And were this not
so, were the inalienable impressiveness of tropical scenery always to
give the poet who described it a superiority in effect, this would not
prove the superiority of his imagination. For either he has been
familiar with such scenes, and imagines them just as the other poet
imagines his English landscape---by an effort of mental vision, calling
up the absent objects; or he has merely read the descriptions of
others, and from these makes up his picture. It is the same with his
rival, who also recalls and recombines. Foolish critics often betray
their ignorance by saying that a painter or a writer "only copies what
he has seen, or puts down what he has known." They forget that no man
imagines what he has not seen or known, and that it is in the SELECTION
OF THE CHARACTERISTIC DETAILS that the artistic power is manifested.
Those who suppose that familiarity with scenes or characters enables a
painter or a novelist to "copy" them with artistic effect, forget the
well-known fact that the vast majority of men are painfully incompetent
to avail themselves of this familiarity, and cannot form vivid pictures
even to themselves of scenes in which they pass their daily lives; and
if they could imagine these, they would need the delicate selective
instinct to guide them in the admission and omission of details, as
well as in the grouping of the images.
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