identical. By "sensibility" critics may mean an artist's power of
responding easily and intensely to the æsthetic significance of what
he sees; this power they might call, if they cared to be precise,
"sensibility of inspiration." At other times they imply no more than
sensibility of touch: in which case they mean that the contact between
the artist's brush and his canvas has the quality of a thrilling caress,
so that it seems almost as if the instrument that bridged the gulf
between his fingers and the surface of his picture must have been as
much alive as himself. "Sensibility of handling" or "hand-writing"
is the proper name for this. In a word, there is sensibility of the
imagination and sensibility of the senses: one is receptive, the other
executive. Now, Duncan Grant's reactions before the visible universe are
exquisitely vivid and personal, and the quality of his paint is often
as charming as a kiss. He is an artist who possesses both kinds of
sensibility. These are adorable gifts; but they are not extraordinarily
rare amongst English painters of the better sort.

In my judgement Gainsborough and Duncan Grant are the English painters
who have been most splendidly endowed with sensibility of both sorts,
but I could name a dozen who have been handsomely supplied. In my own
time there have been four--Burne-Jones (you should look at his early
work), Conder, Steer, and John, all of whom had an allowance far above
the average, while in America there was Whistler. No one, I suppose,
would claim for any of these, save, perhaps, Whistler, a place even in
the second rank of artists. From which it follows clearly that something
more than delicacy of reaction and touch is needed to make a man
first-rate. What is needed is, of course, constructive power. An artist
must be able to convert his inspiration into significant form; for in
art it is not from a word to a blow, but from a tremulous, excited
vision to an orderly mental conception, and from that conception, by