8o ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



Wherever Taine travelled — and we have his Voyage to the 

 Pyrenees, Notes on England, Notes on Paris, and Travel Notebooks (on 

 the provinces), as well as his Italy^^ — he was a sensitive and acute 

 observer. In an 'Introduction' to the Italy volumes, he includes an 

 interesting bit of self-appraisal. His powers of observation are 

 referred to, impersonally, as an 'instrument': 



'According to my own experience this instrument, call it what 

 you will, whether soul or intellect, derives greater pleasure from 

 natural objects than from works of art; nothing seems to it to 

 equal mountains, seas, forests, and streams. It has always shown 

 the same disposition in other things, in poetry as in music, in 

 architecture as in painting; that which has most deeply impressed 

 it is the natural spontaneous outflow of human forces, whatever 

 these may be and under whatever form they present themselves. 

 Provided the artist is stirred by a profound passionate sentiment, 

 and desires only to express this fully, as it animates him, without 

 hesitation, feebleness, or reservation, the end is served; if sincere 

 and sufl[iciently master of his processes to translate his impressions 

 accurately and completely, his work, whether ancient or modern, 

 gothic or classic, is beautiful. In this respect it is a brief abstract 

 of public sentiment, of the dominant passion of the hour and 

 country in which it is born; itself a natural work, the result of the 

 mighty forces that guide or stimulate the conflict of human 

 activities. '32 



The natural note for the traveller is relativisim, and Taine con- 

 cludes by avowing distrust of his own limitations, the tendency to 

 view things as through coloured lenses — an inevitable human 

 weakness which it is the function of education, history, and criti- 

 cism to overcome. 



Though it may seem curious to have a book on Italy, many of 

 whose pages are devoted to descriptions of its art, begin with a 

 confession that its author has a greater love of 'natural objects', 

 such frankness provides an essential clue to the strengths and 

 weaknesses of Taine's method. Just as the History of English Litera- 

 ture was written primarily as a study in 'the psychology of a people', 

 so Taine's interest in the art of Italy is primarily that of an 

 historian of its culture. On the one hand, he chooses those aspects 

 of the works of art he observes which best illustrate his special 

 sort of generalizations; and on the other, his penetrating com- 

 ments — on climate and geography, on historical and social 



