In fact the natural means
TRUTH OF KIND. Each kind of character, each kind of representation,
must be judged by itself. Whereas the vulgar error of criticism is to
judge of one kind by another, and generally to judge the higher by the
lower, to remonstrate with Hamlet for not having the speech and manner
of Mr. Jones, to wish that Fra Angelico could have seen with the eyes
of the Carracci, to wish verse had been prose, and that ideal tragedy
were acted with the easy manner acceptable in drawing-rooms.
The rage for "realism," which is healthy in as far as it insists on
truth, has become unhealthy, in as far as it confounds truth with
familiarity, and predominance of unessential details. There are other
truths besides coats and waistcoats, pots and pans, drawlng-rooms and
suburban villas. Life has other aims besides these which occupy the
conversation of "Society." And the painter who devotes years to a work
representing modern life, yet calls for even more attention to a
waistcoat than to the face of a philosopher, may exhibit truth of
detail which will delight the tailor-mind, but he is defective in
artistic truth, because he ought to be representing something higher
than waistcoats, and because our thoughts on modern life fall very
casually and without emphasis on waistcoats.
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