338 IS MUSIC THE TYPE 



embodying vehicle that the shape produced shall be the only 

 right and perfect manifestation of a spiritual content to the 

 senses, so that, while we contemplate the work, we cannot 

 conceive their separation then in this view there is nothing 

 either new or perilous. It was precisely this which consti- 

 tuted the consummate excellence of Greek sculpture. The 

 sculptor found so apt a shape for the expression of ideal 

 personality, that his marble became an apocalypse of god- 

 hood. It was precisely this, again, which made the poetry of 

 Virgil artistically perfect. In the words of the most eloquent 

 of Virgil's panegyrists : * What is meant by the vague praise 

 bestowed on Virgil's unequalled style is practically this, thai 

 he has been, perhaps, more successful than any other poet ii 

 fusing together the expressed and the suggested emotion; 

 that he has discovered the hidden music which can give to 

 every shade of feeling its distinction, its permanence, and ii 

 charm ; that his thoughts seem to come to us on wings 

 melodies prepared for them from the foundation of th( 

 world.' l 



But it does not seem that Mr. Pater means this only. W( 

 have the right to conclude from passages which may 

 emphasised, that he has in view the more questionable notioi 

 that the fine arts in their most consummate moments all 

 aspire toward vagueness of intellectual intention that 

 well-defined subject in poetry and painting and sculpture 

 a hindrance to artistic quality that the delight of the eye 01 

 of the ear is of more moment than the thought of the brain. 

 Art, he says, is ' always striving to be independent of th< 

 mere intelligence, to become a matter of pure perceptioi 

 to get red of its responsibilities to its subject or material.' 

 'Lyrical poetry,' he says, 'just because in it you are least 

 able to detach the matter from the form without a deduction 

 of something from that matter itself, is, at least artistically, 

 the highest and most complete form of poetry. And the very 

 perfection of such poetry often seems to depend in part on a 

 certain suppression or vagueness of mere subject, so that the 



1 'Essays, Classical,' by F. W. H. Myers, p. 115. 



