MEDON.
When I am serious and poetical, which is not often, I will not allow you to be perverse and ironical!
ALDA.
See, here is a passage which I have just found among Mrs. Austin's beautiful specimens of translation: "The critic of art ought to keep in view, not only the capabilities, but the proper objects of art. Not all that art can accomplish ought she to attempt. It is from this cause alone, and because we have lost sight of these principles, that art among us has become more extensive and difficult, and less effective and perfect."[ 23]
MEDON.
Very well,—and very true:—but who shall bring a rule and compass to measure the capabilities of art, and define its proper objects? May there not exist in the depths or heights of philosophy and art, truths yet to be revealed, as there are stars in heaven, whose light has not yet reached the naked eye? and why should not criticism have its telescope for truth, as well as its microscope for error? Art may be finite; but who shall fix its limits, and say, "thus far shalt thou go?" There are those who regard the distant as the unattainable, the unknown as the unexisting, the actual as the necessary;—are you one of such, O you of little faith! For my own part, I look forward to a new era in sculpture. I believe that the purely natural and the purely ideal are one, and susceptible of forms and modifications as yet untried. For Nature, the infinite, sits within her tabernacle, not made by human hands, and Genius and Love are the cherubim, to whom it is permitted to look into her unveiled eyes, and reflect their light; Art is the priestess of her divine mysteries, and Criticism, the door-keeper of her temple, should be Janus-headed, looking forward as well as backward. Reason estimates what has been done; Imagination alone divines what may be done. But I am losing myself in these reveries. To attempt something new,—perfectly new in style and conception—and spend, like Dannecker, eight years in working out that conception—and then perhaps eight years more waiting for a purchaser, and this in a country where one must eat and pay taxes—truly, it is not easy.
SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.