a piece of foliage in wood, the artist is
moved and inspired by supreme enjoyment of some aspect of the world about
him; an enjoyment in itself keener than that experienced by another man,
and intensified, prolonged, by the power--which comes to him we know not
how--of recording in visible or audible form that emotion of rare
vitality. Art, in some degree, is within the scope of every human being,
were he but the ploughman who utters a few would-be melodious notes, the
mere outcome of health and strength, in the field at sunrise; he sings,
or tries to, prompted by an unusual gusto in being, and the rude stave is
all his own. Another was he, who also at the plough, sang of the daisy,
of the field-mouse, or shaped the rhythmic tale of Tam o' Shanter. Not
only had life a zest for him incalculably stronger and subtler than that
which stirs the soul of Hodge, but he uttered it in word and music such
as go to the heart of mankind, and hold a magic power for ages.

For some years there has been a great deal of talk about Art in our
country. It began, I suspect, when the veritable artistic impulse of the
Victorian time had flagged, when the energy of a great time was all but
exhausted. Principles always become a matter of vehement discussion when
practice is at ebb. Not by taking thought does one become an artist, or
grow even an inch in that direction--which is not at all the same as
saying that he who _is_ an artist cannot profit by conscious effort.
Goethe (the example so often urged by imitators unlike him in every
feature of humanity) took thought enough about his Faust; but what of
those youthtime lyrics, not the least precious of his achievements, which
were scribbled as fast as pen could go, thwartwise on the paper, because
he could not stop to set it straight? Dare I pen, even for my own eyes,
the venerable truth that an artist is born and not made? It seems not
superfluous, in times which have heard disdainful criticism of Scott, on
the ground that he had no artistic conscience, that he scribbled without
a thought of style, that he never elaborated his scheme before
beginning--as Flaubert, of course you know, invariably did. Why, after
all, has one not heard that a certain William Shakespeare turned out his
so-called works of art with something like criminal carelessness? Is it
not a fact that a bungler named Cervantes was so little in earnest about
his Art that, having in one chapter described the stealing o