sky-colours, they were not even approached. The book, in short, dealt
with the artificial and not with nature. Next I went to science--works on
optics, such a mass of them. Some I had read in old time, and turned to
again; some I read for the first time, some translated from the German,
and so on. It appeared that, experimenting with physical colour, tangible
paint, they had found out that red, yellow, and blue were the three
primary colours; and then, experimenting with light itself, with colours
not tangible, they found out that red, green, and violet were the three
primary colours; but neither of these would do for the dandelion. Once
upon a time I had taken an interest in spectrum analysis, and the theory
of the polarisation of light was fairly familiar; any number of books,
but not what I wanted to know. Next the idea occurred to me of buying all
the colours used in painting, and tinting as many pieces of paper a
separate hue, and so comparing these with petals, and wings, and grass,
and trifolium. This did not answer at all; my unskilful hands made a very
poor wash, and the yellow paper set by a yellow petal did not agree, the
scientific reason of which I cannot enter into now. Secondly, the names
attached to many of these paints are unfamiliar to general readers; it is
doubtful if bistre, Leitch's blue, oxide of chromium, and so on, would
convey an idea. They might as well be Greek symbols: no use to attempt to
describe hues of heath or hill in that way. These, too, are only distinct
colours. What was to be done with all the shades and tones? Still there
remained the language of the studio; without doubt a master of painting
could be found who would quickly supply the technical term of anything I
liked to show him; but again no use, because it would be technical. And a
still more insurmountable difficulty occurs: in so far as I have looked
at pictures, it seems as if the artists had met with the same obstacle in
paints as I have in words--that is to say, a deficiency. Either painting
is incompetent to express the extreme beauty of nature, or in some way
the canons of art forbid the attempt. Therefore I had to turn back, throw