And if with us a long poem be a contradiction in terms, a full picture is with them as self-condemnatory a production.
From the contemplation of such works of art as we call finished, one is apt, after he has once appreciated Far Eastern taste, to rise with an unpleasant feeling of satiety, as if he has eaten too much at the feast.
Their paintings, by comparison, we call sketches.

Is not our would-be slight unwittingly the reverse?
Is not a sketch, after all, fuller of meaning, to one who knows how to read it, than a finished affair, which is very apt to end with itself, barren of fruit?
Does not one's own imagination elude one's power to portray it?
Is it not forever flitting will-o'-the-wisp-like ahead of us just beyond exact definition?
For the soul of art lies in what art can suggest, and nothing is half so suggestive as the half expressed, not even a double entente.

To hint a great deal by displaying a little is more vital to effect than the cleverest representation of the whole.

The art of partially revealing is more telling, even, than the ars celare artem.

Who has not suspected through a veil a fairer face than veil ever hid?
Who has not been delightedly duped by the semi-disclosures of a dress?
The principle is just as true in any one branch of art as it is of the attempted developments by one of the suggestions of another.