Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/187

Rh Ce qui n'est pas:—for the drama has not declined. The facts and the philosophy of the case seem to be these. The great opponent to Progress is Conservatism. In other words—the great adversary of Invention is Imitation:—the propositions are in spirit identical. Just as an art is imitative, it is stationary. The most imitative arts are the most prone to repose—and the converse. Upon the utilitarian—upon the business arts, where necessity impels, Invention, Necessity's well-understood offspring, is ever in attendance. And the less we see of the mother the less we behold of the child. No one complains of the decline of the art of Engineering. Here the Reason, which never retrogrades, or reposes, is called into play. But let us glance at Sculpture. We are not worse, here, than the ancients, let pedantry say what it may (the Venus of Canova is worth at any time two of that of Cleomenes), but it is equally certain that we have made, in general, no advances; and Sculpture, properly considered, is perhaps the most imitative of all arts which have a right to the title of Art at all. Looking next at Painting, we find that we have to boast of progress only in the ratio of the inferior imitativeness of Painting when compared with Sculpture. As far indeed as we have any means of judging, our improvement has been exceedingly little, and did we know anything of ancient Art in this department, we might be astonished at discovering that we had advanced even far less than we suppose. As regards Architecture, whatever progress we have made, has been precisely in those particulars which have no reference to imitation:—that is to say we have improved the utilitarian and not the ornamental provinces of the art. Where Rea-