Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/61

Rh off Charleston, S. C. Wind N. E. Velocity, 54. Barometer, 29.6. The disturbance will reach New York on Wednesday, and proceed eastward to the Banks and Bay St. Lawrence. Danger-signals ordered for all North Atlantic ports.

We cannot too clearly understand the difference between artistic vision and scientific analysis. The distinction chiefly one of methods. The poet in his language and the painter with his brush are insensibly and rightly affected by the latter. The draughtsman, it is plain, must depict nature and life as they seem to the eye, and he needs only a flat surface. The camera has proved this, demonstrating the fidelity in outline and shadow of drawings antedating its use. The infant, the blind man suddenly given sight, see things in the flat as we do, but without our acquired sense of facts indicated by their perspective. We have learned, and experience has trained our senses to instant perception, that things have the third dimension, that of thickness, and are not equally near or far. The Japanese, with an instinct beyond that of some of his Mongolian neighbors, avoids an extreme flat treatment by confining himself largely to the essential lines of objects, allowing one's imagination to supply the rest. He carries suggestiveness, the poet's and the artist's effective ally, to the utmost. Still, as Mr. Wores says, he has no scruples about facts, "for he does not pretend to draw things as they are, or should be, but as they seem." Now, it is probable that the