Part Three Poet and Angel Chapter 38 The Wizard of the Bow

When they entered the concert-hall, the orchestra had already begun the programme of the day with Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony. The house was crowded to excess; numbers of people were standing, apparently willing to endure a whole afternoon's fatigue, rather than miss hearing the Orpheus of Andalusia,--the "Endymion out of Spain," as one of our latest and best poets has aptly called him. Only a languidly tolerant interest was shown in the orchestral performance,--the "Italian" Symphony is not a really great or suggestive work, and this is probably the reason why it so often fails to arouse popular enthusiasm. For, be it understood by the critical elect, that the heart-whole appreciation of the million is by no means so "vulgar" as it is frequently considered,--it is the impulsive response of those who, not being bound hand and foot by any special fetters of thought or prejudice, express what they instinctively FEEL to be true.

You cannot force these "vulgar," by any amount of "societies," to adopt Browning as a household god,--but they will appropriate Shakespeare, and glory in him, too, without any one's compulsion. If authors, painters, and musicians would probe more earnestly than they do to the core of this INSTINCTIVE HIGHER ASPIRATION OF PEOPLES, it would be all the better for their future fame. For each human unit in a nation has its great, as well as base passions,--and it is the clear duty of all the votaries of art to appeal to and support the noblest side of nature only--moreover, to do so with a simple, unforced, yet graphic eloquence of meaning that can be grasped equally and at once by both the humble and exalted.