e lifetime of generations and
generations of men; great art is to its true lovers like Cleopatra to
Antony--"age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety."
Indeed, when it is the greatest art of all, the art produced by the
marvellous artist, the most gifted race, and the longest centuries, we
find ourselves in presence of something which, like Nature itself,
contains more beauty, suggests more thought, works more miracles than
anyone of us has faculties to appreciate fully. So that, in some of
Titian's pictures and Michael Angelo's frescoes, the great Greek
sculptures, certain cantos of Dante and plays of Shakespeare, fugues
of Bach, scenes of Mozart and quartets of Beethoven, we can each of
us, looking our closest, feeling our uttermost, see and feel perhaps
but a trifling portion of what there is to be seen and felt, leaving
other sides, other perfections, to be appreciated by our neighbours.
Till it comes to pass that we find different persons very differently
delighted by the same masterpiece, and accounting most discrepantly
for their delight in it.

Now such pleasure as this requires not merely a vast amount of
activity on our part, since all pleasure, even the lowest, is the
expression of an activity; it requires a vast amount of attention, of
intelligence, of what, in races or in individuals, means special
training.

VIII.

There is a sad confusion in men's minds on the very essential subject
of pleasure. We tend, most of us, to oppose the idea of pleasure to
the idea of work, effort, strenuousness, patience; and, therefore,
recognise as pleasures only those which cost none of these things, or
as little as possible; pleasures which, instead of being produced
through our will and act, impose themselves upon us from outside. In
all art--for art stands halfway between the sensual and emotional
experiences and the experiences of the mere reasoning intellect--in
all art there is necessarily an element which thus imposes itself upon
us from without, an element which takes and catches us: colour,
strangeness of outline, sentimental or terrible quality, rhythm
exciting the muscles, or clang which tickles the ear. But the art
which thus takes and catches our attention the most easily, asking
nothing in return, or next to nothing, is also the poorest art: the
oleograph, the pretty woman in the fashion plate, the caricature, the
representation of some domestic or harrowing scene, children being put
t