Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1898-02-10
IN PICTURES AND PRINT.
Advantages of the Author Artist Over the
Mere Writer.

II Advantages of the Author Artist Over the
Mere Writer.
i The artist author has something
that he wishes to tell and to do this
he has at his command two modes
Of expression, each of which supple
ments and supplies the shortcom-
ings of the other. Where the linn
itation blocks the way of words he
can imagine out his idea with his
pencil. When it fails, words can
supply it's need, and so he can pre-
sent his idea before the world at a
tremendous advantage.
1t seems as if he must be better
fitted than any one else for that
presentation of what he means. He
has lived and moved with his char
acters. He has eaten and drunk,
slept and wakened with them, and
to him as to no one else they are
visible personalities. But let him
describe them, however infinitely
and accurately, and they will not be
impressed on the mind of the casual
reader as they would be if he saw
them in picture, or, if the reader
is imaginative enough to clothe
those characters with a body, it is
probably not at all what they were
really meant to be.
How intensely interesting it
would have been if Poe, like Blake,
had been able to imagine out some
of those strange visions that filled
his brain not only in words, but in
actual lines as we'll, or if Cervantes
had left US some idea of how Don
Quixote and his Spanish squire real
~ looked, however roughly drawn
they might have been
1t is under the Byzantine en-
perors that the earliest manuscripts
| Of modern Europe were produced,
and they exist in great numbers and
are of surprising splendor. A timid
suggestion may indeed be ventured
that the Byzantine scribes were less
careful Of their calligraphy than of
their paintings. That may be true,
and it may yet remain true that the
Byzantines had splendid cal
ligraphy Of their own and a splendid
notion of how to adorn their pages.
The Irish monks of the sixth and
seventh centuries, the English
monks of the ninth century and the
French of somewhat later time
were the fellows for beautiful let
tering. The splendid manuscript
which is called by the name of King
1 Knut and which lies in the British
museum contains lettering which
is SO beautiful in its strange modifi
;. cation of the,classical Roman letter
that even the splendid renaissance
work Of five centuries later scarcely
equals it. Every one knows the
, Gothic character of the twelfth
, and thirteenth century manuscripts
a character which the modern Ger.
man typograPher has preserved fol
!, our sins and to punish the eyes Of
those who would fain study German
thoroughly, but few persons know
the pref Gothic character, the beau.
, tiful lettering founded on the an
tique forms, which was preserved
, in the north and in the south, alike
in Lombardy, in France, and in
England, down to time at least as
late as the year $50. Take any in.
itial page Of a tenth century manu-.
script, northern or southern, and
see how much more beautiful is the
!, writing than are the figures Of me1
and animals which are supposed t.
adorn it. The ignorance shown il
drawing these visible objects il
great, and the absence of any powe,
over their forms is really ugly and
offensive, but the power of abstrac,
, form, of making a letter into {
!, beautiful thing, is, however, SO great
as to be quite inconceivable to race
of people like ourselves, who have
, lost the trick of decorative design
Independent