A Barbaric Yawp [pp. 477-482]

A BARBARIC YA WP.
influence on the art of his time, while
still the magnetism of his presence is
round us, and the sound of his voice is
in our ears. That it is a marked one
none will deny. A life-work of fifty
years of unceasing industry, with one
aim kept constantly in view, can not
fail of leaving its impress on the next
generation of painters. Indeed, it is al
ready seen in the works of D'Aubigny,
Francais, and many other prominent
names. Corot's work carefully avoids
all that is meretricious in treatment and
color, and appeals only to the most elevated sentiments. An artist of whom
this can be said surely merits a high
place upon the roll of contemporary
painters.
A BARBARIC YAWP.
T_MONG the many graceful affecta tions which haunt the newly-built
walls of what we may call the structure
of American intellect, there is none more
beautiful and harmless than that which
expresses a full apprehension and com prehension of the motives, emotions, ob jects, and convictions which impressed
Shakspeare, while he was writing his
great plays for the London stage. To
stand as a demonstrator of the anatomy
of the Shakspearean intellect is a proud
position. Except that of preaching the
gospel, there is no more exalted posi tion; nor, we might add, a position more
practically useless or purely ornamental.
Yet, if Shakspeare wrote under the pressure which commonly weighs upon authors who write to live, there can be no
doubt that the object he had in view
might be expressed thus: ~ s. d. -and
the only questions he put to himself
were: "WVill these characters draw
crowds to the'Globe?'" "Do these
parts fit the men of our company?" and
"Can Dick Burbage, as chief actor,
bring down the house and raise the
groundlings with these round sentences
of full-chested English?"
If the character and convictions of authors, in matters about which they are
not writing, are to be found in the general tone of what they do write about,
then it were easy to follow the care and
caution through which minute truth is
pursued in the Baconian books of phi losophy, and triumphantly conclude that
Francis Bacon loved the truth in all
things, and was a most honorable up right man; yet we know, if biography
knows anything, that Francis Bacon
was a moral snob, a social sepulchre, a
character black to rottenness with the
gangrene of official corruption. And
yet, withlal, Bacon had an architectural,
Gothic-like, solemnly high-arched ven eration for the beauty of sacred things!
And here, by the by, we may make a
sporadic jump, and break out in a new
place, to observe that great veneration
for sacred things is often the high ideal
accompaniment of a petty-larceny character; and that a gushing holy devotion and an eloquent pious ardor sometimes walk up the short church stair-way
hand in hand with a moist-lipped lechery.
That the dyer's hand may be temporarily the color of his dye -stuff is true;
but you can not tell, by looking into his
dye-pots and measuring his yarn, what
manner of man he was, particularly after he is dead, and you have read his epitaph written by the village curate, and
the scrivener's chronic verbiage in his
last will.
That Shakspeare was absorbed in his
art-determined to live by it and die
I875.1
477