But though this quality of industry is essential to an artist, it does
not in anywise make an artist; many people are busy, whose doings are
little worth. Neither does sensibility make an artist; since, as I
hope, many can feel both strongly and nobly, who yet care nothing about
art. But the gifts which distinctively mark the artist--_without_
which he must be feeble in life, forgotten in death--_with_ which
he may become one of the shakers of the earth, and one of the signal
lights in heaven--are those of sympathy and imagination. I will not
occupy your time, nor incur the risk of your dissent, by endeavouring
to give any close definition of this last word. We all have a general
and sufficient idea of imagination, and of its work with our hands and
in our hearts: we understand it, I suppose, as the imaging or picturing
of new things in our thoughts; and we always show an involuntary
respect for this power, wherever we can recognize it, acknowledging it
to be a greater power than manipulation, or calculation, or
observation, or any other human faculty. If we see an old woman
spinning at the fireside, and distributing her thread dexterously from
the distaff, we respect her for her manipulation--if we ask her how
much she expects to make in a year, and she answers quickly, we respect
her for her calculation--if she is watching at the same time that none
of her grandchildren fall into the fire, we respect her for her
observation--yet for all this she may still be a commonplace old woman
enough. But if she is all the time telling her grandchildren a fairy
tale out of her head, we praise her for her imagination, and say, she
must be a rather remarkable old woman. Precisely in like manner, if an
architect does his working-drawing well, we praise him for his
manipulation--if he keeps closely within his contract, we praise him
for his honest arithmetic--if he looks well to the laying of his beams,
so that nobody shall drop through the floor, we praise him for his
observation. But he must, somehow, tell us a fairy tale out of his head
beside all this, else we cannot praise him for his imagination, nor
speak of him as we did of the old woman, as being in any wise out of
the common way, a rather remarkable architect. It seemed to me,
therefore, as if it might interest you to-night, if we were to consider
together what fairy tales are, in and by architecture, to be told--what
there is for you to do in this severe art of yours "out of your heads,"
as well as by your hands.
Perhaps the first idea which a young architect is apt to be allured by,
as a head-problem in these experimental days, is its being incumbent
upon him to invent a "new style" worthy of modern civilization in
general, and of England in particular; a style worthy of our engines
and telegraphs; as expansive as steam, and as sparkling as electricity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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