Bringing powers of persuasion, and polish of language, to prove—nothing.
Torn with much teaching—having naught to impart.
Impressive—important—shallow.
Defiant—distressed—desperate.
Crying out, and cutting himself—while the gods hear not.
Gentle priest of the Philistine withal, again he ambles pleasantly from all point, and through many volumes, escaping scientific assertion—"babbles of green fields."
So Art has become foolishly confounded with education—that all should be equally qualified.
Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and breeding, are in no way arguments for artistic result, it is also no reproach to the most finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land that he be absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music—that in his heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's "C minor Symphony."
Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the admission a proof of inferiority.
Art happens—no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce.