Earthwork out of Tuscany | Page 3

earthy, they reply by asking, "What then are we?" For they will admit, and you cannot deny, earthiness to have at least a part in all of us. And you are forbidden to call this unhappy, since God made all. Out of the drenched earth whence these worshippers arose, they made their rough-cast gods; out of the same earth they still mould images to speak the presentment of them which they have. Out of that earth, I, a northern image-maker, have set up my conceits of their informing spirits, of the spirits of themselves, their soil, and the fair works they have accomplished. So I have called this book _Earthwork out of Tuscany. Qui habet aures ad audiendum audiat._
LONDON, 1895.

CONTENTS
PROEM: APOLOGIA PRO LIBELLO
1. EYE OF ITALY
2. LITTLE FLOWERS
3. A SACRIFICE AT PRATO
4. OF POETS AND NEEDLEWORK
5. OF BOILS AND THE IDEAL
6. THE SOUL OF A FACT
7. QUATTROCENTISTERIA
8. THE BURDEN OF NEW TYRE
9. ILARIA, MARIOTA, BETTINA
10. CATS
11. THE SOUL OF A CITY
12. WITH THE BROWN BEAR
13. DEAD CHURCHES AT FOLIGNO
ENVOY: TO ALL YOU LADIES

PROEM
APOLOGIA PRO LIBELLO: IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND
Although you know your Italy well, you ask me, who see her now for the first time, to tell you how I find her; how she sinks into me; wherein she fulfils, and wherein fails to fulfil, certain dreams and fancies of mine (old amusements of yours) about her. Here, truly, you show yourself the diligent collector of human documents your friends have always believed you; for I think it can only be appetite for acquisition, to see how a man recognisant of the claims of modernity in Art bears the first brunt of the Old Masters' assault, that tempts you to risk a _rechauffée_ of Paul Bourget and Walter Pater, with ana lightly culled from Symonds, and, perchance, the questionable support of ponderous references out of Burckhardt. In spite of my waiver of the title, you relish the notion of a Modern face to face with Botticelli and Mantegna and Perugino (to say nothing of that Giotto who had so much to say!), artists in whom, you think and I agree, certain impressions strangely positive of many vanished aspects of life remain to be accounted for, and (it may be) reconciled with modern visions of Art and Beauty. Well! I am flattered and touched by such confidence in my powers of expression and your own of endurance. I look upon you as a late-in-time Maecenas, generously resolved to defray the uttermost charge of weariness that a young writer may be encouraged to unfold himself and splash in the pellucid Tuscan air. I cannot assert that you are performing an act of charity to mankind, but I can at least assure you that you are doing more for me than if you had settled my accounts with Messr. Cook and Sons, or Signora Vedova Paolini, my esteemed landlady. A writer who is worth anything accumulates more than he gives off, and never lives up to his income. His difficulty is the old one of digestion, Italian Art being as crucial for the modern as Italian cookery. Crucial indeed! for diverse are the ways of the Hyperboreans cheek by jowl with asciutta and Tuscan tablewine, as any osteria will convince you. To one man the oil is a delight: he will soak himself in it till his thought swims viscid in his pate. To another it is abhorrent: straightway he calls for his German vinegar and drowns the native flavour in floods as bitter as polemics. Your wine too! Overweak for water, says one, who consumes a stout fiaschone and spends a stertorous afternoon in headache and cursing at the generous home-grown. _Frizzante!_ cries your next to all his gods; and flushes the poison with infected water. Crucial enough. So with art. Goethe went to Assisi. "I left on my left," says he, "the vast mass of churches, piled Babel-wise one over another, in one of which rest the remains of the Holy Saint Francis of Assisi--with aversion, for I thought to myself that the people who assembled in them were mostly of the same stamp with my captain and travelling companion."
Truly an odd ground of aversion to a painted church that there might be a confessional-box in the nave! But he had no eyes for Gothic, being set on the Temple of Minerva. The Right Honourable Joseph Addison's views of Siena will be familiar to you; but an earlier still was our excellent Mr. John Evelyn doing the grand tour; going to Pisa, but seeing no frescos in the Campo Santo; going to Florence, but seeing neither Santa Croce nor Santa Maria Novella; in his whole journey he would seem to have found no earlier name than Perugino's affixed to a picture. Goethe was urbane to Francia, "a very respectable