almost all of them, on the Madonna with the Holy Child, on the Descent
from the Cross, and on every other of the score of stock subjects then
in favor for the appropriate decoration of altar and alcove and dome.
There is wisdom in M. Brunetière's assertion that "just as obedience is
the apprenticeship of command, so is imitation the novitiate of
originality."

We may be assured that this narrow limiting of the number of themes
likely to be treated by the painters of Italy and by the playwrights of
Greece at once diminished the demand on them for mere invention and left
them free to put forth the utmost strength of their imagination, so that
the artist could express himself fully and interpret in his own fashion
a subject certain to be handled sooner or later by the chief of his
fellow-crafts-men. And if the descent from the sublime is not too
sudden, attention might here be called to the similar method of
measuring the skill of the individual performer which we perceive in a
later and more scientific development of what was once almost a game of
chance. In "duplicate whist," as it is called, identical hands are
played in turn by a succession of players, who are thus put to the test
sharply, each withstanding comparison with every one of his rivals.

A strange fascination there is in the wish that it might be possible to
apply to the art of fiction--which is often little more than a game of
chance--the comparative method of duplicate whist. It would be possible
for us to weigh the merits of the novelists far more exactly, if we
could only impose upon all of them, once in a way, the treatment of the
same theme, every successive story-teller making it his own for the
moment, assimilating it, handling it as he pleased, in accordance with
his own instincts and his own principles. It would enable us to note how
adroitly the artist in narrative could deal with a topic which he did