Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

The sketch illustrates a paradox central to Pater's sensibility and writings: a leaning towards ascetic beauty apprehended sensuously. These are not so much stories – plotting is limited and dialogue absent – as psychological studies of fictional characters in historical settings often personifications of new concepts at turning-points in the history of ideas or emotion. Having a particular temperament under review he would ask what was the range of forms in which it might find expression.

Walter Horatio Pater (4 August 1839 – 30 July 1894) was an English essayist critic of art and literature and writer of fiction.