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And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds
That overlook the rivers, or that rise

In the dim forest, crowded with old oaks
Answer. A race that long has passed away

Built them: a disciplined and populous race

Heaped with long toil the earth, while yet the Greek
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms

Of symmetry and rearing on its rock

The glittering Parthenon."

"All day this desert murmured wtth their toils. Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed In a forgotten language, and old tunes,

From instruments of unremembered form,

Gave the soft winds a voice."

What

Thus, even when the devoted lover of nature addresses himself to the wilderness, his imagery is drawn from the life and heart of man. Rather than contemplate nature in uninhabited wildness the imagination will people it with congenial beings of its own. lover of painting has not felt how uninteresting and desolate, how unmeaning is the finest landscape piece without the presence of a human figure? The errant knights in the scenes of Salvator Rosa are often without any obvious business there; but their very presence, while enhancing the picturesque effect, gives a life and human interest to the whole. Extensive knowledge of nature and the principles of science must furnish the artist's mind; and yet if he would have these seeds germinate into works of interest, he must water them from the well springs of his own heart. One ought not to rest satisfied with observing, or with merely

comprehending-he needs to digest the materials of his knowledge until they become assimilated to his own mind; and then, if acquainted with his own strength and weakness, and willing to work in the direction of his strength, he may not attain the highest degree of interest, but his productions can never be dull: for they will be infused with that spirit which man can never regard with apathy-the real feelings of a healthy mind.

SECTION II. POESY.

However critics may differ as to the definition of poetry, all competent to offer an opinion on the subject will agree that occasionally, in prose, as well as in verse, we meet with a passage to which we feel that the term poetry could be applied with great propriety by a figure of speech. In the other arts, also, we find, now and then, what we feel prompted from within to call the poetry of painting, of statuary, of music, or of whatever art it may be. The fact that books have been written under such figurative titles, and favorably received, proves that the popular mind conceives of something in poetry besides versification of some spiritual excellence, most properly belonging to compositions in verse, but which is also found elsewhere. When Byron said that few poems of his day were half poetry, he evidently meant by poetry something distinguishable from rhythm and from rhyme. True,

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such may be only a figurative use of the word; but the public accept that figurative use as corresponding to some actual conception which they entertain of poetry in its best degrees. And when they speak of the poetry of any other art, it is evident from the use of the same word that they believe themselves perceiving the same or similar qualities. To such conceptions, then, without regard to whence they spring, I think, with Coleridge, that it would be expedient to appropriate the word poesy thereby avoiding the ambiguity which now exists in the use of the word poetry; though popular choice, which always prefers a figurative application of a common word, has not adopted the suggestion.

Upon reading Byron's lines on Modern Greece, in the Giaour, or Burke's recollections of the Queen of France, or beholding Landseer's picture called the Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner, or the Dying Gladiator, the feelings we experience are found to be so similar, in the main, that we instinctively seek to embrace them under the same names. Upon proceeding to inquire into the aesthetic feature presented by such examples in common-the one cause of their common effect, that which would be popularly called their poetry—we find it to consist invariably in a beautiful expression of some tender or highly refined emotion.

We often confess a high degree of beauty where we are not prompted to declare the existence of poetry; nothing except what deeply moves the heart, without

a sensible blemish in the manner, receives the honor of that name. There is more poesy in Cole's Voyage of Life than in a whole gallery of equally well executed pictures, which are mere landscapes. Art is a language which may be beautiful only in itself, or also convey beautiful ideas. Poesy may exist in the latter where there is but a moderate degree of the former; but not in the former without the latter. Though many other works equal the Dying Gladiator in beauty of externals, few can be compared with it in the poetry of sculpture. In the Voyage of Life, though the whole is full of poesy, the most affecting of the series is No. 3, which is at the same time the most rugged and scanty in details. Some of the rough outlines of Michael Angelo embody a grandeur of poesy which is not to be found in the most highly finished works of inferior minds.

I do not know that the term is ever applied to any variety of the risible, except the humorous, and to that only in cases involving the most delicate feeling. Some of the playful productions of Charles Lamb might well be called the poesy of humor.

In all subjects of Art, invariably the most poetic are those which most beautifully express the loves, the sorrows, the patience, the piety, the sympathetic tenderness-in short, the more interesting affections of the human heart.

CHAPTER IX.

STYLE

It occurs as appropriate to the foregoing topics to add a few words on the nature of style and morale in Art.

Radically, style is the impress of the individual mind; but, from the fact that men in society are greatly influenced by each other, and adopt, without designing it, some portion of each other's thoughts and feelings, an aggregate of manner comes to belong to any given age or country. Hence, style is not only the mark of the man, but also of his country, and of the stage of its progress in improvement or decline.

The basis of classification, here, must be the relation between the rational and emotional in the human mind. For according as one or the other predominates so will the style be warm or cold, redundant or severe. Subdivisions might be made, under the name of the kind of intellectual power, or the kind of feeling embodied; as, on the one hand, the materially correct and the suggestive; on the other, the voluptuous and the holy.

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