Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/187

Rh on the other hand, the instigation of consciousness supervenes."

The poet, through intuition and executive gift realizing the normal beauty of everything, Recognition of it is intuitive. imaginatively sets it forth. He detects it even within the abnormal gloom and deformity imposed by chance and condition, helps it to struggle to the light, restores it—I may say—to consonance with the beauty of the universal soul. This being partly comprehensible through empiricism and logical analysis, men of talent and of little insight produce tolerable work by means of trained æsthetic judgment. But no art, no poetry, is a distinctive addition to the world's stores unless its first conception be intuitive; then only it is a fresh expression of the universal beauty through one of its select interpreters. Like all things else it comes to us from Jove.

Even Véron is compelled to assume the element which he denies. When he begins to The schools. illustrate and to criticise, he instantly talks of "the perfection of parts." The despotism of established art systems springs from this perfection,—the academic sway of the antique and of Raphaelitism. Much of this discussion belongs to metaphysical æsthetics, and some persons may think these notions antiquated. We know little of these things absolutely. We know not the esoteric truth in matters of art or nature,—otherwise the schools at once would cease their controversies. As it happens,