chop down the ogre, garrote the griffon, hoist the portcullis with a petard, and pierce to the shrine, deaf to the blandishments of the sirens. Then when he has won his bride, the queen, he must lead her beauty forth for the world’s wonderment, to dazzle and inspire.
Recipients of the boons of Art have their duty co-ordinate with the artist’s. Art gives a bounty or a pittance, as we have the will or the capacity to receive, — copper to the blind, silver to the fond, red gold to the passionate, dense light of diamond to the faithful lover. We gain from a noble picture according to our serenity, our pureness, our docility, our elevation of mind. Dolts, fools, and triflers do not get much from Art, unless Art may perchance seize the moment to illuminate them through and through, and pierce their pachyderms with thrills of indignant self-contempt and awakening love. For divine Art has power to confound conceit into humility, and shame the unwashed into purifying their hearts. Clown Cymon saw Iphigenia, and presently the clown was a gentleman. Even if we have a neat love for the beautiful, and call ourselves by the pretty, modest title of amateurs, we have a large choice of degrees of benefit. We may see the first picture of our cycle, and receive a butterfly pleasure, a sniff of half-sensual emotion; or we may transmute our butterfly into a bird of paradise, may educate our slight pleasure into a permanent joy, and sweetly discipline our passion of the finer senses into a love and a worship.
