the vigilance of their apprehension, are
enough? Now Impressionists of late have told us things as to their
impressions--as to the effect of things upon the temperament of this man
and upon the mood of that--which should not be asserted except on the
artistic point of honour. The majority can tell ordinary truth, but they
should not trust themselves for truth extraordinary. They can face the
general judgment, but they should hesitate to produce work that appeals
to the last judgment, which is the judgment within. There is too much
reason to divine that a certain number of those who aspire to derive from
the greatest of masters have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point
of view worth seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth
waylaying. And to be, _de parti pris_, an Impressionist without
these! O Velasquez! Nor is literature quite free from a like reproach
in her own things. An author, here and there, will make as though he had
a word worth hearing--nay, worth over-hearing--a word that seeks to
withdraw even while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is
all too probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not--as is
the craft and mystery of painting--so at the mercy of a half-imposture,
so guarded by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is reserved
that shadowy risk, that undefined salvation. May the gods guard us from
the further popularising of Impressionism; for the point of honour is the
simple secret of the few.

COMPOSURE

Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure do
these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the remoteness
of the Latinity the thought would come too close and shake too cruelly.
In order to the sane endurance of the intimate trouble of the soul an
aloofness of language is needful. Johnson feared death. Did his noble
English control and postpone the terror? Did it keep the fear at some
courteous, deferent distance from the centre of that human heart, in the
very act of the leap and lapse of mortality? Doubtless there is in
language such an educative power. Speech is a school. Every language is
a persuasion, an induced habit, an instrument which receives the note
indeed but gives the tone. Every language imposes a quality, teaches a
temper, proposes a way, bestows a tradition: this is the tone--the
voice--of the instrument. Every language, by counter-change, replies to
the writer's touch or brea