the favorite newspaper, or any other
temporary master of fashion.--All this is probably the result of an
exaggerated sociability, which weakens the soul's forces of resistance,
destroys its capacity for investigation and personal conviction, and
kills in it the worship of the ideal.

* * * * *

DECEMBER 9TH, 1877.--The modern haunters of Parnassus carve urns of
agate and of onyx; but inside the urns what is there?--Ashes. Their work
lacks feeling, seriousness, sincerity, and pathos--in a word, soul and
moral life. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with such a way of
understanding poetry. The talent shown is astonishing, but stuff and
matter are wanting. It is an effort of the imagination to stand
alone--substitute for everything else. We find metaphors, rhymes, music,
color, but not man, not humanity. Poetry of this factitious kind may
beguile one at twenty, but what can one make of it at fifty? It reminds
me of Pergamos, of Alexandria, of all the epochs of decadence when
beauty of form hid poverty of thought and exhaustion of feeling. I
strongly share the repugnance which this poetical school arouses in
simple people. It is as though it only cared to please the world-worn,
the over-subtle, the corrupted, while it ignores all normal healthy
life, virtuous habits, pure affections, steady labor, honesty, and duty.
It is an affectation, and because it is an affectation the school is
struck with sterility. The reader desires in the poem something better
than a juggler in rhyme, or a conjurer in verse; he looks 'to find in
him a painter of life, a being who thinks, loves, and has a conscience,
who feels passion and repentance.

The true critic strives for a clear vision of things as they are--for
justice and fairness; his effort is to get free from himself, so that he
may in no way disfigure that which he wishes to understand or reproduce.
His superiority to the common herd lies in this effort, even when its
success is only partial. He distrusts his own senses, he sifts his own
impressions, by returning upon them from different sides and at
different times, by comparing, moderating, shading, distinguishing, and
so endeavoring to approach more and more nearly to the formula which
represents the maximum of truth.

The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the
greatest elevation both in artist and in public.

* * * * *

MAY 19TH, 1878.