ut son seul refuge," is in the same boat. And for companion they have
Mr. Ruskin, who, being, like them, incapable of a genuine aesthetic
emotion, is likewise incapable of infecting a truly sensitive reader. So
far as I remember, Ruskin's quarrel with Poussin is that to his picture
of the _Flood_ he has given a prevailing air of sobriety and gloom,
whereas it is notorious that an abundance of rain causes all green
things to flourish and the rocks to shine like agate. But when Ingres
attributes the excellence of Poussin to the fact that he was a faithful
disciple of the ancients we feel that he is talking about the thing
that matters, and that he is talking sense. And we feel the same--what
instance could more prettily illustrate my theory?--when Delacroix
passionately asserts that Poussin was an arch-revolutionary. [S]

[Footnote S: For this little history of Poussin criticism I am indebted
to M. Paul Desjardins: _Poussin_ (Paris, Librairie Renouard).]

The divergence between the pretexts alleged by our ancestors for their
enthusiasm and the reasons given by us, moderns, is easily explained
by our intense self-consciousness. We are deeply interested in our own
states of mind: we are all psychologists now. From psychology springs
the modern interest in aesthetics; those who care for art and the
processes of their own minds finding themselves aestheticians
willy-nilly. Now, art-criticism and aesthetics are two things, though at
the present moment the former is profoundly influenced by the latter.
By works of art we are thrown into an extraordinary state of mind, and,
unlike our forefathers, we want to give some exacter account of that
state than that it is pleasant, and of the objects that provoke it some
more accurate and precise description than that they are lifelike,
or poetical, or beautiful even. We expect our critics to find some
plausible cause for so considerable an effect. We ask too much. It is
for the aesthetician to analyze a state of mind and account for it: the
critic has only to bring into sympathetic contact the object that will
provoke the emotion and the mind that can experience it. Therefore, all
that is required of him is that he should have sensibility, conviction,
and the art of making his conviction felt. Fine sensibility he must
have. He must be able to spot good works of art. No amount of eloquence
in the critic can give form significance. To create that is the artist's
business. It is for the cr