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To some they would be dazzling, semi-offensive extravagance, prosaic minds not liking, because seeing but dimly by, the poetically imaginative light. And to some they would be grossly unintelligible, the enjoyment of the few full appreciators seeming to them unnatural or affected. Now, the enjoyment of the few appreciators, what is its source?
So we return to Wordsworth for ourselves, more alert to divine his message, more susceptible to his spell, that he may work in us the magic of evocation. Criticism is of value to us as appreciators in so far as it serves to recreate in us the experience which the work was designed to convey. But criticism is not a short cut to enjoyment. We cannot take our pleasure at second hand.
I wonder, sometimes, whether the appreciators of art and of mathematical solutions are not even more closely allied. Before we feel an aesthetic emotion for a combination of forms, do we not perceive intellectually the rightness and necessity of the combination?
Of all the French etchers who, from time to time, went to London for the "Portfolio," I believe M. Rajon was the one best known in English society, where his liveliness and amiability, as well as his great talent, found appreciators. Like almost every other artist, he did not attach so much importance to what he could do well, as to what he could never master.
And after a long pause one or two appreciators answered: "You're right," and laughed good-humouredly. The Marquis de Gemosac sat down again, with a certain effort at self-control, on the balk of timber which had been used by some generations of tide-watchers. He turned and exchanged a glance with Dormer Colville, who stood at his side leaning on his gold-headed cane.
Painting and statuary, when they do anything towards representing this age, incarnate the dramatic spirit; the literature that has most influence today is journalism, the effective, present, actual, short-lived, dramatic newspaper, where all the actors speak for themselves: other literature has its listeners, but it lags behind; other art has its appreciators, but it cannot keep pace with the march of armies, with the rush to California, with the swarm to Australia; there is no art on these outskirts but the dramatic.
With something of the spirit which dictated them, we renew our vows to freedom, and, with manlier energy, gird up our souls for the stern struggle before us. As might have been expected, and as he himself predicted, the efforts of his friends to procure his nomination failed; but the same generous appreciators of his rare worth were soon after more successful in their exertions in his behalf.
And, after another pause, in which only Mr. Potts's deep breathing was heard, and the desperate scratching at the door of the banished Tison, she said in somber tones: "I think you forget, Mr. Potts, that I was never one of my husband's appreciators. I am sorry to be forced to recall this fact to your memory."
Above all he loved their culture; and the love of culture in general, of its old classic forms in particular, was as strong in him as if it had been formed by all the natural and conventional associations of a university career. He had hearty friends and appreciators among the dignitaries of the Church successive Archbishops and Bishops, Deans of Westminster and St. Paul's.
Elia's books, his "midnight darlings," his "folios," his "huge Switzer-like tomes of choice and massy divinity," his "kind-hearted play-books," his book of "Songs and Posies," his rare old treatises, and quaint and curious tractates, the rich gleanings from the old London book-stalls by one who knew a good book, as Falstaff knew the Prince, by instinct, books that had been the solace and delight of his life, the inspirers and prompters of his best and noblest thoughts, the food of his mind, and the nourishers of his fancies, ideas, and feelings, these books, with the exception of those retained by some of Elia's personal friends, were, after Mary Lamb's death, purchased by an enterprising New-York bookseller, and shipped to America, where Lamb has ever had more readers and truer appreciators than in England.
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