r into the matter; they discover for themselves
the greater part of what I have laid before you to-night; they form
themselves into a body, and enter upon that crusade which has hitherto
been victorious. And which will be absolutely and triumphantly
victorious. The great mistake which has hitherto prevented the public
mind from fully going with them must soon be corrected. That mistake was
the supposition that, instead of wishing to recur to the _principles_ of
the early ages, these men wished to bring back the _ignorance_ of the
early ages. This notion, grounded first on some hardness in their
earlier works, which resulted--as it must always result--from the
downright and earnest effort to paint nature as in a looking-glass, was
fostered partly by the jealousy of their beaten competitors, and partly
by the pure, perverse, and hopeless ignorance of the whole body of
art-critics, so called, connected with the press. No notion was ever
more baseless or more ridiculous. It was asserted that the
Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well, in the face of the fact, that the
principal member of their body, from the time he entered the schools of
the Academy, had literally encumbered himself with the medals given as
prizes for drawing. It was asserted that they did not draw in
perspective, by men who themselves knew no more of perspective than they
did of astrology; it was asserted that they sinned against the
appearances of nature, by men who had never drawn so much as a leaf or a
blossom from nature in their lives. And, lastly, when all these
calumnies or absurdities would tell no more, and it began to be forced
upon men's unwilling belief that the style of the Pre-Raphaelites _was_
true and was according to nature, the last forgery invented respecting
them is, that they copy photographs. You observe how completely this
last piece of malice defeats all the rest. It admits they are true to
nature, though only that it may deprive them of all merit in being so.
But it may itself be at once refuted by the bold challenge to their
opponents to produce a Pre-Raphaelite picture, or anything like one, by
themselves copying a photograph.

132. Let me at once clear your minds from all these doubts, and at once
contradict all these calumnies.

Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute, uncompromising
truth in all that it does, obtained by working everything, down to the
most minute detail, from nature, and from nature only.[39] Ev