ey
were all revolutionaries; and success came so tardily to them that
flattery did not taint their native genius.

"Great men never come singly," says Emerson.

Richard Wagner was born in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirteen, Millet in
Eighteen Hundred Fourteen, and Whitman in Eighteen Hundred Nineteen.
"Tannhauser" was first produced in Eighteen Hundred Forty-five; the
"Sower" was exhibited in Eighteen Hundred Fifty; and in Eighteen Hundred
Fifty-five "Leaves of Grass" appeared.

The reception accorded to each masterpiece was about the same; and all
would have fallen flat had it not been for the gibes and jeers and
laughter which the work called forth.

Wagner was arrested for being an alleged rioter; Whitman was ejected from
his clerkship and his book looked after by the Attorney-General of
Massachusetts; Millet was hooted by his fellow-students and dubbed the
Wild-Man-of-the-Woods.

In a letter to Pelloquet, Millet says, "The creations that I depict must
have the air of being native to their situation, so that no one looking
on them shall imagine they are anything else than what they are."

In his first preface to "Leaves of Grass," Whitman writes: "The art of
arts, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is
simplicity. * * * To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and
insouciance of the movement of animals and the unimpeachableness of the
sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless
triumph of art."

Wagner wrote in an Essay on Art:

"The Greek, proceeding from the bosom of Nature, attained to Art when he
had made himself independent of the immediate influences of Nature.

"We, violently debarred from Nature, and proceeding from the dull ground
of a Heaven-rid and juristic civilization, first reach Art when we
completely turn our backs on such a civilization, and once more cast
ourselves, with conscious bent, into the arms of Nature."

Men high in power, deceived by the "lack of form," the innocent naivete
as of childhood, the simple homeliness of expression, the absence of
effort, declared again and again that Millet's work was not art, nor
Wagner's "recurring theme" true music, nor Whitman's rhymeless lines
poetry. The critics refused to recognize that which was not labored:
where no violence of direction was shown they saw no art. To follow close
to Nature is to be considered rude by some--it indicates a lack of
"culture."

Millet, Wagne