man
ever felt more deeply than he the dignity of labor.

When everything which could be said for or against the picture had
been exhausted on the other side of the Atlantic, the picture was
brought to this country and finally to the State of California. Here
the discussion began all over again. There were those who were so
impressed by the unpleasant character of the subject that they could
not find words strong enough to express their horror. The Man with
the Hoe was called "a monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched," a
"dread" and "terrible" shape, "a thing that grieves not and that never
hopes," a "brother to the ox," and many other things which would have
surprised and grieved Millet.

Of course, any one to whom the pathos of the subject itself appeals
so strongly can have little thought for the artistic qualities of the
picture. So Edwin Markham, the writer of the poem from which
these expressions are quoted, lets the subject lead him on into an
impassioned protest against "the degradation of labor,--the oppression
of man by man,"--all of which has nothing to do with the picture.

Millet was not one to care at all for what he called "pretty"
subjects, as we have already seen in studying the picture of the
Milkmaid. "He felt that only by giving to his figures the expression
and character which belonged to their condition could he obey the laws
of beauty in art, for he knew that a work of art is beautiful only
when it is homogeneous."[1]

This was the theory which he put into practice in the Man with the
Hoe, and one who understands well both his theories and his art sums
up the great painting in these words: "The noble proportions of the
figure alone would give this work a place among the greater artistic
conceptions of all time, while the severe and simple pathos of this
moment of respite in the interminable earth struggle, invests it with
a sublimity which belongs to eternal things alone." [2]

[Footnote 1: Pierre Millet in the _Century_.]

[Footnote 2: Henry Naegely.]

XVI

THE PORTRAIT OF MILLET

In studying the works of any great painter many questions naturally
arise as to the personality of the man himself and the influences
which shaped his life. Some such questions have already been answered
as we have examined these fifteen pictures by Millet. Jean Francois
Millet, we have learned, was of peasant parentage and spent the
greater part of his life in the country. His pious Norman anc