Various

“ If to feel keenly be a nobler state than to drone with blunt edges through that thicket of myrtle and nightshade we call life, then is the artistic temperament a blessing. If the oyster be more enviable than the nightingale, then is it a curse. It all depends on our angle, and the colours we most prefer in the prism. He who has the artistic temperament knows depths and heights such as Those Others cannot even imagine. ”

“ For the true artistic sense impels one to work always—and always to better and not worsen, what it touches. The artistic sense that lazes, and lets other people work to gratify it, is a bastard one, more, it is immoral, and neither bestows, nor receives, grace. It cannot be fashioned, it may not be bought, this strange sense of the inward beauty of things; nor a man’s wife, nor his own soul, nor his beautiful house shall teach it him, and he will never be one with the Universe, with God, understanding all indeed, but not by written word or speech, but by what was born in him. ”

“ If the artistic temperament will enable a man to be rendered profoundly happy by one of those trifles that Nature strews each day in our path—say a salmon-pink sunset seen through the lacing of tall black boles of leafless trees, or a flower, happed upon unexpectedly, that reads you a half-forgotten lesson in “country art”—that same man will be reduced to abject misery and real suffering by a dirty tablecloth, a vulgar, uncongenial companion, or even the presence of a bright blue gown in a chamber subdued to utmost harmonies in gold and yellow. ”

“ The artist keeps the secret from his brother artists until he can startle them with some gracious surprise. He almost pities them, as he thinks of the revelation that is about to dawn upon unsuspecting and slumberous minds. Postponement of this surprise is a torment to the mind which had planned its dazzling disclosure. The greatest pain of all to the artistic temperament is that it lives in the world of the Impossible and the Unattainable. That arm must be very weary which for a lifetime has been stretched out towards the horizon. ”

“ The artistic temperament is creative, sympathetic, responsive; it sees everything, feels everything, realises everything, on a scale of exaggeration. It is in quest of ideals, and all ideals are more or less in the clouds, and not seldom at the tip-top of the rainbow. Those who undertake such long journeys are subject to disappointment and fatigue by the way; if ever they do come to the end of their journey it is probably in a temper of fretfulness and exasperation. A sudden knock at the door may drive an artist into hysterics. He is always working at the end of his tether. ”

“ True, that the finely-organised and sensitive temperament of the Artist suffers keenly when jarred by the discord of the world—that it amounts almost to a curse to be interrupted when in the throes of a new conception (just thought of and hardly grasped) by someone who has no more notion of what he is undergoing than a deal table would have, and pulls him back roughly from his Paradise to the sordid details of Life, putting all his airy fancies to flight, perhaps, by the process. ”

“ We knew that at times we hung perilously over the edge of slopes that eventually dropped a thousand feet sheer to the tops of the sugar-pines below, but we knew that Bill knew it also. The half visible heads of the horses, drawn wedge-wise together by the tightened reins, appeared to cleave the darkness like a ploughshare, held between his rigid hands. Even the hoof-beats of the six horses had fallen into a vague, monotonous, distant roll. Then the ridge was crossed, and we plunged into the still blacker obscurity of the brush. ”

“ But neither this materialistic world, nor all the fools that inhabit it, can ever really rob the Artist of the joy—in which “no stranger intermeddleth”—of the Realm of fancy which is his own domain, inherited by right of his genius. Though he may pass through Life unappreciated and unsuccessful, let him still thank God for the Divine power which has been given him—the power to create! It will tide him over the loss of things, which other men cut their throats for—it will stand him in stead of wife and child—in stead of friends and companionship. ”

“ Do not the creatures of his brain walk beside him wherever he may go? Do they not lie down with him and rise up with him, and even when he is old and grey, his heart still keeps fresh, from association with the Young and Beautiful, with the blossoms of Womanhood and of Spring, that have bloomed upon his canvas—with the notes of the birds and the sounds of falling water that his fingers have conjured to life upon his instrument—with the fair maidens and noble youths that he has accompanied through so many trials and conducted to such a blissful termination in his pages. ”

“ Commencing with long hair touching his shoulders, and with an absence of the use of Someone’s soap, he passes on through mystic moonlight glances to a still more artistic appreciation of the charms of Nature at her simplest, until Mrs. Grundy looks askance, and duchesses and other leaders of Society squabble over him, and try one against the other for the honour and pleasure of his society. ”

“ Limiting ourselves then to these two main varieties of the artistic temperament, the active and the passive, I should say that the latter is an unmixed blessing, and the former a mixed curse.
He speaketh of ye curse.
What, indeed, can be more delightful than to possess good æsthetic faculties—to be able to enjoy books, music, pictures, plays! This artistic sensibility is the one undoubted advantage of man over other animals, the extra octave in the gamut of life. ”

“ From that good Genie the poor straggler from Fairyland got solid help and sympathy. Few can realise now what Dickens was then to London. His humour filled its literature like broad sunlight; the Gospel of Plum-pudding warmed every poor devil in Bohemia.
At this time, I was (save the mark!) terribly in earnest, with a dogged determination to bow down to no graven literary Idol, but to judge men of all ranks on their personal merits. I never had much reverence for Gods of any sort; if the Superior Persons could not win me by love, I remained heretical. ”

“ The artistic temperament is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing when it lifts a man’s soul out of the slough of vulgar commonplace, and turns his thoughts to the contemplation of noble things, while at the same time it enables him to give something to the world which it would not willingly lose, and for which he can obtain adequate remuneration. ”

“ The feet that spring into the courts of heaven by a look or a word—by the glory of the starry night or the radiance of the dawn—stray down into the deepest abysses of hell, when Love has died or Nature forgets to smile. ”

“ Here, in a lofty, white-panelled room, with long windows looking down upon the private gardens of the Castle in which His Excellency and Captain Streatfield, one of the A.D.C.’s, were walking up and down, Mrs. Henniker and I sat talking of the past almost more than we did of the actual present. For, though my hostess is quite a young woman, yet as a daughter of the celebrated Richard Monckton Milnes, the first Lord Houghton, she cannot fail to have the most delightful reminiscences of the many celebrities with whom her father was so fond of filling his house. ”

“ When the station hotel and straggling settlement of Sugar Pine, now distinct and clear in the growing light, at last rose within rifleshot on the plateau, the buggy suddenly darted swiftly by us—so swiftly that the faces of the two occupants were barely distinguishable as they passed—and, keeping the lead by a dozen lengths, reached the door of the hotel. The young girl and her companion leaped down and vanished within as we drew up. They had evidently determined to elude our curiosity, and were successful. ”

“ The creative artist is higher in the scale of existence than the man, as the man is higher than the beatified oyster for whose condition, as Aristotle pointed out, few would be tempted to barter the misery of human existence. The animal has consciousness, man self-consciousness, and the artist over-consciousness. Over-consciousness may be a curse, but, like the primitive curse—labour—there are many who would welcome it! ”

“ If his nature is in arms against anything that is rotten in Society or in Literature itself, he must be silent. Above all, he must lay this solemn truth to heart, that when the World speaks well of him the World will demand the price of praise, and that price will possibly be his living Soul. ”

“ But human beings are the creations of their circumstances, and the circumstances of a Western woman’s life are not favourable to the development of the grander qualities, though, indeed, they are often harassing and bewildering, and cruel enough to demand heroism as great even as that of “Mademoiselle Sophie.” I think it would be salutary for all of us—men as well as women of the West—to come more often within the influence of such natures as this; natures that command the tribute of admiration and the reverence that one must instantly yield to great moral strength and nobility. ”

“ To each back its own burden. So he carries the piteous tale whereby his heart is aching for sympathy, and Those Others give him stones for bread and a serpent for a fish. Then he looks up to heaven, and asks if there be indeed a God to suffer all this wrong; or if there be, How long, O Lord, how long! The artistic temperament is not merely artistic perception, with which it is so often confounded. ”

“ To the artistic temperament there is but little of the mean of things. The “Mezzo Cammin” is a line too narrow for their eager steps. Proportion is the one quality in emotional geometry which is left out of their lesson of life. Their grammar deals only with superlatives; and the positive seems to them inelastic, dead and common-place. Imaginative sympathy colours and transforms the whole picture of existence. By this sympathy the artistic of temperament knows the secrets of souls, and understands all where Those Others see nothing. ”

“ But it (the artistic temperament) is a curse when it tempts a man from that honest employment which provides him with bread and butter, and leaves him a defeated, disappointed, and heartbroken wretch, unable to return to that humble course of life which had happily supplied his daily wants. ”

“ And if a man’s taste require costly gratification of it, say by pictures, by marbles, by the thousand and one sumptuous trifles that go to make the modern house beautiful, then that man is not possessed of true taste, and he will be poorer in his palace than if he dwelt ragged in Nature’s lap, with all her riches, and those of his own mind, at his disposal. ”

“ There are times when the reader of Russian fiction begins to wonder whether he or the author is not a little off his mental balance, so fantastic, so inconsequent, yet so insanely logical (so to put it) are the beings with whom he finds himself surrounded—beings, however, evidently and bewilderingly human, so that though they may appear scarcely in their right minds (as we should judge our compatriots) , they can never be mistaken for mere figures of sawdust and plaster such as people extensive realms of Western fiction. ”

“ Then think of the cross-lights, the mingled colours, the uncalculated relations which enter into the composition of the dreamer’s life, and say whether that life is not more of a chaos than a cosmos. If the artistic temperament came within the range of our own choice and will, possibly we could do something with it ”

“ The artistic temperament implies genius—and “there’s the rub,” for we others don’t understand genius. The Almighty bestowed the blessing; we have superadded the curse of an ignorant reception. The Genius is the child of his century. We persist in relegating him to his family. He asks for materials and room to create. ”

“ Although they will give their last sovereign to prolong their lives, yet will they risk life itself to accumulate gold. Every business in England is formed merely for the gathering together of bits of metal like that in your hand; huge companies of men are formed so that it may be piled up in greater quantities. The man who has most gold has most power, and is generally the most respected; the company which makes most money is the one people are most anxious to belong to.”
Ruth listened to him with wonder and dismay in her eyes. ”

“ There is no doubt that the artistic temperament magnifies all the pleasures of one’s life by the infusion of a keener zest for enjoyment, the natural outcome of such temperament, but the reverse of the medal is equally well cut, and the misfortunes and disappointments of life are the more keenly felt in consequence of the possession of this temperament! ”

“ There is many a poet who never wrote a line, many a romancist who never contributed to a magazine. The ploughboy whistling behind his team, the gardener lovingly pruning his vines, the angler sitting in the shade of summer trees, even the playgoer craning his neck over the gallery and failing to catch the last words of Hamlet on the stage, may be blessed with something of “the divine afflatus,” to be born utterly without which is to require at the Maker’s hands a compensation. ”

“ There is nothing more tantalising than an eternal quest after the ideal; like the horizon, it recedes from the traveller; like the mirage, it vanishes before the claims of hunger and thirst. On the other hand, it has enjoyments all its own. The idealist is always face to face with a great expectation. ”

“ I fancy that the two classes most strongly influenced by this temperament are the painters and the actors, who display characteristics of remarkable resemblance, as, for instance, all painters (I use the word “painters” because “artists” is applied equally to both classes) are fully alive to the beauties of Nature in all her varied moods, but, when those beauties are depicted on the canvasses of others, are somewhat prone to discover a comprehension of those beauties inferior to their own! ”

“ As I never had the good fortune to render any really important service to my country, I have no right to draw public attention upon myself, and no wish to do so. But my experiences, of which I have told you a good deal by word of mouth, have been, save for sundry personal details, very like those of thousands of other young Russians, who, unwilling and unable to accept quietly the order of things that weighs so heavily upon their country, have devoted all their strength and all their faculties to the great struggle for freedom, which you of Western Europe call the Nihilistic Movement. ”

“ For it is reserved the luxurious Chesterfield or Divan, heaped with rainbow-like cushions, and placed in the most becoming light, until the quick, unhappy day dawns when another “artistic temperament” comes to the fore, and the first retires perforce, if not a better, certainly a sadder, man, for all that has been happening unto him. ”