s as Albrecht Duerer had his moment of
"Melencolia," and what can't you detect in Da Vinci or Michael Angelo
if you are overcurious?

"Beauty," like that other deadly phrase, "beautiful drawing," is ever
the shibboleth of the mediocre, of imitators, in a word, of the
academy. These men of narrow vision pin their faith to Ingres (which
is laudable enough), but groan if the "mighty line" of Degas is
mentioned; yet Degas, a pupil of Ingres, has continued his master's
tradition in the only way tradition should be continued, _i. e._, by
further development and by adding an individual note. Therefore, when
I register my overwhelming admiration for Velasquez, Vermeer, and
Rembrandt I do not bind myself to close my eyes to originality,
personal charm, or character in the newer men. There is no such thing
as schools of art; there are only artists.

XIII

THE CULT OF THE NUANCE LAFCADIO HEARN

Lafcadio Hearn, shy, complex, sensuous, has in Elizabeth Bisland a
sympathetic biographer. In her two volumes, the major portion is
devoted to the letters of this exotic and extraordinary writer; he was
both, without being either a great man or a great artist. The dominant
impression made by his personality, so much and often so unhappily
discussed, is itself impressionistic. Curiously enough, as he viewed
the world, so has he been judged by the world. His life, fragmentary,
episodic, restless, doubtless the result of physical and psychical
limitations, is admirably reflected in his writings with their
staccato phrasing, overcoloured style, their flight from anything
approaching reality, their uneasy apprehension of sex, and their
flittings among the folk-lore of a half dozen extinct civilisations.
His defective eyesight was largely the cause of his attitude toward
life and art--for with our eyes we create our world--and his intense
sufferings and consequent pessimism must be set down to the inevitable
tragedy of a soul that greatly aspired, but a soul that had the
interior vision though not the instrument with which to interpret it.
Lafcadio Hearn was a poetic temperament, a stylist, but an incomplete
artist.

His biographer, Miss Bisland, speaks of him as a "stylist."
Unfortunately this is not far from the truth; he was a "stylist,"
though not always with an individual style. The real Hearn had
superimposed upon him the debris of many writers, usually Frenchmen.
He began his