, Rossetti, Millais, Hunt arose;
and they said, "We will paint men as they actually were in the past, in
the moments of their passion, and with their emotions on their faces,
and with the scenery around them as it was; and whatever background of
nature there was behind them, it shall be painted direct from the very
work of nature herself, and in her very colours. In doing this our range
will become infinite. No doubt we shall fail. We cannot grasp the whole
of nature and humanity, but we shall be _in_ their life: aspiring,
alive, and winning more and more of truth." And the world of art howled
at them, as the world of criticism howled at Wordsworth. But a new life
and joy began to move in painting. Its winter was over, its spring had
begun, its summer was imagined. Their drawing was faulty; their colour
was called crude; they seemed to know little or nothing of composition;
but the Spirit of Life was in them, and their faults were worth more
than the best successes of the school that followed Rafael; for their
faults proved that passion, aspiration and originality were again alive:

Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory
For daring so much, before they well did it.

If ever the artist should say to himself, "What I desire has been
attained: I can but imitate or follow it"; or if the people who care for
any art should think, "The best has been reached; let us be content to
rest in that perfection"; the death of art has come.

The next poem belonging to this subject is the second part of _Pippa
Passes_. What concerns us here is that Jules, the French artist, loves
Phene; and on his return from his marriage pours out his soul to her
concerning his art.

In his work, in his pursuit of beauty through his aspiration to the old
Greek ideal, he has found his full content--his heaven upon earth. But
now, living love of a woman has stolen in. How can he now, he asks,
pursue that old ideal when he has the real? how carve Tydeus, with her
about the room? He is disturbed, thrilled, uncontent A new ideal rises.
How can he now

Bid each conception stand while, trait by trait,
My hand transfers its lineaments to stone?
Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth--
The live truth, passing and repassing me,
Sitting beside me?

Before he had seen her, all the varied stuff of Nature, every material
in her workshop, tended to one form of beauty, to the human archetype.
But now she, Phene,