But we must not rashly come to the conclusion that such art would,
indeed, be the highest possible. There is much to be considered
hereafter on the other side; the only conclusion we are as yet
warranted in forming is, that Reynolds had no right to speak lightly
or contemptuously of imitative art; that in fact, when he did so, he
had not conceived its entire nature, but was thinking of some vulgar
conditions of it, which were the only ones known to him, and that,
therefore, his whole endeavour to explain the difference between great
and mean art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in a
crowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committed
himself to conclusions which, he never intended. There is an
instinctive consciousness in his own mind of the difference between
high and low art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, and
every effort which he makes to do so involves him in unexpected
fallacy and absurdity. It is _not_ true that Poetry does not concern
herself with minute details. It is _not_ true that high art seeks only
the Invariable. It is _not_ true that imitative art is an easy thing.
It is _not_ true that the faithful rendering of nature is an
employment in which "the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best."
All these successive assertions are utterly false and untenable, while
the plain truth, a truth lying at the very door, has all the while
escaped him,--that which was incidentally stated in the preceding
chapter,--namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies,
not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or
choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which
the effort of the painter is addressed.
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