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 THE TARN & 
 THE LAKE
 
 THE TARN 
 THE LAKE 
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE IN THE 
 ITALIAN RENAISSANCE 
 
 BY C. J. HOLMES 
 
 LONDON : PHILIP LEE WARNER 
 7 GRAFTON ST. BOND ST. W. MCMXIII
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 TO 
 
 THE MEMORY OF 
 MY BROTHER FRANK 
 MARCH 5, 1871 JAN. 26, 1890
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ORIGINALLY designed as an Introduction to a few 
 studies of Italian painting and sculpture, this essay 
 has overrun its intended bounds. At the outset it 
 proved impossible to recall the pleasant waters of 
 youth, without recalling also the much-enduring affec- 
 tions and friendships so lightly accepted then ; and 
 the sad story of the inhabitants of the Lake would 
 not tell itself without the trivial angling incidents 
 whereby acquaintance with their habits was slowly 
 and painfully gained. 
 
 Indeed it has often seemed to me curious that the 
 experience of anglers has been so little utilized by 
 scientific inquirers. Salmo fario may, for the ichthy- 
 ologist, be no more than a single species with perhaps 
 a few local variants. To the trout fisherman, however, 
 he is no mere trout, one and indivisible, 
 
 aXX' e<TT\ TToAAwv oj/oyttartuj/ er 
 
 V \ tit n 3t S'f 
 
 (TTIV JUitV AfdJ??, <TTl O 
 
 tiTTiv Se Xvtrcra /uai/tay, etrrt <S* 7/xc/ooy 
 a/c/oai/TOf, ear' 
 
 vii
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 Which signifies, as Brother John would interpret it, 
 that the trout is no single, common, identical, definite, 
 determined and measurable fish, but rather ten thousand 
 tantalizing, distinct and different devils. 
 
 To those who angle not, the angler is a miracle of 
 misapplied patience ; a watcher of floats, a wielder of 
 feathers, who wastes time and money and temper 
 incalculable in hunting, usually without success, what 
 the local fishmonger can always supply for a shilling 
 or two. The angler's mind is bent on no such material 
 problems. He is asking himself, " What are the fish 
 doing to-day ? " To him that under-water world is no 
 vulgar provision tank which could after all be un- 
 loaded far more effectually by a net or a dynamite 
 cartridge than by the rods of a hundred experts but 
 the abode of a community of intelligent, if edible, beings. 
 After a time he knows that sound logic underlies their 
 apparent caprice, and that the trout of different rivers 
 are as various in their diet, their habits, their character 
 and their appearance as are the races of mankind. 
 
 The angler visiting a new water is like a restaurant 
 proprietor landing in a new country. Until he 
 has made himself fairly well acquainted with the 
 manners and customs of the place, he will find but few 
 clients. He must consider the available food-supply 
 from natural sources, and utilize it as his craft allows. 
 He must consider how the appetite of the community 
 is affected by the climate, the prevalent winds, and the
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 chances of drought or floods ; how its physical strength 
 and the size of its members is influenced by the kind 
 and quality of that food, by their fertility or sterility, 
 by the presence or absence of predatory birds or 
 fish, and select his tackle and his lures in accord- 
 ance with the conclusions he draws. And then his 
 thoughts may naturally lead him, if his experience 
 covers more that one class of water, to ask himself 
 why the trout in one water are many and small, in 
 another few and large ; why some are light and some 
 dark ; why some are slender, others short and thick ; 
 some brilliantly spotted, others dull brown and grey ; 
 why some grow fast and others slow ; why some fight 
 like tigers and others are fat and scant of breath ? 
 
 It is unlikely that he will find answers to all these 
 questions, though some of them after a time will 
 appear simple enough. But those answers which 
 experience seems to prove correct, will in every case 
 have their root in our common human experience. 
 Trout become stout and short-winded from the same 
 causes that make men so. Give them proper exercise 
 or a more stimulating diet their natural strength 
 and activity will return, even though the stimulus be 
 artificial. Place them in some strong mountain water 
 where flies and their larvae are few, and their breeding 
 grounds extensive ; they will become numerous and 
 small. Place them in a pool where food is plentiful, 
 but where there are no shallows for breeding ; they will
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 grow large and remain few. Leave them undisturbed 
 and they will grow unsuspecting ; fish for them and 
 their native wits will expand to challenge yours. In 
 virtue of this instinctive response to outward condi- 
 tions the trout becomes to the angler no unworthy 
 antagonist. He is a being of like intelligence and 
 appetites, so that the opponents meet on equal terms. 
 The successful angler is the man who most fully 
 recognizes this parity, and can act upon it. 
 
 So much then for the analogy I have been tempted 
 to draw between certain communities of fish and 
 certain societies of men. To carry the argument to its 
 logical conclusion it was necessary to pass from the 
 Renaissance to our own day, although now that the 
 deduction is made I view the unexpected result with 
 some disquiet ; and, being naturally inclined to repose 
 and security, wish that salvation for the soul could be 
 found in some other way than through their troublesome 
 opposites. 
 
 C. J. H. 
 
 June 1913
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 I. THE TARN i 
 
 II. THE LAKE 8 
 
 III. THE PREDATORY FORCES 15 
 
 IV. THE SUPPORT OF WEALTH 18 
 V. THE VANTAGE GROUND OF RACE 23 
 
 VI. THE SPUR OF ADVENTURE 27 
 
 VII. MACHIAVELLI 36
 
 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 I 
 THE TARN 
 
 AMONG the hills, not far as modern journeys go from 
 the dark country of my boyhood, there lies a lake. I 
 well remember the first sight of it, as we alighted by 
 the little wharf and looked out over the glimmering 
 surface to the great fell that swept down beyond, nine 
 hundred feet through the fir woods. In point of mere 
 size that fell would be hardly even a molehill com- 
 pared with the world's real mountains, but in his own 
 district he reigns supreme a huge genius loci whose 
 solemn shadow never fails to exact its due of pleasur- 
 able awe when the place is seen again. Then peering 
 down through the five or six feet of clear water it 
 seemed clearer then than now we were suddenly aware 
 of movement, and a lordly perch, hardly to be distin- 
 guished from the pebbles save by the bars on his 
 back, sailed majestically along the roots of the piles in 
 search, no doubt, of some careless minnow. To 
 unpack rods and make a hasty attempt at capture was 
 the first impulse; but the luggage had been stowed
 
 2 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 away, the carriage was waiting, and appeal to our 
 seniors was out of the question. We were swept off, 
 full of excitement and anticipation, only to meet with 
 other novel and distracting pleasures a garden rich 
 in green gooseberries, the largest ever seen ; a cherry- 
 tree no less ample and inviting ; a manure heap full of 
 such brandlings as transmuted the even then distaste- 
 ful labour of digging for worms into an exhilarating, 
 
 almost a refined, pursuit ; bluff, kindly Willy P , 
 
 with his dogs and guns ; a beck with trout which 
 might sometimes be caught, if only you could keep out 
 of sight ; and, high above all both in wonder and in 
 altitude, the Tarn. 
 
 The Lake was soon discovered to be but a place of 
 boating parties and picnics. But when once you had 
 scrambled up the path through the woods, taking toll 
 of the wild raspberries by the way ; passed through the 
 straggling upland pastures, hugging the loose-knit 
 walls when the shaggy cattle seemed suspiciously like 
 bulls ; you emerged upon wild steeps of heather and 
 deep bracken, clogging thorns and juniper bushes, to 
 which the spice of adventure was given by the legend 
 that the place swarmed with vipers. Then, at last, 
 when apprehension in little hearts had long been 
 replaced by aching in little legs, came an escarpment 
 of grey rock, and beyond it a level sheet of blue water 
 stretching far to the unknown horizon. 
 
 On the ordnance map the Tarn shows but a small
 
 THE TARN 3 
 
 ragged spot, yet when revisited, even on the verge of 
 sober middle age, it still conveys the same impression 
 of vastness which charmed our childhood. Nor was 
 the illusion ever dispelled by making a circuit of the 
 water. The heather there grows deep and thick ; the 
 ground is wrinkled everywhere with unseen crevasses, 
 full either of black bog or sharp unkindly stones ; while 
 the long arms of the tarn, running up into the land, 
 make the journey seem interminable. 
 
 Besides the enchantment of air and light and space, 
 the mystery of remoteness, there was also an exhilarat- 
 ing sense of freedom. Nothing was there but the blue 
 water eternally lapping on the rocks ; the walls of the 
 boathouse dilapidated even then, and swept away long 
 since by some winter storm ; the low, rocky, heather- 
 clad hills all round ; with one dark clump of firs, now 
 like the boathouse a thing of the past, shadowing a 
 calmer bay to the west floored with bright water- 
 lilies. 
 
 But the fishing, the ostensible -object of these visits, 
 was a disheartening failure. We had already served 
 an apprenticeship among the ill-stocked waters of an 
 industrial district ; we had an ample supply of perfect 
 worms, scoured and made doubly attractive by the 
 fresh white moss of the fells, yet the total result of our 
 joint efforts for a week was one sudden solitary bite, 
 followed by the sight of a half-pound perch swinging high 
 in air, a solid thump as he landed on the grass, and a
 
 4 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 proud breakfast at which he was served to us with due 
 pomp. 
 
 This unwilling leisure was not without its diversions. 
 One angler, by slipping in bodily from a steep rock on 
 to which he had clambered, discovered that these 
 crystalline waters were not too cold for bathing. 
 Clothes spread out in the sun and wind dried just 
 enough to pass muster ; and so unkind Fortune was 
 flouted with some success till a surprise visit to the 
 fishermen from the ladies of the house caught them 
 flagrante delicto. 
 
 Still more surprising was the result of the cautionary 
 lecture which followed the loan of the key of the 
 boathouse. From that ramshackle boat, with a still 
 more ramshackle gutta-percha minnow, was hooked a 
 something which, after flashing awhile under the keel 
 in silvery zigzags, was hoisted over the gunwale, and 
 was recognized with joy as a pike. He was an ill- 
 conditioned little weakling, hardly larger than the 
 perch, but these two captures were the sum total of our 
 boyish sport in the Tarn. 
 
 A good many years went by. Then one quiet 
 Sunday afternoon the fell was climbed once more ; the 
 familiar rampart of grey rock was seen and sur- 
 mounted, and there was no disenchantment. The 
 charm of the place was as strong as ever. The low 
 hills all round ; the pleasant sun and wind ; the blue
 
 THE TARN 5 
 
 lapping water ; and the sense of great spaciousness 
 all were unchanged. Only the boat and boathouse had 
 vanished, and were lying in fragments five or six feet 
 below the rippling surface. The potent fascination of 
 the spot infected my companion, and the desire to 
 penetrate the secret of this deep secluded sheet of 
 water held us both enthralled. 
 
 Over the doleful result of our ill-starred enthusiasm 
 it is well to pass quickly. The boat being gone, we 
 should have to fish from the bank. Minnows were the 
 obvious bait, but in the prevalent bright weather they 
 could never be brought alive three miles uphill from 
 the lake. Another tarn, some two miles away along 
 the fells, was the one alternative source of supply. 
 There accordingly we spent a hot, laborious morning 
 among the firwoods, catching our baits singly with rod 
 and line, for want of a minnow-net ; and housing them 
 in a jam-jar, since shyness forbade the borrowing of a 
 bait can. 
 
 Then began a memorable cross-country journey. 
 Outside the narrow belt of firs, instead of easy open 
 moor, a wilderness of close-set thorns and juniper bushes 
 was discovered, grown breast high, either over deep 
 clinging heather made doubly discomforting by 
 memories of the viper legend or over black oozy 
 morass, filled with clouds of blinding, stinging flies. 
 
 Foot by foot, in the stifling midday heat, rods and 
 nets and the precious jam-jar, borne turn by turn, had
 
 6 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 to be hastily forced through this tangle ; the minnows 
 proving by their frantic jumps that they would soon 
 die for want of fresh water. Their bearers, too, felt 
 half-dead with stings, prickles, heat and weariness 
 when at last the glitter of the Tarn was seen far off, the 
 bushes thinned and a rush was made to the edge. 
 Then came the final catastrophe. The jar upset, the 
 minnows were spilled, and one only one was re- 
 covered by a despairing grab. With a care that 
 amounted almost to reverence this solitary survivor was 
 launched into the place which seemed most likely to 
 harbour a monster the bay with the water-lilies, just 
 where the broad leaves edged the deeps. In less than 
 a minute the line moved off with the familiar glide : a 
 cautious strike, befitting the fine tackle, found the fish 
 no giant, and he was soon in the net ; a long lean jack, 
 less than two pounds in weight. The experience of 
 the day was conclusive ; and we fished the Tarn no 
 more. 
 
 Even if all the baits so miserably lost had been 
 available, it may be doubted if we should have caught 
 any notable fish. Though the Tarn contains plenty of 
 pike, four pounds is the greatest weight remembered 
 by its most consistent observer. There are large eels 
 too, he informs me, presumably in the deeps, but I am 
 stubbornly sceptical as to the numbers of the perch 
 at least in the days when we fished there. Never in 
 that clear water, either from the boat or from the bank,
 
 THE TARN ^ 
 
 did we see a single perch on all the extent of smooth, 
 green, grassy bottom which would be their natural 
 feeding ground. Indeed, were it not for the single 
 specimen secured by my brother, their very existence 
 would have been open to question. Why these things 
 should be so I did not then consider.
 
 II 
 
 THE LAKE 
 
 THE Lake, too, was not devoid of charm. Though 
 the general aspect of its shores was gentle and 
 luxuriant, the effect of the great fell descending into 
 the water at one end was impressive ; there was a fine 
 glimpse of tumbled mountains at the other ; and there 
 was one reedy bay in particular where a huge abrupt 
 rock served as a reminder of the forces which ages ago 
 had carved out this placid valley. The water, being a 
 place of popular resort, was constantly fished both by 
 residents and visitors. During the Mayfly season it 
 yielded good baskets of trout, but in the summer its 
 staple products were perch and pike. For two hungry 
 undergraduates in lodgings, unable to vary a diet of 
 eternal cold mutton, these and similar products of the 
 chase rapidly assumed a very practical importance ; 
 especially since it was found exceedingly difficult at 
 first to catch a supply for the table. A light handy 
 boat, and minnows in any quantity were available, but 
 the weather being dry and bright, the Lake was low and 
 glassy clear. Even the local boatmen confessed to small 
 takes, and we, as was natural, at first caught nothing at all. 
 
 8
 
 THE LAKE 9 
 
 But the stillness of the surface frequently enabled us 
 to see that perch were there in plenty; although, in 
 strange contrast to their traditional greed, they moved 
 off quickly when our baits were dangled before their 
 eyes. After a single brief experiment we discarded 
 ordinary perch tackle, and fished with trout casts ; yet 
 even then we were only able to deceive an occasional 
 small fish. In those transparent depths the fine gut 
 we were using glittered like silver wire. A chance ex- 
 periment with a scrap of cobbler's wax proved that 
 a clear pale trout cast might be transmuted quite easily 
 into a stiff brown strand, dark and ugly to the human 
 eye, but possibly less visible to a fish. The trial was 
 
 made by C and, on returning from a dismal day 
 
 on a neighbouring river of some repute, I found him 
 the proud possessor of six good perch. Thenceforth 
 our sole task was to avoid the small fish and find the 
 large ones. 
 
 Making use of every moment of calm weather we 
 methodically explored the bottom' of the Lake : one 
 lying down over the bows of the boat while the other 
 sculled softly in obedience to the watcher's directions. 
 The contours of the underwater world for a mile or two 
 soon became familiar. Here were great tumbled rocks 
 fatal to leads and hooks; there were treacherous 
 growths of long green weed : here a shallow unex- 
 pectedly ran out for a hundred yards or more ; there 
 one floated suddenly over a black chasm branching
 
 io THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 from the great central abyss. The trout which rose 
 occasionally along the stony beaches were left, after 
 a few trial casts, to more experienced fishermen. Our 
 concern was with an easier if less delicate prey the 
 perch and the pike. 
 
 Of the two, the perch, as the more consistent in 
 appetite and considerable in number, had the first place 
 in our affections. On their favourite feeding grounds 
 the bottom was covered with a carpet of short green 
 weed, as smooth and trim as the lawns in a well-kept 
 garden. Where this sward was unbroken, and the 
 depth no more than six or seven feet, the perch usually 
 ran small ; but where boulders lay strewn about below, 
 and the grassy carpet sloped gradually into the twilight 
 of some twelve feet or more of water, the chance of 
 good fish increased. And where to these favourable 
 conditions was added the proximity of a reedy bay we 
 had perfection for there a pike might be looked for at 
 any moment. 
 
 We caught no very large perch the best might 
 weigh three-quarters of a pound but half-pounders 
 were fairly numerous, and our table was usually well 
 supplied with them, after the knack of locating the shoals 
 was once acquired. The pike were by comparison 
 creatures of mood and caprice, but when once hooked 
 on our light tackle they gave splendid sport ; though 
 fish of two or three pounds seemed to be the average, 
 and if we hooked anything larger we lost it. These well-
 
 THE LAKE n 
 
 fed youngsters, which the regular pike fisherman would 
 have hauled out headlong with his stout gimp, fought 
 like tigers : diving under our keel, fouling our anchor 
 line, and providing a thousand excitements before they 
 were secured and knocked on the head. They were 
 excellent eating, too, and cold pike became for our 
 simple household a staple side dish of which the 
 memory still is pleasant. 
 
 Twice in the next few years the place was revisited, 
 and the conditions of the fishing seemed unchanged, 
 though little time was given to the pike and still less to 
 the perch. Now the aim was to catch great trout by 
 trolling with baits of home design and manufacture. 
 While discussing the trout question with the old 
 boatman, who had known the Lake and fished it for 
 more than half-a-century, I heard that proposals were 
 on foot for improving the trout-fishing by netting the 
 pike. In the Mayfly season baskets of ten or even 
 twelve pounds weight of trout were not uncommon ; 
 if only the pike were netted the trout season would be 
 much longer and the catches much larger. Not without 
 some regrets for my old friends the pike, I determined 
 to take my annual holiday at the end of May in some 
 future year, and share in the good time that was in 
 store for trout fishers. 
 
 Several years elapsed before this intention could be 
 carried out, but at last I was by the Lake again. The 
 boats and the old boatman were still there, but the
 
 12 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 boats looked shabbier and the boatman had aged with 
 them. There seemed to be little or no business doing, 
 and in the course of conversation the following facts 
 emerged. 
 
 The reedy bays had been raided by the Fishery 
 Conservators with so much thoroughness that the pike 
 had been practically exterminated. Well, had not the 
 trout-fishing improved ? Yes. If the weather was mild 
 at the very beginning of the season there might be 
 some good takes; but as soon as the little perch 
 moved from the deep water to the shallows, they 
 hustled the trout, the trout retired to the deeps, and 
 the fishing was over for the year. The perch, then, 
 had benefited by the change ? No. They had become 
 innumerable, but were so small as not to be worth 
 catching, even by casual tourists. Nobody, in fact, 
 was doing any fishing at all, 
 
 I took a boat to test the matter for myself. On the 
 old fishing grounds it was impossible to avoid catching 
 perch, but they were all of the same size, not one 
 exceeding four ounces in weight. I tried at all depths, 
 and in all manner of places everywhere these useless, 
 irritating dwarfs rushed blindly at the bait. When I 
 had caught between forty and fifty it became clear that 
 
 Old K had said no more than the truth, and that 
 
 the perch-fishing, which in the past had been a steady 
 source of revenue to him and of pleasure to hundreds 
 of visitors, had ceased to exist. The pike were evidently
 
 THE LAKE 13 
 
 gone, or the perch, their ordinary food, would not have 
 swarmed, as I could see them swarming, in the shallow 
 reedy bays. The trout, too, it was said, had deserted the 
 shores, and through one long morning I had certainly 
 seen no sign of a rise. The deeper water still might 
 be explored. If that failed, there was other fishing in 
 the neighbourhood to which a visitor could resort. 
 Having brought no spinning tackle with me, I had 
 
 to turn to old K for help, but all that he could 
 
 produce from his sadly dilapidated stores was a single 
 "Thames" flight, too large to spin a minnow. So 
 frail and frayed was the gut that it would have been 
 fatal to test it except very gently. It would anyhow 
 make but little show in the water, and in a day of 
 blazing sunshine that was something to the good. 
 Running the boat ashore on a well-remembered shoal, 
 I trespassed, as of old, in a meadow ; and, as of old, in 
 five hasty minutes flicked out a couple of little brook 
 trout. Bending one of them lovingly in a curve that 
 gave an enticing spin, I let out some thirty yards of 
 line and set myself to follow the shelving shore, keep- 
 ing so far as possible to a depth of at least eighteen or 
 twenty feet, well beyond the limit of the feeding-ground 
 of the perch. For more than an hour nothing hap- 
 pened, though all the likely places were carefully tried : 
 then there was a sudden stoppage. The evident weak- 
 ness of my tackle had suggested the use of a twelve- 
 foot fly rod, so the shock passed safely.
 
 1 4 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 Reeling in, I gradually pulled from quite deep water 
 the largest pike I have ever seen alive. He allowed 
 himself to be drawn right up to the boat, supine, un- 
 resisting : and I had already got the net into the water 
 ready for him (how was a twelve-inch net to hold three 
 feet of fish ?) when he took alarm and made a violent 
 plunge vertically under the boat. Down and down 
 he went, the rod bending almost double, the line 
 screaming from the reel, till at last the pace became too 
 much for that unlucky trace, the strain suddenly 
 ceased and the fish was gone. Fired by this mis- 
 fortune I spent several more days on the water, but not 
 one single run rewarded either my own efforts or those 
 of a hotel acquaintance who, having given up fishing in 
 despair of sport, resumed it in my company. It was 
 evident that the large pike I had lost was a solitary 
 cruiser, which, having escaped the nets in the shallows, 
 was living on the trout in the deep water an exception 
 which proved the truth of the boatman's statement that 
 the fishing in the Lake was ruined, and that the place 
 was no longer worth a visit. 
 
 The trivial experiences I have ventured to chronicle 
 were fading into vague memories when they were un- 
 expectedly and vividly recalled to mind in connection 
 
 with a very different matter.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE PREDATORY FORCES 
 
 No ONE, I think, can have studied the history of the 
 Renaissance in Italy without noticing how its splendours 
 and its gaieties are incessantly marred or extinguished 
 by the shadow of death. Death in this world, and 
 worse than death in the next for those whom he docs 
 not love, are the motive and the burden of Dante's 
 song: Boccaccio's gay company jest in a moment of 
 respite from the plague of 1348; two centuries later 
 in the " Lives " of Vasari and the Autobiography of 
 Cellini, we meet the same tragic refrain. Not only 
 was every man's life continually at the mercy of private 
 animosity or avarice ; but the tumults of faction against 
 faction, the feuds of city against city, the wars of 
 princes and states and nations exacted a constant toll. 
 The political history of the time is one long record of 
 marching and counter-marching, of sieges, battles and 
 expeditions, in which the great Condottien won power 
 and immortality at the expense of the non-militant 
 Italians. Add to this the ravages of disease, not only 
 of the recurring periods of pestilence, but the fevers 
 and the like which the habits of the time would aggra- 
 
 15
 
 1 6 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 vate, but which the available medical knowledge was 
 powerless to avert or cure, and it will seem still more 
 wonderful that one of the greatest of the harvests of 
 human genius should have been reaped from this 
 stricken field. Moreover, when these various depreda- 
 tions upon human life are modified with time and circum- 
 stance, and Italy sinks into repose for the century 
 which preceded the French Revolution, there is a 
 notable falling off in Italian painting, sculpture and 
 literature. Some of the native talent, no doubt, had 
 been diverted to music, and Tiepolo, for his own age, 
 was perhaps as important a master as any of his pre- 
 decessors had been for theirs ; but the epoch of truly 
 creative energy was gone with the uncertainty of life 
 which accompanied it. 
 
 I cannot help feeling that there is a certain analogy 
 between Italy, when she seemed to be at the mercy of 
 these predatory forces, and the Lake of which I have 
 spoken. It must not be forgotten that for the most 
 part, those forces preyed upon the less able and agile 
 members of the community, as the prey of the pike was 
 usually the slow-moving perch rather than the swift, 
 watchful trout ; indeed, the perch were so generally 
 recognized as the staple food of the pike that a small 
 perch, all over the district, is the recognized trolling 
 bait for them. 
 
 Before the pike were netted, the nobler fish no 
 doubt came to an untimely end now and then ; but
 
 THE PREDATORY FORCES 17 
 
 after the pike were gone, the conditions of a trout's 
 existence, if less precarious than before, were in other 
 respects less favourable. Once the trout had reasonable 
 access to their feeding grounds ; now they found them 
 occupied by illimitable shoals of small, prickly, hungry 
 fish, quite useless to them as food, feeding greedily on 
 the young trout, and impossible to drive away. Had 
 they thoughts, and trout have long memories, they must 
 often have sighed for the good old days and the pike. 
 
 And if this was the condition of the patricians of _\ 
 the Lake, the plebeians were in no better case. They 
 had immensely increased in numbers, but were become 
 a puny breed, fruges consumere nati, good for nothing 
 but to eat up the whole under-water food supply of the 
 Lake and prevent their betters from getting it. Once 
 their community had its great personages ; now each 
 was as small and useless as his fellow.
 
 IV 
 THE SUPPORT OF WEALTH 
 
 BUT, the reader may ask, if the removal of the 
 predatory fish was so disastrous to the communities of 
 the Lake, how is it that in the Tarn, where the pike 
 remain in undiminished numbers, the fishing is no 
 better ? The answer, I think, must be that it is a 
 question of food supply. The Tarn lies some five 
 hundred feet higher than the Lake : it has thus a 
 shorter, colder summer, and a far more severe winter. 
 The Lake is fed by two or three good-sized streams, 
 and by a number of smaller becks and rills which 
 harbour minnows and other fish food ; while its warmer 
 waters encourage all manner of larvae and minute 
 crustaceans. Larvae, too, there must be in the Tarn, 
 for the flies around it can be a veritable plague, but 
 there are no feeding streams to give minnows safe 
 cover, and the little beck that runs from it makes too 
 steep a descent to give trout access to the place. The 
 Tarn depends on springs for its water supply, a marsh 
 provides tadpoles, and, in their season, presumably 
 frogs. There are also water shrimps. The pike and 
 the perch are thus largely dependent upon their own 
 
 il
 
 THE SUPPORT OF WEALTH 19 
 
 and each other's younger relations for their meal. Of 
 the two, the pike seem to have the advantage in the 
 matter of breeding grounds, so their numbers make the 
 food question even more acute than it would otherwise 
 be. No wonder that they remain small and lean ! 
 
 If, then, the Lake suggests some analogy with a 
 fertile country, the Tarn will suggest a comparison 
 with a rocky and mountainous district ; beautiful per- 
 
 J ' * V 
 
 haps as most mountain districts are ; peopled with 
 a spare and hungry race, robbers and raiders if you 
 will, trained to fighting and inured to hardships ; J 
 but very rarely producing conspicuous or generous 
 talent, unless transferred to some more kindly soil. As 
 in history these ruder races have often laid the founda- 
 tions of empire by conquering the softer folk of the 
 plains, so these little mountain fish grow and expand 
 when removed to waters where the conditions of life 
 are easier. 
 
 There is a small lake in South- Wales, deep and 
 remote, which contains no fish, except possibly minnows. 
 The owner's son, when a boy, was fishing in a 
 neighbouring pool swarming with small perch. Having 
 caught forty of these he transferred them to the empty 
 water. Eight years afterwards, wishing to see what 
 had happened he drove over to the lake with a supply 
 of minnows. After a while he struck a shoal of fish 
 and took thirty-nine perch, all of the same size, just 
 under two pounds in weight. Fired by this pheno-
 
 20 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 menal catch he visited the place again and again, but 
 was never rewarded by a single bite. Apparently 
 something in the conditions of the water had prevented 
 the perch from breeding, and the original fish, having 
 the whole food supply of the place to themselves, had 
 increased enormously in size. 
 
 When estimating the conditions in which genius has 
 most frequently been found, we attach immense import- 
 ance to Race. And we do so quite rightly, for nowhere 
 does national temper show itself more clearly than in 
 the Arts. But the condition of material prosperity cor- 
 responding to the food-supply of the fish is not always 
 given sufficient prominence. As there are ponds and 
 lakes where an ample food supply goes to fatten some 
 dull and lumpish breed of fish, so there may have 
 been periods when wealth has been associated with 
 vulgarity, when patronage has been misdirected and 
 treasure lavished on empty display. But no poverty- 
 stricken age or country has produced any considerable 
 group of artists or men of letters. Even in the Spain 
 of Velasquez and Cervantes and Calderon, though the 
 mass of the people was miserably poor, the Court and 
 the Church had still the tradition, and some of the 
 fruits, of the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro. 
 
 And there was immense wealth in the Italy of the 
 Renaissance. To Rome there flowed an annual tribute 
 from almost the whole civilized world. Florence was 
 the seat of those great financiers, the Medici. Venice,
 
 THE SUPPORT OF WEALTH 21 
 
 Genoa, Pisa were among the chief trading centres of 
 Europe. And all this wealth, being in the hands of 
 comparatively few families and corporations, each com- 
 peting in splendour with its neighbours, was available 
 to reward those who by their talents could enhance the 
 power or the reputation of its possessors. The com- 
 mon folk might lead a hard life, but the exceptional 
 man had every stimulus which his ambition could need. 
 The materials and the rewards for the artist were, in 
 fact, as plentiful in Italy as ever they were in despotic 
 Egypt, Assyria, Persia or China, or in democratic 
 Athens, enriched by the payments of allies and tribu- 
 taries, and supported by slave labour. 
 
 In modern states wealth is usually more widely dis- 
 tributed, and held to carry larger social responsibilities, 
 so that, in Europe at least, the active patronage of the 
 arts has, to its manifold disadvantage, passed from the 
 hands of individuals, and become official. In America, 
 however, immense fortunes are still owned by indi- 
 viduals, and spent in accordance with their personal 
 tastes. Up to the present, as was perhaps natural in 
 a new country, this expenditure has commonly taken 
 the form of collecting works of ancient art from the old 
 world, to serve as standards and examples for native 
 talent in days to come ; also a certain amount of 
 valuable critical work has been done in connection with 
 these imports. The national bent towards commerce 
 with the men, and towards amusement with the women,
 
 22 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 has proved, on the whole, no favourable soil for litera- 
 ture : but the rapid expansion of the country's wealth 
 and trade, and the concurrent demands of a public edu- 
 cation worthy of the nation's place in the world, have 
 given a very practical stimulus to architecture. In forms 
 of art less definitely bound up with her national re- 
 quirements, America may at present be rarely more 
 than clever and ingenious, but in the designing of 
 buildings for commercial, official and educational pur- 
 poses, especially, perhaps, in museums and public 
 libraries, she has not only managed to avoid the 
 besetting faults of similar structures in Europe, but has 
 displayed real creative genius.
 
 V 
 
 THE VANTAGE GROUND OF RACE 
 
 A CONSIDERABLE section, then, of any people must 
 really need art before it can come into being except as 
 a sporadic product. America has begun with architec- 
 ture ; possibly decorative painting and sculpture will 
 follow in due course. But how are we to account for 
 the condition of Germany ? In Germany also there is 
 wealth, and with it a far more general enthusiasm for 
 culture in all its forms. Yet the results, so far as the 
 Fine Arts are concerned, are in no wise commensurate 
 with this enthusiasm. 
 
 In a work which has justly attained considerable 
 reputation, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain has 
 drawn attention to the capacities and achievements of 
 the Teutonic race ; and so far as these relate to specu- 
 lative thought, to detailed research, to poetry, and, 
 above all, to music, his high estimates are fully 
 justified. The long-continued enthusiasm of the 
 Teuton for the Fine Arts has been far more sparingly 
 rewarded. If in Diirer's amazing manipulative power 
 we recognise the supreme development of that patient 
 accuracy of hand and eye which many of the German 
 
 23
 
 24 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 craftsmen of the time possessed, the intense imagina- 
 tive insight which accompanies it may well be derived 
 from his Hungarian ancestry; for no parallel to it 
 appears in other Teutonic work. Thus of genuinely 
 German art Holbein is perhaps the greatest manifesta- 
 tion, and the gap which separates Holbein from Rethel 
 and Menzel, the most considerable figures in German 
 art of modern times, is filled with names that survive 
 only as synonyms for misdirected effort. 
 
 The pure Teutonic race, then, seems to inherit with its 
 many abilities a certain disability towards the Fine 
 Arts. But this disability vanishes when it forms an 
 alliance with other races. Teutonic blood is claimed 
 for the northern invaders ot Greece, with whose coming 
 the Mediterranean civilizations take on a new lease of 
 life and produce in due course the unrivalled art of 
 Hellas. In more recent times the part it has played 
 in the development of the nations of North-Western 
 Europe nations by no means lacking in artistic 
 power hardly needs demonstration. 
 
 When Italy was finally occupied by her northern 
 invaders the inhabitants of the Peninsular had long 
 ceased to be a pure race. The extension of the Roman 
 franchise, and the needs and reputation of the mother 
 country, had led to a steady influx to Rome'of natives 
 from all parts of the Empire, and these in the course 
 of four or five centuries had almost overwhelmed the 
 old Italian Stock. Greece, Asia and Africa were all
 
 THE VANTAGE GROUND OF RACE 25 
 
 represented in the mixed race which the Goths ulti- 
 mately subdued, and this race retained some of the 
 traditions of the arts and crafts which had flourished 
 around the Mediterranean from time immemorial. To 
 the clever fingers, the hereditary ingenuity, of these 
 so-called Latins, the Teutonic alliance brought a new 
 seriousness, persistence and idealism. Centuries, in- 
 deed, had to elapse before the fusion was complete 
 enough to produce definite results : but when the hour 
 and the opportunity came the art of the Renaissance 
 was born. 
 
 The resemblance of the people in the Italian Quattro- 
 cento paintings to the men of our own time and country, 
 and their unlikeness to the modern Italian, is often a 
 subject for popular comment. When we consider the 
 origin of the Renaissance Italians, the frequent occur- 
 rence of fair hair and blue eyes among them ceases to 
 be a marvel. These blonde persons, usually it would 
 seem of the upper classes, represent the survival of the 
 Teutonic stock a survival which, unluckily for the 
 country, did not last long. The internecine warfare in 
 which some part of the country was always involved, 
 called for the services of the stoutest and bravest men 
 available. These naturally came in a large measure 
 from those with Gothic blood in their veins. Civic life, 
 too, had begun to play an all-important part in Italy ; 
 and it is, I believe, a recognised physiological fact that 
 fair-haired peoples die out when confined to towns, 

 
 26 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 whereas dark-haired peoples stand confinement well. 
 The golden age of the Italian Renaissance is thus the 
 moment when the Teutonic element had fused with the 
 other inhabitants of the country, but had not yet 
 succumbed to the forces which wrought its decay. 
 
 It would be unjust to assume that the other elements 
 in the people of Renaissance Italy had no good qualities 
 other than the power of surviving in conditions fatal 
 to the Teutonic stock. Africa, for example, in the 
 days of Imperial Rome, had had her famous men : 
 Apuleius, Augustine and Origen are names which 
 readily come to mind. A curious instance of this 
 non-Latin element was recently brought to my notice 
 in the shape of a death-mask of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 I had been often struck by something which I could 
 only vaguely set down as Oriental in the face of his 
 sister Christina. In the presence of the death-mask all 
 hesitation vanished : the remote ancestry of these great 
 children of Modern Italy was beyond all doubt North 
 African. It is only perhaps from such an intricate 
 racial compound that the extraordinary diversity ol 
 genius which the Renaissance exhibits could have 
 proceeded ; and in virtue of that diversity the art and 
 literature of this enchanted age in Italy has continued 
 for some four hundred years to unfold new delights for 
 each succeeding generation of men all over the civilised 
 world.
 
 VI 
 THE SPUR OF ADVENTURE 
 
 OUR friends the fish had no place in the last few para- 
 graphs, because hybrids among them, if not absolutely 
 unknown, are at least so uncommon as to make any 
 analogy with man quite impossible. But we have still 
 to consider whether the predatory fish exercise any 
 influence over their neighbours, other than that of 
 increasing their food supply and their feeding grounds 
 by decreasing their number. 
 
 It was my good fortune once to light upon certain 
 trout in a state, not quite of innocence, but of apparent 
 security. A sluggish current moving under boughs 
 that met almost everywhere not far above the water, 
 rendered some two hundred yards of one little stream 
 unapproachable to ordinary fly-fishing. Stealthy ex- 
 periment proved that in certain places, not by any 
 means in all, it was possible to crouch by the clear 
 water, even with bright sunshine overhead, and watch 
 unseen every movement of the fish. Also that a rod 
 could be manoeuvred through the bushes here and 
 there, and a fly with two or three feet of line lowered 
 
 gently on to the surface. 
 
 27
 
 28 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 For the first two days almost any small floating fly, 
 so long as there was no suspicious "drag" from the 
 current, attracted the fish ; but the tiny hooks, the 
 difficulty of striking slowly enough with so short a line, 
 complicated by countless entanglements among the 
 boughs, prevented more than ten per cent, of the 
 rises resulting in capture. Two of the larger fish, 
 each over a pound in weight, alone showed suspicion 
 from the first ; and with the exception of one momentary 
 but not, alas ! fatal aberration, avoided every kind of 
 artificial lure. After the third day the angler began 
 to master the secret of striking, and could generally 
 make sure of one in each five or six rises. But the 
 fish, pricked, alarmed or disappointed, were beginning 
 to realize their danger. It was no longer a case of 
 using any small fly. Pattern after pattern came to be 
 recognized as fraudulent ; until at last there was only 
 one single frayed black midge with a faded brown body, 
 which was evidently indistinguishable from some real 
 living delicacy. So woefully suspicious had the fish 
 become that, time after time, the angler saw natural 
 flies, fallen and struggling upon the water, examined all 
 round by the cautious fish, and then regretfully rejected 
 as impostures. 
 
 One disastrous day the precious black midge got 
 caught in a clump of sorrel, was twitched off, and 
 could not be found again. A letter to a friend in 
 London brought half a dozen more, while for two days
 
 THE SPUR OF ADVENTURE 29 
 
 the trout had a rest. Yet the brand new midges, far 
 from attracting the trout, drove them away in terror 
 (a single hasty glance was enough), just as if they 
 had been any of the other flies which the fish had 
 learned to know and to dread. Hours of experiment 
 were needed before the new purchases could be 
 trimmed to pass muster at all, and even then they 
 could be used with success only when other circum- 
 stances, such as the light, the place, and the current, 
 were entirely favourable. 
 
 It would seem then that trout, when past the stage 
 of infancy, learn very quickly where to look for danger. 
 These fish found out in two days that there was some- 
 thing wrong with the flies on which they were accus- 
 tomed to feed ; in a few days more they had learned 
 to reject all imitations except the little midge, and to 
 suspect even living struggling insects. When that 
 artificial midge was lost, they were able to see that the 
 copies of it, made of the same size and the same 
 materials by the same maker, were frauds and all this 
 in the space of some three or four weeks. It is not 
 then unreasonable to suppose that these same powers 
 of watchfulness and observation would be still more 
 highly developed in trout brought up from babyhood 
 in company with predatory fish like the pike of the 
 Lake. 
 
 And if this be so, I cannot help feeling that the 
 perch who survive in such dangerous society, if sur-
 
 30 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 viving in part by accident, survive also in virtue of 
 wits and sinews quickened by hourly contact with peril. 
 Our first experience of the Lake proved that the larger 
 perch were no simpletons : they could be circumvented 
 only by the very finest tackle. Perhaps we should 
 have caught more perch in the Tarn had we taken the 
 same precautions. But the little perch who occupied 
 the Lake after the pike were netted had had no such 
 strenuous education had developed no such acute 
 intelligence. They rushed on their doom so blindly 
 that catching them was tedious. 
 
 We know that the perceptions of fish are acutely 
 stimulated by experience of peril from man ; we may 
 fairly assume that they are stimulated no less acutely 
 by peril from their fellows. Is it conceivable that the 
 infinitely more sensitive and capacious intellect of man 
 in similar circumstances can remain unaffected ? Is 
 not our confidence, such as it now is, in the destiny of 
 Great Britain, based, in a large measure, on the memory 
 that in the past we have, time after time, been just so 
 much stimulated by our difficulties as to overcome 
 them? Habitually careless of precaution, we settle 
 down in indolence the moment a danger is past ; and 
 the next emergency finds us, as usual, unprepared. 
 Our wars open with failure, and we seem on the brink 
 of catastrophe. But under the lash of adversity, the 
 lesson of the failure is learned : our latent energy and 
 practical sense are stirred into activity, and our fortune
 
 THE SPUR OF ADVENTURE 31 
 
 has, so far, been retrieved. Merses pro/undo, pulchrior 
 evenit. 
 
 Upon the more generous and receptive spirits of the 
 Italian Renaissance, the prevalent mutations of life and 
 fortune had a similar effect. Had Dante lived in 
 Florence, at ease and undisturbed, we might indeed 
 have inherited from him other exquisite essays in the 
 manner of the Vita Nuova : but had he not tasted the 
 bitterness of defeat and exile he could have given us no 
 Commedia. If Raphael seems to move serenely for his 
 few brief years among prelates and princes ; if Angelico 
 and others live and work in safety behind their convent 
 walls, as the Venetian masters did behind the then 
 impassable rampart of the Lagoons, these are fortunate 
 exceptions to the general rule. Almost all the painters 
 of whom Vasari speaks are tossed this way and that by 
 political upheavals, even where they are not forced to 
 take part in them. So we find Pisanello described in 
 one of the few known documents which mention him as 
 rebello; Botticelli has to fly before the persecution or 
 the Piagnoni; Leonardo goes on campaign as military 
 engineer to Caesar Borgia ; Michelangelo works on the 
 Medicean tombs in intervals of service on the bastions 
 of San Miniato against the Imperialists. Even the 
 reader of Cellini is compelled to recognize that, if one- 
 half the man's troubles were due to his quarrelsome 
 self, the other half may fairly be ascribed to the violence 
 and disorder all about him.
 
 32 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 Living, as these men did, among the drums and 
 tramplings of incessant conflict, the sudden onslaughts 
 of uncomprehended disease, or strange episodes like 
 that of Savonarola, was it not natural that, though their 
 labours might often be cut short, their sense of the 
 contrast of life and death, of pleasure and sorrow, of 
 good and evil fortune, was immeasurably quickened ? 
 And though there was endless tumult and change, there 
 was no such universal desolation as that which followed 
 in the track of the Thirty Years' War in Germany ; no 
 such wholesale destruction of noble or princely persons 
 as that which occurred during the Wars of the Roses 
 in England. The Condottieri, who did most of the 
 Italian fighting, fought with an eye to business, and 
 therefore with a certain discretion. Next year they 
 might be hired by the opposite side. The sack of 
 Rome by the Imperialists was regarded at the time as 
 a supreme atrocity ; but the treatment of the place and 
 its people was merciful compared with that of Magde- 
 burg after its capture by Tilly. If the ruling family in 
 any town was overthrown, exiled, or murdered, another 
 family was always at hand to take over the vacant 
 palaces and patronage. 
 
 To the stimulus of heightened perception must be 
 added the stimulus of variety. The essence of crea- 
 tion is the production of something new. The creative 
 artist is the man whose work, in addition to its other 
 qualities, surprises us by its novelty, by containing
 
 THE SPUR OF ADVENTURE 33 
 
 something which we did not expect. We recognize the 
 value of this . element of novelty in the distinction we 
 draw between the artists who are varied in accomplish- 
 ment, and those who always harp on the same theme 
 in the same way. We assign, quite rightly, a lower 
 rank to the man of one idea, to the writer of a number 
 of books in precisely the same vein, to the painter who 
 turns out year after year precisely the same kind of 
 picture ; while the poet who, like Shakespeare, seems 
 to embrace all humanity, who is equally at home with 
 the prince and the clown, equally felicitous when at 
 play or in dreadful earnest, equally musical in solemn 
 tragedy or airy lyric ; the sculptor who, like Donatello 
 or. Michelangelo, touches in turn all sides of his art, is 
 necessarily placed among the great ones of the earth. 
 
 This variety, so pleasurable to the cultivated 
 audience, is but the echo of a corresponding variety 
 in the artist's mind : and in many forms of art is more or 
 less directly affected by his environment. If he lives a 
 peaceful life in the same place, surrounded by the same 
 scenes and the same people, he may, if his genius be 
 great, acquire with time a more intense insight into the 
 things about him, as Wordsworth did ; but he will have 
 to depend upon himself for diversity of sensation. A 
 man of letters may get this diversity from books ; an 
 artist by collecting works of art. Yet the stimulus of 
 such things will for most men be faint compared with 
 the stimulus once derived from life itself from such a
 
 34 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 life as the variegated, richly coloured life of the Renais- 
 sance, with its passions, tragedies and pleasures, its 
 pageants and its perils, its sharp transitions, its grief, 
 its glory. Even the custom of journeying from city to 
 city in search of employment, journeys not unattended 
 with incident or danger, must in itself have been a 
 constant spur to laggard inspiration. 
 
 In Cellini, perhaps, we see the other side of the 
 picture; the record of work interrupted, or actually 
 destroyed by passion, adventure, disease or warfare, so 
 that what he has left us is far smaller in amount 
 making due allowance for the fact that his materials 
 were usually the precious metals, and so constantly in 
 danger of coming to the melting-pot by the greed of a 
 thief or the need of their owners than it might have 
 been in less troubled times. The custom of early 
 apprenticeship, however, gave all craftsmen so sound a 
 training that interruptions to their work diminished 
 their skill but little, if at all. The chief dangers of 
 change, instability and amateurishness, were thus 
 averted. 
 
 The influence of classical literature and art upon the 
 period was enhanced by the manner in which they 
 became public property. As each new manuscript was 
 found or translated, as each new statue was dug up, it 
 came to men as a novelty and a wonder; giving far 
 more pleasure and attracting far more attention than 
 it could ever do with future generations, when it had
 
 THE SPUR OF ADVENTURE 35 
 
 become a well-known feature in some library or 
 museum. Too much familiarity with great works of 
 art does not breed contempt, but it may breed a certain 
 acquiescence in their merits. When seen for the 
 first time, or only at long intervals, they have for us 
 the enchantment also of a delightful surprise.
 
 VII 
 MACHIAVELLI 
 
 THESE random thoughts on the conditions of life in 
 the Italian Renaissance certainly seem to indicate that 
 intellectual vitality, far from being dependent upon or 
 associated with those views of universal human happi- 
 ness which are generally accepted to-day, is essentially 
 alien to them. 
 
 Like the conservators of the Lake, we are all in 
 favour of netting the pike of blotting out, effacing, or 
 at least decreasing the wants, the diseases, and the 
 hazards which appeared to menace the health and con- 
 tentment of the humbler members of the community of 
 enabling the masses to live and multiply in security and 
 freedom. And when we come to think of it, our Con- 
 servators have got rid of a good many pike in the last 
 hundred years. Where it has not been extinguished, 
 the autocratic power of kings and princes has every- 
 where been reduced. The resources of the old nobility, 
 the landed classes and the Church are fast being 
 curtailed in similar fashion. Even the great financial 
 and commercial magnates, who are taking the place of 
 monarchs and nobles, have to move with circumspec- 
 
 36
 
 MACHIAVELL1 37 
 
 tion among the nets that are now laid for them by the 
 politicians ; the one class whose authority is not, as yet, 
 openly challenged. 
 
 An ingenious novelist, whose speculations upon the 
 future of civilized man have the unusual merit of making 
 some allowance for human frailty, even though the 
 result is contrary to his evident sympathies, has 
 pictured a world state, in which, some centuries hence, 
 the whole population, for the most part sheepishly con- 
 tent, is employed by a gigantic political and commercial 
 Trust. I confess to seeing some likeness between the 
 innumerable bustling myriads of helpless uniformed 
 toilers whom he so vividly forecasts, and the vast 
 shoals of little perch which now form the chief popula- 
 tion of the Lake ; while the Trust, for the nonce, may be 
 represented by the big solitary pike which broke my 
 tackle. 
 
 The parallel is not so fantastic as it may seem at first 
 sight. When the Conservators netted the pike, they 
 forgot one all-important fact. The trout, whom they 
 wished to encourage, could not reproduce their kind 
 faster than their breeding grounds admitted : and those 
 breeding grounds were limited in extent. The streams 
 which feed the Lake are few in number and small in 
 proportion to its extent, being blocked in several instances 
 by insurmountable waterfalls. There are few extensive 
 gravelly shallows to take their place. On one side the 
 shore is rocky and slopes abruptly to very deep water ;
 
 38 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 along the other side lie thick belts of long green weed; 
 useless to the trout, but ideal breeding ground for 
 perch. 
 
 In the Lake this weed is so plentiful that the perch 
 had every inducement to increase and multiply, the 
 moment that the pike, the sole checks upon their 
 fertility, were removed. With their multiplication the 
 breeding grounds of the trout were still more closely 
 hedged in, while the fate of any small trout who chanced 
 upon these voracious hordes can be imagined. 
 
 Of recent years it has been noted, sometimes with a 
 little alarm, that civilization tends to sterility that the 
 intellectual and governing classes, like the trout in the 
 Lake, reproduce their kind far less rapidly than those 
 below them. So far, indeed, this tendency has had no 
 quite disastrous results in this country, since the sterile 
 upper class is constantly being recruited from its more 
 fertile inferiors. That recruiting process, however, was 
 made possible because those inferiors were themselves 
 capable of growing to greatness under the pressure and 
 the stimulus of an exacting life ; as the perch grew 
 large and strong so long as the pike were there to 
 harry them. If that pressure and that stimulus arc 
 removed, can we expect the same reaction ? Is the 
 recruiting process, on which our civilization ultimately 
 depends, to slacken and gradually cease ? Shall we 
 indeed, become approximately equal; but, like the perch, 
 shall we also become very small, and possibly very very
 
 MACHIAVELLI 39 
 
 hungry, so that, far from acting as a recruiting ground 
 for all that is best in humanity, we may be an encum- 
 brance and a peril to such remnants of noble tradition 
 as have the misfortune then to survive ? 
 
 The problem is no new one. It is essentially the 
 same as that which confronted Demosthenes when he 
 denounced the corruption of the Athenian democracy, 
 and Machiavelli when he composed the Principe. 
 Machiavelli's name has often been used as a synonym 
 for all that was cruel, cunning and dishonest in Renais- 
 sance politics. The stigma might be applied with far 
 more justice to the cold, venal Guicciardini, in com- 
 parison with whom Machiavelli, as modern students 
 have recognized, is a humane and genuine patriot. 
 
 Though Machiavelli's immediate purpose was to find 
 a practical remedy for the disorders of his own time, 
 to bring union to Italy out of hopeless discord, his 
 vision was not limited to this momentary horizon. He 
 sought at the same time to define the relation between 
 the local and temporary causes which impelled him to 
 write, and such universal principles of government as 
 might be deduced from the world's past history. If, 
 for him, the solution of the Italian problem of his day 
 was the coming of a strong military autocrat, some 
 more successful Caesar Borgia and to such despotism, 
 as in Napoleon's case, even republicans and democrats 
 may sometimes turn for relief he did not for a
 
 40 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 moment imagine that the solution was either perfect 
 or permanent. 
 
 For one of the cardinal points of Machiavelli's faith 
 is the conviction that all forms of government are 
 mortal : that each bears within it the seed of its own 
 decay. Thus the political world might be viewed as a 
 cycle in which monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, anarchy 
 rise, flourish, and are in turn corrupted. In this 
 cycle any imagined Utopia of equality would have its 
 place with the rest, and be subject in due course to the 
 same decay and death. 
 
 In the first onset of this Utopia, Machiavelli would 
 have seen an illustration of another of his convictions, 
 that men in the mass are essentially imitative, and 
 ready to conform to any government that happens to 
 exist, rather than to risk the experiment of a new one. 
 He would thus have regarded it as quite possible for a 
 democracy to become gradually petrified into an un- 
 discerning monotonous communism, were it not for one 
 other factor in human nature, no less important than 
 the tendency to submissive mimicry. 
 
 To his belief in the essential depravity of man's 
 character Machiavelli owes much of the odium which 
 is sometimes even now attached to his name. Yet 
 when we read the history of his age, we must admit 
 that he had some justification for his faith. Even in 
 our own day, when the general standard of morality 
 is undoubtedly higher, when crimes of violence are
 
 MACHIAVELLI 41 
 
 certainly much less common, and when conspicuous 
 examples of unselfish honesty are seen all around us, 
 we cannot still wholly deny that, taken in the lump, 
 men do right chiefly because they are obliged. Am- 
 bition and competition are still the moving springs 
 of much that on the surface appears to be disinterested 
 effort : the fear of publicity, if not of the law courts, is 
 responsible for much that passes for honourable or 
 generous dealing. 
 
 Yet Machiavelli, though himself a Pagan with most 
 of the advanced thinkers of his age, was not blind to 
 the usefulness of religion in others. He saw clearly 
 enough that in any state religion made for order and 
 reverence, and in some degree, perhaps, for morality ; 
 and his ideal prince was therefore to be careful in pre- 
 serving the outward observances of religion as one of 
 the buttresses of his throne. He might well argue, 
 therefore, that if modern education was doing much 
 to cultivate the intelligence, and perhaps the morality, 
 of civilised man, the decreasing hold of religion upon 
 men's minds, which has been one of the most marked 
 and disquieting features of the last decade, must be 
 taken into account on the opposite side. 
 
 And there are other reasons for thinking that the 
 competitive instinct in man is not likely to be eradicated 
 all at once. Though the personal enmity or jealousy of 
 princes may no longer set armies on the march ; though 
 religion is more and more rarely invoked as the sole
 
 4 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 pretext for bloodshed ; the racial, political, and economic 
 differences which have almost always co-existed with 
 these ancient excuses for competitive effort still remain 
 with us. 
 
 Nor is it likely that they will soon be dissipated or 
 suppressed. New engineering feats provide new trade 
 routes; new discoveries create new wants and new 
 values. What a few years ago was worthless desert or 
 jungle becomes a rich and precious territory. Old mines 
 in consequence have to shut down ; old plantations to be 
 abandoned. Thus the channels of the world's food 
 supply, or of the commodities which may be used to 
 purchase a share of it, keep rapidly shifting. To meet 
 these changes, which it is impossible to forecast, the 
 machinery which provides for the needs of the great 
 nations has constantly to be readjusted. Readjustment 
 in the future, as in the past, must sometimes involve 
 jarring or friction ; and friction will lead a democracy, no 
 less quickly than a monarchy, to open war. 
 
 In spite of the stimulus of these inevitable oscillations 
 and differences, representative government will still 
 tend to degenerate into oligarchy or despotism from 
 sheer unwieldiness ; as co-operation on a large scale will 
 degenerate into monopoly. The monopolist of the 
 future is usually represented as the direct, if inflated, 
 descendant of the employer of to-day. It is just as 
 likely that he will be the nursling of trade unionism. 
 Machinery has taught men one thing very thoroughly :
 
 MACHIAVELLI 43 
 
 that profitable results can only be obtained where the 
 machine-users are well organized. These last are now 
 turning this organization upon their employers, as a 
 weapon for securing better wages now, and complete 
 control of the industry in the near future. Yet, as the 
 workers during their hours of employment have to be 
 directed by overseers and managers, so their corporate 
 action has to be taken through the officials of their 
 union. When the capitalist employers are gone, these 
 new masters will remain ; and if they do not reap the 
 usual rewards of power they will indeed be more than 
 human. 
 
 In the new co-operative and democratic Utopia we 
 should thus have on the commercial side the trust 
 magnates, or " bosses," with their staff of well-paid 
 trade union officials, and below these their armies of 
 submissive trade union members : while on the political 
 side there will be the professional demagogues, raised 
 to power, on the strength of the patronage and plunder 
 they can distribute, by an all-embracing party machine, 
 and through that machine controlling the votes of 
 a host of helpless electors in the name of Universal 
 Suffrage. In the past these forces may sometimes have 
 come into conflict. With more experience they now 
 recognize that their true interest is to join hands and 
 share the spoils. 
 
 Our eyes are so persistently diverted to the contrast 
 between Capital and Labour, that the financial magnate
 
 44 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 is held by common opinion to be the great danger of 
 the future. There is no doubt that Machiavelli 
 would have regarded the professional politician as the 
 more formidable foe to reasonable liberty. 
 
 In the first place. When men of position and charac- 
 ter have, by the common arts of the demagogue, been 
 ousted from political life, nothing is easier than for the 
 heads of all parties to come to a private arrangement 
 among themselves for sharing the emoluments of office; 
 to amuse the electorate by a succession of Pyrrhic 
 contests ; to resign and be re-elected in turn ; but never 
 to deviate from their common purpose of extracting 
 every penny they can from the helpless public a 
 method which has already been adopted in certain 
 so-called " Latin " states with excellent results. 
 
 In the law-courts, too, the politician has an advantage 
 over the financial magnate. If the law may sometimes 
 be evaded by wealth, the evasion is usually an ex- 
 pensive and delicate business. But the politician need 
 not evade the law. He can alter it in his own interest, 
 and that with such a show of constitutional form as to 
 make the act appear blameless, nay, almost creditable. 
 
 For these corruptions of an over-grown democracy 
 Machiavelli would no doubt have sought the remedy 
 (as he did for their opposite, the chaos of disunion) in 
 a despotism, the one resource of men whose condition 
 of life is made intolerable. Such a remedy he knew 
 could be no more than temporary. Where men had
 
 MACHIAVELLI 45 
 
 dreamed of political freedom, a despotism could only 
 be the prelude to a new constitutional government. 
 
 Recognising that the decay was brought about by an 
 unwieldy centralisation ; by popular assemblies grown 
 too large and too busied with trifles for serious debate ; 
 by a bureaucracy swollen with its own intricacies to 
 thrice its natural bulk ; he would make a beginning by 
 breaking up the stagnant mass into a few states of 
 manageable size, on the lines of our modern idea 
 of Devolution. Political faction, with its attendant 
 evils, would thus at once be limited to local affairs. 
 The discussion of national interests might be confined 
 to a council made up of single representatives of each 
 state : each free to act on his own responsibility, and 
 chosen with as much care as an ambassador. 
 
 Aided by this small council of picked independent 
 minds, in the place of a cumbrous horde of servile 
 partizans, Machiavelli's deus ex machind would be in a 
 position to clear away the remaining obstructions to 
 healthy constitutional life. The general record of 
 political oratory, for example, might seem to him 
 sufficiently mischievous in its effect upon the emotions 
 of the crowd, to justify the suppression of all political 
 speaking in public with a time limit even for parlia- 
 mentary speeches so that the conduct of affairs might 
 pass from professional rhetoricians to business men. 
 Public opinion would still have outlet enough in the 
 absolute freedom of the Press; for, as Disraeli has
 
 46 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 pointed out, the representation of the people by the 
 Press is now far more complete than its representation 
 by Parliament. 
 
 Nor would Machiavelli have hesitated long over "the 
 case of the criminal, the feeble-minded and the fanatic. 
 Whether by segregation or otherwise, these hindrances 
 to the efficiency and economy of the State would be 
 summarily dealt with, as hydrophobia was extinguished 
 by the Muzzling Order. His treatise on The Art of 
 War shows that the citizen who shirked military service 
 would have found equally little favour at his hand. 
 On the sex question, unluckily, he has left us no such 
 definite utterance. Yet we might guess that he would 
 have preferred polygamy to infanticide, on the ground 
 that this last, though offering a complete protection 
 against the evil, was less in accord with Western 
 sentiment. 
 
 Freed thus from its chief incumbrances the corporate 
 sense of the component states might gradually be 
 cultivated, and that inter-civic rivalry which is bound 
 up with so many of man's highest achievements 
 sensibly promoted. 
 
 For Machiavelli's Italy is not the only country where 
 the lively competition of small communities did more 
 for the permanent good of humanity than the peace 
 which has often descended, somewhat drowsily, upon 
 great empires. In respect of the arts even Italy must
 
 MACHIAVELL1 47 
 
 yield the first place to Greece, and the arts, as we all 
 know, were cultivated by the Greek States in the 
 midst, and often on the proceeds, of continual 
 warfare. So we notice the rise of Dutch painting 
 during and after the struggle with Spain : the re-birth 
 of French art and letters with the Revolution ; and the 
 perfecting of Japanese craftsmanship in the midst of 
 incessant calls to arms. 
 
 But it is perhaps, after all, to the contemplative 
 rather than to the active life that the thoughts of men 
 turn most regretfully in such doubtful, changeful times. 
 In his lighter writings Machiavelli has left evidence 
 enough that he could sympathise with this feeling. 
 Yet he would have argued that the contemplative life 
 must always be dependent upon the maintenance of 
 social order, and therefore secondary to it ; and would 
 doubtless have noticed also that the contemplative life is 
 commonly found in its highest perfection where it comes 
 as a sort of reaction from excessive energy. Turbulent 
 Greece has left us Plato ; turbulent Italy Fra Angelico 
 and a host of other serene workers and scholars ; the 
 Saints of the East the very home of contemplation 
 meditate in a society where the sword is seldom in the 
 sheath. While the mediaeval robber-barons fought and 
 forayed, monastic life in Europe reached its climax. 
 
 Viewed in this light it would seem as if the strenuous 
 interplay of contrary forces, with all its apparent 
 wastefulness, which we note in the Golden Age of
 
 48 THE TARN AND THE LAKE 
 
 Greek art as plainly as we do in Renaissance Italy, 
 was a condition of the highest human perfection : just 
 as magnis componere parua the last state of the perch 
 in the Lake may serve as a symbol of the degeneracy 
 which overtakes men and fish alike, when all the natural 
 incentives to healthy exertion are too carefully removed.
 
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 LONDON
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth, gUt top, js 6<t net ; postage $d 
 
 NOTES ON THE SCIENCE OF 
 
 PICTURE-MAKING 
 
 BY C. J. HOLMES, M.A., Director of the National Portrait Gallery ; 
 Author of "Notes on the Art of Rembrandt" 
 
 NEW AND REVISED EDITION, WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE 
 
 ATHENAEUM. " Professor Holmes has done a remarkable and original 
 thing : he has applied common-sense to the arts of design in an appropriate way, 
 and we may fairly add that since Reynolds's ' Discourses ' the student has never 
 had put before him such a fruitful and suggestive guide to his labours." 
 
 BURLINGTON MAGAZINE (George Clausen, R.A.). " Professor 
 Holmes has put down the various sides of a very complex matter with a 
 clearness which will make his book most valuable as a basis for thinking people. 
 . . . The chapters on drawing, engraving, and water-colour painting are all 
 excellent. In general the book is so full of true things well said as to command 
 constant assent." 
 
 DAILY CHRONICLE. "An unemotional, scientific, and stimulating art 
 book. Should be read by every painter who is not a genius, and by every critic 
 who is striving to untangle the threads of art production ancient and modern. 
 
 DAILY MAIL. "These modestly named 'Notes on the Science of 
 Picture-making,' without being in any way didactic or schoolmastery, are teeming 
 with sound advice based on equally sound logical deductions." 
 
 DAILY NEWS. "This modestly entitled volume deserves to be read 
 and pondered by all who practise, all who are interested in art. . . . Professor 
 Holmes unites enthusiasm with learning, and addresses himself with extra- 
 ordinary concentration and veracity to the consideration of a hundred aspects of 
 the aesthetic problem." 
 
 MANCHESTER GUARDIAN. " In its own field the book must stand 
 as the best published for a long time." 
 
 MORNING LEADER. " Any one ^who is interested in painting . . . 
 will be charmed by its lucid clearness of statement and amazed at the profound 
 knowledge of ancient and modern art which it embodies. Professor Holmes's 
 literary style is itself a model of masterly and dignified language." 
 
 OBSERVER. "The Oxford Slade Professor has systematised not only 
 his own invariably sound views on art, but the ideas which in a vague way have 
 transformed the entire method of art criticism in the course of the last two 
 decades. ... It is especially refreshing to find him doing justice to the claims 
 of the moderns." 
 
 TIMES. "Professor Holmes, as his title shows, believes that there is a 
 science of picture-making with principles that can be discovered. . . . He 
 himself is peculiarly well fitted to discover them, being both learned in the art of 
 the past and a painter of pictures which belong to the present, and which there- 
 fore have a good chance of belonging to the future. Since he can form and test 
 his theories in his own practice, be is not tempted to forget all about practice 
 when he theorises." 
 
 LONDON : CHATTO & WINDUS, in ST. MARTIN'S LANE, W.C.
 
 w 
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 75 6d net ; postage ^d 
 
 NOTES ON THE ART OF 
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 BY C. J. HOLMES, M.A., sometime Slade Professor of Fine Art 
 
 in the University of Oxford, Author of " Notes on the 
 
 Science of Picture-making " 
 
 WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE AND 44 OTHER PLATES 
 
 TIMES. "Rembrandt made a language of his art as completely as Beet- 
 hoven made a language of music ; and it is the great merit of Mr. Holmes's book 
 that he explains, with a very unusual clearness, the process by which he gained 
 his command of that language. . . . His success in doing this makes his book 
 valuable both to artists and to all who wish to understand and enjoy Rembrandt." 
 
 MORNING POST. "This volume, which contains admirably selected 
 examples of Rembrandt's art, forms an excellent supplement to the author's 
 1 Notes on the Science of Picture-making,' and, with it, should be in the hands of 
 all interested in the problems of art education." 
 
 DAILY NEWS. " These lectures . i . possess an authority, a swiftness 
 and sureness of intuition, an analytic power, a sweet reasonableness withal, which 
 will cause the book to be read and pondered by those to whom art of whatever 
 kind is valuable." 
 
 SPECTATOR. " Mr. Holmes has penetrated deeply into the art of 
 Rembrandt, and has a great deal that is deeply interesting to say. One of the 
 charms of the book is that, although Rembrandt and his works are never lost 
 sight of, a very wide field is traversed for purposes of illustration." 
 
 YORKSHIRE POST. "The worst fault one can find with Mr. C. J. 
 Holmes's book is that its title is far too modest It is in fact a most stimulating 
 essay on art education in its broadest sense, as illustrated by the progress of 
 Rembrandt's art and its comparison with that of other masters." 
 
 SUNDAY TIMES. "Mr. C. J. Holmes is not only the greatest Slade 
 Professor Oxford has had since Ruskin, but the author of what are the most 
 helpful and clearly enlightening books on art written in English since Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds's Discourses were published." 
 
 STANDARD. ". . . This remarkably sound and thoughtful work. Few 
 readers will close the book without feeling that their appreciation of Rembrandt 
 has been deepened and enlarged." 
 
 QUARTERLY REVIEW." We strongly advise every lover of pictures 
 to read this fascinating volume." 
 
 STUDIO. "We cannot praise too highly the perfection of the reproduc- 
 tions, or imagine that we shall have an opportunity of introducing a more illumin- 
 ating book to the student of Rembrandt, or to the collectors of his plates. ' ' 
 
 WESTMINSTER GAZETTE. "One of the most illuminating and 
 masterly pieces of art criticism of our time." 
 
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