II.

ANNO DOMINI.

HOW long does the morning last? Till Odin's

time? or Merlin's? When may the myths

be said to end, and history fairly to begin? While Merlin was flirting with Vivien on the Breton sands. Arthur-in the Enchanted Island-was still marking time by the Roman calendar, having heard very little of Christ, and absolutely nothing of "Anno Domini." Yet the worship of Odin-who ceased to be the Prince of Denmark and was discovered to be a god about the year when Christ was born-had flared its course through our heavens, and was already fading into darkness. How swiftly the hours move! Since Odin came there has been time for three or four religions such as that he gave us. How slowly the hours move! Since Christ came we have not found time to shake off all the myths that shroud our morning in a blinding mist. Surely it is only sunrise with us still.

And then, how many mornings history has seen-and

evenings, too. The first faint flushings in the East that broke over India and Persia; the meridian splendour that made Athens for a time the acropolis of the world; the darkness that fell upon Rome just when day was beginning to dawn upon Britain. So many and so varied are the lights that one cannot always. discern precisely the direction in which the shadows lie. To read history is like recalling the scenes of our childhood. Much is forgotten, much is exaggerated, or confused, or has taken a new shape or colour in our minds. Not until we actually revisit the long-deserted home do we realise its true proportions. Then, though familiar faces may be missing, though landmarks may have disappeared, and the fields where we gathered buttercups may have become hideous with brick and mortar, yet the little that does remain possesses a reality strong enough to correct our dreams of the past, to awaken dormant memories, and to give cohesion and substance to associations that were otherwise but fragmentary and elusive.

It is thus with History and Art. In History we read the record of the event; in Art we revisit the scene. History may tell us more than Art can show us-just as memory may recall things which have ceased to exist and incidents which have left no visible trace. But what Art does show us is not a shadow, it is the substance itself, of which History is only the

word-picture. The artist is, indeed, a historian, and the historian is an artist. For the vanishing point of History is found in mythology-which is the creation of the imagination; and the vanishing point of Art is found in hieroglyph-which is the earlist record of fact. If History is the living soul of the past, Art is its visible incarnation.

But the definition I seek is not one that shall divide myth from history, or picture-writing from picturepainting; it is rather one that shall differentiate the motive underlying two representations of the same thing. Take for instance, the ninth book of the Odyssey," where Ulysses recounts his adventures in the land of the Cyclops.

66

"Now off at sea, and from the shallows clear,
As far as human voice could reach the ear,
With taunts the distant giant I accost.
Hear me, O Cyclop! hear, ungracious host!
Thy barbarous breach of hospitable bands,
The god, the god revenges by my hands.

These words the Cyclop's burning rage provoke;
From the tall hill he rends a pointed rock;

High o'er the billows flew the massy load,

And near the ship came thundering on the flood.
It almost brush'd the helm-"

That is the story, as Ulysses tells it to Alcinoüs and his court. Compare it now with Turner's great painting in the National Gallery of the same scene. The

poem is a drama recited in our ears; the picture is the same drama acted before us in dumb show. But the reciter speaks as one whose eyes are filled with . visions of beauty or terror; and the actor's face is a revelation of his voiceless passion.

By

Is not the motive the same, then, in each? no means. In the poem it arises in the narrative and springs to the event. Will the huge rock hurled by the Cyclops sink Ulysses' ship? In the painting it is purely æsthetic, and asks for no event beyond the perfect correlation of light and darkness and colour in a splendid sunrise.

But now turn from this picture of Ulysses' ship to

But

one that hangs side by side with it-"The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her Last Berth." The motive, so far as Art is concerned, is the same in the two pictures -it is æsthetic: it is the perfect correlation of light and darkness and colour in a splendid sunset. there is something in the picture of the "Téméraire " which we do not discover in the "Ulysses," and which goes far beyond it; something not founded on imagination, or tradition, or research. It is the witness of an epoch in our national life-of the passing away of the old order and the bringing in of the new. While the picture of Ulysses' ship is only a historical painting the picture of the "Téméraire" is Historic Art.