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If the gift is not there, we can have no art at all; and if the soul and a right soul too is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of the moral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice; but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race.
Yet, remember, I repeat it again and yet again, that I may for once, if possible, make this thing assuredly clear: the inherited art-gift must be there, as well as the life in some poor measure, or rescued fragment, right.
And for the individual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of a great race of men, and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on a man or on a skeleton.
This art-gift of mine could not have been won by any work or by any conduct: it belongs to me by birthright, and came by Athena's will, from the air of English country villages, and Scottish hills. I will risk whatever charge of folly may come on me, for printing one of my many childish rhymes, written on a frosty day in Glen Farg, just north of Loch Leven. It bears date 1st January, 1828.
First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift and amiability of disposition are two different things; for a good man is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for color necessarily imply an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers; it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul.
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