Another outcome of my search for light was a conviction of the importance of his theory of art. I might almost say his religion of art, inasmuch as he had no traffic with anything that was not spontaneous, effervescing. To him a hammer and a chisel were actual and very real, and the plastic art appealed especially to him in its character of _smiting_. To smite from the stone, to finish with all a craftsman's cunning care--there seemed to him real joy in this; and so I think he felt the influence of art dynamically, maintaining always that the life-force is also the art-force, and remains constant throughout the ages. So, I imagine, he reasoned when he wrote the following verses, only to fling them aside to be forgotten:
_An Author, Sitting to a Sculptor, Speaks His Mind._
And yet you call yourself a sculptor, sir? You with your tape a-trailing to and fro, Jotting down figures, frowning when I stir, Measuring me across the shoulders, so! And yet you are an artist, they aver, Heir to the crown of Michelangelo?
I cannot think--eh, what? I ought to think? How will you have me? Shall I sit at ease, Staring at nothing thro' the eyelids' chink, Coining new words for old philosophies? Aye, so I sit until the pale stars wink And vanish ere the early morning breeze.
Sculpture is dead, I say! We have no men To match the mighty masters of the past: I've read, I've seen their works; the acumen Of Learning on their triumph I have cast. Divine! Colossal! Tongue nor pen Can tell their beauty, O Iconoclast!
Ah, now you're modelling--in the soft clay! In that prosaic task where is the glow Of genius, as in great Lorenzo's day, When, solitary in his studio, Buonarotti, in his "terrible way," Smote swift and hard the marble, blow on blow?
One moment while I ask you, earnestly, Where is the splendour of the Dorian gone, The genius of him whose mastery Outshines the classic grace of Sicyon, Whose art can show Death lock'd with Life, the cry, The shuddering moan of poor Laocoön?
_The Sculptor continues to model swiftly while the sitter remains motionless, watching him._
That's good, sir, good! I'll wait till you have done: We men of letters are a crabbéd race; Often we're blind with staring at the sun; And when the evening stars begin their race, We miss their beauty, we, who creep and run Like beetles o'er a buried Greek god's face.