The craving for variety and novelty is a powerful impulse of the human mind, and makes itself especially apparent in the appreciation of works of A. The greatest works cease to please after a time, and temporary fashion may occasionally lord it over the perennial in taste.
In looking at the fine arts individually, we may divide them into two classes, by draw ing a distinction of some importance as regards the question of an artistic standard. The one class contains the effusive arts, or those which consist of mere outbursts of the inward spontaneity, regulated by the effect of the display on the sense of the beholder or list ener. Music is a good example. The spontaneous the human voice, and those prompted by the various emotions, are corrected and tuned by the ear into melody and harmony, and after this process has been often repeated, pleasing airs and composi tions are the result. It is the same with the dance, considered as a fine art. In like manner, dramatic gesture and display. and the graces of elocution and fine address, are the natural promptings rendered pleasing by being changed and modified for that express end. The first movements are mere random, but the delicate sensibility of the beholder causes some to be suppressed, and others brought out, until a.really pleasing combination is attained. Contrasted with the purely effusive. are the so-called imitative arts, or those that involve the representation of some of the appearances of the outer world. Such are painting, sculpture, and poetry. In these, the artist, while still aiming at pleasing effects, is trammeled with a new condition—namely, a certain amount of fidelity to his original. In the others, there are no originals. The musician imitates nothing, and is bound by the sole condition of gratifying the ear; but a painter chooses his subject from nature, and although he must contrive to yield the pleasures of color, outline, and grouping, he must do so with a certain respect to the object copied. The poet, in depicting the life of men, comes under the rule of fidelity to this extent, that an obvious misrepresentation is apt to give a painful shock, and mar the pleasure that would otherwise be derived from the poetry itself. It is not so much that truth is a part of the artistic pleasure, as that falsehood is a stumbling-block in the way; for even the imitative arts are only so in part. There is no imitation in the meter and cadence of a song, and yet these often constitute the main charm. So a certain license of fantastic effusion is allowed to poets,
subject to no rules but the ,giving of pleasure. The creation of imaginary worlds, when avowed, is not objected to; and the criterion of fidelity to the actual is accordingly laid aside for the time. The various arts of decoration and design are for the most part effusive, although occasionally imitative. Architecture is not in any way imitative; the coincidence between the Gothic roof and the intermingling foliage of a double row of trees is a more aceidr.nt.
These observations are necessary in order to qualify the current maxim that nature is the artist's standard, and truth his chief end; conditions that, in 'their strictness, apply only to science. It is the scientific nian that should never deviate from nature, and should care for truth above every other cousioleration. The artist's standard is feeling, his end is refined pleasure; lie may go to nature, but it is to select what chimes in with his feel ings of artistic effect, and pass by the rest. He is not bound to adhere to nature even inner choicest displays; his own taste being the touchstone, he alters the originals at his will. The student of science, on the other hand, must embrace every fact wills open arms. If a nauseous fungus or loathsome rat meet the eye of a naturalist, lie is bound to record it as faithfully and minutely as lie would dilate on the violet or the nightin gale. When a painter adopts the human figure as a basis for setting forth harmonies of color, beauties, and form, and picturesqueness of grouping, he ought not to jar our sense of consistency by a wide departure from the usual proportions of humanity. Still, we do not look for anatomical exactness; we know that the studies of an artist do not imply the knowledge of a professor of anatomy; but we expect the main features of the reality to be adhered to. In like manner, a poet is not great because he exhibits human nature with literal fidelity; to do that makes the reputation of a historian or mental phi losopher. Th© poet works by his meters, his cadences, his touching similes, his graceful narrative, and his exaltation of reality into the region of ideality; and ;if in all this lie avoids serious mistakes and gross exaggerations, lie succeeds in his real vocation.