are enough?  Now Impressionists have told us things as to their impressions—­as to the effect of things upon the temperament of this man and upon the mood of that—­which should not be asserted except on the artistic point of honour.  The majority can tell ordinary truth, but should not trust themselves for truth extraordinary.  They can face the general judgement, but they should hesitate to produce work that appeals to the last judgement, which is the judgement within.  There is too much reason to divine that a certain number of those who aspire to differ from the greatest of masters have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point of view worth seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth waylaying.  And to be, de parti pris, an Impressionist without these!  O Velasquez!  Nor is literature quite free from a like reproach in her own things.  An author, here and there, will make as though he had a word worth hearing—­nay, worth over-hearing—­a word that seeks to withdraw even while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is all too probably a platitude.  But obviously, literature is not—­as is the craft and mystery of painting—­so at the mercy of a half-imposture, so guarded by unprovable honour.  For the art of painting is reserved that shadowy risk, that undefined salvation.  If the artistic temperament—­tedious word!—­with all its grotesque privileges, becomes yet more common than it is, there will be yet less responsibility; for the point of honour is the simple secret of the few.

THE COLOUR OF LIFE

Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life.  But the true colour of life is not red.  Red is the colour of violence, or of life broken open, edited, and published.  Or if red is indeed the colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen.  Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the act of betrayal and of waste.  Red is the secret of life, and not the manifestation thereof.  It is one of the things the value of which is secrecy, one of the talents that are to be hidden in a napkin.  The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses.  It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.

So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life is outdone by all the colours of the world.  Its very beauty is that it is white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than earth; red, but less red than sunset or dawn.  It is lucid, but less lucid than the colour of lilies.  It has the hint of gold that is in all fine colour; but in our latitudes the hint is almost elusive.  Under Sicilian skies, indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; but under the misty blue of the English zenith, and the warm grey of the London horizon, it is as delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, out to their utmost, flat as stars, in the hedges of the end of June.