Carrying a delicacy like that of nature
itself into every form of imitation, reproduction, and combination--
leaf and flower, fish and bird, reed and water--and failing only when
it touches the sacred human form, that art of Japan is not so unlike
the earliest stages of Greek art as might at first sight be supposed.
We have here, and in no mere fragments, the spectacle of a universal
application to the instruments of daily life of fitness and beauty,
in a temper still unsophisticated, as also unelevated, by the
divination of the spirit of man. And at least the student must
always remember that Greek art was throughout a much richer and
warmer thing, at once with more shadows, and more of a dim
magnificence in its surroundings, than the illustrations of a
classical dictionary might induce him to think. Some of the ancient
temples of Greece were as rich in aesthetic curiosities as a famous
modern museum. That Asiatic poikilia,+ that spirit of minute and
curious loveliness, follows the bolder imaginative efforts of Greek
art all through its history, and one can hardly be too careful in
keeping up the sense of this daintiness of execution through the
entire course of its development.
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