" [Footnote: Letter to Robert
Browning, September 9, 1845.]
"Art," says Aristotle, "is an imitation of life." "_L'art, mes
enfants_," says the modern poet, speaking through the lips of
Verlaine, "_c'est d'etre absolument soi-meme_." Of course if one
concedes that the poet is the only thing in life worth bothering about,
the two statements become practically identical. It may be true that the
poet's universal sympathies make him the most complex type that
civilization has produced, and consequently the most economical figure
to present as a sample of humanity. But Taine has offered us a simpler
way of harmonizing the two statements, not by juggling with Aristotle's
word "life," but with the word "imitation." "Art," says Taine, "is
nature seen through a temperament."
Now it may be that to Aristotle imitation, _Mimeseis_, did mean "seeing
through a temperament." But certainly, had he used that phrase, he would
have laid the stress on "seeing," rather than on "temperament."
Aristotle would judge a man to have poetic temperament if his mind were
like a telescope, sharpening the essential outlines of things.
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