Of course the personal
value of the man, the mind, behind any plastic expression is, in a
sense, the measure of the expression itself. If it be a mind interested
in "pouncet-box" covers, in the pictorial setting forth of themes whose
illustration most intimately appeals to the less cultivated and more
rudimentary appreciation of fine art--as indisputably the Madonnas and
Charities and Oresteses and Bacchus Triumphs of M. Bouguereau do--one
may very well dispense himself from the duty of admiring its
productions. Life is short, and more important things, things of more
significant import, demand attention. The grounds on which the works of
Bouguereau and Cabanel are admired are certainly insufficient. But they
are experts in their sphere. What they do could hardly be better done.
If they appeal to a _bourgeois_, a philistine ideal of beauty, of
interest, they do it with a perfection that is pleasing in itself. No
one else does it half so well. To minds to which they appeal at all,
they appeal with the force of finality; for these they create as well as
illustrate the type of what is admirable and lovely.
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