responsibility. Somewhat unrefined, in comparison to his lofty and

simple claim to be believed on a suggestion, is the commoner
painter's production of his credentials, his appeal to the sanctions

of ordinary experience, his self-defence against the suspicion of
making irresponsible mysteries in art. 'You can see for yourself,'

the lesser man seems to say to the world, 'thus things are, and I
render them in such manner that your intelligence may be satisfied.'

This is an appeal to average experience--at the best the cumulative
experience; and with the average, or with the sum, art cannot deal

without derogation. The Spaniard seems to say: 'Thus things are in
my pictorial sight. Trust me, I apprehend them so.' We are not

excluded from his counsels, but we are asked to attribute a certain
authority to him, master of the craft as he is, master of that art

of seeingpictorially which is the beginning and not far from the
end--not far short of the whole--of the art of painting. So little

indeed are we shut out from the mysteries of a great Impressionist's
impression that Velasquez requires us to be in some degree his

colleagues. Thus may each of us to whom he appeals take praise from
the praised: He leaves my educated eyes to do a little of the work.

He respects my responsibility no less--though he respects it less
explicitly--than I do his. What he allows me would not be granted

by a meaner master. If he does not hold himself bound to prove his
own truth, he returns thanks for my trust. It is as though he used

his countrymen's courteous hyperbole and called his house my own.
In a sense of the most noble hostship he does me the honours of his

picture.
Because Impressionism is so free, therefore is it doubly bound.

Because there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times
responsible. To undertake this art for the sake of its privileges

without confessing its obligations--or at least without confessing
them up to the point of honour--is to take a vulgar freedom: to see

immunities precisely where there are duties, and an advantage where
there is a bond. A very mob of men have taken Impressionism upon

themselves in this our later day. It is against all probabilities
that more than a few among these have within them the point of

honour. In their galleries we are beset with a dim distrust. And
to distrust is more humiliating than to be distrusted. How many of

these landscape-painters, deliberately" target="_blank" title="ad.故意地；慎重地">deliberately rash, are painting the truth
of their own impressions? An ethical question as to loyalty is

easily answered; truth and falsehood as to fact are, happily for the
intelligence of the common conscience, not hard to divide. But when

the DUBIUM concerns not fact but artistic truth, can the many be
sure that their sensitiveness, their candour, their scruple, their

delicate equipoise of perceptions, the vigilance of their
apprehension, are enough? Now Impressionists of late have told us

things as to their impressions--as to the effect of things upon the
temperament of this man and upon the mood of that--which should not

be asserted except on the artistic point of honour. The majority
can tell ordinary truth, but they should not trust themselves for

truth extraordinary. They can face the general judgment, but they
should hesitate to produce work that appeals to the last judgment,

which is the judgment within. There is too much reason to divine
that a certain number of those who aspire to derive from the

greatest of masters have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point
of view worth seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth

waylaying. And to be, de parti pris, an Impressionist without
these! O Velasquez! Nor is literature quite free from a like

reproach in her own things. An author, here and there, will make as
though he had a word worth hearing--nay, worth over-hearing--a word

that seeks to withdraw even while it is uttered; and yet what it
seems to dissemble is all too probably a platitude. But obviously,

literature is not--as is the craft and mystery of painting--so at
the mercy of a half-imposture, so guarded by unprovable honour. For

the art of painting is reserved that shadowy risk, that undefined
salvation. May the gods guard us from the further popularising of

Impressionism; for the point of honour is the simple secret of the
few.

COMPOSURE
Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure

do these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the
remoteness of the Latinity the thought would come too close and

shake too cruelly. In order to the sane endurance of the intimate
trouble of the soul an aloofness of language is needful. Johnson

feared death. Did his noble English control and postpone the
terror? Did it keep the fear at some courteous, deferent distance

from the centre of that human heart, in the very act of the leap and
lapse of mortality? Doubtless there is in language such an

educative power. Speech is a school. Every language is a
persuasion, an induced habit, an instrument which receives the note

indeed but gives the tone. Every language imposes a quality,
teaches a temper, proposes a way, bestows a tradition: this is the

tone--the voice--of the instrument. Every language, by counter-
change, replies to the writer's touch or breath his own intention,

articulate: this is his note. Much has always been said, many
things to the purpose have been thought, of the power and the

responsibility of the note. Of the legislation and influence of the
tone I have been led to think by comparing the tranquillity of

Johnson and the composure of Canning with the stimulated and close
emotion, the interior trouble, of those writers who have entered as

disciples in the school of the more Teutonic English.
For if every language be a school, more significantly and more

educatively is a part of a language a school to him who chooses that
part. Few languages offer the choice. The fact that a choice is

made implies the results and fruits of a decision. The French
author is without these. They are of all the heritages of the

English writer the most important. He receives a language of dual
derivation. He may submit himself to either University, whither he

will take his impulse and his character, where he will leave their
influence, and whence he will accept their education. The Frenchman

has certainly a style to develop within definite limits; but he does
not subject himself to suggestions tending mainly hitherwards or

thitherwards, to currents of various race within one literature.
Such a choice of subjection is the singular opportunity of the

Englishman. I do not mean to ignore the necessary mingling.
Happily that mingling has been done once for all for us all. Nay,

one of the most charming things that a master of English can achieve
is the repayment of the united teaching by linking their results so

exquisitely in his own practice, that words of the two schools are
made to meet each other with a surprise and delight that shall prove

them at once gayer strangers, and sweeter companions, than the world
knew they were. Nevertheless there remains the liberty of choice as

to which school of words shall have the place of honour in the great
and sensitive moments of an author's style: which school shall be

used for conspicuousness, and which for multitudinous service. And
the choice being open, the perturbation of the pulses and impulses

of so many hearts quickened in thought and feeling in this day
suggests to me a deliberate return to the recollectedness of the

more tranquil language. 'Doubtless there is a place of peace.'
A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not to

charge some of the moralists of the last century with an
indifference into which they educated their platitudes and into

which their platitudes educated them. Addison thus gave and took,
until he was almost incapable of coming within arm's-length of a

real or spiritualemotion. There is no knowing to what distance the
removal of the 'appropriate sentiment' from the central soul might

have attained but for the change and renewal in language, which came
when it was needed. Addison had assuredly removed eternity far from

the apprehension of the soul when his Cato hailed the 'pleasing
hope,' the 'fond desire;' and the touch of war was distant from him

who conceived his 'repulsed battalions' and his 'doubtful battle.'
What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness were restored

once more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men were too
eager to go into the workshop of language. There were unreasonable

raptures over the mere making of common words. 'A hand-shoe! a
finger-hat! a foreword! Beautiful!' they cried; and for the love of

German the youngest daughter of Chrysale herself might have
consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It seemed to be forgotten

that a language with all its constructionvisible is a language
little fitted for the more advancedmental processes; that its

images are material; and that, on the other hand, a certain
spiritualising and subtilising effect of alien derivations is a