II

I have already given what I believe to be the best answer to these
questions as to what beauty is and how it is to be judged. Beauty is
beauty as good is good (_see_ pp. 7, 8), or yellow, yellow; indeed, to
the second question, Matthew Arnold has given the only possible
answer--the relative value of beauties is "as the judicious would
determine," and the judicious are, in matters of art "finely touched and
gifted men." This criterion obviously cannot be easily or hastily
applied, nor could one ever be quite sure that in any given case it had
been applied to any given effect. But for practical needs we see that it
suffices to cast a slur on facile popularity, and vindicate over and
over again those who had been despised and rejected. What the true
artist desires to bring into his pictures is the power to move
finely-touched and gifted men. Not only are such by very much the
minority, but the more part of them being, by their capacity to be moved
and touched, easily wounded, have developed a natural armour of reserve,
of moroseness, of prejudice, of combativeness, of pedantry, which makes
them as difficult to address as wombats, or bears, or tortoises, or
porcupines, or polecats, or elephants. It is interesting to witness how
Duerer's self-contradictions show him to be aware of the great complexity
of these difficulties, as also to see how very near he comes to the true
answer. At one time he tells us:

"When men demand a work of a master, he is to be praised in so far as he
succeeds in satisfying their likings ..."[88]

At another he tells us: