But the impressions produced by the real undergo in the mere transcription certain modifications, which are greater or less according to the organization of the exponent; and while some of the subject’s delicate aroma invariably escapes in its passage, however transitory, from brain to canvas, the proper conservation of what remains constitutes the work of art on whose opulence succeeding generations are nourished, and from which, in turn, other impressions are derived; and where the original exponent has artistically transcribed that which he has seen and felt, his followers express not that which reality suggests to them, but that which Nature suggested to him, and the original types of the one become the modified models of the others, until in descending the centuries reality becomes unrecognizable, and art and literature through constant copying of copies become at last enervated and meaningless. When, therefore, the poetry of the Greeks was becoming entangled in the subtleties of versification, it received a fresh and vigorous impulsion from Theocritus, who, disregarding the set rules of his contemporaries, and returning to the direct observation of reality, expressed not only the ideal, as poetry should, but also Nature in her most humble and familiar details, and represented his Shepherdess as beautiful but unkempt, the odor of cattle about her, and with her hands hardened by contact with the horns of the steers. Pictures of the obvious and the true should represent, therefore, not only the beautiful but the repulsive, not only that which is unpleasant but that which is agreeable; and the Shepherdess of Theocritus, in her unkempt beauty, would be as untrue to nature had she not the odor of the cattle about her as are the patched and powdered bergères with which Watteau charmed the Pompadour. Nature loves and abounds in contrasts, as witness the toad squatting beneath the rose bush; and while either may afford a separate study, yet the union of the two is necessary in a faithful picture of what actually exists. When, therefore, Villon broke away from the stilted and flowery madrigals of the school of Charles d’Orléans, and sought anew for the simplicity of Nature, he was but continuing Theocritus and paving the way for Diderot and Rétif de la Bretonne. The current of opinion, however, was adverse to these writers, and it was not until the early part of the present century, when the Romantic school, with its vanguards led by Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand and with Victor Hugo for its subsequent chief, had succeeded after a terrible struggle in freeing themselves from the established rules and conventional phrasing of the classicists and had raised the standard of liberty in art, that many of the prejudices which the Academicians had engendered disappeared, and the ground, swept clean and clear, was prepared for the advent of a new teacher.