“Balaam’s Ass”
Mr. Whistler has written a discord in black and white. It is a strong saying, excellent in diction, broadly and boldly set down in slashing words....
Vanity Fair, Jan 11, 1879.
The point Mr. Whistler raises and enforces is that criticism of painting other than by painters is monstrous, and not to be tolerated.... Mr. Ruskin’s “high sounding empty things” would, he says, “give Titian the same shock of surprise that was Balaam’s when the first great critic proffered his opinion.”... The inference... is that all the world, competent and incompetent together, must receive the painter’s work in silence, under pain of being classed with Balaam’s ass....
If, finding himself ill received or ill understood, he has to say, “You cannot understand me,” he must also say, “I did not understand myself and you, to whom I speak, sufficiently well to make you understand me.”
There could be no better illustration of all this than that Mr. Whistler has suggested of Balaam’s ass. For the Ass was right, although, nay, because he was an ass. “What have I done unto thee,” said he, “that thou hast smitten me these three times?” “Because thou hast mocked me,” replies Balaam—Whistler; whereupon the Angel of the Lord rebukes him and says, “The ass saw me,” so that Balaam is constrained to bow his head and fall flat on his face. And thus indeed it is. The ass sees the Angel of the Lord there where the wise prophet sees nothing, and, by her seeing, saves the life of the very master who, for reward, smites her grievously and wishes he had a sword that he might kill her.
Let Balaam not forget that after all he rides upon the ass, that she has served him well ever since she was his until this day, and that even now he is on his way with her to be promoted unto very great honour by the Princes of Balak. And let him remember that whatever can speak may at any moment have a word to say to him which it were best he should hear.
RASPER.