things? Where, at such times, is our artistic
appreciation, and what is it worth? Should we then, if such a thing
were possible, forbid such comparisons, such associations? Should we
voluntarily deprive ourselves of all such pleasure as is not given by
the work of art itself?

No, but we should restrain such impressions; we should, as far as
we can, remain conscious of the fact that they are mere effects of
comparison and association, that they are not the work of art, but
something distinct from it, and that the work of art itself exists in
the lines, tints, lights and shades of the picture or statue, in the
modulations and harmonies of a composition, and that all the rest is
gratuitously added by ourselves. Nay, we should remember that there
could not even have been that very comparison, that very association
if there had been no previous real artistic perception; that unless we
had first cared for Virgil's Orpheus for its own sake, we could not
afterwards have cared for the bas-relief on its account.

We confess that we have ourselves become instinctively jealous of such
foreign causes of pleasure in art, jealous because we have been pained
by their constant encroachment; the feeling may be an exaggerated one,
but it is a natural reaction. We have thus caught ourselves almost
regretting that pictures should have any subjects; we have sometimes
felt that the adaptation of music to the drama is a sort of profanation;
and all this because we have too often observed that the subject seemed
to engross so much attention as to make people forget the picture, and
that the drama made people misinterpret the music; and that criticism
itself, instead of checking this tendency, has done much to further it.
Yes, critics, grave and emphatic thinkers, have spoken as if the chief
merit of the painter had consisted in clearly expressing some story,
which in all probability was not worth expressing, some dull monkish
legend which his genius alone could render tolerable; as if the chief
aim of the composer were to follow the mazes of some wretched imbecile
libretto, which has become endurable thanks only to his notes; as if the
immortal were to be chained to the mortal, and mediocrity, inferiority,
mere trumpery fact or trumpery utility were to bridle and bestride the
divine hippogriff of art, and, like another Astolfo, fly up on its back
into the regions of immortality. Artists themselves have been of this
way of thinking, we cannot