This might at first sight seem a hard task to perform; the interests we shall have to deal with are so many and so various. But the difficulty may be eluded. I have already gone to literature for examples of special feelings on the part of individuals, and under certain circumstances. We will now go to it for a kindred, though not for the same assistance; and for this end we shall approach it in a slightly different way. What we did before was this. We took certain works of literary art, and selecting, as it were, one or two special patches of colour, we analysed the composition of these. What we shall now do will be to take the pictures as organic wholes, with a view to analysing the effect of them as pictures--the harmony or the contrast of their colours, and the massing of their lights and shadows. If we reflect for a moment what art is--literary and poetical art in particular--we shall at once see how, examined in this way, it will be of use to us. In the first place, then, what is art? and what is the reason that it pleases us? It is a reflection, a reproduction of the pleasures of life, and is altogether relative to these, and dependent on them. We should, for instance, take no interest in portraits unless we took some interest in the human face. We should take none in statues if we took none in the human form. We must know something of love as a feeling, or we should never care for love-songs. Art may send us back to these with intenser appreciation of them, but we must bring to art from life the appreciation we want intensified. Art is a factor in common human happiness, because by its means common men are made partakers in the vision of uncommon men. Great art is a speculum reflecting life as the keenest eyes have seen it. All its forms and imagery are of value only as this. Taken by themselves, '_the best in this kind are but shadows_.' We have to '_piece out their imperfections, with our thoughts_;' '_imagination has to amend them_,' and '_it must be our imagination, not theirs_.'[23] In examining a work of art, then, we are examining life itself; or rather, in examining the interest which we take in a work of art, in examining the reasons why we think it beautiful, or great, or interesting, we are examining our own feelings as to the realities represented by it. And now remembering this, let us turn to certain of the world's greatest works of art--I mean its dramas: for just as poetry is the most articulate of all the arts, so is the drama the most comprehensive form of poetry. In the drama we have the very thing we are now in want of. We have life as a whole--that complex aggregate of details, which forms, as it were, the mental landscape of existence, presented to us in a '_questionable shape_,' at once concentrated and intensified. And it is no exaggeration to say that the reasons why men think life worth living, can be all found in the reasons why they think a great drama great.