For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts—­the one essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is a great man.  You cannot have the art without the man, and when you have the man you have the art.  His time and his surroundings will color him; his art will not be at one time or place precisely what it might be at another; but at bottom the art is the man and at all times and in all countries is just as great as the man.

Let us clear our minds, then, of the illusion that there is in any important sense such a thing as progress in the fine arts.  We may with a clear conscience judge every new work for what it appears in itself to be, asking of it that it be noble and beautiful and reasonable, not that it be novel or progressive.  If it be great art it will always be novel enough, for there will be a great mind behind it, and no two great minds are alike.  And if it be novel without being great, how shall we be the better off?  There are enough forms of mediocre or evil art in the world already.  Being no longer intimidated by the fetich of progress, when a thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and degraded, indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so and shall not care to investigate it further.  Detestable things have been produced in the past, and they are none the less detestable because we are able to see how they came to be produced.  Detestable things are produced now, and they will be no more admirable if we learn to understand the minds that create them.  Even should such things prove to be not the mere freaks of a diseased intellect that they seem but a necessary outgrowth of the conditions of the age and a true prophecy of “the art of the future,” they are not necessarily the better for that.  It is only that the future will be very unlucky in its art.

IV

RAPHAEL

There used to be on the cover of the “Portfolio Monographs” little medallions of Raphael and Rembrandt, placed there, as the editor, Mr. Hamerton, has somewhere explained, as portraits of the two most widely influential artists that ever lived.  In the eighteenth century, one imagines, Rembrandt’s presence by the side of Raphael would have been thought little less than a scandal.  To-day it is Raphael’s place that would be contested, and he would be superseded, likely enough, by Velazquez.

There is no more striking instance of the vicissitudes of critical opinion than the sudden fall of Raphael from his conceded rank as “the prince of painters.”  Up to the middle of the nineteenth century his right to that title was so uncontested that it alone was a sufficient identification of him—­only one man could possibly be meant.  That he should ever need defending or re-explaining to a generation grown cold to him would have seemed incredible.  Then came the rediscovery of an earlier art that seemed more frank and simple than his; still later the discovery