absolutely relative, that all that a painter can hope to do is to suggest a truth to the imagination which will satisfy it and reinforce the form by its expression. Corot's comment upon a young painter's despairing attempt to reproduce by cadmiums, spectrums and alizarins the colours of a sunset was, 'Why doesn't he do it in black and yellow ochre?' A de Windt looks true, and a Sargent looks true; hang them side by side, and the de Windt looks brown and the Sargent looks garish; the same effect would be visible if we hung a Reynolds beside a Holman Hunt. Raw umber will look blue, or violet, or pink, or green, or brick-red, or black, by the right juxtapositions. Hunt is, according to Mr. Friswell's definition, an Impressionist in the second sense of an imitator of the actual colours of Nature (though not in the first sense of a recorder of a simple unified impression); but does anyone believe seriously either that his greatness is based on that literal use of colour, or that his pictures even depend for their great emotional effect on their colour? In the finest of Holman Hunt's works accurate reproduction of colour is always subordinate to emotional expression by means of colour; and, further, expression by colour is subordinate to expression by form. Colour is, I admit, an added greatness in these works, chiefly as an emotional organ, partly (surely very slightly?) as an aid in their conviction of reality; but The Triumph of the Innocents and The Light of the World would be among the world's glories in Bolognese bistre and bitumen; and, as it is, they have not got literal colour truth. Such a work as his Hireling Shepherd (now at Wembley) gains something by its fidelity to outdoor light, but it is great even in a black-and-white reproduction. No doubt the Pre-Raphaelites valued such fidelity, and their enthusiasm for outdoor colour was a natural part of their young enthusiasm for all truth-a part of their greatness-but, again, they cared for it because they were great in many other ways; they were not great only because they cared for it. To the effect of some works literal colour is a distracting intrusion; yet I admit that a recurrent return to the study of outdoor light and outdoor Nature is one of the healthiest signs in the life of a school of painting, but in the sense that a normal healthy state of mind is engendered by it. I believe, for instance, that the Athenian and Elizabethan drama would not have been so great if the plays had not been performed in outdoor theatres; no adventitious glamour could be derived from artifice or illusion, studied darkness or factitious brilliance. But it is another thing to preach a one-sided plein-airisme, and to erect fidelity to outdoor colour into the main aim of painting. Is Bastien Lepage's portrait of his father great because it is faithfully painted in outdoor colour or because it is a profound and moving revelation of a human being? Does anyone miss outdoor lighting in his equally magical portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, which

is a revelation of an enchantress and a genius which no external fidelity of colour could enhance, and even the use of gold and silver colour as a means of expression only enhances in a small degree compared with the consummate drawing of the profile and hands and amazing delicacy of posing and accent? It is true, Mr. Friswell pleads for the Impressionist ideal chiefly as an ideal for landscape painters; but all that I have said is, I believe, as true of landscapes as it is of portraits and historical painting. In all branches we may be grateful to Impressionism for the new knowledge it has gleaned and garnered, scientific knowledge which artists may use, and should use, when appropriate. No truth must be rejected. Art needs all the science it can learn, for art is' Reason in her most exalted mood.' But a sense of proportion must be maintained. Many of our best landscape painters would gain little by using it, and in any case il dono principal di Natura e libertà.' Such a magnificent work as Mr. W. T. Wood's immense water-colour called Wild Winter, which was exhibited in the Royal Academy last year, and is one of the most marvellous landscapes of recent times, would gain nothing by focal unity of impression (so complete is its imaginative unity of expression), or by accuracy of optical colour (so perfect is its imaginative truth of tone). But I have seldom seen an Impressionist painting which would not have been turned from an unsatisfying experiment into a fine work by even a part of Mr. Wood's drawing and design. Mr. Wood values science more than most artists; but he does not say that art is science. Mr. Friswell and I are certainly agreed in a hope that the students at the proposed school of landscape at Flatford Mill will draw before they paint-and after it as well; still more, that they will think, feel, and create, as well as study and investigate. The greatest example of the union of scientific with artistic genius who ever lived was Leonardo da Vinci; no one ever valued science more-la somma certezza delle matematiche,'' vera scientia '-but he knew that artistic creation was more than scientific research, and in his landscapes there is no mere copying, but infinite suggestion :

My feeling, therefore, is that Impressionism, in its study of focal unity and colour accuracy, has earned our gratitude by contributing a body of valuable scientific knowledge to the store upon which artists can draw, but that it is not itself a phase of art, still less a culmination, and that its claims are exaggerated and one-sided, not only when tested by the performance of its disciples (who are artists only when they make the classical appeal to thought and the romantic appeal to emotion as well as their own realist appeal to curiosity), but that they are exaggerated in themselves as theoretical ideas. But for what they have contributed let us be grateful.

DELMAR HARMOOD BANNER.

SOME NOVELISTS OF MODERN SPAIN

EVEN in the days of the Greeks writers had realised that the function of art is to correct the shortcomings of Nature. Art must select its materials from the gross world of reality and build up another world of fancy, creating a just balance between the real and the ideal. There is thus a perpetual conflict between the real and the ideal, but nowhere more so than in the novel which has been well defined as the epic of modern life.'

The term ' epic' is a happy one to use when we reflect on the enormous influence in Spain of the fantastic romances of chivalry -an influence that only faded away when Don Quixote rode out on Rocinante. It was Dekker who had said of the Castilian hidalgo: 'The Spaniard was so busy in touching heaven with a lance that our Knight of the Burning Shield could not get him at so much leisure as to eat a dish of pilchards with him.'

The early Spanish novels approach near to the term 'epic' because they narrate, whereas our modern novel describes. Don Quixote stands at the parting of both ways. It is full of narrations that recall the old books of chivalry-narrations that the modern reader often skips through. But Don Quixote is also full of descriptions of actual characters that enchant in the same way as the ideal modern novel. And by descriptions we do not simply mean men and women like Sancho, Teresa Panza, the curate, or Maritornes, but also the enveloping atmosphere, the surroundings. As Flaubert said of the immortal work: Comme on voit ces

routes d'Espagne qui ne sont nulle part décrites.' The modern novelist of Spain nursing in his heart vestal-wise the divine flame of Cervantes, tries to observe realistically modern life. The nineteenth century coming as it did hard upon the heels of the eighteenth, when Voltaire's temple of reason was thronged with European pilgrims, introduced the weighing machine of materialism. Everything must be measured by 'facts.' Even in romantic Spain the castles of fantasy were fading into thin air, and there appear on the horizon novelists like Fernán Caballero and later on in the century Galdós.

Galdós by his novels redeemed the people from the cult of reason, which was alien to Spain, and led them to the reality of

flesh and blood. Azorín, the subtle miniaturist of modern literature, says of him:

Galdós appears silently, with his little eyes that pierce, his cold, scrupulous glance; he looks at everything, he examines everything--the cities, the streets, the shops, the cafés, the theatres, the fields, the roads. For the first time reality is going to exist for the Spaniards.

Galdós, the greatest novelist since Cervantes, leads us to our contemporary novel. His National Episodes, wherein he traces the epic of nineteenth century Spain, mark the dawn of Liberalism in a country notoriously traditional. Galdós had many great contemporaries in the novel, such as Juan Valera, Doña Emilia Pardo Bazan, Pereda, and Palacio Valdés, but they belong really to the nineteenth century, not to contemporary times.

When we examine generally the great mass of Spanish novels written in the last decade of the nineteenth century, we notice great differences of atmosphere and local colour, due to the regional character of the works. It was with justice that Victor Hugo spoke of Les Espagnes.' Nature by its succession of transverse mountain ranges has broken the Iberian peninsula into separate sections. Its dislocation of the country has imposed localism and isolation on its inhabitants. We find separatist tendencies not only in Catalonia, but also in the Basque country and in Galicia, and it is on account of this localisation that the modern Spanish novel is so interesting to us. We find in it a wealth of local colour that exists rarely in the novels of other more progressive countries, where the tendency has been to evolve a uniform cosmopolitan type of literature. When we read the works of Thomas Hardy, we are struck by his deep attachment to the soil of his native Wessex -the soil which he peoples not only with its modern inhabitants, but also with the phantoms of countless ancestors back to the days of the old kingdom. With this thought in our minds, we shall understand the value of the modern novelists of Spain. When the breath of popularity withers the bloom of inspiration which they have received from their own folk, they issue forth into the limelit arenas of Europe and trick out with trumpery their native muse; then must we write them down as poor workmen plodding the well-worn path.

To illustrate this point, let us take first of all Blasco Ibañez, who has obtained a greater share of notoriety, if not popularity, than any novelist living. Right from the outset Ibañez has been the stormy petrel of Spanish politics, and, unlike most agitators, he has made commercial success of his work. Born in the picturesque province of Valencia, the garden of Spain, his early novels are thoroughly Valencian in character and in custom. They paint in vigorous colours the lives of the middle class in the city, or else

the storm-tossed lives of fishermen or smugglers. In Arroz y Tartana he describes microscopically the bourgeoisie and their commercial life. In Flor de Mayo we enter the lives of the fishermen and share their hazardous enterprises. The fatalism of these folk, their rich fund of proverbs and phrases, recall faintly Synge's description of the west of Ireland. But there is all the difference between the modern realistic novelist, who only sees the appearances of things, and the realistic poet, who sees not the outer surface, but the essence, the kernel, and whose realism is of things recollected. La Barraca (The Cabin) is Ibañez's most striking work, because in it he reaches the folk. It is a remorseless picture of their relation to the rural problems of Spain. After reading that novel we can understand the pride of race of the Spanish peasant, his superstition and ferocity when roused. With its vivid description of the unpopular landlord, the grumbling peasantry and the boycotting, this work reminds us of many regional novels of Ireland. There is the same pessimism and inexorable fatalism that we meet in The Valley of the Squinting Windows, by Brinsley Macnamara. Don Salvador, the miserly landlord, who is hated by his tenants, wrapped in his old cape even in spring, is a figure that commands our attention. He could be compared to old Père Grandet, but he is drawn in darker colours. His is the tenacity of the miser who wishes to be in contact with his property at all hours; dogs bark when they see him afar off, as if Death were approaching; children make faces at him; men hide. Tío Barret is an interesting character, for he represents the old feudal peasant who is beginning to rouse himself to action against social conditions. There is no subtle portrayal of women in Blasco Ibañez, for his style is too rough. We must, however, make an exception in favour of the attractive Dolores in Flor de Mayo, the wilful, passionate Neleta in Cañas y Barro, and Roseta, the pathetic little drudge in La Barraca, who reminds us of Balzac's heroine Pierrette. The brilliant colours of this naturalist of the Mediterranean must not deter us from finding fault with his lack of sincerity, the lack of proportion which makes his works seem exaggerated. He fails especially with regard to continuity of action; some of his novels are full of endless description, such as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Enemies of Women. His later works are works for the cinema, works for exportation abroad among peoples that are ever ready to welcome the cry' New lamps for old!' The present writer in a visit to Unamuno at Salamanca in 1921 asked him what he thought of Ibañez as an artist. The sage replied that Ibañez was more an impressionist than an artist. Then, to illustrate his meaning, he related an anecdote about him. When Ibañez was last at Salamanca, Unamuno asked him to visit a second time some interesting parts of the city, such as the cathedral and the