not doubt but that some one may oppose our views, till now based principally on logical deductions, with other logical combinations. It is enough for us to have proposed here a hypothesis, born of the observation of the facts, which does not meet with any obstacles in the facts, and to have presented it favorably, perhaps, to the attention of criticism. It will remain a hypothesis, we know, so long as we shall be forced to see so dimly this archetype, of which we can give here only a suggestion to the reader.

Since the five romances upon which depend all the known texts (those by Béroul, Eilhart, Thomas, the romance in French prose, and the poem of the "Folie Tristan ") all proceed from it, directly or indirectly, but independently of each other, a comparison of the differences in these five versions will allow us to restore it. By means of a philological operation the mechanism of which it would take too long to describe here, it will be reborn in all its archaic grace, more beautiful than all the romances derived from it, the primitive poem, at once harsh and delicious, voluptuous and cruel, grave and charming, and with an extraordinary, passionate, and sorrowful exaltation. We must imagine the author of this archetype, doubtless an Anglo-Norman, as living in an early period, and his work was doubtless the venerable contemporary of the "Pèlerinage de Charlemagne" or the "Chanson de Roland." Before him there must certainly have been, in the Celtic country, scattered stories of Tristan, that gave the first impetus to his genius; but these stories would have lived obscurely and have fallen into oblivion but for him, who, alone, gave to them an unforeseen value and meaning; it was through him alone that the legend of the fatal love, stronger than law, stronger than honor, came into being and had life, and this love, being absolute, created a sort of mysterious legitimacy for itself. After him, there were only the remouldings of his poem, very beautiful, assuredly. But what do the works of Thomas and Gottfried von Strassburg represent? They are the reduction to the tone of court poetry, the transposition into the "precieux" manner, of a poem originally foreign to the "precieux" and courtly mind. Charming and exquisite as they are when they embellish and soften the inventions of the primitive poet, these remoulders are great only when they preserve them without daring to touch them. The primitive poet alone was the sovereign poet. The theory according to which a legend, slowly elaborated by thousands of poetic hearts, is the fruit of the collaboration of divers peoples and of manifold generations of bards, has, indeed, a certain romantic nobility. Yet there is another sight no less inspiring: that of a man who, by the power of his heart and of his imagination, starting

from a few legendary ideas received from outside, creates heroes that will live, creates the "geste" which is to stir the hearts of men throughout long centuries. Then, too, what matters it whether this sight be the more beautiful or not, sentimentally? It is the more beautiful, only if it is the truer.

A

FREDERIC CROWNINSHIELD

NEW YORK

LITTLE more than twenty years ago a few artists saw wonderful visions of things that might come to pass. Through

the murky ugliness that enveloped the sanctuaries of Church, State, Commerce, and the Home, and all that they contained,—an ugliness that settled on thoroughfare and market-place like a dismal, sooty fog, they saw the ultimate sunshine of Beauty rivaling in its glory the splendor of Attic rays, or the more modern glories of the Renaissance. For, were not the expanses broader, the wealth greater, the instruments of accomplishment more varied? They knew that the degradation of the arts had been brought about by a concomitance of circumstances which they proposed to confront and if possible overcome. The term "arts" embraced what are commonly called the "applied arts" or arts and crafts" or the "decorative arts," all one and the same thing, from the adornment of a salt-cellar to a monumental mural painting; from the brocading of a flowered silk to the weaving of a pictured tapestry; from the damascening of a sabre to the casting of an heroic statue. They knew that these so-called "decorative arts," which had been differenced from art pure and comprehensive either of Classic, Mediæval, or Renaissance days, had received their quietus from this very differentiation through the malign influence of guilds and academies,―trades' unions, if you will, and that they were degraded to a secondary place, yielding the first place to the easel picture, or movable statue destined, perhaps, for no fixed abode. They realized that, as a consequence, the "applied arts" had slowly but surely declined in artistic quality until they had touched their nadir within the memory of men still living.

Who were these hopeful enthusiasts? Primarily, they were atelierbred artists trained to produce the easel picture, and aware of the conditions above set forth; who were more or less familiar with the world's art history; who knew that the highest work even in the lowliest departments had been accomplished by men endowed with the keenest sensibilities to beauty and with hands coequal with their taste. They harked back to the days of the Italian bottega, or workshop. They saw in the far perspective of the years, but with a clarity of vision that is the prerogative of the highly sensitive, the Robbias, Donatellos, Verrocchios, Ghirlandajos, Cellinis, and the whole galaxy of those wonderful artist-artisans (on whose output our uncreative world is living today), producing count

Copyright, 1904, Frederick A. Richardson, all rights reserved.

less chefs-d'œuvre, from their bonnet buckles or marriage chests, to their equestrian Colleonis, Gattamelatas, Novella frescoes, or Sistine epics. They saw, too, the unique Raphael painting his first tender Madonnas, or a church banner, then portraits and Florentine Holy Families, and later the incomparable mural frescoes of the Stanze, nor yet ignoring designs for mosaics, tapestries, platters, and even perfume vases. Last of all, they saw him architect, the author of the Loggia, admirable in scale, color, invention, and entirely satisfactory to churchmen, laymen, and artists. Has the world ever paused to think what a loss architecture sustained in the premature death of Raphael? According to the historians and poets painting is his chief mourner. Rather should it be architecture and all that architecture implies. It is to be doubted that had his life been spared painting would have occupied more than a secondary place in his thoughts except through the instrumentality of his disciples. It would seem as though his artistic feeling was seeking expression through the wider channels of the builder's art: not the builder as he is commonly understood, but one competent to found, erect, roof, adorn,-adorn with paintings if need be, with sculpture, mosaic, glass, tapestry, carven wood, and all manner of precious material, but material metamorphosed by the craftsman's hand. Had Raphael lived it seems as though he would have erected buildings unparagoned in the ages.

Such an hypothesis is not unreasonable when we take into consideration the charming architectural fancies that held the background of his earlier paintings to the later sumptuous structural forms of his Vatican frescoes; his tutelage under Bramante; his coöperation with Fra Giocondo and San Gallo; his study of Vitruvius and the ruins of Rome; and finally his actual achievements in this new departure,-unless he had yielded to the sin that besets some of our own most gifted architects, and attempted too much and worked too vicariously.

These few artists harked back to Raphael and to those of his kind as types, ideal types, to be imitated in their universality as far as modern conditions might permit, for they aimed if not actually to build, themselves, at least to acquire an aesthetic knowledge of architecture, the value of its solids and voids, where to emphasize structure, and where purely to adorn. Thus if the interest of the architect could be aroused (who was no longer either painter or sculptor) a happy coöperation might ensue which would extricate the arts of decoration from the quagmire in which they seem to be hopelessly involved, and even react favorably on architecture itself. And such an interest was aroused at that time in a few quickwitted, sympathetic architects. The intercourse between these few

decorators and equally few architects was cordial and equal, equal, because the architect quite as frequently visited the studio of the artist as the latter the office of the architect. The deference, or a lack of it, was mutual; the architect requested, the artist granted, or vice versa. The mutual performance may not, perhaps, have always been commensurate with the expectation, but in memory, at least, it was interesting, personal, and promising if the conditions were to be continued. But this was not to be. For shortly there loomed the black, destroying demon of Commercialism, against which all resistance seems futile, certainly the resistance of the sensitive, retiring, creative men whom the world has pleased to call artists.

a

The laws that govern art are dissimilar to those that rule the marketplace. Indeed, they may be said to be the antipodes. Coöperation on an extended scale; suppression of individualism; great sales and small profits; wide and blatant advertisements; a conspicuous, ornate, and often inappropriate "plant"; a legion of well drilled canvassers; promise greater than the performance, all are part and parcel of the modern commercial scheme. Art, on the contrary, is an individual calling, the more intensely individual the better. The trinity of the arts, united in one personality is the ideal,-the sculptor, painter, architect all in one, a Michel Angelo, for example, or a Raphael. This triune concentration, for reasons that cannot be stated here, is very difficult of realization today, if not impossible; but the close and sympathetic fellowship of architect, sculptor, and painter comes very near to it. Rob art of its individuality and you leave it a mere brittle, colorless husk. In fact, you have no art, only sere and arid reminiscence. In commerce the rule is large sales with small profits; in art small sales and fairly large profits; in commerce an apparent, ostentatious outfit; in art an inconspicuous, often shabby workshop; in commerce trumpeting canvassers and announcements; in art a becoming modesty, unwillingness to fost the unworthy on a credulous public, a painful sense of insufficiency; and lastly, in commerce something akin to the lie; in art the yearning for the truth.

These antithetical periods are not merely empty, splenetic words. They can each and all be substantiated by proven illustration. Let us suppose that an important decorative work is contemplated. The decorative artist, either alone, or in coöperation with an architect, proposes a scheme which seems to meet with the approbation of the client, and all is about to progress satisfactorily when some one, with the trade instinct, some one not quite an artist, a shrewd ex-foreman, perhaps, or ex-salesman, with no faculty for design, no feeling for art, but with a grammar