If the difficulty has been greater (although with his
evidently wide sympathies and keen insight into humanity we doubt if it
has), the success is the more honourable; for a success it certainly is.
The partially biographical plan on which he has constructed his work has
no doubt aided in the accomplishment of this purpose; for it is much
easier to present the subject in its human relations, when its history
is given in connexion with the lives of those who were most immediately
associated with it. But it would be a great mistake to conclude from
this, that it is the less a history of the art itself; for no art or
science has life in itself, apart from the minds which foresee,
discover, and verify it. Whatever point in its progress it may have
reached, it will there remain until a new man appears, whose new
questions shall illicit new replies from nature--replies which are the
essential food of the science, by which it lives, grows, and makes
itself a history.
Nor must our readers suppose that because the book is readable, it is
therefore slight, either in material or construction. Much reading and
research have provided the material, while real thought and argument
have superintended the construction.
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