ith his brilliant contemporaries,
was ignorant of all the skill of the handicraft: I do not speak of the
tricks of which his frankness can never be suspected. He especially
studied forms and aspects in their absolute simplicity. The least
artifice was an embarrassment which would have spoiled him, because it
would have altered his clear view of things. A great bull in a vast
plain, an immense sky, and no horizon, so to speak,--what better
opportunity is there for a student to learn once for all a host of very
difficult things, and to know them, as they say, by rule and compass.
The action is very simple; he did not fail with it; the movement is
true, and the head admirably full of life. The beast has his age, his
type, his character, his disposition, his length, his height, his
joints, his bones, his muscles, his hair rough or smooth, in flocks or
curls, his hide loose or stretched,--all is perfection. The head, the
eye, the neck and shoulders, the chest, from the point of view of a
naive and powerful observation, form a very rare specimen, perhaps,
really without an equal. I do not say that the pigment is beautiful, nor
that the colour is well chosen; pigment and colour are here subordinated
too visibly to preoccupations of form for us to exact much on that head,
when the designer has given all, or nearly all, under another. Moreover,
the work in that field accomplished with such force results in rendering
nature exactly as she is, in her reliefs, her nuances, and her power,
and almost in her mysteries. It is not possible to aim at a more
circumscribed but more formal result and attain it with more success.
People say _Paul Potter's Bull_, and that is not enough, I assure you:
they might say _The Bull_, and, in my opinion, that would be the
greatest eulogy that could be bestowed upon this work, so mediocre in
its weak parts and yet so decisive.

_Les Maitres d'Autrefois_ (Paris, 1876)

CORESUS AND CALLIRHOE

(_FRAGONARD_)

EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT

Poets were lacking in the last century. I do not say rhymers, versifiers
and mechanical arrangers of words; I say poets. Poetry, taking the
expression in the truth and height of its meaning; poetry, which is an
elevation or an enchantment of the imagination, the contribution of an
ideal of reverie or gaiety to human thought; poetry, which carries away
and suspends above the world the soul of a period and the spirit of a
people, was unknown to the France