Product Of A Myriad Various Minds And

Many Attempts Have Been Made By Writers On Art And Poetry To Define Beauty In The Abstract, To Express It In The Most General Terms, To Find Some Universal Formula For It.

In Truth, The Legitimate Contention Is, Not Of One Age Or School Of Literary Art Against Another, But Of All Successive Schools Alike, Against The Stupidity Which Is Dead To The Substance, And The Vulgarity Which Is Dead To Form.

One Of The Most Beautiful Passages Of Rousseau Is That In The Sixth Book Of Confessions, Where He Describes The Awakening In Him Of The Literary Sense. Of Such Wisdom, The Poetic Passion, The Desire Of Beauty, The Love Of Art For Its Own Sake, Has Most.

To Burn Always With This Hard, Gemlike Flame, To Maintain This Ecstasy, Is Success In Life. ... While All Melts Under Our Feet, We May Well Grasp At Any Exquisite Passion, Or Any Contribution To Knowledge That Seems By A Lifted Horizon To Set The Spirit Free For A Moment, Or Any Stirring Of The Senses, Strange Dyes, Strange Colours, And Curious Odours, Or Work Of The Artist's Hands, Or The Face Of One's Friend.

At First Sight Experience Seems To Bury Us Under A Flood Of External Objects, Pressing Upon Us With A Sharp And Importunate Reality, Calling Us Out Of Ourselves In A Thousand Forms Of Action.