Now, I find among the men of the present age

§ 25. Now, I find among the men of the present age, as far as I know them, this character in Scott and Turner preeminently; I am not sure if it is not in them alone. I do not find Scott talking about the dignity of literature, nor Turner about the dignity of painting. They do their work, feeling that they cannot well help it; the story must be told, and the effect put down; and if people like it, well and good; and if not, the world will not be much the worse.
I believe a very different impression of their estimate of themselves and their doings will be received by any one who reads the conversations of Wordsworth or Goethe. The slightestmanifestation of jealousy or self-complacency is enough to mark a second-rate character of the intellect; and I fear that especially in Goethe, such manifestations are neither few nor slight. art oil paintings for sale

§ 26. Connected with this general humility is the total absence of affectation in these men,—that is to say, of any assumption of manner or behavior in their work, in order to attract attention. Not but that they are mannerists both. Scott's verse is strongly mannered, and Turner's oil painting; but the manner of it is necessitated by the feelings of the men, entirely natural to both, never exaggerated for the sake of show. I hardly know any other literary or pictorial work of the day which is not in some degree affected. I am afraid Wordsworth was often affected in his simplicity, and De Balzac in his finish. Many fine French writers are affected in their reserve, and full of stage tricks in placing of sentences. It is lucky if in German writers we ever find so much as a sentence without affectation. I know no painters without it, except one or two Pre-Raphaelites (chiefly Holman Hunt), and some simple water-color painters, as William Hunt, William Turner of Oxford, and the late George Robson; but these last have no invention, and therefore by our fourth canon, Chap. III. sec. 21., are excluded from the first rank of artists; and of the Pre-Raphaelites there is here no question, as they in no wise represent the modern school. wholesale oil paintings