The excellence, therefore, the success, is on the side of spirit.
Does not this look as if a Celtic stream met the main German current
in us, and gave it a somewhat different course from that which it
takes naturally? We have Germanism enough in us, enough patient love
for fact and matter, to be led to attempt the plastic arts, and we
make much more way in them than the pure Celtic races make; but at a
certain point our Celtism comes in, with its love of emotion,
sentiment, the inexpressible, and gives our best painters a bias.
And the point at which it comes in is just that critical point where
the flowering of art into its perfection commences; we have plenty of
painters who never reach this point at all, but remain always mere
journeymen, in bondage to matter; but those who do reach it, instead
of going on to the true consummation of the masters in painting, are
a little overbalanced by soul and feeling, work too directly for
these, and so do not get out of their art all that may be got out of
it.
The same modification of our Germanism by another force which seems
Celtic, is visible in our religion. Here, too, we may trace a
gradation between Celt, Englishman, and German, the difference which
distinguishes Englishman from German appearing attributable to a
Celtic element in us.
Pages:
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123