f art; and I have obeyed you in coming.
But the main thing I have to tell you is, that art must not be talked
about. The fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it is
ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever speaks, or ever has
spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no
exception, for he wrote of all that he could not himself do, and was
utterly silent respecting all that he himself did.

The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it.
All words become idle to him--all theories. Does a bird need to theorize
about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is
essentially done that way--without hesitation, without difficulty, without
boasting; and in the doers of the best, there is an inner and involuntary
power which approximates literally to the instinct of an animal--nay, I
am certain that in the most perfect human artists, reason does _not_
supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as much more divine than
that of the lower animals; as the human body is more beautiful than
theirs; that a great singer sings not with less instinct than the
nightingale, but with more--only more various, applicable, and governable;
that a great architect does not build with less instinct than the beaver
or the bee, but with more--with an innate cunning of proportion that
embraces all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all
construction.

* * * * *

And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts and labors of
life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of their
lessons--that the more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the
work of the people who _feel themselves wrong_; who are striving for the
fulfillment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not
yet attained, which they feel even further and further from attaining, the
more they strive for it. And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the work of
people who know also that they are right. The very sense of inevitable
error from their purpose marks the perfectness of that purpose, and the
continued sense of failure arises from the continued opening of the eyes
more clearly to all the sacredest laws of truth.

This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious one:
namely--that, whenever the arts and labors of life are fulfilled in this
spirit of striving against misrule