INDIVIDUALISM IN ART. 
281 
In reference to Criticism, which I regard as one of the 
Arts, it is individualism which plays the most glorious part— 
the man of originality who can break away from the 
established canons of bygone times, and assert himself by the 
views he holds. It was Emerson—a great prophet of indi¬ 
vidualism—who, when all other critics went astray, saw the 
grandeur of “ Sartor Besartus,” the great prose poem of the 
mighty individualist Carlyle. The man who is affected most 
by Nature is he who is most affected by Art, and as Emerson 
expresses it:—“ The individual in whom simple tastes and 
susceptibility to all the great human influences overpower the 
accidents of a local and special culture, is the best critic of 
Art.” * There are critics who scarcely answer to this descrip¬ 
tion, but then, they are neither “ susceptible to the great 
human influences ” or to any influences whatsoever. 
It would be pleasant to linger over some of the great 
names which have been such prominent examples of indi¬ 
vidualism in the present century—a century which is 
remarkable for the progress of individualism among a certain 
class of the community, and which has seen the rise of those 
ideas which in England are termed Democratic. (Of the 
Socialist movement, about which we hear so much just at 
present, it is hardly necessary to speak, for it is but a passing 
phase of the discontented, who, like the poor, are ever with 
us. That Socialism will not cure their maladies it requires 
but a year or two to prove.) The poet-painters alone furnish 
us with splendid examples of individualism. The wonderful 
genius of Blake, with his strange visions, his lurid paintings 
and weird poems, made an assertion for individuality which 
could not be withstood. Those by whom he was surrounded 
did their best to mould him into the orthodox shape, but they 
were peculiarly unsuccessful. He continued in his own way, 
inventing his own methods, producing his compound works 
of Art in painting and poetry. Dante Gabriel Kossetti, 
another great individualist who worked in the same arts as 
did Blake, if not so strange in his methods and life, was as 
great a genius. Some of his works in poetry, while they do 
not display the strangeness of some of Blake’s, have qualities 
which Blake’s poetical work does not possess. Their grace, 
their beautiful examples of alliteration, their perfect form, their 
effect upon the senses, are allurements which cannot be with¬ 
stood when once the spirit of their author is thoroughly 
assimilated. In painting, his work is the greatest ever done by 
an Englishman. As a colourist he is the rival of the greatest 
* 
Emerson. Essay on “ Art.” 
