for verity and use is the one aim of the three that always leads in
great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without any exception.
They will permit themselves in awkwardness, they will permit themselves
in ugliness; but they will never permit themselves in uselessness or in
unveracity.

102. And farther, as their skill increases, and as their grace, so much
more, their desire for truth. It is impossible to find the three motives
in fairer balance and harmony than in our own Reynolds. He rejoices in
showing you his skill; and those of you who succeed in learning what
painter's work really is, will one day rejoice also, even to
laughter--that highest laughter which springs of pure delight, in
watching the fortitude and the fire of a hand which strikes forth its
will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it on the sea. He
rejoices in all abstract beauty and rhythm and melody of design; he will
never give you a colour that is not lovely, nor a shade that is
unnecessary, nor a line that is ungraceful. But all his power and all
his invention are held by him subordinate,--and the more obediently
because of their nobleness,--to his true leading purpose of setting
before you such likeness of the living presence of an English gentleman
or an English lady, as shall be worthy of being looked upon for ever.

103. But farther, you remember, I hope--for I said it in a way that I
thought would shock you a little, that you might remember it--my
statement, that art had never done more than this, never more than given
the likeness of a noble human being. Not only so, but it very seldom
does so much as this; and the best pictures that exist of the great
schools are all portraits, or groups of portraits, often of very simple
and no wise noble persons. You may have much more brilliant and
impressive qualities in imaginative pictures; you may have figures
scattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers; you may have light and
shade, as of a tempest, and colour, as of the rainbow; but all that is
child's play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. Their
real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I know, it is never
elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, as in painting one man or woman,
and the soul that was in them; nor that always the highest soul, but
often only a thwarted one that was capable of height; or perhaps not
even that, but faultful and poor, yet seen through, to the poor best of
it, by