58 THE STONES OF VENICE I. PRIDE OF SCIENCE

not be able to draw so much as a brick-kiln through its own smoke, unless I look at it: and that in an entirely humble and unscientific manner, ready to see all that the smoke, my master, is ready to show me, and expecting to see nothing more.

§ 19. So that all the knowledge a man has must be held cheap, and neither trusted nor respected, the moment he comes face to face with Nature. If it help him, well; if not, but, on the contrary, thrust itself upon him in an impertinent and contradictory temper, and venture to set itself in the slightest degree in opposition to, or comparison with, his sight, let it be disgraced forthwith. And the slave is less likely to take too much upon herself, if she has not been bought for a high price. All the knowledge an artist needs will, in these days, come to him almost without his seeking; if he has far to look for it, he may be sure he does not want it. Prout became Prout without knowing a single rule of perspective to the end of his days; and all the perspective in the Encyclopædia will never produce us another Prout.

§ 20. And observe, also, knowledge is not only very often unnecessary, but it is often untrustworthy. It is inaccurate, and betrays us where the eye would have been true to us. Let us take the single instance of the knowledge of aerial perspective,¹ of which the moderns are so proud, and see how it betrays us in various ways. First by the conceit of it, which often prevents our enjoying work in which higher and better things were thought of than effects of mist. The other day I showed a fine impression of Albert Durer’s “Sir Hubert” to a modern engraver, who had never seen it nor any other of Albert Durer’s works. He looked at it for a minute contemptuously, then turned away: “Ah, I see that man did not know much about aerial perspective!” All the glorious work and thought of the mighty master, all the redundant landscape, the living vegetation, the magnificent truth of line, were dead letters to him, because he

¹ [For a definition of this term, see Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 260).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]