ARTIST AND CRITIC 97 



other beauties he is blind, deaf, and callous. If you hear a man 

 who is clearly interested in pictures, plays, or music openly 

 proclaim that Raffaelle could not paint, that Shakespeare was a 

 poor dramatist, or that Beethoven was grossly ignorant of music, 

 you may guess that man to be an artist. His thesis is all the 

 more amusing because usually he is right so far as he goes 

 that is to say, the qualities he admires are in all probability 

 good qualities enough, and are more or less absent from the 

 work which he rejects. He is only wrong in attributing over- 

 whelming value to minor merits. 



The question we are discussing is of far more practical 

 importance to artists than to laymen. The many will have their 

 way whatever artists may think of the value of their judgment. 

 The public holds the purse-strings, and so commands a hearing ; 

 we commonly hear artists lament this. The painter, for instance, 

 speaks contemptuously of pot-boilers, and grieves over the sad 

 necessity which binds him to give, not that which he knows to 

 be best, but that which the ignorant public will buy. To these 

 men we would say there is an ignorant public for whom you 

 may at your choice write or paint, and so make large sums of 

 money ; but there is also a cultivated public whom your very 

 best work cannot satisfy. This cultivated public is now so large 

 that no really good work ever fails to produce a livelihood for 

 the artist. If, then, you produce pot-boilers knowing you can 

 do better, this is not the fault of the public, but your own fault. 

 This, however, is a mere side issue to the general question 

 raised, whether the artist should work mainly with a view to 

 satisfy other artists, or to satisfy that portion of the public 

 which is interested in his art and has a cultivated taste. 



We have no doubt which solution to prefer. The great 

 artist must, indeed, satisfy the priesthood of his art, but he must 

 work for mankind, not merely for his fellow-craftsmen. He 

 must not be content with a neat garden-plot, he must reign 

 over a great world. Yet we know how difficult it is for him to 

 believe in the existence of an artist's world outside his little 

 ring of friends. The painter hears the world speak of his 

 pictures, dismissing the work of months with some curt and 

 pert remark. The great actor sees the world neglect him for 

 some pretty girl some noisy fool ; musicians see the world 



VOL. I. H 



