in
language, or by linear representation, of actual vision involuntarily
received at the moment, though cast on a mental retina blanched
by the past course of faithful life. But it is also true that
these visions, where most distinctly received, are always--I speak
deliberately--_always_, the _sign of some mental limitation or
derangement_; and that the persons who most clearly recognise their
value, exaggeratedly estimate it, choosing what they find to be useful,
and calling that "inspired," and disregarding what they perceive to be
useless, though presented to the visionary by an equal authority.

47. Thus it is probable that no work of art has been more widely
didactic than Albert Duerer's engraving, known as the "Knight and
Death."[6] But that is only one of a series of works representing
similarly vivid dreams, of which some are uninteresting, except for the
manner of their representation, as the "St. Hubert," and others are
unintelligible; some, frightful, and wholly unprofitable; so that we
find the visionary faculty in that great painter, when accurately
examined, to be a morbid influence, abasing his skill more frequently
than encouraging it, and sacrificing the greater part of his energies
upon vain subjects, two only being produced, in the course of a long
life, which are of high didactic value, and both of these capable only
of giving sad courage.[7] Whatever the value of these two, it bears more
the aspect of a treasure obtained at great cost of suffering, than of a
directly granted gift from heaven.

[Footnote 6: Standard Series, No. 9.]

[Footnote 7: The meaning of the "Knight and Death," even in this
respect, has lately been questioned on good grounds.]

48. On the contrary, not only the highest, but the most consistent
results have been attained in art by men in whom the faculty of vision,
however strong, was subordinate to that of deliberative design, and
tranquillised by a measured, continual, not feverish, but affectionate,
observance of the quite unvisionary facts of the surrounding world.

And so far as we can trace the connection of their powers with the moral
character of their lives, we shall find that the best art is the work of
good, but of not distinctively religious men, who, at least, are
conscious of no inspiration, and often so unconscious of their
superiority to others, that one of the greatest of them, Reynolds,
deceived by his modesty, has asserted that "all things are possib