artistic development than some suppose. It can produce facility not only in outward expression, giving the singer, orator, or actor a flexible voice or a graceful body, or the musician, painter, or sculptor dexterity in the use of fingers, brush, or chisel. It can produce facility in the processes of inward preparation for expression, enabling the mind to draw at will from the subconscious resources that which is the subject-matter of artistic invention and inspiration.

It is true, of course, that no amount of practice can enable some to become artists, and that in exceptional cases or upon extraordinary occasions some may produce genuine works of art who have practised little; but, as a rule, practice is indispensable if one wish to attain the characteristics supposed to be possessed habitually by the great artists. We find this fact illustrated almost universally. Of course, there are a few exceptional cases like that of Mozart, mentioned on page 47. For him, notwithstanding the instruction that he received, practice does not seem to have been absolutely indispensable. And it was not so, say some, because he was a genius. But let us think a moment. Might he not have been a genius, and also have been obliged to cultivate his powers? In fact, in later life, did he not cultivate them? Again, was not Beethoven a genius? Yet when he was three years old he knew nothing, so far as we are aware, of music; and very little when he was eight. But after he had practised many hours a day for ten or fifteen years, he could do as well as Mozart could in early manhood; and not only so, but a few years later he could do better than Mozart ever could. Not a few to-day consider Beethoven the greater genius of the two.

What is true of music is true of every art.

There was

Demosthenes. As most of us have heard, when he first ventured before an audience, his stammering articulation, interrupted respiration, ungraceful gestures, and ill-arranged periods brought upon him general ridicule. What was it necessary for him to do in order to speak artistically? To think, every time that he came before the public, of his articulation, respiration, gestures, and periods? Had he pursued this course, he never could have waxed eloquent, because he never could have entered into his theme with unconscious abandon. What he did, was to withdraw altogether from the public until, by a course of persistent practice, he had trained himself for his work. Nor must it be supposed that the results in his case, or in that of any other man practising similarly, were confined, or could be confined, to such as can be manifested merely in external manner or style. Many find the strongest indication of what they term the inspired genius of Henry Ward Beecher in his marvellous illustrative ability, in his imaginative facility in arguing from analogy. He himself, in his "Yale Lectures," said that not only did he practise elocution "incessantly for three years," but that, while in later life it was as easy for him to use illustrations as to breathe, he did not have this power to any such extent in his early manhood, but cultivated it.

The problem of expressional art is how to train the conscious agencies of expression so that they shall respond without interference to the promptings of subconscious agencies. The musician has always practically solved this problem when he is pouring his whole soul into his music, unconscious of anything but the emotional effect that he desires to produce upon the souls of his hearers. The sculptor and the painter have always

solved it when they are projecting into line or colour, unconscious of being hampered by any thought of technique, that image which keen observation of the outer world has impressed upon their conceptions. The poet has always solved it when he has lost himself in his theme, unconscious of anything except that to which Milton refers in "Paradise Lost," ix., when he says that it

-dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse.

But, now, this method, of which we remain unconscious, through which thoughts and emotions pass from the subconscious mind through the conscious mind, and out of it again into the details of form, is the result of what most men mean when they use the term artistic inspiraticn. Yet notice that it is often, too, even in cases of the most indisputable genius, a result, in part at least, of skill acquired by practice.

The truth seems to be that, although there is a wide separation between the conscious and the subconscious powers, the mind as a whole is one, and almost any method of cultivating one part of it involves cultivating other parts. What forms of mental action can seem more widely separated than those of memory and of imagination? Yet there is truth in what E. S. Dallas says in "The Gay Science," that "it is not so much to a trained invention as to a trained memory that the poet who secks for variety must chiefly trust; and it will be found that all great poets, all great artists, all great inventors, are men of great memory-their unconscious memory being even greater than that of which they are. conscious. And thus far, at least, we can see a deeper

wisdom in the doctrine of the Greeks that the Muses were all daughters of Mnemosyne."

Let it not be thought, then, that education, experience, and learning unfit one for those pursuits which are usually supposed to necessitate genius. Milton wrote little poetry until he had finished his argumentative and political work. Goethe and Schiller both profited much from the discriminating scientific criticism to which, as appears in their correspondence, they were accustomed to submit their productions; at all events, they achieved their greatest successes subsequent to it. And with criticism playing all about his horizon, like lightnings from every quarter of the heavens, who can calculate how much of the splendour of Shakespeare is attributable to this by-play among the circle of dramatists by whom he was surrounded? With new forms rising still like other Venuses above the miasmas of the old Campagna, who can estimate how much the excellence of the Italian artists has been owing to the opportunities afforded in historic Rome for critical study?

The results of art have not disproved that universal principle according to which the degree of labour, mediate or immediate, generally measures the degree of worth. A bountiful exuberance of imagination usually accompanies abounding information. The analogies of the poet are usually most natural to the mind that has made the most scrupulous study of nature. Truth, comprehensiveness, and greatness, manifested in artistic products, are usually crystallisations of the accuracy, breadth, and largeness of the formative thought occasioning them.

CHAPTER V.

ARTISTIC FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE.

Review of the Thought in Preceding Chapters-Reproduction of Beauty Necessitating Attention to both Form and Significance-Meaning of the Term Form" in Art-Of the Term · Significance "--The Necessity for Giving Due Consideration to both-Regard for Form and Disregard of Significance in Painting-In Sculpture, Architecture, Music, and Poetry-How Far the Artist must Consciously Regard Claims of Significance-Regard for Significance and Disregard of Form in Poetry and Painting-In Architecture-In Music-Regard for Form and for Significance Need not be Antagonistic—Reason for Applying to the Higher Arts the Term Representative."

THE opening chapter of this book undertook to show

that art which is such in the finest and most distinctive sense has to deal with the sights and sounds of nature, with human thoughts and emotions, and with products. external to the artist. In Chapters II., III., and IV., certain limitations were placed upon each of these conditions. This art was said to be confined to such sights and sounds as are beautiful, to such thoughts and emotions as are largely due to the subconscious action of the mind, when influenced by emotion and stimulating imagination, and to such products external to the artist as embody the other two conditions instinctively, or as a result of skill, acquired by practice. In this chapter, an endeavour will be made to limit the province of these higher arts still further, and in such a way as to indicate a single principle applicable to all of them in all of these