Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/245

Rh cannot be given in words because for a slight difference in shade or in curve there is no expression in language. All that Beyle got out of art he could put into words. He made no attempt to compete with the painter like the leading realists of the past half-century. Other arts interested him only as far as they formed, without straining, illustrations for expression in language of the feelings they appeal to. It was with him in music as it was in painting, and often his musical criticism is as charming to the unattached dilettante as it is annoying to the technical critic who judges it in its own forms. Beyle names the sensation with precision always. His vocabulary has fine shades without weakening fluency. In choosing single words to name single sensations is his greatest power, and it is a power which naturally belongs to a man whose eye is inward, a power which the word-painters of the environment lack. Everything is expression for Beyle, and within the limits of the verbally-expressible he steadfastly remains. His truth is truth to the forms of thought as they exist in the reason—the clear eighteenth-century reason—disembodied truth. "It is necessary to have bones and blood in the human machine to make it walk. But we give slight attention to these necessary conditions of life, to fly to its great end, its final result—to think and to feel.

"That is the history of drawing, of colour, of light and shade, of all the various parts of painting, compared to expression.

"Expression is the whole of art."

This reminds one again of Merimée's statement, that Beyle could see in the Moses nothing but the expression of ferocity; and an equally conclusive assertion (for it is in him no confession) is made by Beyle in reference to music, which he says is excellent if it gives him elevated thoughts on the subjects that are occupying him, and if it makes him think of the music itself it is mediocre.