Yet no one
would ever call Turgenev a romanticist, or Stevenson a realist. The
spirit of the first brooded over life, found in it a perpetual voyage of
spiritual adventure, was set on discovering and making clear to himself
and all, the varying traits and emotions of human character--the varying
moods of Nature; and though he couched all this discovery in caskets of
engaging story, it was always clear as day what mood it was that drove
him to dip pen in ink. The spirit of the second, I think, almost dreaded
to discover; he felt life, I believe, too keenly to want to probe into
it; he spun his gossamer to lure himself and all away from life. That was
his driving mood; but the craftsman in him, longing to be clear and
poignant, made him more natural, more actual than most realists.
So, how thin often is the hedge! And how poor a business the partisan
abuse of either kind of art in a world where each sort of mind has full
right to its own due expression, and grumbling lawful only when due
expression is not attained. One may not care for a Rembrandt portrait of
a plain old woman; a graceful Watteau decoration may leave another cold
but foolish will he be who denies that both are faithful to their
conceiving moods, and so proportioned part to part, and part to whole, as
to have, each in its own way, that inherent rhythm or vitality which is
the hall-mark of Art.
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