nnot imagine him deeply moved, as
the modern world is moved, by the symbolism of bird and beast, of tree and
mountain, of flame and darkness. It was a profound understanding of all
creatures and things, a profound sympathy with passionate and lost souls,
made possible in their extreme intensity by his revolt against corporeal
law, and corporeal reason, which made Blake the one perfectly fit
illustrator for the 'Inferno' and the 'Purgatorio': in the serene and
rapturous emptiness of Dante's Paradise he would find no symbols but a few
abstract emblems, and he had no love for the abstract, while with the
drapery and the gestures of Beatrice and Virgil, he would have prospered
less than Botticelli or even Clovio.

1897.

SYMBOLISM IN PAINTING

In England, which has made great Symbolic Art, most people dislike an art
if they are told it is symbolic, for they confuse symbol and allegory.
Even Johnson's Dictionary sees no great difference, for it calls a Symbol
'That which comprehends in its figure a representation of something else';
and an Allegory, 'A figurative discourse, in which something other is
intended than is contained in the words literally taken.' It is only a
very modern Dictionary that calls a Symbol 'the sign or representation of
any moral thing by the images or properties of natural things,' which,
though an imperfect definition, is not unlike 'The things below are as the
things above' of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes! _The Faery Queen_ and _The
Pilgrim's Progress_ have been so important in England that Allegory has
overtopped Symbolism, and for a time has overwhelmed it in its own
downfall. William Blake was perhaps the first modern to insist on a
difference; and the other day, when I sat for my portrait to a German
Symbolist in Paris, whose talk was all of his love for Symbolism and his
hatred for Allegory, his definitions were the same as William Blake's, of
whom he knew nothing. William Blake has written, 'Vision or
imagination'--meaning symbolism by these words--'is a representation of
what actually exists, really or unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is formed
by the daughters of Memory.' The German insisted with many determined
gestures, that Symbolism said things which could not be said so perfectly
in any other way, and needed but a right instinct for its understanding;
while Allegory said things which could be said as well, or better, in
another way, and needed a right knowledge for its underst