I do not say that he will not take liberties with his
materials, or with his rules: I do not say that strange changes will
not sometimes be wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But
those changes will be instructive, natural, facile, though sometimes
marvellous; they will never be sought after as things necessary to his
dignity or to his independence; and those liberties will be like the
liberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance
of its rules for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated,
and brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language,
without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have
above described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and
in its refusal of ancient limitations: so there are in the life of an
insect; and there is great interest in the state of both the art and
the insect at those periods when, by their natural progress and
constitutional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as that
would be both an Uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead
of being contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding on
caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a
chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie
awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn
itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and
unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and
contenting itself with the customs, which have been enough for the
support and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is struggling
and fretting under the natural limitations of its existence, and
striving to become something other than it is.
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