Of late years it has been my fate or my whim to write a good deal aboutthe early days of the Præraphaelite movement, the members of thePræraphaelite Brotherhood, and especially my brother Dante GabrielRossetti, and my sister Christina Georgina Rossetti. I am now invited towrite something further on the subject, with immediate reference to thePræraphaelite magazine “The Germ,” republished in thisvolume. I know of no particular reason why I should not do this, for certainit is that few people living know, or ever knew, so much as I do about“The Germ,”; and if some press-critics who regarded previouswritings of mine as superfluous or ill-judged should entertain a likeopinion now, in equal or increased measure, I willingly leave them to sayso, while I pursue my own course none the less.
“The Germ” is here my direct theme, not thePræraphaelite Brotherhood; but it seems requisite to say in the firstinstance something about the Brotherhood—its members, allies, andideas—so as to exhibit a raison d'être for the magazine. Indoing this I must necessarily repeat some things which I have set forthbefore, and which, from the writings of others as well as myself, are wellenough known to many. I can vary my form of expression, but cannot introducemuch novelty into my statements of fact.
In 1848 the British School of Painting was in anything but a vital or alively condition. One very great and incomparable genius, Turner, belongedto it. He was old and past his executive prime. There were some other highlyable men—Etty and David Scott, then both very near their death;Maclise, Dyce, Cope, Mulready, Linnell, Poole, William Henry Hunt, Landseer,Leslie, Watts, Cox, J.F. Lewis, and some others. There were also somedistinctly clever men, such as Ward, Frith, and Egg. Paton, Gilbert, FordMadox Brown, Mark Anthony, had given sufficient indication of their powers,but were all in an early stage. On the whole the school had sunk very farbelow what it had been in the days of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, andBlake, and its 6 ordinary average had come tobe something for which commonplace is a laudatory term, and imbecility a notexcessive one.
There were in the late summer of 1848, in the Schools of the RoyalAcademy or barely emergent from them, four young men to whom this conditionof the art seemed offensive, contemptible, and even scandalous. Their nameswere William Holman-Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti,painters, and Thomas Woolner, sculptor. Their ages varied from twenty-two tonineteen—Woolner being the eldest, and Millais the youngest. Beinglittle more than lads, these young men were naturally not very deep ineither the theory or the practice of art: but they had open eyes and minds,and could discern that some things were good and other bad—that somethings they liked, and others they hated. They hated the lack of ideas inart, and the lack of character; the silliness and vacuity which belong tothe one, the flimsiness and make-believe which result from the other. Theyhated those forms of execution which are merely smooth and prettyish, andthose which, pretending to mastery, are nothing better than slovenly andslapdash, or what the P.R.B.'s called “sloshy.” Still more didthey hate the notion that each artist should not obey his own individualimpulse, act upon his own perception and study of Nature, and scrutinize andwork at his