FINE 
 
 N 
 
 66 
 
 .C17 
 
 1912a 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924091301139 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART * 3 1924 091 301 139 
 
 IT was on a day of rare beauty that I went out into the fields to try to gather 
 these few thoughts. So goldeti and sweetly hot it was that they came 
 lazily, and with a flight no more coherent or responsible than the swoop 
 of the very swallows I was watching; and, as in a play or poem, the result is 
 conditioned by the conceiving mood, so I knew would be the nature of my 
 diving, dipping, pale-throated, fork-tailed words. But, after all — ^I thought, 
 sitting there — I need not take my critical pronouncements seriously. I have 
 not the firm soul of the critic. It is not my profession to know things for cer- 
 tain, and to make others feel that certainty. On the contrary, I am often 
 wrong — a luxury no critic can afford. And so, invading as I was the realm of 
 others, I advanced with a light pen, knowing that none, and least of all myself, 
 need expect me to be right. 
 
 What then, I thought, is Art? For I perceived that to think about it I 
 must first define it; ' and I almost stopped thinking at the fearsome nature of 
 that task, till, slowly, there gathered in my mind this group of words: 
 
 Art is that imaginative expression of human energy which, through tech- 
 nical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with 
 the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is 
 that which excites the greatest impersonal emotion in an hypothecated perfect 
 human being. 
 
 Impersonal emotion! And what, I thought, do I mean by that? Surely 
 I mean this: That is not Art, which, while I am contemplating it, inspires me 
 with any active or directive impulse; that is Art, when, for however brief a 
 moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in itself. For let 
 me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble bath. If my thought be, 
 "What could I buy that for?" ' Impulse of acquisition; or, "From what quarry 
 did it come?" Impulse of inquiry; or, "Which would be the right end for 
 my head?" Mixed impulse of inquiry and acquisition — I am at that moment 
 insensible to it as a work of Art. But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of 
 its color and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by 
 any definite practical thought or impulse — to that extent and for that moment 
 it has stolen me away out of myself, and put itself there instead, has Unked me 
 to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that 
 moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The 
 word "impersonal," then, is only used in this, my definition, to signify a needed, 
 if only momentary, forgetfulness of one's own personality arid its active wants. 
 
 So Art, I thought, is that which, heard, read, or looked on, while producing 
 no directive impulse, warms one with unconscious vibration. Nor can I 
 imagine any means of defining what is the greatest Art without hypothecating 
 
 *This article appeared originally in the Fortnightly Review (London), February, 1912. Subse- 
 quently it appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, April, 1912. It is incorporated in The Inn of Tranquillity, 
 by John Galsworthy, published in October, 191Z, by Charles Scribner's Sons. It is reprinted in Camera 
 WoKK by special permission of the author, the Atlantic Monthly Company, and Charles Scribner's 
 Sons. Copyright, 1912, by Atlantic Monthly Company. Copyright, 1912, Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 »■ 17 
 
a perfect human being. But since we shall never see, or know — ^if we do see — 
 that desirable creature, dogmatism is banished, "Academy" is dead to the 
 discussion, deader than even Tolstoy left it after his famous treatise What is 
 Art? For having destroyed all the old judges and academies, Tolstoy, by 
 saying that the greatest Art was that which appealed to the greatest number 
 of human beings, proceeded to raise up a definite new judge or academy, living 
 at a given moment, as tyrannical and narrow as ever were those judges whom 
 he had destroyed. 
 
 This, at all events — I thought — is as far as I dare go in defining what 
 Art is. But let me try to make plain to myself what is the essential quality 
 that gives to Art the power of exciting this unconscious vibration, this imper- 
 sonal emotion. It has been called Beauty! An awkward word — ^a perpetual 
 begging of the question; too current in use, too ambiguous altogether; now 
 too narrow, now too wide — a word, in fact, too glib to know at all what it 
 means. And how dangerous a word — often misleading us into slabbing with 
 extraneous floridities what would otherwise, on its own plane, be Art! To be 
 decorative where decoration is not suitable, to be lyrical where lyricism is out 
 of place, is assuredly to spoil Art, not to achieve it. But this essential quality 
 of Art has also been called Rhythm. And what is Rhythm if not that myster- 
 ious harmony between part and part, and part and whole, which gives what is 
 called life; that exact proportion, the mystery of which is best grasped in 
 observing how life leaves an animate creature when the essential relation of 
 part to whole has been sufficiently disturbed. And I agree that this rhythmic 
 relation of part to part, and part to whole — in short, vitality — ^is the one quality 
 inseparable from a work of Art. For nothing which does not seem to a man 
 possessed of this rhythmic vitality can ever steal him out of himself. 
 
 And having got thus far in my thoughts I paused, watching the swallows; 
 for they seemed to me the symbol, in their swift, sure curvetting, all daring 
 and balance and surprise, of the delicate poise and motion of Art, that visits 
 no two men alike, in a world where no two things of all the things there be, are 
 quite the same. 
 
 Yes — I thought — and this Art is assuredly the one form of human energy 
 which really works for union and destroys the barriers between man and man. 
 It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of one self by 
 another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment, and 
 renewal. For what is grievous, . dompting, grim, about our lives is that we 
 are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And 
 to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that 
 itching, a minute's profound, and, as it were, secret, enfranchisement. 
 The active amusements and relaxations of life can only give rest to certain of 
 our faculties by indulging others; the whole self is never rested save through 
 that unconsciousness of self, which comes through rapt contemplation of 
 Nature, or of Art. , 
 
 And suddenly I remembered having read in a recent essay: "Art in its 
 highest forms does not produce self-forgetfulness, but self-realization of an 
 i8 
 
extraordinaty intensity and vividness; by cutting the ties of momentary 
 matters it sets us free to be ourselves more fully, to live our own soul-lives 
 more intensely." * 
 
 Ah! but — ^I thought — ^that is not the first and instant effect of Art; it 
 is the after-efftct of that momentary replacement of oneself by the self of the 
 work before us; it is surely the result of that brief span of enlargement, en- 
 franchisement, and rest. 
 
 Yes, Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never dog- 
 matic; holds no brief for itself — ^you may take it or you may leave it. It does 
 not force itself rudely where it is not wanted. It is reverent to all tempers, 
 to all points of view. But it is wilful — the very wind in the comings and goings 
 of its influence, an uncapturable fugitive, visiting our hearts at vagrant, sweet 
 moments; since even before the greatest works of Art we often stand without 
 being able quite to lose ourselves ! That restful oblivion comes, we never quite 
 know when — and it is gone! But when it comes it is a spirit hovering with 
 cool wings, blessing us from least to greatest according to our powers; a spirit 
 deathless and varied as human life itself. 
 
 And in what sort of age — I thought — are artists living now? Are condi- 
 tions favorable? Life is very multiple; "movements" are very many; 
 interest in "facts" is very great; "news" batters at our brains; limelight is 
 terribly turned on — and all this is adverse to the artist. Yet leisure is abundant; 
 the facilities for study great; Liberty is respected. But far exceeding all other 
 reasons, there is one great reason why in this age of ours Art, it seems, must 
 flourish. For just as cross-breeding in Nature — if it be not too violent — often 
 gives an extra vitality to the off-spring, so does cross-breeding of philosophies 
 make for vitality in Art. Historians, looking back from the far future, may 
 record this age as the Third Renaissance. We who are lost in it, working or 
 looking on, can neither tell what we are doing nor where standing; but we 
 cannot help observing that, just as in the Greek Renaissance, worn-out Pagan 
 orthodoxy was penetrated by new philosophy; just as in the Italian Renais- 
 sance, Pagan philosophy, reasserting itself, fertilized again an already too 
 inbred Christian creed; so now. Orthodoxy fertilized by Science is producing a 
 fresh and fuller conception of life — a love of Perfection, not for hope of reward, 
 not for fear of punishment, but for Perfection's sake. Slowly, under our feet, 
 beneath our consciousness, is forming that new philosophy, and it is in times 
 of new philosophies that Art, itself in essence always a discovery, must flourish. 
 Those whose sacred suns and moons are ever in the past, tell us that our Art 
 is going to the dogs; and it is true that we are in confusion! The waters are 
 broken, and every nerve and sinew of the artist is strained to discover his own 
 safety. It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. 
 Yet assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is 
 all the time being made. 
 
 I ceased again to think, for the sun had dipped low, and the midges were 
 biting me. The sounds of evening had begun, those innumerable far-traveling 
 
 (i) Art, Life, and Criticism. Edwin BjOrkman. 
 
 '9 
 
cries of man and bird aad beast— so clear and intimate — of remote countrysides 
 at sunset. And for long I listened, too vague to move my pen. 
 
 New philosophy — a vigorous Art! Are there not all the signs of it? In 
 music, sculpture, painting; in fiction — and drama; in dancing; in criticism 
 itself, if criticism be an Art. Yes; we are reaching out to a new faith not yet 
 crystallized, to a new Art not yet perfected; the forms still to find — the flowers 
 srill to fashion ! 
 
 And how has it come, this slowly growing faith in Perfecdon for Per- 
 fection's sake ? Surely thus. When the Western world awoke one day to find 
 that it no longer believed corporately and for certain in future life for the 
 individual — ^when it began to feel: "I cannot say more than that there may 
 be individual life to come; that Death may be the end of man, or that Death 
 may be nothing"— it began also to ask itself in this uncertainty: "Do I then 
 desire to go on living?" And, since it found that it desired to go on living at 
 least as earnestly as ever it did before, it began to inquire why. And slowly it 
 perceived that there was, inborn within it, a passionate insrinct, of which it 
 had hardly rill then been conscious — a sacred instinct to perfect itself, now, as 
 well as in a possible hereafter; to perfect itself because Perfecrion was desir- 
 able, a vision to be adored and striven for; a dream motive fastened within 
 the Universe; the very essential Cause of everything. And it began to see 
 that this Perfection, cosmically, was nothing but perfect Equilibrium and 
 Harmony; and in human relations, nothing but perfect Love and Justice. 
 And Perfection began to glow before the eyes of the Western world like a new 
 star, whose light touched with glamour all things as they came forth from 
 Mystery, till to Mystery they were ready to return. 
 
 This — I thought — is surely what the Western world has dimly been re- 
 discovering. There has crept into our minds once more the feeling that the 
 Universe is all of a piece. Equipoise supreme; and all things equally wonderful, 
 and mysterious, and valuable. We have begun, in fact, to have a glimmenng 
 of the artist's creed, that nothing may we despise or neglect — that everything 
 is worth the doing well, the making fair— that our God, Perfection, is implicit 
 everywhere, and the revelation of Him, the business of our Art. 
 
 And as I jotted down these words, I noticed that some real stars had crept 
 up into the sky, so gradually darkening above the pollard limes; cuckoos, who 
 had been calling on the thorn trees all the afternoon, were silent; the swallows 
 no longer flitted past, but a bat was already in career over the holly hedge; 
 and round me the buttercups were closing. The whole form and feeling of the 
 world had changed, so that I seemed to have before me a new picture hanging. 
 
 Ah! — I thought — ^Art must indeed be priest of this new faith in Perfection,' 
 whose motto is "Harmony, Proportion, Balance." For by Art alone can true 
 harmony in human affairs- be fostered, true Proportion revealed, and true 
 Equipoise preserved. Is not the training of an artist a training in the due 
 relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of expressing that rela- 
 tion clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self 
 the very essence of self and passing that essence into other selves by so delicate 
 
 20 
 
means that none shall see how it is done, yet be insensibly unified ? Is not the 
 artist, of all men, born to be foe of partisanship and parochialism, of distor- 
 tions and extravagance, the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern — Truth; for, 
 if Truth be not Spiritual Proposition I know not what it may be. Truth, it 
 seems to me, is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry 
 in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth but the concrete 
 expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen throughout as a countless 
 show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, 
 the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it were, spiritually selected — that is 
 Truth; a thing as multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life 
 itself, and as little to be bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: 
 no deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule, nothing attains full 
 vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the 
 creation of vital things. 
 
 That aesthete, to be sure, was right enough who said: "It is Style that 
 makes one believe in a thing; nothing but Style." For what is style in its 
 true sense save fidelity to idea and mood, and perfect balance in the clothing 
 of them. And I thought: Can one believe in the decadence of Art in an age 
 which, however unconsciously as yet, is beginning to worship that which Art 
 worships — Perfection — Style ? 
 
 The faults of our Arts to-day are the faults of zeal and of adventure, the 
 faults and crudities of pioneers, the errors and mishaps of the explorer. They 
 must pass through many fevers and many times lose their way, but at all 
 events they shall not go dying in their beds and be buried at Kensal Green. 
 And here and there amid the disasters and wreckage of their voyages of dis- 
 covery, they will find something new, some fresh way of embellishing life, or 
 of revealing the heart of things. That characteristic of to-day's Art — the 
 striving of each branch of Art to burst its own boundaries — to many spells 
 destruction; but is it not rather of happy omen? The novel straining to 
 become the play — the play the novel — both trying to paint; music striving 
 to become story; poetry gasping to be music; painting panting to be phil- 
 osophy; forms, canons, rules, all melting in the pot; stagnation broken up! 
 In all this havoc there is much to shock and jar even the most eager and 
 adventurous. We say, "I cannot stand this new-fangled fellow! He has no 
 form ! He rushes in where angels fear to tread. He has lost all the good of the 
 old, and given us nothing in its place!" And yet, only out of stir and change 
 is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs 
 on courage! It is well, indeed, that some should live in their closed studies 
 with the paintings and the books of yesterday — such devotees and students 
 serve Art in their own way. But the fresh-air world will ever want new forms. 
 We shall not get them without faith enough to risk the old! The good will 
 live, the bad will die; and to-morrow only can tell us which is which! 
 
 Yes — I thought — ^we take, and naturally, a too impatient view of the Art 
 of our own time, since we can neither see the ends towards which it is almost 
 blindly groping, nor the few perfected creations that will be left standing amidst 
 
 21 
 
the rubble of abortive effort. An age must always decry itself and extol its 
 forbears. The unwritten history of every Art will show us that. Consider the 
 novel — that most recent form of Art. Did not the age which followed Fielding 
 lament the treachery of authors to the Picaresque tradition, complaining that 
 they were not as Fielding and Smollett were ? Be sure they did. Very slowly, 
 and in spite of opposition, did the novel attain in this country the fullness of 
 that biographical form achieved under Thackeray. Very slowly, and in face 
 of condemnation, it has been losing that form in favor of a greater vividness, 
 which places before the reader's brain, not historical statements, as it were, 
 of motives and of facts, but word-paintings of things and persons, so chosen 
 and arranged that the reader may see, as if at first hand, the spirit of Life at 
 work before him. The new novel has as many bemoaners as the old novel had 
 when it was new. It is no question of better or worse, but of differing forms — 
 of change dictated by gradual suitabiHty to the changing conditions of our 
 social life, and to the ever-fresh discoveries of craftsmen, in the intoxication of 
 which, old and equally worthy craftsmanship is too often for the moment over- 
 laid and lost. The vested interests of life favor the line of least resistance — 
 disliking and revolting against disturbance. On the other hand, a spurious 
 glamour is inclined to gather around what is new. And because of these two 
 deflecting factors, those who break through old forms must always expect to 
 be dead before the new forms they have unconsciously created have found 
 their true level, high or low, in the world of Art. When a thing is new it is 
 "nohow!" In the fluster of meeting novelty, we have even seen coherence 
 attempting to bind together two personalities so fundamentally opposed as 
 those of Ibsen and Bernard Shaw — dramatists with hardly a quality in com- 
 mon; no identity of tradition, or belief; not the faintest resemblance in meth- 
 ods of construction or technique. Yet contemporary estimate talks of them 
 often in the same breath. They are new! It is enough. And others as utterly 
 unlike them both. They, too, are new. They have as yet no other label. 
 Lump them in! 
 
 And so — I thought — it must always be; for Time is essential to the proper 
 placing and estimate of all Art. And is it not this feeling that contemporary 
 judgments are apt to turn out a little ludicrous, which has turned criticism of 
 late to the form, not so much of judgment pronounced, as of impression re- 
 corded — recreative statement — a kind, in fact, of expression of the critic's 
 self, elicited through contemplation of a book, a play, a symphony, a picture ? 
 For this kind of criticism there has even recently been claimed an actual 
 identity with creation, in a passage which runs thus: "Taste must reproduce 
 the work of Art within itself in order to understand and judge it; and at that 
 moment aesthetic judgment becomes nothing more nor less than creative art 
 itself. The identity of genius and taste is the final achievement of modern 
 thought on the subject of Art, and it means that, fundamentally, the creative 
 and the critical instincts are one and the same." ' 
 .Esth etic judgment ancicreative power identical! I wondered, reading, and 
 
 (i) The New Criticism. Professor Spingam. Columbia University, U. S. A. 
 
 22 
 
still wonder! For however sympathetic one may feel towards this hew criti- 
 cism, however one may recognize that the recording of impression has a wider, 
 more elastic, and more lasting value than the delivery of arbitrary judgment 
 based on rigid laws of taste; however one may admit that it approaches the 
 creative gift in so far as it demands the qualities of receptivity and reproduction 
 — is there not still lacking to this "new" critic something of that thirsting 
 spirit of discovery which precedes the creation — hitherto so-called — of any- 
 thing? Criticism, taste, aesthetic judgment, by the very nature of their task, 
 wait till life has been imprisoned for them before they attempt to reproduce 
 the image which that imprisoned fragment of life makes on the mirror of their 
 minds. But a thing "created" springs from a germ unconsciously implanted 
 by the direct impact of unfettered life on the whole range of the creator's 
 temperament; and round the germ thus engendered the creative artist — ever 
 penetrating, discovering, selecting — goes on building cell on cell, gathered 
 from a million little fresh impacts and visions. And to say that this is also 
 exactly what the re-creative critic does is to say that the interpretative musi- 
 cian is creator in the same sense as is the composer of the music that he inter- 
 prets. And if, indeed, these processes be the same in kind, they are in degree 
 so far apart that one would think the word creative unfortunately used of both. 
 
 But this speculation — I thought — is going beyond the bounds of vague- 
 ness. Let there be some thread of coherence in the progress of your thoughts, 
 as in the progress of this evening, fast fading into night. Return to the con- 
 sideration of the nature and purposes of Art! And recognize that you will 
 seem, on the face of it, a heretic to the school whose doctrine was incarnated 
 by Oscar Wilde in that admirable apotheosis of half truths, The Decay of the 
 Art of Lying. Did he riot there say, "No great artist ever sees things' as they 
 really are"; while you have put it thus: The seeing of things as they really 
 are — the seeing of a proportion veiled from other eyes (together with the power 
 of expression), is what makes a man an artist. What makes him a great 
 artist is that high fervor of spirit which produces a superlative, instead of a 
 comparative, clarity of vision. 
 
 Close to this house of mine there are some pines with gnarled red limbs 
 flanked by beech trees. And there is often a very deep blue sky behind. Gen- 
 erally, that is all I see. But once in a way, in those trees against that sky I 
 seem to see all the passionate life and glow that Titian painted into his Pagan 
 pictures. I have a vision of mysterious meaning, of a mysterious relation 
 between that sky and those trees with their gnarled red limbs, and Life as I 
 know it. When I have had that vision I always feel that it is reality, and all 
 those other times, when I am not so blessed, simple unreality; and if I were 
 a painter, it is for such fervent feeling I should wait before moving brush. This, 
 so intimate, inner vision of reality, seems in duller moments well-nigh grotesque; 
 and hence that other glib half-truth: "Art is greater than Life itself." Art is 
 greater than Life in the sense that the power of Art is the disengagement from 
 Life of its real spirit and significance. But in any other sense, to say that Art 
 is greater than Life from which it emerges, and into which it must remerge, 
 
 23 
 
can but suspend the artist over Life, with his feet in the air and his head in the 
 clouds — Prig masquerading as Demi-god. "Nature is no great Mother who 
 has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life." 
 Such is the highest hyperbole of the aesthetic creed. But what is creative 
 instinct if not an incessant living sympathy with Nature, a constant craving 
 like that of Nature's own, to fashion something new out of all that comes 
 within the grasp of those faculties with which Nature has endowed us? The 
 qualities of vision, of fancy, and of imaginative power, are no more divorced 
 from Nature than are the qualities of common sense and courage. They are 
 rarer, that is all. But, in truth, no one holds such views. Not even those who 
 utter them. They are the rhetoric, the over-statement of half-truths, by such 
 as wish to condemn what they call "Realism," without being temperamentally 
 capable of appreciating what "Realism" really is. < 
 
 And what — I thought — ^is Realism? What is the meaning of that word 
 so wildly used ? Is it descriptive of technique, or descriptive of the spirit of 
 the artist, or both, or neither? Was Turgensv a realist? No greater poet 
 ever wrote in prose, nor anyone who more closely brought the actual shapes of 
 men and things before us. Was he a realist? No more fervent idealists than 
 Ibsen and Tolstoy ever lived; and none more careful to make their people real. 
 Were they realists? No more deeply fantastic writer can I conceive than 
 Dostoievsky, nor any who has described actual situations more vividly. Was 
 he a realist? The late Stephen Crane was called a realist. Than whom no 
 more impressionistic writer ever painted with words. What then is the heart 
 of this term still often used as an expression almost of abuse? To me, at all 
 events — I thought — the words realism, realistic, have no longer reference to 
 technique, for which the words naturalism, naturalistic serve far better. Nor 
 do they imply a lack of imaginative power — ^which is as much demanded by 
 realism as by romanticism. A realist, as I understand the word, may be 
 naturalistic, poetic, idealistic, fantastic, impressionistic, anything, indeed, 
 except romantic; that, in so far as he is realistic, he cannot be. The word, to 
 me, characterizes that artist who invents tale or design revealing the actual 
 inter-relating spirit of life, character, and thought, with a primary view to 
 enlighten; as distinguished from that artist — ^whom I call romantic — ^who 
 invents tale or design with a primary view to delight. It is a question of 
 temperamental antecedent motive in the artist, and nothing more. 
 
 Realist — Romanticist! Enlightenment — Amusement! That is the true 
 apposition. To make a revelation — to tell a fairy-tale! And either of these 
 artists may use what form he likes— naturalistic, fantastic, poetic, impres- 
 sionistic. For it is not by the form, but by the purpose and mood of his art 
 that he shall be known, as one or as the other. Realists, we know, including 
 the half of Shakespeare that was realist, not being primarily concerned to 
 amuse their audience, are still comparatively unpopular in a world made up 
 for the greater part of men of action, who instinctively reject all art that does 
 not distract them without causing them to think. For thought makes demands 
 on an energy already in full use; thought causes introspection; and intro- 
 24 
 
spection causes discomfort, and disturbs the grooves of action. But to say 
 that the object of the realist is to enHghten rather than to delight, is not to say 
 ^that in his art the realist is not amusing himself as much as ever is the teller 
 of a fairy-tale, though he does not deliberately start out to do so; he is amusing, 
 too, a large part of mankind. For, admitted that the object and the test of 
 Art is the awakening of vibration, of impersonal emotion, it is still usually 
 forgotten that men fall, roughly speaking, into two flocks — those whose intel- 
 ligence is uninquiring in the face of Art, and does not demand to be appeased 
 before their emotions can be stirred; and those who, having a speculative bent 
 of mind, must first be satisfied by the enlightening quality in a work of Art 
 before that work of Art can make them feel at all. The audience of the realist 
 is drawn from this latter type of man; the much larger audience of the romantic 
 artist from the former; together with, in both cases, those fastidious few for 
 whom all Art is style and only style, and who welcome either kind so long as 
 it is good enough. 
 
 To me, then — I thought — this division into Realism and Romance, so 
 understood, is the main cleavage in all the Arts; but it is hard to find pure 
 examples of either kind. For even the most determined realist has more than 
 a streak in him of the romanticist, and the most resolute romanticist finds it 
 impossible at times to be quite unreal. Correggio, Guido Reni, Watteau, 
 Leighton — ^were they not perhaps somewhat pure romanticists; Leonardo, 
 Rembrandt, Hogarth, Watts — mainly realist; and Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, 
 a blend of both. Dumas pere, and Scott, surely romantic; Flaubert and 
 Tolstoy as surely realists; Dickens and Cervantes, blended. Keats and 
 Swinburne — romantic; Browning and Whitman — realistic; Shakespeare and 
 Gioethe, both. The Greek dramatists — realists. The Arabian Nights and 
 Malory — romantic. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Old Testament, both 
 realism and romance. But how thin often is the hedge! And how poor a 
 business the partisan abuse of either kind of art in a world where each sort of 
 mind has full right to its own due expression, and grumbling lawful only when 
 due expression is not attained. One man may not care for a Rembrandt 
 portrait of a plain old woman; a graceful Watteau decoration may leave 
 another cold; but foolish will he be who denies that both are faithful to their 
 conceiving moods, and so proportioned part to part, and part to whole, as to 
 have, each in its own way, that inherent rhythm or vitality which is the hall- 
 mark of Art. He is but a poor philosopher who holds a view so narrow as to 
 exclude forms not to his personal taste. No realist can love romantic Art so 
 much as he loves his own, but when that Art fulfils the laws of its peculiar being, 
 if he would be no blind partisan, he must admit it. The romanticist will never 
 be amused by realism, but let him not for that reason be so parochial as to 
 think that realism, when it achieves vitality, is not Art. Art is but the per- 
 fected expression of self in contact with the world; whether that self be of 
 enlightening, or of fairy-telling temperament, is of no moment whatever. The 
 tossing of abuse from realist to romanticist and back is but the sword-play of 
 two one-eyed men with their blind side turned towards each other. Shall not 
 
each attempt at Art be judged on its own merits ? If found not shoddy, faked, 
 or forced, but true to itself, true to its conceiving mood, and fair-proportioned 
 part to whole, so that it lives — then, realistic or romantic, in the name of fair- 
 ness let it pass ! For of all kinds of human energy. Art is the most free, the 
 least parochial, and demands of us an essential tolerance of all its forms. Shall 
 we, then, waste breath and ink in condemnation of artists because their 
 temperaments are not our own ? 
 
 But the shapes and colors of the day were now all blurred; every tree 
 and stone entangled in the dusk. How different the world seemed from that 
 in which I had first sat down, with the swallows flitting past. And my mood 
 was different, for each of those worlds had brought to my heart its proper 
 feeling — painted on my eyes the just picture. And Night, that was coming, 
 would bring me yet another mood that would frame itself with consciousness 
 at its own fair moment, and hang before me. A quiet owl stole by iri the field 
 below and vanished-into the heart of a tree. And suddenly above the moor- 
 line I saw the large moon rising. Cinnamon-colored, it made all things swim, 
 made me uncertain of my thoughts, vague with a mazy feeling. Shapes 
 seemed but drifts of moon-dust, and true reality nothing save a sort of still 
 listening to the wind. And for long I sat, just watching the moon creep up, 
 and hearing the thin, dry rustle of the leaves along the holly hedge. And there 
 came to me this thought: What is this Universe — that never had beginning 
 and will never have an end — but a myriad striving to perfect pictures never 
 the same, so blending and fading one into another that all form one great 
 perfected picture. And what are we — ripples on the tides of a birthless, death- 
 less, equipoised Creative Purpose — but little works of Art? 
 
 But trying to record that thought, I noticed that my notebook was damp 
 with dew. The cattle were lying down. It was too dark to see. 
 
 John Galsworthy. 
 
 z6