of something else.

I was not convinced he was right, but years after I began to use
the brush a little, and I remember painting a twilight from love
of some strange colors and harmonious lines, and when one of my
literary friends found that its interest depended on color and form,
and that the idea in it could not readily be translated into words,
and that it left him wishing that I would illustrate my poems or
something that had a meaning, I veered round at once and understood
Whistler, and how foolish I was to argue with John Hughes. I joined
in the general insurrection of art against the domination of literature.
But being a writer and much concerned with abstract ideas, I have never
had the comfort and happiness of those who embrace this opinion with
their whole being, and when I was asked to lecture, I thought that
as I had no Irish Whistler to fear, I might speak of art in relation
to these universal ideas which artists hold are for literature and
not subject matter for art at all.

I must first say it was not my wish to speak. With a world of
noble and immortal forms all about us, it seemed to me as unfitting
that words without art or long labor in their making should be
advertised as an attraction; that any one should be expected to
sit here for an hour to listen to me or another upon a genius which
speaks for itself. I was overruled by Mr. Lane. But it is all wrong,
this desire to hear and hold opinions about art rather than to be
moved by the art itself. I know twenty charlatans who will talk
about art, but never lift their eyes to look at the pictures on
the wall. I remember an Irish poet speaking about art a whole
evening in a room hung round with pictures by Constable, Monet,
and others, and he came into that room and went out of it without