Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/431

Rh were of a kind that singularly divided these elements. Such of his productions as are most delightful in colour are comparatively rude and heavy in outline—and where his line is most sharp and masterly, the element of colour is nearly or altogether absent. His colour, again, was not so much an imitative as a purely decorative agent. The question as to whether the highest qualities of colour are compatible with the highest qualities of form, seems to us to be not so much a matter of abstract possibility as of actual and personal practice. Tintoretto proposed to unite the 'terrible manner' and grand drawing of Michael Angelo to the colour of Titian. There seems no reason in the nature of these two elements why they should not be united in the highest perfection; whether any genius will arise who will succeed in doing this remains to be seen. Colour is to drawing what music is to rhythmic words. It is not under every set of conditions that music can be 'married to immortal verse' with success. Much depends upon the auditory—much on the apprehension of the musician. There are delights of the eye in colour alone which fully correspond to the delights of melody alone. We may see in so common an object as an old garden-wall and in the compass of a dozen moss-grown or lichen-stained bricks, with the irregular, intervening mortar-lines, such hues and harmonies as will, for a while, give to the trained eye the same delight as a happy air of music gives to the instructed ear. No two red bricks are alike. Some deepen into rich and mottled purples, others kindle into ruddy orange, or subside into greys of the loveliest gradation. These accidental combinations of time-stain and emerald moss-growth with the cloudy hues of the irregular, brick wall, are sufficient of themselves to satisfy an eye open to perceive and understand them. In painting we may observe all manner of pleasant sophistries, which it is a fine holiday amusement to disentangle—arising from these subtle and indefinable relations of the pleasures of colour to the pleasures of form. How often we receive—especially among the smaller and