Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/261

Rh are only to be thrown into ecstasies by being fantasized. —Nothing is so much dreaded by artists, poets and authors as that eye which sees their minor deceptions, and subsequently perceives how frequently they have halted at the landmark whence the path branches off either to innocent delight in their ego or lo straining for effect; that eye, which detects when they were about to sell little for much or tried to exalt and adorn without being themselves exalted; which, despite all the fallacies of their art, sees the idea as it first floated before their imagination, perhaps in the shape of a fascinating, celestial form ; perhaps even as a theft, perpetrated against all the world; as a commonplace idea which they had to spread, abridge, tinge, swathe, season, in order to make something of it, whereas really the idea ought to make something of them, —oh, this eye, which detects in your work all your restlessness, your prying eye and your covetousness, your imitation and rivalry (which is but a jealous imitation); which knows both your blush and your skill in concealing this blush and in interpreting it before yourselves ! —He is in distress, and forth with the “