1914] on A Criticism on Critics 155 



most subtle critics of our time has pointed out, a new and wonderful 

 work, more marvellous, it may be, than that on which he builds. 

 Thus from parts but meanly conceived by the writer, the actor may 

 make a fresh work of art, finer than that of which the materials 

 have been given him ; the pianist may weave dreams about a sonata, 

 that beautify and ennoble it, and even from the supremest work of 

 art a new marvel may spring to birth, when the eye of the true seer 

 looks on it, and he tells us what it holds for him. So, for instance, 

 was born " the presence that thus so strangely rose beside the waters, 

 the head on which all the ends of the world have come." With art 

 as his material the critic-artist fashioned a new creation, even as out 

 of the materials of life and landscape the poet and the artist have 

 seen and have shown the romance and the magic eternally and every- 

 where spread, which waited for his revelation of it. Even as it was 

 given to Turner to see and to show a sunset in such manner that 

 those who look on his picture know new wonders in the evening 

 lights or in the clear shining after rain^ — borrowing, so to speak, his 

 eyes, so they who study the work of the prince of English critics, in 

 whose prose burn the jewels of Job, in which is set the seal of 

 Solomon, look with new eyes, his, on the masterpiece of Leonardo. 

 On the fire that inspired such creation the critic feeds, and the 

 wonders of art are but the ashes from which his Phoenix springs. 

 Patient and keen as tempered steel will he be, eager to find gold 

 and to find fire, which he fashions yet again into forms of new 

 beauty, brooding like the holy men of Benares by the banks of the 

 sacred Ganges, on the sunny river of art that flows ever by and is 

 eternally renewed ... I confidently expect his coming. Perhaps he 

 has come. 



[E. F. B.] 



