fered us a simpler
way of harmonizing the two statements, not by juggling with Aristotle's
word "life," but with the word "imitation." "Art," says Taine, "is
nature seen through a temperament."

Now it may be that to Aristotle imitation, _Mimeseis_, did mean "seeing
through a temperament." But certainly, had he used that phrase, he would
have laid the stress on "seeing," rather than on "temperament."
Aristotle would judge a man to have poetic temperament if his mind were
like a telescope, sharpening the essential outlines of things. Modern
poets, on the other hand, are inclined to grant that a person has poetic
temperament only if his mind resembles a jeweled window, transforming
all that is seen through it, if by any chance something _is_ seen
through it.

If the modern poet sees the world colored red or green or violet by his
personality, it is well for the interests of truth, we must admit, that
he make it clear to us that his nature is the transforming medium, but
how comes it that he fixes his attention so exclusively upon the colors
of things, for which his own nature is responsible, and ignores the
forms of things, which are not affected by him? How comes it that the
colored lights thrown on nature by the stained windows of his soul are
so important to him that he feels justified in painting for us,
notnature, but stained-glass windows?

In part this is, as has often been said, a result of the individualizing
trend of modern art. The broad general outlines of things have been
"done" by earlier artists, and there is no chance for later artists to
vary them, but the play of light and shade offers infinite possibilities
of variation. If one poet shows us the world highly colored by his
personality, it is inevitable that his followers should have their
attention caught by the different coloring which their own natures throw
upon it. The more acute their sense of observation, the more they will
be interested in the phenomenon. "Of course you are self-conscious,"
Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Robert Browning. "How could you be a poet
otherwise?" [Footnote: February 27, 1845.]

This modern individualizing trend appears equally in all the arts, of
course. Yet the poet's self-consciousness appears in his work more
plainly than does that of painters and sculptors and musicians. One
wonders if this may not be a consequence of the peculiar nature of his
inspiration. While all art is doubtless essentially alike in mode of
c