Dreams, the author-hero, Lucian Taylor, evolves a complete and mystic comprehension of all the manifestations of sex from the accidental embrace of a farm girl. The novelist, the painter, are thus reduced to models, however far-fetched and ridiculously inappropriate the models may appear to be in the light cast by the finished work. No doubt George Sand loved all her lovers, but somewhere in the back of her head lurked a realization that their ultimate purpose was to supply copy. Some one once asked Maurice Maeterlinck what had been his inspiration for the creation of Pelléas et Mélisande and his reply was, "I was writing a piece that suited my wife." Cecil Forsythe, in his book, Nationalism in Music, educes the interesting theory that a great sea-power never produces great musicians, but that authors and painters flourish under triumphant mercantile, social, and political régimes.
Painters and writers extract their material from the world. They must mingle with men, see and understand life, no matter how far removed from life their finished art may be. Art, it may be stated categorically, is certainly not a reproduction of nature, and yet without nature, or some human aspect of it, the painter and writer are helpless. Perhaps you have never seen a Monet hay-stack in a real field, but unless
