Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

53
Forget six counties overhung v/ith nnoke,
Forgot the snorting steam nd piston stroke,
Forget the spreading of the hideous town;
Think rather of tlic pack-horse on the clown,
And dream of London, email and white, and clean,
The clear Thames bordered by its /arsons green;...
In Ilorris's London Chaucer is at work:
...nigh the thronged wharf Geoffrey Chaucer's pen
Moves over bills of lading... 2g
l:his picture seems to have influenced Pater's description of
Auxerre in "Denys L'Auxerrois", where tho river Yonne,
has all tho lightsome characteristics of French
river-side scenery on a smaller ccale than usual,
and miclrt pass for the child's fancy of a river,
like the rivero of old r:dniature~paintcrs, blue
and full to a fair green mar gin. 2g
Pater's Shakespeare, it a-op ceres, had anticipated "orris.
The poet iillian Watson, reviewing Appreciations in The
Acoc'.Giny discerned a quality of humility in Pater's method:
by virtue of this vory humility and apparent
celf-repression ho attains to something like
kinship and equality v:it:i tho masters whom it
is his ambition singly to under.' trnci and report.
(21 December 1889)
To ono modern c iti, :. it appears that Pator'c "reel ;;ift" is
for "the discernment of the delicate nuance rather than of
oov;er" - ho deals on a mail scale with works conceived on
a fjuall scule and "is more successful in coaling v/ith Luca
aobbia than .vitA
"^
ra.tor's selection of t-iree relatively unpopular ol^yc
in ordoji" to characterise Sliakospeare is siciiificnrb - it
reflects the parado:-: of his Iiunility: he v/ritos about t^o r:u; lities:
in artists thf.it he aspires to in his ovm work, 'i.liic- egocentricity
is something Pator aclaiov/1 edged anc. v/elcoraed in tho
otucly of --cst ages. In V'arius tlio Enicuz'Gan tlie nest is Been
to be interesting not in itself but in so f r as it contributed
to a continual process c/liicli includes present anc1 future -
an abstract value t;oin;'; beyono archaeolo^/j
The frag::ents of oldoa architecture, the
nosaics, the spiral cola~-ns, the orecious
corJier-ctonos of innieraorial buildin..:;, 1m d
nuu on, by r;uch jtuitaiociition v;ith a now
creed , a now and cinaTilar oiprcasivenesc,