THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 187 



ever at hand or may be by study and research. 

 These the artist must select and combine into 

 ideal forms in such relation that his characters 

 shall really live on his pages. All art is illusive, 

 and therefore plastic to touch; the marble 

 statue but represents the human form, the bril- 

 liant painting but represents sunsets and rolling 

 seas ; now the illusion must be perfect and here- 

 in is the artist power. 



Granted that all the passionate love stories 

 have been told and retold, that every possible 

 combination of plot and counter-plot has been 

 appropriated, and that it is more difficult to 

 write the great novel now than formerly. Yet 

 is not human nature the same as ever, is not 

 life ever new in its varying unfoldings, and do 

 not the "old, old stories" become fresh and 

 original with every new generation? The artist 

 is a creator and it is his province to make all 

 things new. Life has very few dramatic situa- 

 tions, but the great forces of love and hate and 

 jealousy and crime and passion and sorrow and 

 heroism and honor have the field and operate 

 it as ever. No, the novelists' themes are not 

 poverty struck but the artist is if he cannot work 

 the combination. The palette of the painter 

 holds only the seven primary colors it held in 

 the days of Raphael. The seven notes of music 



