students of aesthetics term it, and the body is here inseparable from the
feeling. But in poetry, which is likewise embodied feeling, it is somewhat
easier to attempt, for purposes of logical analysis, a separation of the
component elements of thought (i.e. "content") and form. We speak
constantly of the "idea" of a poem as being more or less adequately
"expressed," that is, rendered in terms of form. The actual form of a
given lyric may or may not be suited to its mood,
[Footnote: Certainly not, for instance, in Wordsworth's "Reverie of Poor
Susan."]
or the poet may not have been a sufficiently skilful workman to achieve
success in the form or "pattern" which he has rightly chosen.

Even in poetry, then, the distinction between inside and outside,
content and form, has sometimes its value, and in other arts, like
painting and sculpture, it often becomes highly interesting and
instructive to attempt the separation of the two elements. The French
painter Millet, for instance, is said to have remarked to a pupil who
showed him a well-executed sketch: "You can paint. But what have you to
say?" The pupil's work had in Millet's eyes no "significance." The English
painter G. F. Watts often expressed himself in the same fashion: "I paint
first of all because I have something to say.... My intention has not been
so much to paint pictures that will charm the eye as to suggest great
thoughts that will appeal to the imagination and the heart and kindle all
that is best and noblest in humanity.... My work is a protest against the
modern opinion that Art should have nothing to say intellectually."

On the other hand, many distinguished artists and critics have given
assent to what has been called the "Persian carpet" theory of painting.
According to them a picture should be judged precisely as one judges a
Persian rug--by the perfection of its formal beauty, its harmonies of