This, no doubt, is what he ought to do if he leaves the creative, poetic and more properly artistic aspect of his own function out of the question; if he is making himself a mere transcriber, holding the mirror up to nature with such entire forgetfulness of self as to be rather looking-glass than man, this is what he must do. But the moment he approaches nature in this spirit he ceases to be an artist, and the better he succeeds as painter of something that might pass for a coloured photograph, the more inevitably must he fail to satisfy, or indeed to appeal to us at all as poet—as one whose sympathies with nature extend beyond her superficial aspect, or as one who is so much at home with her as to be able readily to dissociate the permanent and essential from the accidental which may be here to-day and gone to-morrow. If he is to come before us as an artist, he must do so as a poet or creator of that which is not, as well as a mirror of that which is. True, experience in all kinds of poetical work shows that the less a man creates the better, that the more, in fact, he makes, the less is he of a maker; but experience also shows that the course of true nature, like that of true love, never does run smooth, and that occasional, judicious, slight departures from the actual facts, by one who knows the value of a lie too well to waste it, bring nature more vividly and admirably before us than any amount of adherence to the letter of strict accuracy. It is the old story, the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life. With colour, then, he who does not look for it will begin by not seeing it unless it is so obtrusive that there is no escaping it; he will therefore, in his rendering of the hundred facts of nature above referred to, not see the ten coloured bits at all, supposing them to be, even at their brightest, somewhat sober, and his work will be colourless or disagreeable in colour. The faithful copyist, who is still a mere copyist, will give nine details of dull uninteresting colour and one of interesting. The artist or poet will find some reason for slightly emphasising the coloured details and will scatter here and there a few slight, hardly perceptible, allusions to more coloured details than come within the letter of his bond, but will be careful not to overdo it. The vulgar sensational painter will force in his colour everywhere, and of all colourists he must be pronounced the worst.