But though science is not to make the artist, there is no
reason in nature that the artist reject it. Still, science is
properly the birthright of the critic; 'tis his all in all. It shows
him poets, painters, sculptors, his fellow men, often his inferiors
in their want of it, his superiors in the ability to do what he
cannot do; it teaches him to love them as angels bringing him food
which _he_ cannot attain, and to venerate their works as a gift from
the Creator.
But to return to the critical errors relating to 'High Art.' While
the constituents of high art were unknown, whilst its abstract
principles were unsought, and whilst it was only recognized in the
concrete, the critics, certainly guilty of the most unpardonable
blindness, blundered up to the masses of 'High Art,' left by
antiquity, saying, "there let us fix our observatory," and here came
out perspective glass, and callipers and compasses; and here they
made squares and triangles, and circles, and ellipses, for, said
they, "this is 'High Art,' and this hath certain proportions;" then
in the logic of their hearts, they continued, "all these proportions
we know by admeasurement, whatsoever hath these is 'High Art,'
whatsoever hath not, is 'Low Art.'" This was as certain as the fact
that the sun is a globe of glowing charcoal, because forsooth
they both yield light and heat.
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