out of low, grovelling comparisons applied to things pretending to be dignified and venerable. Burke's French Revolution teems with all the varieties of eloquent comparison. His 'trampling law and order 'under the hoofs of the swinish multitude,'' will be ever memorable among the figures of oratory.

Although Shakespeare often displays the Baconian power of illuminative comparison, especially in moral maxims and commonplaces, he shines chiefly in the other class, those that heighten the emotional effect (while the genius of both the one and the other abounds in such as have no effect whatever but intellectual profusion). With all his susceptibility to the sensible and concrete of the world, to the full face of nature and life, he had the poetic eclecticism, and dwelt by preference upon the objects that inspired emotions such as an artist is wont to kindle up. Having perhaps the greatest intellectual reach of similarity that the mind of man ever attained to, his power of adducing illustrative similitudes, through chasms of remoteness and the thickest disguise, will be a wonder and an astonishment to the latest posterity.

43. Of the Tropes and Figures described in Rhetoric, the largest half turn upon comparison. The metaphor, the simile, the allegory-are all forms of illustration by similitude, sometimes serving for clearness, or intellectual comprehension, at other times producing animation and effect. Their invention. is due to the identifying intellect, which breaks through the partition caused by difference of subject to bring together what is similar in some one striking aspect or form. The literary and poetic genius of ages has accumulated a store of such comparisons; many of them have passed into common speech to enrich the dialects of everyday life. No man has ever attained rank in literature, without possessing in some degree the power of original illustration; and the reach or interval of disparity through which new similes are brought, makes a fair measure of the intellectual force of the individual mind in one of the leading characteristics of genius. The original fetches of Homer, of Eschylus, of Milton, and above all of Shakespeare (I do not pretend to exhaust the list even of the first-rate minds), are prodigious. How remote and yet

THE INTELLECTUAL FINE ARTS.

535 how grand the simile describing the descent of Apollo from Olympus he came like night.' The identifying faculty, be it never so strong, would hardly suffice to bring together things so widely different, but for some previous preparation serving to approximate the nature of the two things in the first instance, as we have already had occasion to remark of some of the scientific discoveries. Night itself must have been first personified in the mind to some extent, thereby reducing the immense disparity between the closing day and the march of a living personage down the mountain slopes. But with all due allowance for the highest susceptibility of mind to the poetic aspects of things, the power of adducing comparisons from remote regions, such as we find it in the greatest literary compositions, is stupendous and sublime.

FINE ART IN GENERAL.

44. The spirit of the observations made above respecting Poetry applies to Fine Art in general. In the Arts we may trace out a scale or arrangement, beginning at the most intellectual and ending with those that have this quality in the lowest degree. At one end of the scale we find distinct examples of the purely intellectual law of similarity, at the other end scarcely a trace of this operation appears in the manner that we have been accustomed to recognise it. Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Decoration, and Design, are all conversant with some of the higher intellectual elements: Poetry with speech and the pictorial as represented by speech, the others with visual forms and appearances of various kinds. In stirring up and reproducing on fit occasions the materials of those arts, the associating forces of Contiguity and Similarity are extensively brought into play. As to Contiguity this is obvious enough; as regards Similarity it may be easily shown. A painter in composing a picture must in the last resort choose the component parts according to their artistic keeping with one another but in recalling from the past a number of objects in order to try their effect, he will be greatly assisted by a powerful identifying faculty. For we may suppose him to

have in his view some one plan of a background, which background, however, although containing the main features, does not satisfy his artistic sense. By the attraction of likeness, this part, unsuitable in itself, may recal others resembling and yet greatly differing, and in the array brought up by a powerful intellect working upon a large foregone experience, one may be presented exactly fitting the picture. There may be nothing artistic in the suggestion of the different views; nevertheless, it is only an artist that can make the proper choice. As in poetry, so in painting, in sculpture, in architecture, decoration, and design, there may be a rich intellectual storage and reproduction of the material, apart from the æsthetic feeling, but by this feeling the artist must be guided in the use that he makes of the suggestions of the intellect. In all the Arts, examples may be found of rich profusion of unselected matter; the authors mistaking a strong recollection and revival of natural scenery and pictorial elements in general, for the artistic harmonizing of the material; still an Artist in the class we are now discussing cannot attain the highest greatness without some intellectual source of suggestions over and above his artistic faculty. The intervention of high intellect in Art seems to have reached a climax in Michael Angelo; and the limits of human nature forbid us to suppose that he could at the same time put forth the power of delicately adjusting the parts of his compositions so as to yield the graces and charms that constitute the true distinction, the essence of Art.

45. When we pass to the second class of Arts, we find intellect dying away and giving place to the genuine artistic stimulus in its purity. Music is the most conspicuous member of the group, and might be taken as representing the whole: the others are, spoken music or Eloquence, Dramatic action and pantomime, the graces of personal Demeanour and display, and the Dance. In these Arts the suggestions of intellectual similarity can hardly be said to occur. Undoubtedly, we may by similarity, as already said, identify a common character in different airs and harmonies; and, through the presence of any one, others may be recalled to the mind of a composer, and may serve him as hints and aids in a new com

VALUE OF THE INTELLECT IN ART.

537

position. In such circumstances, I can conceive the operation of a vigorous identifying faculty as enlarging a musician's resources, or making more readily available to him the examples that have previously impressed themselves on his mind. But this process of imitating and compiling does not fairly exemplify the workings of artistic creativeness. The author of a truly original melody relies upon no such intellectual assistance. By the spontaneous gushings of his mind he flows out into song, and by the guidance of a delicate sense he tunes himself to melody. Other men may imitate and combine such primitive originals in a variety of compositions, but the knowing ear can always detect the work of compilation. Intellect may originate Science, but not Art. It might be shown, I believe, that the fountain of artistic originality in such instances as music and dramatic action is to be sought in the emotional and spontaneous workings of the organs; while in the compositions of the former class these workings conspire with the sensuous intellect; and in all alike a keen æsthetic sensibility is indispensable.

I may here refer to what is a common subject of remark, that great musicians and actors, not to speak of opera dancers, have often a very low order of intellect, as measured by the ordinary tests. So in the charms and graces of society, which is a species of fine art, intellect may contribute nothing. In assisting the less gifted temperaments to take on the charm native to the others, it may operate with good effect; for this is done by acquisition and compilation, where the intellectual forces always work to advantage. Moreover, in Art, effects can often be reduced to rule, and the comprehending and following out of rules is an affair of the intelligence. In musical compositions there are rules as to harmony, which any one might act upon; in elocution much can be done by merely understanding the directions of an instructor, but to stupidity all such directions are nugatory. Thus it is that in the diffusion and extension of the least intellectual of the fine arts, recourse may be had to an instrumentality that would never suffice for their creation. It is a remarkable fact in history, that the most highly gifted people of antiquity, in all

that regarded pure intelligence, had no apparent originality in music; but in their appreciation of its effects they made copious use of the Lydian and Phrygian melodies, and pushed them forward into alliance with meaning in their lyric and dramatic poetry.

SIMILARITY IN ACQUISITION AND MEMORY.

46. It now remains to show how the force of reinstatement by similarity can operate in carrying forward the work of Acquisition. We have seen that the associating principle of Contiguity must needs be the groundwork of Acquisition in general; but when any new train can bring up from the past some nearly similar train, the labour of a separate acquirement is thereby saved, the points of difference between the new and the old are all that is left for Contiguity to build up in the mental system. When a workman is to be taught a new operation in his art, there will necessarily be, along with certain matters of novelty, a large amount of identity with his already acquired habits; hence in order to master the operation, he will require to repeat it just as often as will suffice for fixing all those new steps and combinations by the plastic adhesiveness of Contiguity. A professed dancer learning a new dance, is in a very different predicament from a beginner in the art. A musician learning a new piece, actually finds that nineteen-twentieths of all the sequences to be acquired have been already formed through his previous education. A naturalist reads the description of a newly discovered animal; he possesses already, in his mind, the characters of the known. animals most nearly approaching to it; and, if he merely give sufficient time and attention for fastening the features that are absolutely new to him, he carries away and retains the whole. The judge in listening to a law-pleading hears little that is absolutely new; if he keeps that little in his memory, he stores up the whole case. When we read a book, on a subject already familiar to us, we can reproduce the entire work, at the expense of labour requisite to remember the additions it makes to our previous stock of knowledge. So in Fine Art; an architect, a painter, or a poet, can easily carry