Earthwork out of Tuscany | Page 3

flowers in a rye-field. If you say that they have
made gods in their own image, you do not convince them of Sin, for
they do as their betters. If you say their gods are 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.