EASTLAKE’S HISTORY OF OIL-PAINTING 255

or disciplined invention; and to the complexities of a system requiring time, patience, and succession of process, may be owing the conversion of the ready draughtsman into the resolute painter. Farther than this, who shall say how unconquerable a barrier to all self-denying effort may exist in the consciousness that the best that is accomplished can last but a few years, and that the painter’s travail must perish with his life?

5. It cannot have been without strong sense of this, the true dignity and relation of his subject, that Mr. Eastlake has gone through a toil far more irksome, far less selfish than any he could have undergone in the practice of his art. The value which we attach to the volume depends, however, rather on its preceptive than its antiquarian character. As objects of historical inquiry merely, we cannot conceive any questions less interesting than those relating to mechanical operations generally, nor any honours less worthy of prolonged dispute than those which are grounded merely on the invention or amelioration of processes and pigments.¹ The subject can only become historically interesting when the means ascertained to have been employed at any period are considered in their operation upon or procession from the artistical aim of such period, the character of its chosen subjects, and the effects proposed in their treatment upon the national mind. Mr. Eastlake has as yet refused himself the indulgence of such speculation; his book is no more than its modest title expresses. For ourselves, however, without venturing in the slightest degree to anticipate the expression of his ulterior views-though we believe that we can trace their extent and direction in a few suggestive sentences, as pregnant as they are unobtrusive-we must yet, in giving a rapid sketch of the facts established, assume the privilege of directing the reader to one or two of their most obvious consequences, and, like honest ‘prentices, not suffer the abstracted retirement of our master in the back parlour

¹ [For Ruskin’s views on discoveries of this kind and their vanity, see Two Paths, § 139; Eagle’s Nest, §§ 33, 74; Arrows of the Chace, 1880, i. pp. 277 seq.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]