saw it. Or again it happens
that an artist imposes his feeling upon nature. Thus Burne-Jones said,
"I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that
never was, never will be--in a light better than any that ever shone--in
a land no one can define or remember, only desire." Whether true
to nature or true to the creative inner vision, the work of both men
embodies truth. Sometimes an artist effaces entirely his own
individuality, as in Greek sculpture and Gothic architecture, and the
mere name of the creator does not signify. George Frederick Watts
is reported to have said, "If I were asked to choose whether I would
like to do something good, as the world judges popular art, and
receive personally great credit for it, or, as an alternative, to produce
something which should rank with the very best, taking a place with
the art of Pheidias or Titian, with the highest poetry and the most
elevating music, and remain unknown as the perpetrator of the work,
I should choose the latter." Sidney Lanier wrote, "It is of little
consequence whether _I_ fail; the _I_ in the matter is small
business. . . . Let my name perish,--the poetry is good poetry and the
music is good music, and beauty dieth not, and the heart that needs it
will find it." Or on the contrary, a work may bear dominantly, even
aggressively, the impress of the distinctive individuality of its
creator, as with Carlyle's prose and Browning's poetry. Whistler
seems at times to delight less in the beauty of his subject than in the
_exercise_ of his own power of refinement. Where another man's art
is personal, as with Velasquez or Frans Hals, Whistler's art becomes
egotistical. He does not say, "Lo, how mysterious is this dusk
river-side, how tenderly serene this mother, how wistful and mighty is this
prophet-seer!" He exclaims rather, "Note how subtly I, Whistler,
have seen. Rejoice with me in my powers of vision and of
execution." There is no single method of seeing, no one formula of
expression and handling. The truth both of nature and of art is great
and infinitely various. For art, like nature, is organic, allowing for
endless modifications, while remaining true to the inner principle of
its being.

The judgment of truth is a delicate business. To test the truth of a
work of art by reference to the truth of nature is to presuppose that
our power of perception is equal to the artist's power, and that our
knowledge of the object represented is equal t