and depth, the intelligibility and power, the flexibility and multitudinous associations, of language.  The other arts are limited in what they utter.  There is nothing which has entered into the life of man which poetry cannot express.  Poetry says everything in man’s own language to the mind.  The other arts appeal imperatively, each in its own region, to man’s senses; and the mind receives art’s message by the help of symbols from the world of sense.  Poetry lacks this immediate appeal to sense.  But the elixir which it offers to the mind, its quintessence extracted from all things of sense, reacts through intellectual perception upon all the faculties that make men what they are.

VII

I used a metaphor in one of the foregoing paragraphs to indicate the presence of the vital spirit, the essential element of thought or feeling, in the work of art.  I said it radiated through the form, as lamplight through an alabaster vase.  Now the skill of the artist is displayed in modelling that vase, in giving it shape, rich and rare, and fashioning its curves with subtlest workmanship.  In so far as he is a craftsman, the artist’s pains must be bestowed upon this precious vessel of the animating theme.  In so far as he has power over beauty, he must exert it in this plastic act.  It is here that he displays dexterity; here that he creates; here that he separates himself from other men who think and feel.  The poet, more perhaps than any other artist, needs to keep this steadily in view; for words being our daily vehicle of utterance, it may well chance that the alabaster vase of language should be hastily or trivially modelled.  This is the true reason why ’neither gods nor men nor the columns either suffer mediocrity in singers.’  Upon the poet it is specially incumbent to see that he has something rare to say and some rich mode of saying it.  The figurative arts need hardly be so cautioned.  They run their risk in quite a different direction.  For sculptor and for painter, the danger is lest he should think that alabaster vase his final task.  He may too easily be satisfied with moulding a beautiful but empty form.

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The last word on the topic of the arts is given in one sentence.  Let us remember that every work of art enshrines a spiritual subject, and that the artist’s power is shown in finding for that subject a form of ideal loveliness.  Many kindred points remain to be discussed; as what we mean by beauty, which is a condition indispensable to noble art; and what are the relations of the arts to ethics.  These questions cannot now be raised.  It is enough in one essay to have tried to vindicate the spirituality of art in general.

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A VENETIAN MEDLEY

I.—­FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND FAMILIARITY

It is easy to feel and to say something obvious about Venice.  The influence of this sea-city is unique, immediate, and unmistakable.  But to express the sober truth of those impressions which remain when the first astonishment of the Venetian revelation has subsided, when the spirit of the place has been harmonised through familiarity with our habitual mood, is difficult.