"Rodin's art comes from the earth and returns to it, like those giant blocks—rocks or dolmens—which mark deserts, and in the heroic grandeur of which man recognises himself.
"The transmission of thought by art, like the transmission of life, is the work of passion and of love.
"Passion, whose obedient servant Rodin is, makes him discover the laws that serve to express it; she it is that gives him the sense of volumes and proportions, the choice of the expressive prominence.
"Thus the earth projects external apparent forms, images, and statues that fill us with a sense of its internal life.
"These terrestrial forms were the real guides of Rodin. They have set him free from scholastic traditions, in them he found his being and the creative instinct of men whom humanity celebrates.
"Trees and plants revealed to him their likeness to those fair women, with sleek limbs rising, like delicate columns, to the moving torso and swelling breast, above which the head hangs heavily in the company of a strong and supple neck, even as a fine fruit full of savour weighs down its branch.
"The massive brow overshadows the eyes, and the cheek brings the lip softly to the lover's entreaty.
"Forms seek and meet in voluptuous desires of violence and of resignation, rebellious and obedient to laws from which nothing escapes; everywhere conscious logic triumphs.
"The generalising spirit of Rodin has imposed solitude upon him. It has not been his lot to work upon the cathedral that is not, but his desire of humanity links him to the eternal forms of nature."
After such a passage, in which every word is significant and eloquent, and is a great artist's reflection, everything seems pale. I will not, however, confine myself to a mere dry mention of the essay by Vittorio Pica, the great Italian critic, who generously arranged for Rodin's participation in the Venetian Exhibition (Gallery of Modern Art, 1897), and I should have liked to quote Anatole France's fine article, and some assertions of Mr. MacColl's, who very logically recalls to our memory the sculptor Auguste Préault, who is too much forgotten, and who was, indeed, a sort of imperfect precursor of Rodin. I must at least transcribe a few lines from W. E. Henley, who was, from the very beginning, a clear-sighted admirer of Rodin, and who spoke of him with eloquence and passion:—