“To me personally such works of living reality are cordially welcome.  Yet art neither can nor will be satisfied with snatches of what is close at hand; but you are late-born, sons of a time when the two great tendencies of art have nearly reached the limits of what is attainable to them.  You were everywhere confronted with completed work, and you are right when you refuse to sink to mere imitators of earlier works, and therefore return to Nature, with which we Hellenes, and perhaps the Egyptians also, began.  The latter forgot her; the former—­we Greeks—­continued to cling to her closely.”

“Some few,” Hermon eagerly interrupted the other, “still think it worth the trouble to take from her what she alone can bestow.  They save themselves the toilsome search for the model which others so successfully used before them, and bronze and marble still keep wonderfully well.  Bring out the old masterpieces.  Take the head from this one, the arm from that, etc.  The pupil impresses the proportions on his mind.  Only so far as the longing for the beautiful permits do even the better ones remain faithful to Nature, not a finger’s breadth more.”

“Quite right,” the other went on calmly.  “But your objection only brings one nearer the goal.  How many who care only for applause content themselves to-day, unfortunately, with Nature at second hand!  Without returning to her eternally fresh, inexhaustible spring, they draw from the conveniently accessible wells which the great ancients dug for them.”

“I know these many,” Hermon wrathfully exclaimed.  “They are the brothers of the Homeric poets, who take verses from the Iliad and Odyssey to piece out from them their own pitiful poems.”

“Excellent, my son!” exclaimed Thyone, laughing, and Daphne remarked that the poet Cleon had surprised her father with such a poem a few weeks before.  It was a marvellous bit of botchwork, and yet there was a certain meaning in the production, compiled solely from Homeric verses.

“Diomed’s Hecuba,” observed Proclus, “and the Aphrodite by Hippias, which were executed in marble, originated in the same way, and deserve no better fate, although they please the great multitude.  But, praised be my lord, Apollo, our age can also boast of other artists.  Filled with the spirit of the god, they are able to model truthfully and faithfully even the forms of the immortals invisible to the physical eye.  They stand before the spectator as if borrowed from Nature, for their creators have filled them with their own healthy vigour.  Our poor Myrtilus belonged to this class and, after your Demeter, the world will include you in it also.”

“And yet,” answered Hermon in a tone of dissent, “I remained faithful to myself, and put nothing, nothing at all of my own personality, into the forms borrowed from Nature.”