that all Mr. Brownell's admirers will understand why no review can give any adequate notion of the artistic tension and fullness of his treatment: "No man ever spake more neatly, more weightily or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered."
When a man of letters of Mr. Brownell's eminent talent spends a lifetime in an inflexible pursuit of perfection, it is not strange, yet it is singularly inspiring, to consider how fittingly the fine things which have been said of other men may be applied to him. As, for instance, with reference to his social consciousness, this tribute of Pater's to the Greek master of all those who seek to think straight and feel nobly: "It is life itself, action and character, he professes to color; to get something of that irrepressible conscience of art, that spirit of control, into the general course of life, above all, into its energetic or impassioned acts." And this tribute of Joubert's to the same master:
Somehow or other the habit of reading him augments in us the capacity for discerning and entertaining whatever fine truths may afterward present themselves. Like mountain air it sharpens our organs and gives us an appetite for wholesome food.
Yes, Mr. Brownell belongs to the Academy, to the true sons of that Academy which met under the plane trees outside the city wall and asked the gods that haunted the spot, not in vain, for "beauty in the inner man."
