is intended to be purely atmospheric, as in the “Angelus,” he misses its justness and fitness, and so, in insisting on color, obtains from the color point of view itself an infelicitous—­a colored—­result.  Occasionally he bathes a scene in yellow mist that obscures all accentuations and play of values.  But always his feeling for color betrays him a painter rather than a moralist.  And in composition he is, I should say, even more distinguished.  His composition is almost always distinctly elegant.  Even in so simple a scheme as that of “The Sower,” the lines are as fine as those of a Raphael.  And the way in which balance is preserved, masses are distributed, and an organic play of parts related to each other and each to the sum of them is secured, is in all of his large works so salient an element of their admirable excellence, that, to those who appreciate it, the dependence of his popularity upon the sentimental suggestion of the raw material with which he dealt seems almost grotesque.  In his line and mass and the relations of these in composition, there is a severity, a restraint, a conformity to tradition, however personally felt and individually modified, that evince a strong classic strain in this most unacademic of painters.  Millet was certainly an original genius, if there ever was one.  In spite of, and in open hostility to, the popular and conventional painting of his day, he followed his own bent and went his own way.  Better, perhaps, than any other painter, he represents absolute emancipation from the prescribed, from routine and formulary.  But it would be a signal mistake to fail to see, in the most characteristic works of this most personal representative of romanticism, that subordination of the individual whim and isolated point of view to what is accepted, proven, and universal, which is essentially what we mean by the classic attitude.  One may almost go so far as to say, considering its reserve, its restraint and poise, its sobriety and measure, its quiet and composure, its subordination of individual feeling to a high sense of artistic decorum, that, romantic as it is, unacademic as it is, its most incontestable claim to permanence is the truly classic spirit which, however modified, inspires and infiltrates it.  Beside some of the later manifestations of individual genius in French painting, it is almost academic.

In Corot, anyone, I suppose, can see this note, and it would be surplusage to insist upon it.  He is the ideal classic-romantic painter, both in temperament and in practice.  Millet’s subject, not, I think, his treatment—­possibly his wider range—­makes him seem more deeply serious than Corot, but he is not essentially as nearly unique.  He is unrivalled in his way, but Corot is unparalleled.  Corot inherits the tradition of Claude; his motive, like Claude’s, is always an effect, and, like Claude’s, his means are light and air.  But his effect is a shade more impalpable, and his means are at once simpler and more subtle.  He gets