This was the only
fine art which might be thought to be nourishing now. The
others had had their day. This was advancing upon a higher
intellectual ground.
"Of painting she spoke, but not so well. She seemed to think
painting worked more by illusion than sculpture. It involved
more prose, from its representing more objects. She said
nothing adequate about _color_.
"She dwelt upon the histrionic art as the most complete, its
organ being the most flexible and powerful.
"She then spoke of life, as the art, of which these all were
beautiful symbols; and said, in recurring to her opinions
expressed last winter, of Dante and Wordsworth, that she had
taken another view, deeper, and more in accordance with
some others which were then expressed. She acknowledged
that Wordsworth had done more to make all men poetical, than
perhaps any other; that he was the poet of reflection; that
where he failed to poetize his subject, his simple faith
intimated to the reader a poetry that he did not find in the
book. She admitted that Dante's Narrative was instinct with
the poetry concentrated often in single words. She uttered her
old heresies about Milton, however, unmodified.
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