The Defendant by G.K. Chesterton

It is a very significant fact that the form of art in which the modern / world has certainly not improved upon the ancient is what may roughly be / called the art of the open air. Public monuments have certainly not / improved, nor has the criticism of them improved, as is evident from the / fashion of condemning such a large number of them as pompous. An / interesting essay might be written on the enormous number of words that / are used as insults when they are really compliments. It is in itself a / singular study in that tendency which, as I have said, is always making / things out worse than they are, and necessitating a systematic attitude / of defence. Thus, for example, some dramatic critics cast contempt upon / a dramatic performance by calling it theatrical, which simply means that / it is suitable to a theatre, and is as much a compliment as calling a / poem poetical. Similarly we speak disdainfully of a certain kind of work / as sentimental, which simply means possessing the admirable and / essential quality of sentiment. Such phrases are all parts of one / peddling and cowardly philosophy, and remind us of the days when / 'enthusiast' was a term of reproach. But of all this vocabulary of / unconscious eulogies nothing is more striking than the word 'pompous.'

Properly speaking, of course, a public monument ought to be pompous. / Pomp is its very object; it would be absurd to have columns and pyramids / blushing in some coy nook like violets in the woods of spring. And / public monuments have in this matter a great and much-needed lesson to / teach. Valour and mercy and the great enthusiasms ought to be a great / deal more public than they are at present. We are too fond nowadays of / committing the sin of fear and calling it the virtue of reverence. We / have forgotten the old and wholesome morality of the Book of Proverbs, / 'Wisdom crieth without; her voice is heard in the streets. ' In Athens / and Florence her voice was heard in the streets. They had an outdoor / life of war and argument, and they had what modern commercial / civilization has never had -- an outdoor art. Religious services, the most / sacred of all things, have always been held publicly; it is entirely a / new and debased notion that sanctity is the same as secrecy. A great / many modern poets, with the most abstruse and delicate sensibilities, / love darkness, when all is said and done, much for the same reason that / thieves love it. The mission of a great spire or statue should be to / strike the spirit with a sudden sense of pride as with a thunderbolt. It / should lift us with it into the empty and ennobling air. Along the base / of every noble monument, whatever else may be written there, runs in / invisible letters the lines of Swinburne:

'This thing is God: / To be man with thy might, / To go straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live / out thy life in the light.'

If a public monument does not meet this first supreme and obvious need, / that it should be public and monumental, it fails from the outset.

There has arisen lately a school of realistic sculpture, which may / perhaps be better described as a school of sketchy sculpture. Such a / movement was right and inevitable as a reaction from the mean and dingy / pomposity of English Victorian statuary. Perhaps the most hideous and / depressing object in the universe -- far more hideous and depressing than / one of Mr. H. G. Wells's shapeless monsters of the slime (and not at all / unlike them) -- is the statue of an English philanthropist. Almost as bad, / though, of course, not quite as bad, are the statues of English / politicians in Parliament Fields. Each of them is cased in a cylindrical / frock-coat, and each carries either a scroll or a dubious-looking / garment over the arm that might be either a bathing-towel or a light / great-coat. Each of them is in an oratorical attitude, which has all the / disadvantage of being affected without even any of the advantages of / being theatrical. Let no one suppose that such abortions arise merely / from technical demerit. In every line of those leaden dolls is expressed / the fact that they were not set up with any heat of natural enthusiasm / for beauty or dignity. They were set up mechanically, because it would / seem indecorous or stingy if they were not set up. They were even set up / sulkily, in a utilitarian age which was haunted by the thought that / there were a great many more sensible ways of spending money. So long as / this is the dominant national sentiment, the land is barren, statues and / churches will not grow -- for they have to grow, as much as trees and / flowers.

But this moral disadvantage which lay so heavily upon the early / Victorian sculpture lies in a modified degree upon that rough, / picturesque, commonplace sculpture which has begun to arise, and of / which the statue of Darwin in the South Kensington Museum and the statue / of Gordon in Trafalgar Square are admirable examples. It is not enough / for a popular monument to be artistic, like a black charcoal sketch; it / must be striking; it must be in the highest sense of the word / sensational; it must stand for humanity; it must speak for us to the / stars; it must declare in the face of all the heavens that when the / longest and blackest catalogue has been made of all our crimes and / follies there are some things of which we men are not ashamed.