ts excellences, or demerits--artistic--and so degrades Art,
by supposing it a method of bringing about a literary climax.

It thus, in his hands, becomes merely a means of perpetrating
something further, and its mission is made a secondary one, even as a
means is second to an end.

The thoughts emphasised, noble or other, are inevitably attached to
the incident, and become more or less noble, according to the
eloquence or mental quality of the writer, who looks the while, with
disdain, upon what he holds as "mere execution"--a matter belonging,
he believes, to the training of the schools, and the reward of
assiduity. So that, as he goes on with his translation from canvas to
paper, the work becomes his own. He finds poetry where he would feel
it were he himself transcribing the event, invention in the intricacy
of the _mise en scene_, and noble philosophy in some detail of
philanthropy, courage, modesty, or virtue, suggested to him by the
occurrence.

All this might be brought before him, and his imagination be appealed
to, by a very poor picture--indeed, I might safely say that it
generally is.

Meanwhile, the _painter's_ poetry is quite lost to him--the amazing
invention that shall have put form and colour into such perfect
harmony, that exquisiteness is the result, he is without
understanding--the nobility of thought, that shall have given the
artist's dignity to the whole, says to him absolutely nothing.

So that his praises are published, for virtues we would blush to
possess--while the great qualities, that distinguish the one work from
the thousand, that make of the masterpiece the thing of beauty that it
is--have never been seen at all.

That this is so, we can make sure of, by looking back at old reviews
upon past exhibitions, and reading the flatteries lavished upon men
who have since been forgotten altogether--but, upon whose works, the
language has been exhausted, in rhapsodies--that left nothing for the
National Gallery.

* * * * *

A curious matter, in its effect upon the judgment of these gentlemen,
is the accepted vocabulary of poetic symbolism, that helps them, by
habit, in dealing with Nature: a mountain, to them, is synonymous with
height--a lake, with depth--the ocean, with vastness--the sun, with
glory.

So that a picture with a mountain, a lake, and an ocean--however poor
in paint--is inevitably "lofty," "vast," "infinite," and
"glorious"--on paper.