is--literary and poetical art in particular--we shall at once see how,
examined in this way, it will be of use to us. In the first place, then,
what is art? and what is the reason that it pleases us? It is a
reflection, a reproduction of the pleasures of life, and is altogether
relative to these, and dependent on them. We should, for instance, take
no interest in portraits unless we took some interest in the human face.
We should take none in statues if we took none in the human form. We
must know something of love as a feeling, or we should never care for
love-songs. Art may send us back to these with intenser appreciation of
them, but we must bring to art from life the appreciation we want
intensified. Art is a factor in common human happiness, because by its
means common men are made partakers in the vision of uncommon men.

Great art is a speculum reflecting life as the keenest eyes have seen
it. All its forms and imagery are of value only as this. Taken by
themselves, '_the best in this kind are but shadows_.' We have to
'_piece out their imperfections, with our thoughts_;' '_imagination has
to amend them_,' and '_it must be our imagination, not theirs_.'[23] In
examining a work of art, then, we are examining life itself; or rather,
in examining the interest which we take in a work of art, in examining
the reasons why we think it beautiful, or great, or interesting, we are
examining our own feelings as to the realities represented by it.

And now remembering this, let us turn to certain of the world's greatest
works of art--I mean its dramas: for just as poetry is the most
articulate of all the arts, so is the drama the most comprehensive form
of poetry. In the drama we have the very thing we are now in want of. We
have life as a whole--that complex aggregate of details, which forms, as
it were, the mental landscape of existence, presented to us in a
'_questionable shape_,' at once concentrated and intensified. And it is