To start with the assumption that you are right, and all
who oppose you are fools, cannot be a safe method. Nor in spite of a
conviction that much of the admiration expressed for the
"Transfiguration" is lip-homage and tradition, ought the non-admiring
to assume that all of it is insincere. It is quite compatible with
modesty to be perfectly independent, and with sincerity to be
respectful to the opinions and tastes of others. If you express any
opinion, you are bound to express your real opinion; let critics and
admirers utter what dithyrambs they please. Were this terror of not
being thought correct in taste once got rid of, how many stereotyped
judgments on books and pictures would be broken up! and the result of
this sincerity would be some really valuable criticism. In the presence
of Raphael's "Sistine Madonna," Titian's "Peter the Martyr," or
Masaccio's great frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, one feels as if
there had been nothing written about these mighty works, so little does
any eulogy discriminate the elements of their profound effects, so
little have critics expressed their own thoughts and feelings.
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