MEDON.
But Dannecker must have been poor in spirit as in pocket—simple, indeed, if he did not profit by the opportunities which Paris afforded of studying human nature, noting the passions and their physiognomy, and gaining other experiences most useful to an artist.
ALDA.
There I differ from you. Would you send a young artist—more particularly a young sculptor—to study the human nature of London or Paris?—to seek the ideal among shop-girls and opera-dancers? Or the sublime and beautiful among the frivolous and degraded of one sex, the money-making or the brutalized of the other? Is it from the man who has steeped his youthful prime in vulgar dissipation, by way of "seeing life," as it is called, who has courted patronage at the convivial board, that you shall require that union of lofty enthusiasm and patient industry, which are necessary, first to conceive the grand and the poetical, then consume long years in shaping out his creation in the everlasting marble?
MEDON.
But how is the sculptor himself to live during those long years? It must needs be a hard struggle. I have heard young artists say, that they have been forced on a dissipated life merely as a means of "getting on in the world," as the phrase is.
ALDA.
So have I. It is so base a plea, that when I hear it, I generally regard it as the excuse for dispositions already perverted. The men who talk thus are doomed: they will either creep through life in mediocrity and dependence to their grave; or, at the best, if they have parts, as well as cunning and assurance, they may make themselves the fashion, and make their fortune; they may be clever portrait-painters and bust-makers, but when they attempt to soar into the historical and ideal department of their art, they move the laughter of gods and men; to them the higher, holier fountains of inspiration are thenceforth sealed.
MEDON.
But think of the temptations of society!