Disrealize

And yet haue they not alwaies plentie or aboundaunce of these readye at hand neyther, or in ease they haue, yet is it marred and disrealised with muche galle of griefes and sorowes.

By that disrealizing and subliming touch of genius which made the ragged beggar who sat to Michael Angelo rise from beneath his chisel “transformed into the Patriarch of Poverty,” the great novelist leads us into the realm where his ideal creations float in immortal freedom, and sets us free to rove and rest with them.

The rules as I take it, if rules can be spoken of in such a matter, are two only. The first is, “Disrealise everything, and never forget that whatever art is, it is not nature.” The second is the same as that just given, “Try all things if you like: but if you try the exceptional, the abnormal the unconventional, remember that you try it at your own peril, and you must either make a great success or an intolerable and inexcusable failure.

But the snow threw over everything an unfamiliar guise; the reflected light, striking gently yet brilliantly up from below, had a disrealising quality, produced a subtle architectural confusion, such as the process of floodlighting coarsely travesties.