same overwhelming sense of the tragic conflicts of life, the same
sense of the greatness, the splendour of human nature, which is most
triumphant when most it seems to fail; and on the other side at least
something of that exquisite, that almost unimaginable grace of the
romantic comedy, of the world of Portia and Viola and Beatrice and
Miranda. I do not think that the unity of the great art of Europe, the
comparative insignificance of merely national characteristics and
historical circumstances can find a more convincing illustration.

* * * * *

I could wish that I were able to deal adequately with the parallel
movements of painting and sculpture during these centuries, but I have
neither the capacity nor is there now the time to deal with them. This
much only may be said, that the movement of these arts is very closely
parallel during these centuries, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth,
to that of literature. I cannot discuss the characteristics of mediaeval
sculpture and painting, but I would remind you that the notion that
these were merely conventional and abstract is just as mistaken as the
notion that mediaeval literature deals only with conventions or
allegories. It is of course obviously true that the ecclesiastical or
religious purpose served by the greater part of the decorative art of
the Middle Ages which has survived to us, limits and restrains its
subjects and its forms. But no one who is at any pains to consider
mediaeval sculpture and mosaic painting can fail to see that alongside
of much which became conventional, and was fixed in what has been
called the 'Byzantine' style, there is an immense amount of work both in
sculpture and in mosaic which expresses the determination of the
mediaeval artist to represent the world as he experienced and saw it,
and that the main obstacle to the free expression of this spirit was not
the acquiescence or satisfaction of the mediaeval artist in conventional
forms, but the lack of technical dexterity. This will become evident to
any one who will turn his attention, in studying the mosaics, from what
are no doubt the somewhat conventional and hieratic figures of saints
and angels to the realistic attempts to portray the stories of the
Bible. And it will be clear to any one who will study, for instance, the
sculpture of Wells or Amiens or Chartres that by the thirteenth century
the artists were rapidly learning how to represent the wor