spirit and essence from the Fontainebleau school as the French genius
itself is from the Italian which presided there. In Poussin, indeed,
the French genius first asserts itself in painting. And it asserts
itself splendidly in him.

We who ask to be moved as well as impressed, who demand satisfaction of
the susceptibility as well as--shall we say rather than?--interest of
the intelligence, may feel that for the qualities in which Poussin is
lacking those in which he is rich afford no compensation whatever. But I
confess that in the presence of even that portion of Poussin's
magnificent accomplishment which is spread before one in the Louvre, to
wish one's self in the Stanze of the Vatican or in the Sistine Chapel,
seems to me an unintelligent sacrifice of one's opportunities.


III

It is a sure mark of narrowness and defective powers of perception to
fail to discover the point of view even of what one disesteems. We talk
of Poussin, of Louis Quatorze art--as of its revival under David and its
continuance in Ingres--of, in general, modern classic art as if it were
an art of convention merely; whereas, conventional as it is, its
conventionality is--or was, certainly, in the seventeenth century--very
far from being pure formulary. It was genuinely expressive of a certain
order of ideas intelligently held, a certain set of principles
sincerely believed in, a view of art as positive and genuine as the
revolt against the tyrannous system into which it developed. We are
simply out of sympathy with its aim, its ideal; perhaps, too, for that
most frivolous of all reasons because we have grown tired of it.