Myrrhina.  The God whom thou worshippest led me here that I might repent of my iniquities and know Him as the Lord.

Honorius.  Why didst thou tempt me with words?

Myrrhina.  That thou shouldst see Sin in its painted mask and look on
Death in its robe of Shame.

THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE OF ART

‘The English Renaissance of Art’ was delivered as a lecture for the first time in the Chickering Hall, New York, on January 9, 1882.  A portion of it was reported in the New York Tribune on the following day and in other American papers subsequently.  Since then this portion has been reprinted, more or less accurately, from time to time, in unauthorised editions, but not more than one quarter of the lecture has ever been published.

There are in existence no less than four copies of the lecture, the earliest of which is entirely 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 collated and the text here given contains, as nearly as possible, the lecture in its original form as delivered by the author during his tour in the United States.

Among the many debts which we owe to the supreme aesthetic faculty 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 manifestations.  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 virtue 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 comely 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 enjoyments:  and I call it our romantic movement because it is our most recent expression of beauty.

It has been described as a mere revival of Greek modes of thought, and again as a mere revival of mediaeval feeling.  Rather I would say that to these forms of the human spirit it has added whatever of artistic value the intricacy and complexity 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 mediaevalism but individuality?