Art Principles

pplication to poetry-To scul

mena connected with ?sthetic perception which are so regular and undeviating in their application as to have all the force of law. The first and most important o

may become aware of a certain beauty which he did not before appreciate. We notice also that when the beauty is comparatively high, it is more rapidly recognized than when it is comparatively low. Continuing the examination we arrive at what is evidently an unalterable law, namely, that the higher the ?sthetic value in a particular sphere of art, the more rapidly is the beauty therein recognized;

made as strong as possible, this must not be done at the expense of the emotional elements. We unconsciously measure the emotional with the intellectual effect, and if the former does not at least equal the latter, we reject the work as inferior art. A painted Madonna wanting in beauty of features is instantly and properly condemned even if her figure be enshrined within surroundings of saintly glories which in themselves make a powerful appeal to the mind. In fact the highest reaches in art were probably originally suggested by the necessity of balancing

of actual experience. The supreme emotional effects he produces seem perfectly appropriate therefore to the intellectual appeals. In the next lower form of art, where the representation does not go beyond life experience, the emotional appeal is of still greater relative importance because the appeal to the mind is rarely striking. The emotional effect here may indeed be so overpowering that the purely mental considerations are lost sight of, and we observe that in a

onsideration of the kinds of beauty, since it puts in the same class, representations of the divinity and the superman-joins Homer and Phidias with Praxiteles and Raphael. In dealing with the divine the artist need place no limit to his imagination in the presentation of his picture, whereas with the superman he must circumscribe his fancy within the limits of what may appear to the senses to be possibly natural. It is true that the poet may use the supernatural as distinguished from the divine, to enable him to extend his imaginative scope, and so give us beautiful pictures which would be otherwise unpresentable. Shakespeare makes us imagine Puck encircling the earth in forty minutes, and Shelley shows us iron-winged beings climbing the wind, but we immediately recognize these pictures as figures of fancy,

peal to the mind of any kind-but this form is so weak and exceptional that it need hardly be considered in the general proposition. Indeed we might reasonab

nd place respectively. A work of architecture may seem more beautiful in one place than in another; and a work of music more or less beautifu

all other functions, must be exercised in order that normal healthy conditions may be retained; but a large section of the people, by force of circumstances or want of will, have neglected this exercise, and so through disuse or misuse these functions are often in a condition which is little more than rudimentary. Hence such persons are practically debarr

ore rapidly, and consequently more forcibly, than would be possible if direct means were employed; and the beauty of the metaphor appears the greater according as it more completely fills in the picture which the poet is desirous of presenting. When other artifices than metaphor or simile are applied, the result only appears very beautiful when the condensation of the language used is e

in the time of Hesiod her renown "spread over the earth." What was it then that established the eternal fame of her beauty? Simply a few words of Homer indicating the startling effect of her appearance before the elders of Troy. We are allowed to infer that these dry, shrunken-formed sages, shrill-voiced with age, became passionately disturbed by a mere glance at her figure, and nervously agreed with each other that little blame attached to the Greeks and Troja

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am is apparently perfectly still, the atmosphere calm, and there is nothing in the surroundings to disturb the natural tranquillity, these conditions inducing a feeling of softness and rest in the observer. If it had been necessary to say all this, Shakespeare

not suggest any cause for its ?sthetic effect. It is true that nothing could be finer, but the nobility of the expression is derived from its brevity-from the extreme rapidity with which so vast and potent an event a

tively insignificant, being merely the expression of emotion on the part of an individual consequent upon disappointment, yet the transcendent beauty of the poem has held enthralled fourscore generations of men and women, and still the world gasps with astonishment at its perfection. Obviously the beauty of the ode rests mainly on qualities of form which cannot be reproduced in translation, but the substance may be, and it will be observed that the description of the acti

hold in our minds a carved group of several figures. The images of the Zeus and Athena of Phidias, though we know little of them except from literary records and inferior copies, are far more brilliantly mirrored upon our minds than the Parthenon reliefs. The importance of simplic

e for the eye to take in at a single glance the whole of a large fresco painting, and this explains why a fresco celebrated for its beauty is often disappointing to one who sees it for the first time, and endeavours to impress it on his mind as a single picture by rapidly piecing together the different parts.26 Polygnotus could well paint forty scenes from Homer as mural decoration in one hall, for they could only be examined and understood as separate pictures; and the ceil

tainment by means of a single incident. But within his limit the short-story writer may provide his beauty more easily than the novelist, because a picture can be more readily freed from complications when away from surroundings, than when it forms one of a series of pictures which must have connecting links. A good short story consists of a single incident or experience in a life history. It is clearly cut, without introduction, and void of a conclusion which is not directly part of the incident. The subject is of general interest; the language simple, of common use, and free from mannerisms; while there are no accessories beyond those essential for the comprehension of the scheme. These conditions, which imply the most extreme si

he signs or sign combinations which produce it; and hence the Law of Recognition rests