in medias res_, checked by too great a tendency
to harking back, and re-stating some conclusion in modified terms and
with insecure corollaries. Two points which Mr. Tupper chiefly
insists upon are: (1) that the subject in a work of art affects the
beholder in the same sort of way as the same subject, occurring as a
fact or aspect of Nature, affects him; and thus whatever in Nature
excites the mental and moral emotion of man is a right subject for
fine art; and (2), that subjects of our own day should not be
discarded in favour of those of a past time. These principles, along
with others bearing in the same direction, underlie the propositions
lately advanced by Count Leo Tolstoy in his most interesting and
valuable (though I think one-sided) book entitled "What is Art?"--and
the like may be said of the principles announced in the "Hand and
Soul" of Dante Rossetti, and in the "Dialogue on Art" by John
Orchard, through the mouths of two of the speakers, Christian and
Sophon. I have once or twice seen these papers by Mr. Tupper
commented upon to the effect that he wholly ignores the question of
art-merit in a work of art, the question whether it is good or bad in
form, colour, etc. But this is a mistake, for in fact he allows that
this is a relevant consideration, but declines to bring it within his
own lines of discussion. There is also a curious passage which has
been remarked upon as next door to absurd; that where, in treating of
various forms of still life as inferior subjects for art, he says
that "the dead pheasant in a picture will always be as 'food,' while
the same at the poulterer's will be but a dead pheasant." I do not
perceive that this is really absurd. At the poulterer's (and Mr.
Tupper has proceeded to say as much in his article) all the items are
in fact food, and therefore the spectator attends to the differences
between them; one being a pheasant, one a fowl, one a rabbit, etc.
But, in a varied collection of pictures, most of the works
representing some subject quite unconnected with food; and, if you
see among them one, such as a dead pheasant, representing an article
of food, that is the point which primarily occurs to your mind as
distinguishing this particular picture from the others. The views
expressed by Mr. Tupper in these two papers should be regarded as his
own, and not by any means necessarily those upheld by the
Praeraphaelite Brotherhood. The members of this body must however
have agreed w