So art has become foolishly confounded with education, that all should
be equally qualified. Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and
breeding are in no way arguments for artistic result, it is also no
reproach to the most finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land
that he be absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music--that in
his heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's
needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's "C Minor Symphony."
Let him have but the wit to say so, and not let him feel the admission a
proof of inferiority.
Art happens--no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend on it, the
vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it
universal end in quaint comedy and coarse farce.
This is as it should be; and all attempts to make it otherwise are due
to the eloquence of the ignorant, the zeal of the conceited.
_Whistler._