first moment; not only the tree
but the sky behind it; not only that tree or sky, but all the other
great features of his picture: by what intense power of instantaneous
selection and amalgamation cannot be explained, but by this it may be
proved and tested, that if we examine the tree of the unimaginative
painter, we shall find that on removing any part or parts of it, the
rest will indeed suffer, as being deprived of the proper development of
a tree, and as involving a blank space that wants occupation; but the
portions left are not made discordant or disagreeable. They are
absolutely and in themselves as valuable as they can be, every stem is a
perfect stem, and every twig a graceful twig, or at least as perfect and
as graceful as they were before the removal of the rest. But if we try
the same experiment on the imaginative painter's work, and break off the
merest stem or twig of it, it all goes to pieces like a Prince Rupert's
drop. There is not so much as a seed of it but it lies on the tree's
life, like the grain upon the tongue of Chaucer's sainted child. Take it
away, and the boughs will sing to us no longer. All is dead and cold.

Sec. 14. The monotony of unimaginative treatment.

This then is the first sign of the presence of real imagination as
opposed to composition. But here is another not less important.

Sec. 15. Imagination never repeats itself.

We have seen that as each part is selected and fitted by the
unimaginative painter, he renders it, in itself, as beautiful as he is
able. If it be ugly, it remains so, he is incapable of correcting it by
the addition of another ugliness, and therefore he chooses all his
features as fair as they may be (at least if his object be beauty.) But
a small proportion only of the ideas he has at his disposal will reach
his standard of absolute beauty. The others will be of no use to him,
and among those which he permits himself to use, there will be so marked
a family likeness, that he will be more and more cramped, as his picture
advances, for want of material, and tormented by multiplying
resemblances, unless disguised by some artifice of light and shade or
other forced difference, and with all the differences he can imagine,
his tree will yet show a sameness and sickening repetition in all its
parts, and all his trees will be like one another, except so far as one
leans east and another west, one is broadest at the top and another at
the bottom, while through