lf, an instinctive power of discerning good work
from bad, of recognising on the instant the sound and true method and
style, and of feeling a fresh and constant delight in such work. His
education comes not by didactic, but by vital methods.

The art quality in a book is as difficult to analyse as the feeling
for it; not because it is intangible or indefinite, but because it is
so subtly diffused. It is difficult to analyse because it is the
breath of life in the book, and life always evades us, no matter how
keen and exhaustive our search may be. Most of us are so entirely out
of touch with the spirit of art in this busy new world that we are not
quite convinced of its reality. We know that it is decorative, and
that a certain pleasure flows from it; but we are sceptical of its
significance in the life of the race, of its deep necessity in the
development of that life, and of its supreme educational value. And
our scepticism, it must be frankly said, like most scepticism, grows
out of our ignorance. True art has nothing in common with the popular
conception of its nature and uses. Instead of being decorative, it is
organic; when men arrive at a certain stage of ripeness and power they
express themselves through its forms as naturally as the tree puts
forth its flowers. Nothing which lies within the range of human
achievement is more real or inevitable. This expression is neither
mechanical nor artificial; it is made under certain inflexible laws,
but they are the laws of the human spirit, not the rules of a craft;
they are rooted in that deeper psychology which deals with man as an
organic whole and not as a bundle of separate faculties.

It was once pointed out to Tennyson that he had scrupulously
conformed, in a certain poem, to a number of rules of versification
and to certain principles in the use of different sound values. "Yes,"
answered the poet in substance, "I carefully observed all those rules
and was entirely unconscious of them!" There was no contradiction
between the Laureate's practice of his craft and the technical rules
which govern it. The poet's instinct kept him in harmony with those
essential and vital principles of language of which the formal rules
are simply didactic statements.

Art, it need hardly be said, is never artifice; intelligence and
calculation enter into the work of the artist, but in the last
analysis it is the free and noble expression of his own personality.
It expresses what i