w in the dark courtyard outside. This manner of setting
they have had; and a far finer than any that could artificially be given
to them. In order to endure, they had, these ideas, to be removed out of
all this living frame-work; to be written down, that is to say, to be
made quite lifeless and inorganic, and dry and stiff, like some stuffed
animal or bird. And when it came to sorting them, to preparing them to
show to other folk; the vague melancholy sense of how different they
now looked, my poor art thoughts all dreary in their abstractness, from
what they had been when they had first come into my head; this sense
of difference made me wish and try to replace them in a setting, an
artificial one, which should in a manner be equivalent to that original
real setting of place and moment, and individuality and digression:
equivalent as an acre of garden, with artificial rocks, streams, groves,
grottoes, places for losing your way, flower-beds etc., is equivalent
for all the country you can travel over in five or six years. I have
done as best I could, merely to satisfy my own strong feeling that art
questions should always be discussed in the presence of some definite
work of art, if art and its productions are not to become mere
abstractions, logical counters wherewith to reckon; also, that
discussions should be, what real discussions are, a gradual unravelling
of tangled questions, either alone or with others' assistance, not a
mere exposition of a cut and dry system. I have always, in putting
together these notes, had a vision of pictures or statues or places, had
a sound of music in my mind, or a page of a book in my memory; I have
always thought, in arranging these discussions, of the real individuals
with whom I should most willingly have them: I have always felt that
some one else was by my side to whom I was showing, explaining,
answering; hence, the use of the second person plural, of which I have
vainly tried to be rid: it is not the oracular _we_ of the printed book,
it is the _we_ of myself and those with whom, for whom, I am speaking;
it is the constantly felt dualism of myself and my companion.

Thus much of the form into which, as the only one which, however
imperfectly, suited my liking, I have worked these notes, taken from
out of the confusion of my commonplace books. Now, as to the notes, or
rather as to the ideas which they embody. These ideas, I repeat, are not
a system; they are mere fragmentary thin