Our education becomes complete in proportion as our
susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And
the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyse, and
separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape,
a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special
impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that
impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is
reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist
notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for
those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the
words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:--De se borner a connaitre de
pres les belles choses, et a s'en nourrir en exquis amateurs, en
humanistes accomplis.
What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct
abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of
temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of
beautiful objects.
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