Yet, ere we wander where the Salons wait,
Regard the colour of an elder date,
And, glancing at some names that France may boast,
Culled here and there from a receding host,
Observe the painters who, in whole or part,
Have touched to finer issues pictured art.

View Cousin's, Clouet's and the Le Nains' paint,
Of drawing crude, of colour cold and faint;
The Fontainebleau group, of Italian aim,
That never blossomed with a famous name;
Eclectic Vouet, of the technique vile;
Le Valentin, of cheap, archaic style;
And sterile Poussin, who could never show
A canvas where he made the colour flow
In aught save stilted manner, thin and weak,
The so-called classic mode some painters seek.

O word misused! what art crimes hast thou cloaked,
What callow crudities and cant evoked!
Let us have done with such abuse of sense,
A classic picture does not give offence;
It is not stilted and devoid of style—
Style only can the classic grace beguile;
The theme is never classic, and we need
A clean revision of the painter's creed.
The classic style is merely what is best,
The kind that triumphs o'er the Attic test,
And no more means the antique than the new—
The classic style is timeless, like the true.

The Madrid master knew what classic meant,
Its subtle shading and serene extent.
He painted Men, not puppets poor and slight,
Begot of palsied hand and blinded sight.
Degas the worth of classic painting knows.
Does Puvis, of the sad, consumptive pose?
The cockney of Phil May has classic grace,
Not so the maid Du Maurier tried to trace.
The landscape men of 'Thirty saw in youth
What classic means, and how it stands for truth;
Not truth of detail; but of mass and tone—
That culmination that is art's alone.

Let us recuperate, be honour bright,
And have the courage of selective sight;
No longer loiter at the bungler's lair,
But learn that Classic Art is free as air;
Free as the beauty worshipped of her sons,
The home-grown beauty that the bungler shuns;
Cast off all doubt and turn our backs on ‘bleat’
To wander with the master in the street,
And know again the sanity that said:
‘The classic is but the romantic dead.’