They sought to select the best points of Graeco-Roman and Italian style, unconscious that the physical type of the Niobids, the voluptuous charm of Correggio, the luminous color of Titian, the terribleness of Michelangelo, and the serenity of Raphael, being the ultimate expressions of distinct artistic qualities, were incompatible.

A still deeper truth escaped their notice--namely, that art is valueless unless the artist has something intensely felt to say, and that where this intensity of feeling exists, it finds for itself its own specific and inevitable form.
'Poems distilled from other poems pass away, The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes; Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature.' These profound sentences are the epitaph, not only of imitative poetry, but also of such eclectic art as the Caracci instituted.

Very little of it bears examination now.

We regard it with listlessness or loathing.

We turn from it without regret.