As soon as her
conversation ran into the mysteries of manipulation and artistic
effect, it was less trustworthy. I remember that in the first times
when I chanced to see pictures with her, I listened reverently to
her opinions, and endeavored to see what she saw. But, on several
occasions, finding myself unable to reach it, I came to suspect my
guide, and to believe, at last, that her taste in works of art, though
honest, was not on universal, but on idiosyncratic, grounds. As it has
proved one of the most difficult problems of the practical astronomer
to obtain an achromatic telescope, so an achromatic eye, one of the
most needed, is also one of the rarest instruments of criticism.
She was very susceptible to pleasurable stimulus, took delight in
details of form, color, and sound. Her fancy and imagination were
easily stimulated to genial activity, and she erroneously thanked the
artist for the pleasing emotions and thoughts that rose in her mind.
So that, though capable of it, she did not always bring that highest
tribunal to a work of art, namely, the calm presence of greatness,
which only greatness in the object can satisfy. Yet the opinion was
often well worth hearing on its own account, though it might be wide
of the mark as criticism.
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