and mean art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in a
crowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committed
himself to conclusions which, he never intended. There is an
instinctive consciousness in his own mind of the difference between
high and low art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, and
every effort which he makes to do so involves him in unexpected
fallacy and absurdity. It is _not_ true that Poetry does not concern
herself with minute details. It is _not_ true that high art seeks only
the Invariable. It is _not_ true that imitative art is an easy thing.
It is _not_ true that the faithful rendering of nature is an
employment in which "the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best."
All these successive assertions are utterly false and untenable, while
the plain truth, a truth lying at the very door, has all the while
escaped him,--that which was incidentally stated in the preceding
chapter,--namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies,
not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or
choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which
the effort of the painter is addressed. We cannot say that a painter
is great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately; because he
generalizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because he
disdains it. He is great if, by any of these means, he has laid open
noble truths, or aroused noble emotions. It does not matter whether he
paint the petal of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that Love
and Admiration attend him as he labours, and wait for ever upon his
work. It does not matter whether he toil for months upon a few inches
of his canvas, or cover a palace front with colour in a day, so only
that it be with a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart with
patience, or urged his hand to haste. And it does not matter whether
he seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles, among the heroic or
the simple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all things
with a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. There
are, indeed, certain methods of representation which are usually
adopted by the most active minds, and certain characters of subject
usually delighted in by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible,
quite easy, to adopt the manner of painting without sharing the
activity of mind, and to imitate the choice of subject without
possessing t