Great art is produced by men who feel acutely and nobly; and
it is in some sort an expression of this personal feeling. We can
easily conceive that there may be a sufficiently marked distinction
between such art, and that which is produced by men who do not feel at
all, but who reproduce, though ever so accurately, yet coldly, like
human mirrors, the scenes which pass before their eyes.
Secondly, Great Art is like the writing of Homer, and this chiefly
because it has little of "common nature" in it. We are not clearly
informed what is meant by common nature in this passage. Homer seems
to describe a great deal of what is common:--cookery, for instance,
very carefully in all its processes.[42] I suppose the passage in the
_Iliad_ which, on the whole, has excited most admiration, is that
which describes a wife's sorrow at parting from her husband, and a
child's fright at its father's helmet;[43] and I hope, at least, the
former feeling may be considered "common nature." But the true
greatness of Homer's style is, doubtless, held by our author to
consist in his imaginations of things not only uncommon but impossible
(such as spirits in brazen armour, or monsters with heads of men and
bodies of beasts), and in his occasional delineations of the human
character and form in their utmost, or heroic, strength and beauty.
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