How far the subject of this writing may
have been already familiar to the readers of it, I have no means of
knowing; but I conceive it to be no less than my duty, as a countryman of
Mr. Kemeys's and a lover of all that is true and original in art, to pay
the tribute of my appreciation to what he has done. There is no danger of
his getting more recognition than he deserves, and he is not one whom
recognition can injure. He reverences his art too highly to magnify his
own exposition of it; and when he reads what I have set down here, he will
smile and shake his head, and mutter that I have divined the perfect idea
in the imperfect embodiment. Unless I greatly err, however, no one but
himself is competent to take that exception. The genuine artist is never
satisfied with his work; he perceives where it falls short of his
conception. But to others it will not be incomplete; for the achievements
of real art are always invested with an atmosphere and aroma--a spiritual
quality perhaps--proceeding from the artist's mind and affecting that of
the beholder. And thus it happens that the story or the poem, the picture
or the sculpture, receives even in its material form that last indefinable
grace, that magic light that never was on sea or land, which no pen or
brush or graving-tool has skill to seize.
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