Art, Poetry and Music

I got this great book today from Whodunit, a bookstore I don't get to very often. They mostly sell mysteries (hence the clever name). But they also have other random things. This book, Art, Poetry and Music by John Lubbock, was published in Philadelphia in 1896. It has a white "leatherette" cover with silver embossed flowers and the author's name and title in silver. I read the "Art" essay outside near the river -- it was really nice out today. He writes about perspective in scenes of ancient battle, "As a matter of fact a king is not, as a rule, bigger than his soldiers, but in these battle-scenes he is always so represented" and goes on to say that "in modern battle-pictures the story is much less clear, and, indeed, the untrained eye sees for some time little but scarlet and smoke."

He quotes Ruskin, "Art is no recreation: it cannot be learned at spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do." "It is only in the East," Lubbock adds, "that great works, really due to study and labor, have been attributed to magic." I should really type the whole thing here -- it's so full of great lines. And I haven't even read the essays on poetry or music yet!

March 13, 2007