value and sources of highest art

Thinking and tinkering about aesthetics, all the while steeped in Byron...

 MAY 1853

Frank said, solemnly: " The present is all we possess: but we should turn from sad experience to the future; there to lay hopeful plans, with good resolves." 

C. —Labour and depravity are our curse: but blessings too are the high faculties of the soul: among which are poetic fancies, — perception of the beautiful, —romantic yearnings, which were given for cultivation; they elevate man's mind, and

'Make his heart a spirit—'

In cherishing these heaven-descended attributes, we can oft forget that we are animals too.  ("Scenes Beyond the Western Border")

1857:

... my Friend said solemnly: "The present only is ours; but we should turn from sad experience to the future, there to lay hopeful plans, with good resolves."

"Labor and care and depravity are our curse: but blessings too are the faculties by which we struggle above the Sensual;—perceptions of the Beautiful, and the Sublime,—all the elements of the Ideal realm, where, Fancy-borne, we draw the materials of highest art; they elevate poor grovelling man, and

'Make his heart a spirit—'

Thus to poetry, and much-abused romance, we owe the cherished oblivion of our animal natures. (Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 411)

From Melville's 1857-1858 Lecture on "Statues in Rome"

They appeal to that portion of our beings which is highest and noblest....These marbles, the works of the dreamers and idealists of old, live on, leading and pointing to good.  They are the works of visionaries and dreamers, but they are realizations of soul, the representations of the ideal....They were formed by those who had yearnings for something better, and strove to attain it by embodiments in cold stone.  How well in the Apollo is expressed he idea of the perfect man.  Who could better it?  Can art, not life, make the ideal?  (Melville as Lecturer, 150)

According to contemporary newspaper reports, Melville ended his lecture on Roman statuary by quoting famous lines from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto 4, 145):

“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
  When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
  And when Rome falls—the world.”