line, color and texture, its "unity in variety." It is evident that the
men who hold this opinion are emphasizing form in the work of art, and
that Millet and Watts emphasized significance. One school is thinking
primarily of expression, and the other of that which is expressed. The
important point for the student of poetry to grasp is that this divergence
of opinion turns upon the question of relative emphasis. Even pure form,
or "a-priori form" as it has sometimes been called,--such as a
rectangle, a square, a cube,--carries a certain element of association
which gives it a degree of significance. There is no absolutely bare or
blank pattern. "Four-square" means something to the mind, because it is
intimately connected with our experience.
[Footnote: See Bosanquet, _Three Lectures on Aesthetic_, pp. 19, 29, 39,
and Santayana, _The Sense of Beauty_, p. 83.]
It cannot be a mere question of balance, parallelism and abstract "unity
in variety." The acanthus design in architectural ornament, the Saracenic
decoration on a sword-blade, aim indeed primarily at formal beauty and
little more. The Chinese laundryman hands you a red slip of paper covered
with strokes of black ink in strange characters. It is undecipherable to
you, yet it possesses in its sheer charm of color and line, something of
beauty, and the freedom and vigor of the strokes are expressive of
vitality. It is impossible that Maud's face should really have been

"Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more."

Nevertheless, though absolutely pure decorative beauty does not exist, the
artist may push the decorative principle very far, so far, indeed, that
his product lacks interest and proves tedious or nonsensical. There is
"nonsense-verse," as we shall see later, which fulfills every condition
for pure formal beauty in poetry. Yet it is not poetry, but only