and play, and they discourse easily on the
performances of Mr. James and Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Shaw; but I
have no right to talk about the meaning to me of Jones's picture or
Smith's sonata, for my business is with words, and therefore I cannot
have any concern with painting or with music. To be sure, literature
uses as its vehicle the means of communication of daily life, namely,
words. But the _art_ in literature, the interpretation of life which it
gives us, as distinct from mere entertainment, is no more generally
appreciated than the art in painting. A man's technical
accomplishment may be best understood and valued by his
fellow-workmen in the same craft; and often the estimate set by artists on
their own work is referred to the qualities of its technical execution.
As a classic instance, Raphael sent some of his drawings to Albert
Duerer to "show him his hand." So a painter paints for the painters.
But the artist gives back a new fullness and meaning to life and
addresses all who live. That man is fortunate who does not allow his
progress toward appreciation to be impeded by this confusion of
technique with art.

The emphasis which workers in any art place upon their powers of
execution is for themselves a false valuation of technique, and it
tends to obscure the layman's vision of essentials. Technique is not,
as it would seem, the whole of art, but only a necessary part. A work
of art in its creation involves two elements,--the idea and the
execution. The idea is the emotional content of the work; the
execution is the practical expressing of the idea by means of the
medium and the vehicle. The idea of Millet's "Sower" is the emotion
attending his conception of the laborer rendered in visual terms; the
execution of the picture is exhibited in the composition, the color,
the drawing, and the actual brush-work. So, too, the artist himself is
constituted by two qualifications, which must exist together: first,
the power of the subject over the artist; and second, the artist's
power over his subject. The first of these without the second results
simply in emotion which does not come to expression as art. The
second without the first produces sham art; the semblance of art may
be fashioned by technical skill, but the life which inspires art is
wanting. The artist, then, may be regarded in a dual aspect. He is
first a temperament and a mind, capable of feeling intensely and
able to integrate his emotions into unified