Belcaro Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions

pubOne.info present you this new edition. A little while ago I told you that I wished this collection of studies to be more especially yours: so now I send it you, a bundle of proofs and of MS. , to know whether you will have it. I wish I could give you what I have written in the same complete way that a painter would give you one of his sketches, that a singer, singing for you alone, might give you his voice and his art, for a dedication is but a drop of ink on a large white sheet, and conveys but a sorry notion of property. Now, this book is intended to be really yours, yours in the sense that, were it impossible for more than one copy of it to exist, that one copy I should certainly give to you. Because these studies represent the ideas I have so far been able to work out for myself about art, considered not historically, but in its double relation to the artist and the world for whom he works, ideas which it is my highest ambition should influence those young enough and powerful enough to act upon them, and, this being the case, my first thought is to place them before you: it is, you see, a matter of conversion, and the nearest, most difficult, most desired convert, is yourself