--encumbered with its
lurid warmth of fungous wick, and drip of stalactitic grease--that we
may see, when another man would have seen, or dreamed he saw, the flight
of a divine Virgin--only the lamplight upon the hair of a costermonger's
ass;--that, having to paint the good Samaritan, we may see only in
distance the back of the good Samaritan, and in nearness the back of the
good Samaritan's dog;--that having to paint the Annunciation to the
Shepherds, we may turn the announcement of peace to men, into an
announcement of mere panic to beasts; and, in an unsightly firework of
unsightlier angels, see, as we see always, the feet instead of the head,
and the shame instead of the honor;--and finally concentrate and rest
the sum of our fame, as Titian on the Assumption of a spirit, so we on
the dissection of a carcass,--perhaps by such fatuous fire, the less we
walk, and by such phosphoric glow, the less we shine, the better it may
be for us, and for all who would follow us.

78. Do not think I deny the greatness of Rembrandt. In mere technical
power (none of his eulogists know that power better than I, nor declare
it in more distinct terms) he might, if he had been educated in a true
school, have taken rank with the Venetians themselves. But that type of
distinction between Titian's Assumption, and Rembrandt's Dissection,
will represent for you with sufficient significance the manner of choice
in all their work; only it should be associated with another
characteristic example of the same opposition (which I have dwelt upon
elsewhere) between Veronese and Rembrandt, in their conception of
domestic life. Rembrandt's picture, at Dresden, of himself, with his
wife sitting on his knee, a roasted peacock on the table, and a glass of
champagne in his hand, is the best work I know of all he has left; and
it marks his speciality with entire decision. It is, of course, a dim
candlelight; and the choice of the sensual passions as the things
specially and forever to be described and immortalized out of his own
private life and love, is exactly that "painting the foulest thing by
rushlight" which I have stated to be the enduring purpose of his mind.
And you will find this hold in all minor treatment; and that to the
uttermost: for as by your broken rushlight you see little, and only
corners and points of things, and those very corners and points ill and
distortedly; so, although Rembrandt knows the human face and hand, and
never fails in