21. One of the most curious minor questions in this matter is
respecting the vulgarity of excessive neatness, complicating itself with
inquiries into the distinction between base neatness, and the
perfectness of good execution in the fine arts. It will be found on
final thought that precision and exquisiteness of arrangement are always
noble; but become vulgar only when they arise from an equality
(insensibility) of temperament, which is incapable of fine passion, and
is set ignobly, and with a dullard mechanism, on accuracy in vile
things. In the finest Greek coins, the letters of the inscriptions are
purposely coarse and rude, while the relievi are wrought with
inestimable care. But in an English coin, the letters are the best
done, and the whole is unredeemably vulgar. In a picture of Titian’s,
an inserted inscription will be complete in the lettering, as all the
rest is; because it costs Titian very little more trouble to draw
rightly than wrongly, and in him, therefore, impatience with the letters
would be vulgar, as in the Greek sculptor of the coin, patience would
have been. For the engraving of a letter accurately is difficult work,
and his time must have been unworthily thrown away.
22. All the different impressions connected with negligence or foulness
depend, in like manner, on the degree of insensibility implied.
Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar, in an antiquary’s study, not; the
black battle-stain on a soldier’s face is not vulgar, but the dirty face
of a housemaid is.
And lastly, courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is peculiarly the
mark of a gentleman or a lady: but it becomes vulgar if rude or
insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of
race or fineness of make. A fawn is not vulgar in being timid, nor a
crocodile "gentle" because courageous.
23. Without following the inquiry into farther detail, we may conclude
that vulgarity consists in a deadness of the heart and body, resulting
from prolonged, and especially from inherited conditions of
"degeneracy," or literally "un-racing;"—gentlemanliness being another
word for an intense humanity. And vulgarity shows itself primarily in
dulness of heart, not in rage or cruelty, but in inability to feel or
conceive noble character or emotion. This is its essential, pure, and
most fatal form. Dulness of bodily sense and general stupidity, with
such forms of crime as peculiarly issue from stupidity, are its material
manifestation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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