256 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



mighty and enduring forces of which it is but 

 the momentary expression. In this he is like 

 Constable, Crome, Cox, De Wint, and the great 

 majority of landscape painters. In what way 

 does he come nearer than they to Turner, so 

 that it can be said, as I have said with reference 

 to Cox and De Wint, that he comes part way be- 

 tween Turner and them ? It is in his power of 

 imaginative design. We might say that whereas 

 the others paint nature, Cotman paints Nature. 

 The capital letter mades all the difference. It 

 suggests a unity, that what we see around us 

 may be to us '*a mighty maze" but that it is 

 **not without a plan". Mr. Laurence Binyon 

 has well said of him : '* He is not at all con- 

 cerned to imitate the actuality of nature. As 

 we have seen, he will endow things with un- 

 known shapes and colours, if by so doing he 

 can subdue them the better to his mood. He 

 is for ever seeking a rhythm, a controlling idea 

 behind the waste and abundance of nature; 

 and what he creates, when his effort is victorious, 

 coheres into reality with a force and persuasion 

 of its own." 



We are perpetually being brought face to 

 face with the problem of the relation of art to 



