This agitation, this perpetual delay, give him
an air of weariness and ennui. To others he seems to be aiming at an
impossible effect, to do something that art, that painting, can never
do. Often the expression of physical beauty at this or that point seems
strained and marred in the effort, as in those heavy German
foreheads--too German and heavy for perfect beauty.
For there was a touch of Germany in that genius which, as Goethe said,
had "thought itself weary"--muede sich gedacht. What an anticipation of
modern Germany, for instance, in that debate on the question whether
sculpture or painting is the nobler art.* But there is this difference
between him and the German, that, with all that curious science, the
German would have thought nothing more was needed; and the name of
Goethe himself reminds one how great for the artist may be the danger of
overmuch science; how Goethe, who, in the Elective Affinities and the
first part of Faust, does transmute ideas into images, who wrought many
such transmutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and in the
second part of Faust presents us with a mass of science which has almost
no artistic character at all.
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