IS MUSIC THE TYPE OR MEASURE OF 

 ALL ART? 



ME. MATTHEW ARNOLD'S definition of Poetry as ' at bottom 

 a Criticism of Life,' insisted somewhat too strenuously on 

 the purely intellectual and moral aspects of art. There is a 

 widely different way of regarding the same subject-matter, 

 which finds acceptance with many able thinkers of the present 

 time. This ignores the criticism of life altogether, and dwells 

 with emphasis upon sensuous presentation, emotional sugges- 

 tion, and technical perfection, as the central and essential 

 qualities of art. In order to steer a safe course between the 

 Scylla of excessive intellectuality and the Charybdis of 

 excessive sensuousness, it will be well to examine what a 

 delicate and philosophical critic has published on this second 

 theory of the arts. With this object in view, I choose a 

 paper by Mr. Walter Pater on ' The School of Giorgione.' l 

 The opinion that art has a sphere independent of intellectual 

 or ethical intention is here advocated with lucidity, singular 

 charm of style, and characteristic reserve. 



Mr. Pater opens the discussion by very justly condemning 

 the tendency of popular critics * to regard all products of art 

 as various forms of poetry.' ' For this criticism,' he says, 

 ' poetry, music, and painting are but translations into different 

 languages of one and the same fixed quantity of imaginative 

 thought, supplemented by certain technical qualities of colour 

 in painting, of sound in music, of rhythmical words in poetry.' 

 ' In this way,' he adds, * the sensuous element in art, and 

 with it almost everything in art that is essentially artistic, is 



1 Fortnightly Review, October 1887. 



