you to the superiority of Flaxman. When we become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that single name, we may look for an English public capable of real patronage to English Art,—and not till then.
I, Artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, Artist, whose ideas speak in marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I love it not the less because it has been little understood and superficially judged by the common herd: it was not meant for them. I love it not the more because it has found enthusiastic favourers amongst the Few. My affection for my work is rooted in the solemn and pure delight which it gave me to conceive and to perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert, this apparition of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded moments, would have been to me as dear: And this ought, I believe, to be the sentiment with which he whose Art is born of faith in the truth and beauty of the principles he seeks to illustrate, should regard his work. Your serener existence, uniform and holy, my lot denies—if my heart covets. But our true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: And therefore, in Books—which are his Thoughts—the Author's character lies bare to the discerning eye. It is not in the life of cities—in the turmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more sacred life, which for some hours, under every sun, the student lives—(his stolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave)—that I feel there is between us the bond of that secret sympathy, that magnetic chain, which unites the Everlasting Brotherhood, of whose being Zanoni is the type.
London, May 1845.
