True art has nothing in common with the popular conception of its nature and uses.

Instead of being decorative, it is organic; when men arrive at a certain stage of ripeness and power they express themselves through its forms as naturally as the tree puts forth its flowers.

Nothing which lies within the range of human achievement is more real or inevitable.

This expression is neither mechanical nor artificial; it is made under certain inflexible laws, but they are the laws of the human spirit, not the rules of a craft; they are rooted in that deeper psychology which deals with man as an organic whole and not as a bundle of separate faculties.
It was once pointed out to Tennyson that he had scrupulously conformed, in a certain poem, to a number of rules of versification and to certain principles in the use of different sound values.

"Yes," answered the poet in substance, "I carefully observed all those rules and was entirely unconscious of them!" There was no contradiction between the Laureate's practice of his craft and the technical rules which govern it.