each people that there is a proper moment for the
throwing of flowers as well as a proper method.

Life remains eternally unchanged; it is art which, by presenting it to us
under various forms, enables us to realize its many-sided mysteries, and
to catch the quality of its most fiery-coloured moments. The
originality, I mean, which we ask from the artist, is originality of
treatment, not of subject. It is only the unimaginative who ever
invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he
annexes, and he annexes everything.

If I ventured on a bit of advice, which I feel most reluctant to do, it
would be to the effect that while one should always study the method of a
great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an
artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely
universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the
second is perfection, which all should aim at.

A critic who posed as an authority on field sports assured me that no one
ever went out hunting when roses were in full bloom. Personally, that is
exactly the season I would select for the chase, but then I know more
about flowers than I do about foxes, and like them much better.

The nineteenth century may be a prosaic age, but we fear that, if we are
to judge by the general run of novels, it is not an age of prose.

Perhaps in this century we are too altruistic to be really artistic.

I am led to hope that the University will some day have a theatre of its
own, and that proficiency in scene-painting will be regarded as a
necessary qualification for the Slade Professorship. On the stage,
literature returns to life and archaeology becomes art. A fine theatre
is a temple where all the muses may meet, a second Parnassus.

It would be sad indeed if the many volumes of poems that are every year
published in London found no readers but the authors themselves and the
authors' relations; and the real philanthropist should recognize it as
part of his duties to buy every new book of verse that appears.

A fifteen-line sonnet is as bad a monstrosity as a sonnet in dialogue.

Antiquarian books, as a rule, are extremely dull reading. They give us
facts without form, science without style, and learning without life.

The Roman patron, in fact, kept the Roman poet alive, and we fancy that
many of our modern bards rather regret the old system. Better, surely,
the humiliation of the _sportul