eyes; he amply relieves them, of such a
function. They come only to inquire how significant the poet's
expressions are for humanity at large or for whatever public he
addresses. They come to register the social or representative value of
the poet's soul. His inspiration may have been an odd cerebral rumbling,
a perfectly irrecoverable and wasted intuition; the exquisite quality it
doubtless had to his own sense is now not to the purpose. A work of art
is a public possession; it is addressed to the world. By taking on a
material embodiment, a spirit solicits attention and claims some kinship
with the prevalent gods. Has it, critics should ask, the affinities
needed for such intercourse? Is it humane, is it rational, is it
representative? To its inherent incommunicable charms it must add a
kind of courtesy. If it wants other approval than its own, it cannot
afford to regard no other aspiration.

This scope, this representative faculty or wide appeal, is necessary to
good taste. All authority is representative; force and inner consistency
are gifts on which I may well congratulate another, but they give him no
right to speak for me. Either aesthetic experience would have remained a
chaos--which it is not altogether--or it must have tended to conciliate
certain general human demands and ultimately all those interests which
its operation in any way affects. The more conspicuous and permanent a
work of art is, the more is such an adjustment needed. A poet or
philosopher may be erratic and assure us that he is inspired; if we
cannot well gainsay it, we are at least not obliged to read his works.
An architect or a sculptor, however, or a public performer of any sort,
that thrusts before us a spectacle justified only in his inner
consciousness, makes himself a nuisance. A social standard of taste must
assert itself here, or else no efficacious and cumulative art can exist
at all. Good taste in such matters cannot abstract from tradition,
utility, and the temper of the world. It must make itself an interpreter
of humanity and think esoteric dreams less beautiful than what the
public eye might conceivably admire.

[Sidenote: Art may grow classic by idealising the familiar.]

There are various affinities by which art may acquire a representative
or classic quality. It may do so by giving form to objects which
everybody knows, by rendering experiences that are universal and
primary. The human figure, elementary passions, common t