Bel. Shakespeare says we should "hold the mirror up to nature'' in our art.

Mal. Ay, but what mirror? Not the senseless material mirror, in which nature is simply reproduced as fact. Art is nature reflected in the spiritual mirror, and tinged with all the sentiment, feeling, passion of the spirit that reflects it. It is nature that has suffered a sea change into something rich and strange." It is then an absolute requisite of a work of art, that it should neither be real nor illusory. The moment reality or illusion comes in, art disappears. The birds that strove to peck the painted grapes of Zeuxis, the ape that ate the colored beetles in the volume of natural history, are types of the ignorant and vulgar mind that never entered into the sacred precincts of art.

Bel. The story of the birds pecking the grapes in the picture of Zeuxis is always related as a proof of his wonderful power of copying nature, even to the point of literal deception. But birds and insects are easily deceived by the commonest representation of fruit and flowers. I have often watched the bee-moth as he tried flower after flower, painted coarsely along under the cornice of my Italian villa walls, sometimes making the entire round of the room in search of his sustenance, and never learning by experience.

Mal. The old story of the painted curtain of Parrhasius, which he was requested to draw aside from before his picture, is in the same class. It is evidently made out of the whole cioth-like a hundred others that are told about artists. But supposing it true, it proves that the result of the perfect imitation was to take the picture out of the domain of art-to the minds of all who saw it. Much as one might admire the skill of the deception, the result was not interesting as art in its higher sense. But art is not only not illusion-it is not even a mere reproduction of nature, but an expression and bodying forth of the inmost being of the artist. Its germ is within and not without; it only uses nature as an outward garment in which to clothe the living idea and conception, assimilating whatever in nature belongs to it of right, and rejecting all which is not fit or necessary. It weaves its figure out of nature, but nature is only the material which it uses in its loom, and which obeys the motions of the working spirit as it transfigures the outward sub

stance with its own inner life. Truth and fact are to be carefully discriminated. Mere facts, however true in and for themselves, may be all untrue in art. Nothing is true in art unless it be assimilated by the imagination to the idea which is the soul of the work, whatever it may be, independently of that connection, and viewed by itself. Too close an imitation of facts often lowers the character of the work and degrades the idea, and this is specially to be seen in music, which, in so far as it is imitation, is on a low plane.

Bel. Is it not equally so with regard to sculpture? Suppose illusion to be its object, and literal imitation its true means, on such principles the wax figures of Madame Tussaud, with their real dresses, their real hair, and painted faces, ought to be truer products of art than the noblest of Greek statues. But, in truth, it is this very illusion which disgusts us while it deceives. So far from desiring illusion, it is an impertinence which we reject. Mal. Undoubtedly it is.

Bel. And let me, before you go on, also recall to you those charming lines of Wordsworth, suggested by a picture of Peele Castle in a storm, by Sir George Beaumont :—

"I was thy neighbor once, thou rugged pile !
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
I saw thee every day; and all the while

"So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
It trembled, but it never passed away.
Whene'er I looked, thy image still was there;

"How perfect was the calm! It seemed no sleep,

No mood, which season takes away, or brings :
I could have fancied that the mighty deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

"Ah! then, if mine had been the painter's hand,

To express what then I saw; and add the

gleam,

The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream."

Mal. Exactly! That is what is wanted in art-the consecration, and the poet's dream-and without it there is no real art in the highest sense of the word.

Bel. One moment before you go on. These lines of Wordsworth reminded me of a passage in Shelley which it very closely resembles

"It trembles, but it cannot pass away." But if we continue quoting poetry, we shall not get on with our discussion. You were saying that art should be above nature while it was in it as the spirit is above and in the body—and that it should be an interpretation and not an imitation of nature. Now go on, if I have not entirely put you out.

Mal. In art there is no nature independent of man and his relation to it. While art should never be false to nature, it should be its master and not its slave. Nature is the grammar and dictionary of art; but it is not until we have mastered these so as to use them freely and almost unconsciously as a language, that we can rise to be poets or artists. A faultless grammatical sentence, or series of sentences, does not make a poem; and many are the artists who, after they have learned the language of art, have nothing to say which is worth saying. If we have nothing really to say, what is the use of learning the language. A servile imitation of nature is fatal to all the higher impulses of the spirit, and will never result in anything admirable. A sketch by a great master is better, despite all its incorrectness, not only than the most careful reproduction through mere imitation of any facts in nature, but often better than the finished work of the same master-better, because freer and fuller of the idea. Every artist will tell you that he finds it difficult in his finished work to come up to the impression of his sketch, for the former is produced in the heat of enthusiasm, and when the mind is penetrated thoroughly with the idea, while the latter is more studied and mechanical. Persons

ordinarily speak of imitations of natureas if nature were something definite, and positive, and absolute. But nature is to each one a different thing. It is what we are, and takes the coloring of the eye and the mind. It is infinite, too, in its variety, infinite in its scale, and infinite in its combinations-while an imitation of

a

Yet

definite fact is limited to that fact. even that one fact is protean. It changes with every light, and is affected by every emotion of the artist. Nature is not an aggregation of facts-it is an idea in the mind derived from a long series of vary. ing impressions and experiences. When we say a work of art is natural, it is because it answers to this idea, not because it is true to some particular fact. Many incidents true in fact are to the imagination false, unnatural, and unfit for art.

Bel. You remember Coleridge's lines beginning

"Oh, lady, we receive but what we give, And in our life alone doth nature live," etc.

all so true and so charming. But go on.

Mal. The vice of modern art is that it founds itself too much on the low principle of imitation and literal realism, as it is called. The study of particular facts in nature is considered as an end and not as a means; and they are treated, not as idioms or phrases of a language to be learned and freely used to express ideas, but as being in themselves poems which are merely to be copied. The artist subordinates himself to some particular scene, or place, or room, or dress, and by patiently, and often servilely, copying these, he expects to produce a great picture. He sets a model before him, and by imitating carefully every detail of the individual, expects to produce a great statue. But in this kind of work there is no opportunity for style and grand character. Its place but too often is usurped by the sham and counterfeit chique. The imag ination is not tasked to a great conception, but cleverness and trick play its part. Undoubtedly the dexterity and ability shown in some of these works of mere handicraft is very great, but there it all but too often ends. Such works surprise and delight for a moment, but their time is short. The public admire and buy. The artist yields to temptation and paints to sell, and thus talent and skill of a rare quality are wasted; and when the fashion of the day goes, such works go with it. The consequence is, that we have many phrase-books, note-books, and studies from nature, and very little art in its highest sense. That nature should be studied with the utmost earnestness and zeal, that it should never be falsely represented in our work, is too obvious to need

to be stated. But all this study is only preparation for art. It is learning to play the scales, but it is not music. It is acquiring the language, not writing poems. Bel. You differ from the principles laid down by Mr. Ruskin, who seems to think that a perfect reproduction of anything physical before you will constitute an admirable work of art.

tle.

Mal. Oh, I don't believe he would accept such a rendering of his thought and teaching. He has done an immense deal of good by his writings. He has stimulated the mind to think. He has brought art over from vague generalities to a real study of nature, which is the true basis of excellence in sculpture and painting. But it is not the end. We cannot idealize anything by omitting its peculiarities and slurring over its facts; but only by mastering them, and then subjecting them to the idea to be represented. Besides this, he is a poet, and his descriptions of nature in landscape are wonderfully true and subBut in his statement of principles he is vague, contradictory, and unphilosophical. The principles he lays down dogmatically in one chapter, he controverts and refutes in the next, so that it is impossible to understand what his real principles are. He has no system, but very many just observations; no metaphysical accuracy, but a high poetic and critical faculty. He has changed his view in regard to many of the great painters in the most remarkable way, now decrying them as comparatively worthless, and at a later time praising them with equal vehemence. It always seems to me as if he were learning his lesson aloud, and correcting his impressions before the public. Still, he speaks as authoritatively when he is beginning to study his lesson, as afterward when he has advanced to a position where he finds what he said is untrue. But he has one great merit. He is honest, bold, and in earnest.

Bel. His observations of nature always strike me as particularly admirable and close, and his descriptions are so poetic and rich in expression and style that they carry one away with their eloquence. But you were saying that imitation is a mere means and not an end of art. You are speaking, I suppose, more in relation to sculpture and painting than in relation to poetry and music?

Mal. I have been speaking of art in

general, and not of art as confined to any particular form. Undoubtedly, in sculpture and painting, imitation must properly be carried further than in music or poetry. Music, which is the most ideal of all the arts, at once wrenches itself entirely from imitation, and seeks to stir the emotions. by fiery sallies into the upper nature which overbroods the lower nature of facts, forms, and incidents, as the sky over the earth. In landscape, for instance, the material facts are etherealized and transfigured by air, light, and color, so as to lift them out of prose facts, and the true artist should seek the sentiment as well as the facts. It is by the imaginative sense that he subdues the prosaic facts to the emotion and idea to be conveyed in his work, and thus fuses the literal into poetry. Round every form there hovers an essence that spiritualizes it, and it is this which the true artist should seek to appropriate as well as the form, for without it the form is vacuous. Nature is plastic to the soul. There is no stock, or stone, or weed which a great emotion in the heart will not spiritualize. Nature is not a dead repertory of facts-it is a living keyboard for the imagination to play upon, out of which infinite combinations of harmony or melody may be produced. But nature must be played by the artist in the key of the emotion to be embodied, and the modulations must follow the creative energy, or only consecutive sounds will be evoked, and not music.

Bel. That is what we mean in common parlance when we say of a work that it may be very clever, but it has no feeling, -that it shows great skill and technical mastery, but does not touch us. Nothing, I suppose, ever does touch us, unless it has come from a deep feeling. Unless the artist profoundly feels his own work, and infuses into it his own spirit, how can he expect to move any one? Mere mechanical dexterity will not evidently suffice. How many works, despite their technical merit, seem to us hard, cold, or clever; while other works, despite their manifest defects and incompleteness, delight us? But I did not mean to interrupt you, though you require, perhaps, to be taken down from your high horse once in a while, lest you go out of sight and lose yourself in the clouds. But go on.

Mal. Look at poetry, and you will see how little imitation has to do with it. The

poet will never evoke the simplest scenery by enumerating its facts, but he condenses into a single phrase the whole spirit of the scene, and makes it live again in the sympathetic mind of the reader. He leaves out the barren and waste details which do not of necessity belong to his emotion, and without falsifying, reproduces nature as a garment to his thought. In music, too, the composer does not imitate the sounds of the natural world, though he summons it up to you by the tones in which he embodies it. So it should be, though in a less degree, with the painter and with the sculptor. He cannot say all, and he must select. What is not necessary in art is impertinent. Each work has its one word to say, its one blow to strike, and if that be missed, all the rest is rubbish. If the artist have a real and sincere intent, a living idea and thought, let him subordinate all to that, rejecting the unnecessary, however pleasing in itself, and making his work in all its details converge to one point, and cry out with one voice. But to do this, he must have an imperious conception to which all must yield. He must learn the virtue of renunciation. What is left undone is as necessary to a true work of art as what is done. In each of the arts too much is as fatal as too little. A suggestion is often better than a statement. The imagination is always ready to be beckoned, but rebels against being drilled or driven.

Bel. I have a modern picture in my mind now, which justifies all you say. It was painted with very great technical skill-all the parts were carefully finished, and it showed great talent. But it had no central point of interest. Each detail was emphasized as if it were essential, and the artist seemed to have given as much love to each bit as to the whole. Indeed the whole was lost in the parts. When I first saw it, the impression it made on me I cannot better express than by saying, that it seemed to me as if I entered a room where everybody was talking at once -each claiming my attention, and each saying his word as loud as he could. Apparently the artist was afraid of not being true to every part in detail, and thus lost his grasp on the essential one thing to be said. The public was delighted with the care with which everything was done; but the whole picture seemed to me a mistake, and a waste of talent. Notwith

standing its skill, it left no real impression upon me.

Mal. Art is now a slave or servant of the age, and no longer a leader and master. Yet this is not its true function. It is born to command, and its life is Freedom. But the necessities of the time, the follies of fashion, and the public desire for illusion and imitation, pull it down from its pedestal, and drag it in their train. It goes creeping along to swell the pageant of wealth and utility. But art does not sing well in a cage. It is only in the fulness of freedom that it does its best. As Schiller says in his "Letters on the Esthetic Education of Man,' "Man only plays when in the fullest sense of the word he is man; and he is then only truly man when he plays." What is mere truth is only the mechanics of art. It is of the earth, earthy. But inspiration and imagination have the spirit of what Schiller calls play. They are rejoicing and self-sufficing, and freely play with the materials that work has collected. So long as our art is mere work, it is a vulgar drudge. It is only when imagination lends it wings that it soars into its true sphere of the ideal, and becomes the master and not the slave of Nature. Let me read you a passage from Schiller on this subject. He says-"The current of events has given the genius of the age a bias, which draws it further and further from the art of the Ideal. This must abandon actualities, and lift itself with becoming boldness above mere necessities. For art is the daughter of freedom, and from the urgency of the spirit, not from the necessity of the matter, must its conceptions spring. But necessities now rule, and bow fallen manhood under her tyrannical yoke. Utility is the great idol of the age, which all powers serve, and to which all talent does homage.

Bel. There is no doubt truth in all this, though it is a little vague in expression. Yet between the claims of the ideal on the one side and of practical adherence to nature on the other, the artist seems to have as difficult a course to steer as between Scylla and Charybdis. In the past generation we had the Ideal school, which, by endeavoring to lift itself above nature, became vague and untrue and phantasmical. Now we have the Realistic school, which sins as much on the other side, and becomes literal and prosaic in its slavery to

imitation. Taking to avoid Scylla, we have fallen on Charybdis.

Mal. The true mean is of course difficult. If art were easy, and its path strictly drawn, it would cease to be the problem it is. But listen again to Schiller "Matter without Form" (he uses Form in the highest sense of imaginative shaping) is only a half possession, for the most royal knowledge is buried when dead treasure in a mind, which knows not how to give it its shape. Form without matter, again, is only the shadow of a possession, and the utmost dexterity of art in expression is useless to him who has nothing to express.'

Bel. All very true, but is it not also self-evident?

Mal. I suppose it is; but in discussions upon art, one has often strongly to insist upon principles which seem to be almost self-evident.

Bel. Let us go back a little to what you were saying about Imitation not being the end of art. In music and in poetry, one sees at once that it is not. The ear has a science for its art, but unfortunately the eye has not. There is no absolute harmonic scale of color, and still less of form. And we must therefore depend on our natural instincts, as we have no definite positive rules.

But

Mal. That is undoubtedly true to a certain extent; but I have no doubt that there is a real science of harmony to the eye as well as to the ear, only we have not yet discovered and formally established it; and so we blindly work in the one, while our way is comparatively clear in the other. I spent a good many hours at one time in endeavoring to make a thorough bass of color, but it foiled me, and after many experiments I gave it up. sounds and colors are closely connected, and the harmonies of one are as absolute as those of the other. The blind feel this perhaps more than those who see, and certain sounds represent to their minds a corresponding color. You remember the blind man who said that the sound of the trumpet seemed to him scarlet. Do we not all feel that he was right? It may be fanciful, and of course it is, but most of the instruments represent to me colors.

Bel. You may well say this is fanciful. I do not follow you at all. They represent nothing of the kind to me; and even if what you say were true, I suppose to

each different mind the effect would be different, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to establish any agreement.

Mal. I dare say it would. I merely threw out a hint. But the common use of the words "tone" and "harmony,' as applied to color, indicate that there is a subtle connection between sound and color, however dim and intangible. Certainly some colors clash together, and produce the same mental impression as discords in music. So also harmonies of forms and lines are felt to be allied to music, though we cannot explain the relation. Proportion is harmony; symmetry is nothing but the harmonious relations of measures, and I have no doubt they have an absolute mathematical relation, as much as the pulsations of strings. It is because we do not scientifically know these relations that we are always groping in the dark; and having only an empirical knowledge, gained from practice, we are never sure of anything, and so cannot lift ourselves above imitations of what we see and feel to be agreeable; and this brings me back to what I was saying. In art, servile imitation means ignorance. Take sculpture, for instance. This, as I have said before, is at once the most positive, the most restricted in its means, and the most requiring in its end. If in this art mere imitation be not required as of necessity, it would seem to be required in no form of art. Yet it is precisely because of its literal imitation that sculpture in the modern days is defective. It has no style. It is not nature, it is the individual model; it is Lisette or Antoine. When compared with the best antique work, though it is far more elaborate in its execution, and more finished in its details, it is far inferior in character, dignity, and style. In the antique the forms are scientifically disposed, according to a certain established scale or harmony of proportion, and the details are subordinated to that distribution. The type is never lost sight of; it dominates all the parts. The Greek artist in his ideal works never suffered himself to be seduced by any accidents of the model from principles established by long study of the varying forms of nature, and reduced to system. His art has, like music, a thorough-bass, a scientific standard of proportion which is absolute. He permits himself no extravagance of gesture or form, but he seizes on