Call him Gothic, if you like,
but the inspiring mind that presided over the growth of these clustered
masses of arch and spire and pinnacle and buttress is neither Greek nor
Gothic,--it is simply genius lending itself to embody the new desire of
man's mind, as it had embodied the old. After all, to be delightful is to
be classic, and the chaotic never pleases long. But manifoldness is not
confusion, any more than formalism is simplicity. If Shakespeare rejected
the unities, as I think he who complains of "Art made tongue-tied by
Authority" might very well deliberately do, it was for the sake of an
imaginative unity more intimate than any of time and place. The antique
in itself is not the ideal, though its remoteness from the vulgarity of
everyday associations helps to make it seem so. The true ideal is not
opposed to the real, nor is it any artificial heightening thereof, but
lies _in_ it, and blessed are the eyes that find it! It is the _mens
divinior_ which hides within the actual, transfiguring matter-of-fact
into matter-of-meaning for him who has the gift of second-sight. In this
sense Hogarth is often more truly ideal than Raphael, Shakespeare often
more truly so than the Greeks. I think it is a more or less conscious
perception of this ideality, as it is a more or less well-grounded
persuasion of it as respects the Greeks, that assures to him, as to them,
and with equal justice, a permanent supremacy over the minds of men.
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