&c., (and the critics have done a great deal)--then is the work
oracularly pronounced one of 'High Art;' and the obsequious artist is
pleased to consider it is.
But if, per contra, as in the former case, the works are not to be
literally reconciled, though wrought in the self-same spirit; then
this unfortunate creature of genius is degraded into a lower rank of
art; and the artist, if he have faith in the learned, despairs; or,
if he have none, he _swears_. But listen, an artist speaks: "If I
have genius to produce a work in the true spirit of high art, and yet
am so ignorant of its principles, that I scarce know whereon the
success of the work depends, and scarcely whether I have succeeded or
no; with this ignorance and this power, what needs your knowledge or
your reasoning, seeing that nature is all-sufficient, and produces a
painter as she produces a plant?" To the artist (the last of his
race), who spoke thus, it is answered, that science is not meant for
him, if he like it not, seeing he can do without it, and seeing,
moreover, that with it _alone_ he can never do. Science here does not
make; it unmakes, wonderingly to find the making of what God has
made--of what God has made through the poet, leading him blindly by a
path which he has not known; this path science follows slowly and in
wonder.
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