of artistic limitation. If Japanese art is right in confining itself to what can be "broidered upon the fan"—and the gist of the whole argument is in favour of this assumption—then the sculpture which appeals, indeed, first of all to our perception of beauty, to the delight of the eye, to the wonder and the worship of the instinct or the sense, but which in every possible instance appeals also to far other intuitions and far other sympathies than these, is as absolutely wrong, as demonstrably inferior, as any picture or as any carving which may be so degenerate and so debased as to concern itself with a story or a subject. Assuredly Phidias thought of other things than "arrangements"[34] [34]REFLECTION:
Because the Bard is blind, shall the Painter cease to see?
in marble—as certainly as Æschylus thought of other things than "arrangements" in metre. Nor, I am sorely afraid, can the adored Velasquez be promoted to a seat "at the foot of Fusi-yama." Japanese art is not merely the incomparable achievement of certain harmonies in colour; it is the negation, the immolation, the annihilation of everything else. By the code which accepts as the highest of models and of masterpieces the cups and fans and screens with which "the poor world" REFLECTION:
"Cups and fans and screens," and Hamilton vases, and figurines of Tanagra, and other "waterflies."
has been as grievously "pestered" of late years as ever it was in Shakespeare's time "with such waterflies"—"diminutives of nature"—as excited the scorn of his moralizing cynic, Velasquez is as unquestionably condemned as is Raphael or Titian. It is true that this miraculous power of hand (?)[35] [35]REFLECTION:
Quite hopeless!
makes beautiful for us the deformity of dwarfs, and dignifies the degradation of princes; but that is not the question. It is true, again, that Mr. Whistler's own merest "arrangements" in colour are lovely and effective;[36] [36]REFLECTION:
Whereby it would seem that, for the Bard, the lovely is not necessarily "effective."
but his portraits, to speak of these alone, are liable to the damning and intolerable imputation of possessing not merely other qualities than these, but qualities which actually appeal—I blush to remember and I shudder to record it—which actually appeal to the intelligence[37] [37]REFLECTION:
The "lovely," therefore, confessedly does not appeal to the intelligence, emotions, mind, and heart of the Bard even when aided by the "effective."
