only genuine reason they could give for their preference was that they felt Raffael to be vulgar.  The reason was good, but not fundamental; so they set about inventing others.  They discovered in the primitives scrupulous fidelity to nature, superior piety, chaste lives.  How far they were from guessing the secret of primitive art appeared when they began to paint pictures themselves.  The secret of primitive art is the secret of all art, at all times, in all places—­sensibility to the profound significance of form and the power of creation.  The band of happy brothers lacked both; so perhaps it is not surprising that they should have found in acts of piety, in legends and symbols, the material, and in sound churchmanship the very essence, of mediaeval art.  For their own inspiration they looked to the past instead of looking about them.  Instead of diving for truth they sought it on the surface.  The fact is, the Pre-Raffaelites were not artists, but archaeologists who tried to make intelligent curiosity do the work of impassioned contemplation.  As artists they do not differ essentially from the ruck of Victorian painters.  They will reproduce the florid ornament of late Gothic as slavishly as the steady Academician reproduces the pimples on an orange; and if they do attempt to simplify—­some of them have noticed the simplification of the primitives—­they do so in the spirit, not of an artist, but of the “sedulous ape.”

Simplification is the conversion of irrelevant detail into significant form.  A very bold Pre-Raffaelite was capable of representing a meadow by two minutely accurate blades of grass.  But two minutely accurate blades of grass are just as irrelevant as two million; it is the formal significance of a blade of grass or of a meadow with which the artist is concerned.  The Pre-Raffaelite method is at best symbolism, at worst pure silliness.  Had the Pre-Raffaelites been blessed with profoundly imaginative minds they might have recaptured the spirit of the Middle Ages instead of imitating its least significant manifestations.  But had they been great artists they would not have wished to recapture anything.  They would have invented forms for themselves or derived them from their surroundings, just as the mediaeval artists did.  Great artists never look back.

When art is as nearly dead as it was in the middle of the nineteenth century, scientific accuracy is judged the proper end of painting.  Very well, said the French Impressionists, be accurate, be scientific.  At best the Academic painter sets down his concepts; but the concept is not a scientific reality; the men of science tell us that the visible reality of the Universe is vibrations of light.  Let us represent things as they are—­scientifically.  Let us represent light.  Let us paint what we see, not the intellectual superstructure that we build over our sensations.  That was the theory:  and if the end of art were representation it would be sound enough.  But the end of art is not representation,