Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/25

Rh his own nature to the semblance of his visions that individuality of tone and form which is the ultimate value of human art.

I have avoided much discussion of schools and fashions. Every race has its own genius, as we say; every period has its own vogues in the higher arts, as well as in those which fashion wholly dominates. There have been "schools" in all ages and centres, but these, it must be acknowledged, figure most laboriously at intervals when the creative faculty seems inactive. The young and ardent,—so long as art has her knight-errantry, so long as there is a brotherhood of youth and hope,—will set out joyously upon their new crusades. Sometimes these are effective, as in the Romantic movement of 1830; but more often, as when observing the neo-romanticists and neo-impressionists, the French and Belgian "symbolists," and just now the "intuitivists," we are taught that, no matter how we reconstruct the altars or pile cassia and frankincense upon them, there will be no mystic illumination unless a flame descends from above. New styles are welcome, but it is a grievous error to believe a new style the one thing needful, or that art can forego a good one, old or new. Our inquiry, then, is concerned with that which never ages, the primal nature of the minstrel's art. Even sturdy thinkers fall into the