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189
abiding
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| adj.永久的，持久的，不变的 | |
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190
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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191
accustoming
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| v.（使）习惯于( accustom的现在分词 ) | |
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192
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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193
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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194
weaver
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| n.织布工；编织者 | |
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195
loom
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| n.织布机，织机；v.隐现，(危险、忧虑等)迫近 | |
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196
vapid
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| adj.无味的；无生气的 | |
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197
engendered
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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198
professing
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| 声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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199
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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200
pitcher
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| n.(有嘴和柄的)大水罐；(棒球)投手 | |
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201
toiler
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| 辛劳者，勤劳者 | |
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202
adorn
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| vt.使美化，装饰 | |
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203
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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204
lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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205
gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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206
iridescent
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| adj.彩虹色的，闪色的 | |
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207
adornment
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| n.装饰；装饰品 | |
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