1914] on A Criticism on Critics 151 



dancing in his place." Pictor appears not to find it at all difficult to 

 write English : I should i-^ay he found it too easy if anything, for he 

 is apt to burst into French for no ascertainable reason, and the 

 difficulty comes in when we try to understand whcit he says. Being 

 a sedulous reader of his work, T permit myself from time to time to 

 pick out the plums which so plentifully bestrew his puddings, and 

 illustrate his style and his teaching. Here are some. 



He appreciates Grunewald. 



" The Xativity, if such it can be called, utterly indefensible if we 

 analyse it in cold blood, so wonderfully, nevertheless, expressing an 

 ethereal if short-lived joy, carried to the verge of frenzy, that we are 

 swept away with our master into regions where reason is in abeyance." 



That appears to be the case. There is no verb but many 

 adjectives. 



Or this. I cannot say with any certitude what it is about. 



" Even the passion of the human voice, of the human gesture 

 emphasized and broadened, even these supreme modes of expression, 

 supported and reinforced though they should be, by the divine 

 colour, the divine pulsation of music, fail to convey certain phases, of 

 superhuman joy, of desire for the infinite, certain modes of what 

 might be called Praxitelean or Corregiesque suavity." 



Xow, I am willing to believe that Pictor meant something when 

 he wrote this, and even that he knew what he meant : all I am quite 

 certain about is that he does not tell us what it was, and we may 

 indeed ask, " Shepherd, what art thou pursuing ? " If we imagine 

 Mr. Ruskin suddenly stricken with some brain-numbing disease in 

 the middle of one of his splendid sentences, and his hand carried on 

 by its own impetus, this is the sort of thing we may imagine he 

 would have written. Pictor seems to lack the clarity of the fine 

 critic : he is too suave : his suavity is more than Corregiesque ; it is 

 glutinous, and we stick in it helplessly like files in jam. We do not 

 doubt his knowledge, but his message is as inarticulate as the 

 sonorous note of the honey-laden bee, and we want our Maeterlinck 

 to interpret. Now the interpreter should not need an interpreter. 

 He is there to make things plain to us, to help us to understand, 

 not to daub us with syrup, as we daub tree-trunks to catch moths. 

 His aim should be not to stupefy, but to stimulate, to kindle the eye 

 of others to see what he has seen, and to do that he must tell us 

 what it was. 



Pictor begins one of his articles of the " Masterpieces of Paint- 

 ing " thus : 



" A favourite game, and one of a superior order, is that of putting 

 together the hundred masterpieces of painting, or the hundred best 

 pictures of the world. For those who plunge into it with a light 

 heart, and feel no misgivings, for those who play the game in a 

 measure for themselves, but partly also for the gallery, it is one of 

 exquisite fascination and defiorht." 



