things claiming to be such, in
which this law of natural proportion is not respected or not observed,
may have a transient popularity and success: nay, their success may be
the greater, or at least the louder and more emphatic, for that very
disproportion: the multitude may, and in fact generally do, go after
such in preference to that which is better. And even men not exactly
of the multitude, but still without the preparation either of a
natural or a truly educated taste,--men in whom the sense of beauty is
outvoiced by cravings for what is sensational, and who are ever
mistaking the gratification of their lower passions for the
satisfaction of their aesthetic conscience;--such men may be and often
are won to a passing admiration of works in which the moral law of Art
is plainly disregarded: but they seldom tie up with them; indeed their
judgment never stays long enough in one place to acquire any weight;
and no man of true judgment in such things ever thinks of referring to
their preference but as a thing to be avoided. With this spirit of
ignorant or lawless admiration the novelty of yesterday is eclipsed by
the novelty of to-day; other things being equal, the later instance of
disproportion always outbids the earlier. For so this spirit is ever
taking to things which are impotent to reward the attention they
catch. And thus men of such taste, or rather such want of taste,
naturally fall in with the genius of sensationalism; which, whatever
form it takes on, soon wears that form out, and has no way to sustain
itself in life but by continual transmigration. Wherever it fixes, it
has to keep straining higher and higher: under its rule, what was
exciting yesterday is dull and insipid to-day; while the excess of
to-day necessitates a further excess to-morrow; and the inordinate
craving which it fosters must still be met with stronger and stronger
emphasis, till at last exhaustion brings on disgust, or the poor thing
dies from blowing so hard as to split its cheeks.

It is for these reasons, no doubt, that no artist or poet who aims at
present popularity, or whose mind is possessed with the spirit of such
popularity, ever achieves lasting success. For the great majority of
men at any one time have always preferred, and probably always will
prefer, that which is disproportioned, and especially that which
violates the law of moral proportion. This, however, is not because
the multitude have no true sense of the Beautiful,