"
These are words which the writer should have always present to his
memory, if he has something serious that he wants to say, or if he wishes
to express himself in the classic and perfect manner. But if it is his
fate merely to be obliged to say something, in the course of his
profession, or if he is bid to discourse for the pleasure of readers in
the Underground Railway, I fear he will often have to forget Mr. Pater.
It may not be literature, the writing of _causeries_, of Roundabout
Papers, of rambling articles "on a broomstick," and yet again, it _may_
be literature! "Parallel, allusion, the allusive way generally, the
flowers in the garden"--Mr. Pater charges heavily against these. The
true artist "knows the narcotic force of these upon the negligent
intelligence to which any _diversion_, literally, is welcome, any vagrant
intruder, because one can go wandering away with it from the immediate
subject . . . In truth all art does but consist in the removal of
surplusage, from the last finish of the gem engraver blowing away the
last particle of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of the
finished work to be lying somewhere, according to Michel Angelo's fancy,
in the rough-hewn block of stone.
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