HERBERT SPENCER
many instances of painters reaching a very ripe old age under the stimulus of work, and that it was generally through avarice that they broke down, and consequently were not to be pitied.
We touched, then, upon Millais and his wealth and his house, which reminded Spencer of a remark of Carlyle's, on entering the hall of Millais' house: "What! has all this been produced by painting pictures? Then men are greater fools than I thought them." "Yes, I have sometimes thought as Carlyle," I replied, "for in some of my moods I have said that the daubing of little spots of paint on canvas, in imitation of the things around us, is the most foolish of all the foolish ways of spending a life. Yet, on the other hand, is not Art—sculpture, architecture, painting, etc.—the ultimate aim of existence, the grandest and most entrancing of all our pursuits? The wealthy and the leisured classes go to Art as the highest and final enjoyment of existence, even those who do not understand it."
"Not so," said Spencer; "it is only another means of distinction. When men fail to make themselves celebrated, they think to make themselves distinguished by their possessions." "But," said I, "referring again to Carlyle, is not literature a form of art?" "That," he replied, "depends on the kind of literature." "Is not Sartor Resartus an artistic work?" I asked. "Yes," he answered, "it is an artistic rendering of a philosophic idea."
Then he fell foul of the Old Masters, on my referring to Franz Hals and his style, saying that every age thought the preceding one better, and that even the Iliad was full of complaints of the degeneracy of man. Spencer had led up to this by expressing a regret that there existed no means of marking a picture so as effectually to prevent imitation
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