Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.

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.