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diff --git a/old/67870-0.txt b/old/67870-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1862c28..0000000 --- a/old/67870-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5230 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Readers and Writers (1917-1921), by -Alfred Richard Orage - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Readers and Writers (1917-1921) - -Author: Alfred Richard Orage - -Release Date: April 18, 2022 [eBook #67870] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive/American - Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK READERS AND WRITERS -(1917-1921) *** - - - - - - -READERS & WRITERS - - - - - Readers and Writers - (1917-1921) - - By - R. H. C. (A. R. Orage) - - [Illustration] - - LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. - RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1 - - _First published in 1922_ - - _All rights reserved_ - - - - -Preface - - -Under the title of “Readers and Writers” and over the initials “R. H. -C.” I contributed to the _New Age_, during a period of seven or eight -years, a weekly literary causerie of which the present volume, covering -the years 1917-1921, is a partial reprint. My original design was to -treat literary events from week to week with the continuity, consistency -and policy ordinarily applied to comments on current political events; -that is to say, with equal seriousness and from a similarly more or less -fixed point of view as regards both means and end. This design involved -of necessity a freedom of expression rather out of fashion, though it was -the convention of the greatest period of English literature, namely, the -Eighteenth Century; and its pursuit in consequence brought the comments -into somewhat lively disrepute. That, however, proved not to be the -greatest difficulty. Indeed, within the last few years an almost general -demand for more serious, more outspoken and even more “savage” criticism -has been heard, and is perhaps on the way to being satisfied, though -literary susceptibilities are still far from being as well-mannered as -political susceptibilities. The greatest difficulty is encountered in the -fact that literary events, unlike political events, occur with little -apparent order, and are subject to no easily discoverable or demonstrable -direction. In a single week every literary form and tendency may find -itself illustrated, with the consequence that any attempt to set the -week’s doings in a relation of significant development is bound to fall -under the suspicion of impressionism or arbitrariness. I have no other -defence against these charges than Plato’s appeal to good judges, of whom -the best because the last is Time. Time will pronounce as only those -living critics can whose present judgments are an anticipation of Time’s. -Time will show what has been right and what wrong. Already, moreover, a -certain amount of winnowing and sifting has taken place. Some literary -values of this moment are not what they were yesterday or the day before. -A few are greater; many of them are less. My most confident prediction, -however, remains to be confirmed: it is that the perfect English style is -still to be written. That it may be in our own time is both the goal and -the guiding-star of all literary criticism that is not idle chatter. - - A. R. ORAGE. - -_The New Age_, 38 CURSITOR STREET, E.C. 4. - -_December 1921._ - - - - -Contents - - - PAGE - - PREFACE 5 - - FONTENELLE 15 - - BIOGRAPHY 16 - - THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRESS 17 - - CRITICS BEWARE 20 - - HENRY JAMES 22 - - TURGENEV 27 - - PLOTINUS 29 - - THE NEW EUROPE 31 - - THE FASHION OF ANTI-PURITANISM 32 - - POPULAR PHILOSOPHY 34 - - WAS CARLYLE PRUSSIAN? 36 - - IS NIETZSCHE FOR GERMANY? 37 - - NIETZSCHE IN FRAGMENTS 38 - - THE END OF FICTION 41 - - THE CRITERIA OF CULTURE 42 - - THE FATE OF SCULPTURE 45 - - THE TOO CLEVER 46 - - HOMAGE TO PROPERTIUS 49 - - MR. POUND AND MR. WYNDHAM LEWIS IN PUBLIC 52 - - MR. EZRA POUND AS METRICIST 57 - - MR. EZRA POUND ON RELIGION 60 - - MR. POUND, CARICATURIST 62 - - THE ADMIRABLE VICTORIANS 63 - - FRENCH CLARTÉ 65 - - WHEN SHALL WE TRANSLATE? 66 - - NATURE IN MIND 68 - - MR. CLIVE BELL’S POT 70 - - THE CRITICISM OF POETS 73 - - “JOHN EGLINTON” 74 - - IRISH HUMOUR 75 - - THE LITERARY DRAMA OF IRELAND 76 - - MR. STANDISH O’GRADY 79 - - MR. STANDISH O’GRADY, ENCHANTER 80 - - LES SENTIMENTS DE JULIEN BENDA 81 - - CONVALESCENCE AFTER NEWSPAPER 82 - - NATURE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 88 - - S.S.S. 90 - - STERNE CRITICISM 92 - - STERNE ON LOVE IN FRANCE 94 - - ENGLISH STYLE 95 - - LITERARY CULS-DE-SAC 98 - - THE DECLINE OF FREE INTELLIGENCE 98 - - LITERARY COPYRIGHT IN AMERICA 103 - - RIGHT CRITICISM 109 - - MAN’S SURVIVAL OF BODILY DEATH 111 - - BEARDSLEY AND ARTHUR SYMONS 115 - - “Æ’S” “CANDLE OF VISION” 117 - - HOW TO READ 134 - - THE OLD COUNTRY 135 - - LOOKING FOR THE DAWN 136 - - FIELDING FOR AMERICA 139 - - POOR AUTHORS! 140 - - ON GUARD 143 - - THE COMING RENAISSANCE 145 - - LEONARDO DA VINCI AS PIONEER 147 - - “SHAKESPEARE” SIMPLIFIED 151 - - THE “LONDON MERCURY” AND ENGLISH 152 - - MR. G. K. CHESTERTON ON ROME AND GERMANY 155 - - THE ORIGINS OF MARX 161 - - MARX AS POLITICIAN 163 - - JOHN MITCHEL AS THE SAME 166 - - NORSE IN ENGLISH 167 - - THE COMEDY OF IT 168 - - THE EPIC SERBS 171 - - ERNEST DOWSON 173 - - A SENTIMENTAL EXCURSION 175 - - THE NEWEST TESTAMENT 178 - - NOTHING FOREIGN 182 - - PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 184 - - PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE MYSTERIES 185 - - GENTLY WITH PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 188 - - A CAMBRIDGE “COCOON” 190 - - AN OXFORD MISCELLANY 195 - - THE IMPOTENCE OF SATIRE 196 - - THE “DIAL” OF AMERICA 199 - - AMERICA REGRESSING 206 - - THE BEST IS YET TO BE 209 - - INDEX 215 - - - - -Readers and Writers - - -FONTENELLE.—There is a reason that Fontenelle has never before been -translated into English. It is not that Mr. Ezra Pound, who has now -translated a dozen of Fontenelle’s dialogues, was the first to think of -it. Many readers of the original have tried their hand at the translation -only to discover that somehow or other Fontenelle would not “go” in -English as he goes in French. The reason is not very far to seek. -Fontenelle wrote a French peculiarly French, a good but an untranslatable -French. He must, therefore, be left and read in the original if he is to -be appreciated at his intrinsic value. Mr. Pound has made a rash attempt -at the impossible in these dialogues, and he has achieved the unreadable -through no further fault of his own. The result was foregone. The -dialogues themselves in their English form are a little more dull than -are the _Conversations_ of Landor, which is to say that they are very -dull indeed. Nothing at the first glance could be more attractive than -dialogues between the great dead of the world. To every tyro the notion -comes inevitably sooner or later, as if it were the idea for which the -world were waiting. Nevertheless, on attempting it, the task is found to -be beyond most human powers. Nobody has yet written a masterpiece in it. -Fontenelle was not in any case the man to succeed in it from an English -point of view. We English take the great dead seriously. We expect them -to converse paradisaically in paradise, and to be as much above their own -living level as their living level was above that of ordinary men. Here, -however, is a pretty task for a writer of dead dialogues, for he has not -only to imitate the style, but to glorify both the matter and style of -the greatest men of past ages. No wonder that he fails; no wonder that in -the vast majority of cases he produces much the same impression of his -heroes as is produced of them at spiritualistic séances. The attempt, -however, will always continue to be made. It is a literary cactus-form -that blooms every fifty years or so. As I calculate its periodicity, some -one should shortly be producing a new series. - -BIOGRAPHY.—Very few biographers have been anywhere near the level of -mind of their subjects, and fewer still have been able to describe even -what they have understood. The character of a great man is so complex -that a genius for grasping essentials must be assumed in his perfect -biographer: at the same time, it is so tedious in the analysis that the -narrative must be condensed to represent it. Between the subtlety to -be described, and the simplicity with which it must be described, the -character of a man is likely to fall in his portrait into the distortion -of over-elaboration or into the sketch. Though difficult, however, the -art has been frequently shown to be not impossible. We could not ask for -a better portrait of Johnson than Boswell’s. Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_ -is as good as we desire it to be. Plato’s _Socrates_ is truer than life; -and there are others. On the whole, the modern gossiping method is not -likely to become popular in a cultured country. - -THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRESS.—From his little brush with the -Press, Dr. Lyttelton has come off badly. It was not because his case -was bad, but because he had not the moral courage to stick to his -guns. His case was that Parliament had practically ceased to be the -leader of the nation, and that its place had been taken by the Press. -Unfortunately, however, the Press had come to depend for its living upon -sensationalism, with the consequence that its tendency was to prefer -fiction to fact. A perfectly good case, I say, who know more of Fleet -Street than Dr. Lyttelton will ever know. Every word of the indictment is -well within the truth. But when challenged by the Press to substantiate -his charges, Dr. Lyttelton, instead of inviting the world simply to -_look_ at the Press and to contrast its reports with facts, proceeded to -exculpate the editors and to put the whole blame on the public. It is -the public, he said, that is responsible, and there is no use in rating -the editors, who merely supplied what the public wanted. But so long as -public men adopt this cowardly attitude nothing can possibly be done, -for the “public,” like a corporation, has neither a body to be kicked -nor a soul to be damned. Relatively to the proprietors and editors of -the Press the public consists of irresponsible individuals, who merely -choose from among what is laid before them. They are mostly as innocent -as children who deal at a tuck-shop, and, perchance, buy sweets and cakes -that are bad for them as readily as things that are good for them. The -responsible parties are the proprietors and editors, and, above them, the -law. It is not an offence to buy articles at a shop that are illegally -displayed for sale. The public supposition is that if they are on sale -they can be bought. And, in fact, the Public Prosecutor, unlike Dr. -Lyttelton, does not proceed against the purchasers of illegal articles, -he proceeds against the vendors. In the case of our newspaper proprietors -and editors the conditions of shop-keeping are parallel; they expose -professed news and views for sale, with an implied guarantee that their -goods are both good and fit for human consumption. The public cannot be -expected to know which is which, or what is what, any more in the case of -news and views than in the case of tea and potatoes. Rather less indeed, -since the ill-effects of false news and unsound views are, as a rule, too -long delayed and too subtle to be attributed to their proper causes. But -the Press proprietors and editors know very well. They know whether the -news they expose is true, or the views they vend are sound. They know -also that in a large degree they are neither the one nor the other. Yet -they continue to sell them, and even to expect public honours for their -fraudulent dealings. The excuses made for them are such as could be made -for any other fraudulent industry; that it pays, that the public swallows -it, that honesty would not pay, that the public does not want truth -and sincerity, that the public must learn to discriminate for itself. -Reduced to a simple statement, all these mean, in effect, that the Press -is prepared to trade on the ignorance and folly of the public. So long -as editors and proprietors are allowed to sail off from responsibility -under the plea that they are only satisfying a public demand, so long -will it be possible for purveyors of other forms of indecent literature -and vendors of other articles of public ill-fare to complain that they -are unfairly treated. There is likely to be always a demand for fiction -against fact, the plausible lie against the honest truth, the doctored -news against the plain statement, and the pleasing superficial against -the strenuous profound. A change of taste in these respects could only -be brought about by a determined effort in education extending over a -generation and applied not only to schools, but to the Press, the pulpit, -and to book-publishing. But because the preference now exists, and is a -profitable taste to pander to, it is not right to acquit the Press that -thrives on it. - -CRITICS BEWARE.—Mr. Crees, the author of a new study of George Meredith, -has first pointed out one of the dangers in writing about Meredith -and then fallen into it. Everybody knows what it is; it is writing in -epigram, or, as Mr. Crees calls it, “miscarrying with abortive epigram.” -That phrase alone should have warned Mr. Crees how near he was to -ignoring his own counsel; but apparently he saw only the idea and not -the fact, for a passage soon occurs in which he illustrates the danger -perfectly. He is writing of the difficulty encountered by a certain kind -of intellectual—Meredith, for example—in winning any public recognition; -and this is the way he miscarries on: - - The idol of the future is the Aunt Sally of the present. The - pioneer of intellect ploughs a lonely furrow. He is assailed by - invective, beset by contumely, the butt of ridicule, the Saint - Sebastian of the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. - He is depressed by disregard, chilled by the icy waters of - contempt, haunted by the dread of beggary, the recompense of - strictness of conviction.... And when detraction recites its - palinode, his sole compensation is to reply (from the Elysian - fields), “I told you so.” - -There are many untruths contained in this passage, some flattering and -others not, to the “intellectual,” and they are properly expressed—if -untruths ever can be—in the style. The style is one in which the truth -cannot be told; and it perfectly illustrates the axiom that critical -writing cannot be too simple and unaffected. It is a common practice -for a critic to approximate his style to the style of his subject; for -example, to write about poetry poetically, about a “grand impassioned -writer” in a grand and impassioned manner. By so doing it is supposed -that a critic shows his sympathy and his understanding of his subject. -But the method is wrong. Criticism is not a fine art. The conversational -tone is its proper medium, and it should be an absolute rule never to -write in criticism what cannot be imagined as being easily said. - -HENRY JAMES.—The “Henry James Number” of the _Little Review_ is devoted -to essays by various hands upon the works and characteristics of the late -novelist. The most interesting essay in the volume is one by Miss Ethel -Coburn Mayne reporting the first appearance and subsequent development -of Henry James as witnessed by the writers for the famous _Yellow Book_, -of whom Miss Mayne was not the least characteristic. What a comedy of -misunderstanding it all was, and how Henry James must have smiled about -it! At the outset the _Yellow Book_ writers had the distinct impression -that Henry James was one of themselves; and they looked forward to -exploiting the new worlds which he brought into their ken. But later on, -to their disappointment, he fell away, receded from their visibility, -and became, as Miss Mayne puts it, concerned less with the “world” than -with the “drawing-room.” The fault, however, was not with James, nor was -the change in him. The _Yellow Book_ too readily assumed that because -James wrote in it, he was willing to be identified with the tendency -of the school; and they thought him lacking in loyalty when afterwards -it appeared that he was powerfully hostile. But how could they have -deceived themselves into supposing that a progress towards the ghostly -could always keep step with a progress towards the fleshly? The two were -worlds apart, and if for a single moment they coincided in an issue or -two of the _Yellow Book_, their subsequent divergence was only made the -more obvious. I, even I, who was still young when the _Yellow Book_ began -to appear, could have told its editors that Henry James was not long -for their world. Between the method employed in, say, the _Death of the -Lion_ and the method of Henry Harland, Max Beerbohm, Miss Mayne herself, -and, subsequently, Mr. D. H. Lawrence, there was, and could be, only -an accidental and momentary sympathy. James was in love with the next -world, or the next state of consciousness; he was always exploring the -borderland between the conscious and the super-conscious. The _Yellow -Book_ writers were positively reactionary to him, for their borderland -was not between men and angels, but between men and beasts. James’s -“contemptuous” word for Mr. D. H. Lawrence—which Miss Mayne still groans -to think of—was the most natural and inevitable under the circumstances. -It might have been foreseen from the moment Henry James put his pen -into the _Yellow Book_. If there are any critics left who imagine that -the _Yellow Book_ was anything but a literary _cul de sac_, I commend to -them this present essay by Miss Mayne. Under the disguise of criticism of -Henry James, it is a confession. - - * * * * * - -Henry James’s _Middle Years_ is a fragment of the autobiography begun -some years before the author’s death. We are told that this fragment -was “dictated” by Henry James and that it was never revised by himself, -both of which facts explain a little of the peculiarity of his style. -If the style of the earlier books was mazy, the style of _Middle Years_ -is mazier. If the earlier style consisted of impressions impassionately -conveyed, the present is more elusive still. Henry James was always -difficult to pin down; in _Middle Years_ his fluttering among words -never rests a sentence. Nobody, I am convinced, who is not either a -genuine devotee of Henry James or one of the paper-audience his friends -cultivated for him, will succeed in reading through this work. An -infinitely leisurely mind or an infinite interest in just Henry James’s -way of looking at things is necessary to the endurance of it. But given -one of these, and in particular the latter, and the reading of _Middle -Years_ becomes an exhilarating exercise in sensing ghosts. - -Yes, that is the phrase to describe what Henry James was always after. -He was always after sensing ghosts. His habitat has been said to be the -inter-space between the real and the ideal; but it can be more accurately -defined as the inter-space between the dead and the living. You see his -vision—almost his clairvoyance—actively engaged in this recovery of his -experiences years before as a young man in London. See how he revelled -in them, rolling them off his tongue in long circling phrases. Is it not -obvious that he is most at home in recollection, in the world of memory, -in the inter-world, once more, of the dead and the living? Observe, -too, how only a little more exaggeratedly anfractuous and swirling -his style becomes—but not, in any real sense, different—under the -influence of memory, than when professing to be describing the present. -It is plain that memory differs for him from present vision only in -being a little more vivid, a little more real. In order to see a thing -clearly, he had, in fact, to make a memory of it, and the present tense -of memory is impression. What I am trying to say is that Henry James -mentalised phenomenon; hence that he saw most clearly in the world of -memory where this process had been performed for him by time; and that -he saw less clearly in our actual world because the phenomena herein -resisted immediate mentalisation. The difference for him was between -the pre-digested and the to-be-digested; the former being the persons -and events of memory, and the latter being the events and persons of his -current experience. - -Henry James will find himself very much at home with the discarnate minds -who, it is presumed, are now his companions. Incarnation, embodiment, was -for him a screen to be looked through, got over somehow, divined into, -penetrated. He regarded it as a sort of magic curtain which concealed at -the same time that under careful observation it revealed by its shadows -and movements the mind behind it. And I fancy I see him sitting before -the actual sensible world of things and persons with infinite patience -watching for a significant gesture or a revealing shadow. And such -motions and shadows he recorded as impressions which became the stuff of -his analysis and synthesis of the souls that originated them. But if that -was his attitude towards the material world—and it is further proved by -his occasional excursions into the completely ghostly—may we not safely -conclude that in the world he now inhabits his sense of impressions is -more at home still. For there, as I take it, the curtain is drawn, and -minds and souls are by one degree the more exposed to direct vision. With -his marvellous insight into the actual, what would Henry James not make -of the mental and psychic when these are no longer concealed by the -material? On the whole, nobody is likely to be happier “dead” than Henry -James. - -TURGENEV.—Both in Mr. Conrad’s Introduction and Mr. Edward Garnett’s -critical study of Turgenev I observe the attitude of defence. They are -defending rather than praising Turgenev. But Turgenev has been so long -the victim of polemics that it is about time some judge summed up the -contentions and delivered judgment. Neither Mr. Conrad nor Mr. Garnett, -however, is qualified for this task by either temper or the power of -judgment itself. Mr. Conrad is a great writer, but he is not a great -critic, and as for Mr. Garnett, he is not even a great writer; and the -temper of both is shown in their common tendency to abuse not only -the plaintiff’s attorney but the jury as well. But there is no use in -abusing the jury—in other words, the reading public of the world—even if -some gain may be got by polemics with this or that critic. I am content -to hear Mr. Maurice Baring and M. Haumont told that they are merely -echoes of Russian partisanship and incapable of feeling the fine shades -of “truth” in Turgenev; for both these writers are quite capable of -hitting back. But when Mr. Conrad satirically remarks that Turgenev had -qualities enough to ruin the prospects of any writer, and Mr. Garnett -echoes _him_ to the effect that Turgenev owes his “unpopularity” to “an -exquisite feeling for balance” which nowadays is “less and less prized -by modern opinion,” I feel that the defence of Turgenev is exceeding -the limits of discretion. For it is not by any means the case that the -“unpopularity” of Turgenev is confined to the mob that has no feeling for -balance or is jealous of his possession of too many qualities. Critics -as good as Mr. Garnett and with no Russian political prejudices against -Turgenev can come to the same conclusion as the innumerable anonymous -gentlemen of the jury, to wit, that Turgenev was a great artist on a -small scale whose faults were large. That is certainly my own case. While -I agree (or affirm, for I am quite willing to take the initiative), that -Turgenev’s art is more exquisite, more humane, more European than that -of any other Russian writer, I must also maintain that in timidity of -thought, in sentimentality, in occasional pettiness of mind, he is no -more of a great writer than, let us say, Mr. Hall Caine. To compare the -whole of him with the whole of Dostoievski is to realise in an instant -the difference between a writer great in parts and a writer great even -in his faults. Turgenev at his best is a European, I would rather say a -Parisianised Russian; but Dostoievski, while wholly Russian, belongs to -the world. An almost exact parallel is afforded by the case of Ibsen and -Björnson, about whose respective values Norway used to dispute as now -Mr. Garnett would have us dispute concerning the respective values of -Dostoievski and Turgenev. The world has settled the first in favour of -Ibsen—with Norway dissenting; the world will similarly settle the latter -in favour of Dostoievski, with Mr. Garnett dissenting. - -PLOTINUS.—Plotinus, of whom Coleridge said that “no writer more wants, -better deserves, or is less likely to obtain a new and more correct -translation,” has lately been translated into excellent English by Mr. -Stephen Mackenna (_not_ the author of _Sonia_, by the way). For all -Coleridge’s demand and Mr. Mackenna’s supply, however, Plotinus is not -likely to be read as much as he deserves. Abstract thought, or thinking -in ideas without images, is a painful pleasure, comparable to exercises -designed and actually effective to physical health. There is no doubt -whatever that mental power is increased by abstract thought. Abstract -thinking is almost a recipe for the development of talent. But it is -so distasteful to mental inertia and habit that even people who have -experienced its immense profit are disinclined to persist in it. It was -by reason of his persistence in an exercise peculiarly irksome to the -Western mind that Plotinus approached the East more nearly in subtlety -and purity of thought than all but a few Western thinkers before or after -him. In reading him it is hard to say that one is not reading a clarified -Shankara or a Vyasa of the Bhishma treatises of the _Mahabharata_. East -and West met in his mind. - -Plotinus’s aim, like that of all thinkers in the degree of their -conception, is, in Coleridge’s words, “the perfect spiritualisation of -all the laws of Nature into laws of intuition and intellect.” It is the -subsumption of phenomena in terms of personality, the reduction of Nature -to the mind of man. Conversely it will be seen that the process may be -said to personalise Nature; in other words, to assume the presence in -natural phenomena of a kind of personal intelligence. If this be animism, -I decline to be shocked by it on that account; for in that event the -highest philosophy and one of the lowest forms of religion coincide, -and there is no more to be said of it. The danger of this reasoning -from mind to Nature and from Nature to mind is anthropomorphism. We -tend to make Nature in our own image, or, conversely, _à la_ Nietzsche, -to make ourselves after the image of Nature. But the greater the truth -the greater is the peril of it; and thinkers must be on their guard to -avoid the dangers, while nevertheless continuing the method. Plotinus -certainly succeeded in avoiding the anthropomorphic no less than the -crudely animistic dangers of his methods; but at the cost of remaining -unintelligible to the majority of readers. - -THE NEW EUROPE.—It should be possible before long to begin to discern -some of the outlines of the new continent that will arise from the flood -of the present war. That it will be a new continent is certain, and that -it will contain as essential features some of the aspects of the Slav -soul is probable. For what has been spiritually most apparent during the -war has been the struggle of the Slav soul to find expression in the -Western medium. Russia, we may say, has sought to Europeanise herself; -or, rather, Russia has sought to impress upon Europe Russian ideas; -with this further resemblance in her fate to the fate of the pioneers -of every great new spiritual impulse, that she has been crucified in -her mission. The crucifixion of Slavdom, however, is the sign in which -Russian ideals—or, let us say Slav ideals—will in the end conquer. They -will not submerge our Western ideas; the new continent will be the -old continent over again; but they will profoundly modify our former -configurations, and compel us to draw our cultural maps afresh. In what -respect, it may be asked, will our conceptions be radically changed? The -reply is to be found confusedly in the events of the Russian Revolution; -in the substitution of the pan-human for the national ideal, and in the -attempt, this time to be made with all the strength at the disposal of -intelligence, to create a single world-culture—a universal Church of men -of good-sense and good-will. This appears to me to be the distinguishing -feature of the new continent about to be formed; and we shall owe it to -the Slavs. - -THE FASHION OF ANTI-PURITANISM.—The anti-Puritanism of the professed -anti-Puritans is very little, if any, better than the Puritanism they -oppose. The two parties divide the honours of our dislike fairly evenly -between them. Puritanism is a fanatical devotion to a single aspect of -virtue—namely, to morality. It assumes that Life is moral and nothing -else; that Power, Wisdom, Truth, Beauty, and Love are all of no account -in comparison with Goodness; and doing so it offends our judgment of the -nature of Virtue, which is that Virtue is wholeness or a balance of all -the aspects of God. Anti-Puritanism, on the other hand, denies all the -affirmations of Puritanism, but without affirming anything on its own -account. It denies that Life is exclusively moral, but it does not affirm -that Life is anything else; it destroys the false absolute of Puritanism, -but it is silent to the extent of tacitly denying that there is any -absolute whatsoever. This being the case, our choice between Puritanism -and anti-Puritanism is between a false absolute and no absolute, between -a one-sided truth and no truth at all. We are bound to be half-hearted -upon either side, since the thing itself is only half a thing. - -I am not likely to revise my opinions about virtue from the school of -Marx and his disciple Kautsky. Marx was another flamen, a priest, that is -to say, of one aspect only of reality—in this case the economic. That the -moral cant of a particular age tends to represent the economic interest -of the dominant class, is, of course, a truism; but there is a world of -difference between moral cant and morality—and the latter is as uniform -throughout all history as the former is variable. Moreover, it is not by -any means always the case that the interests of the dominant class of -capitalism are identical with Puritanism. The interests of capitalism -to-day are decidedly with anti-Puritanism, in so far as the effects of -anti-Puritanism are to break up family life, to restrict births and to -cultivate eugenics. What could suit capitalism better than to atomise -the last surviving natural grouping of individuals and to breed for the -servile State? The anti-Puritan propagandas of Malthusianism and eugenics -are not carried on, either, by Marxians, but by the wealthy classes. -Because he is a shopkeeper, the Anglo-Saxon is to-day an anti-Puritan in -these matters. - -POPULAR PHILOSOPHY.—The difficulty of popular philosophical discussion -is not insuperable. It is all a matter of style. Mr. Bertrand Russell, -for example, manages by means of an excellent style to make philosophy -as easy to understand and as entrancing to follow as certain writers -have made the equally difficult subject of economics. It is, in fact, -the business of professional thinkers to popularise their subject and to -procure for their Muse as many devotees as possible. In the case of Mr. -Bertrand Russell, his admirable style has been put into the service of -the most abominable philosophy ever formulated. He is an accidentalist -of the most thorough-going kind who denies that life has any meaning or -purpose. Life appeared, he says, by chance, and will disappear, probably -for good, with the cooling of the sun; and he sings like a doomed -cricket on a dissolving iceberg. But it is all the more strange in my -judgment that a man who thinks thus can write as Mr. Russell writes. -There is a contradiction somewhere between the simple richness of his -style and the Spartan poverty of his ideas. He thinks glacially, but his -style is warm. I suspect that if he were psycho-analysed Mr. Bertrand -Russell would turn out to be a walking contradiction. In a word, I don’t -believe he believes a word he says! That tone, that style, them there -gestures—they betray the stage-player of the spirit. - -A philosophy written in a popular style is not, of course, the same thing -as a popular philosophy. “From a popular philosophy and a philosophical -populace, good sense deliver us,” said Coleridge, meaning to say that -a philosophy whose substance and not whose expression only has been -adapted to the populace is in all probability false and is certainly -superficial. For in his _Lay Sermons_, published a hundred years ago, -Coleridge supplemented the foregoing remark by deploring the “long and -ominous eclipse of philosophy, the usurpation of that venerable name -by physical and psychological empiricism, and the non-existence of a -learned and philosophical _public_.” Between a philosophic public and -a philosophic populace there is the same distinction as between the -“public” that reads, let us say, Sedlák, and the “populace” that reads, -let us say, Mr. H. G. Wells. Mr. Wells is a popular philosopher; but -that is manifestly not the same thing as a writer who is trying to make -philosophy popular. - -WAS CARLYLE PRUSSIAN?—In the _International Journal of Ethics_, Mr. -Herbert Stewart makes a chivalrous attempt to deliver Carlyle from -the charge recently brought home to him of having been a Prussian. -Militarist Prussianism, he says, rests upon a postulate which would have -filled Carlyle with horror, the postulate, namely, that an autocracy -must be organised for war. I am not satisfied, however, that Carlyle -would have been filled with anything but admiration. It is true that he -did not adopt the Prussian error of identifying Might with Right. “Is -Arithmetic,” he asked, “a thing more fixed by the Eternal than the laws -of justice are?” Could Justice or Right, therefore, be allowed to vary -with the amount of Might at its disposal—a deduction inevitable from -the Prussian hypothesis? On the other hand, Carlyle cannot be said to -have been equally free from the more subtle error of Prussianism, the -assumption that Might can be accumulated only by Right means. Might, he -said in effect, being an attribute of God, can be obtained by man only as -a result of some virtue. Hence its possession presumes the possession -of a proportionate virtue, and a man of Might is to that extent a man -of Right also. This subtlety led Carlyle into some strange company for -the moral fanatic he was. It led him to glorify Frederick the Great and -to condone Frederick’s crime against Silesia. It led him to despise -France and to defend West Indian slavery. Mr. Stewart must make his -choice between Carlyle as a confused ethical philosopher and Carlyle as a -Prussian. If he was not the latter, he was the former. - -IS NIETZSCHE FOR GERMANY?—Nietzsche, we are told, is being read as never -before in Germany. It is certain that Nietzsche was taken, if taken -at all, in the wrong sense in Germany before the war. The Germans did -with him precisely what the mob everywhere does with the satirist; they -swallowed his praise and ignored his warnings. He is still, however, more -of a danger than a saviour to post-war Germany, if only for the reason -that his vocabulary is for the most part militarist. Culture is usually -presented by Nietzsche in the terms of combat, and the still small voice -of perfection is only heard in the silences of his martial sentences. Now -that Germany has begun to re-read Nietzsche, will it read him any more -intelligently than before? Is not a critique of Nietzsche a necessary -condition of safely reading him—in Germany? There are, undoubtedly, -authors who are most dangerous to the nation in which they appear. -Rousseau was particularly dangerous to France. Whitman is inimical to -American culture. Dr. Johnson has been a blight upon English thought. And -Nietzsche, it may well be, is only a blessing outside of Germany. Art and -thought, it is commonly said, are beyond nationality and beyond race; and -from this it follows that it is only a happy accident when a great writer -or thinker is peculiarly suited to the nation in which he happens to be -born. He is addressed to the world—why should his message be specially -adapted to the language and people of his parentage? A nation runs risks -in accenting as its own the doctrines of the great men who chance to -appear among it. Equally, a nation runs the risk of missing its real -chosen unless it examines all the great men of the world. Chauvinism, -either by choice or by exclusion, is always dangerous. We must take the -good where we find it. - -NIETZSCHE IN FRAGMENTS.—The English mind is easily “put off” a subject, -and particularly easily off a subject as uncongenial as Nietzsche; and -it has been known to remain in this state for a century or more. Several -of our own greatest thinkers and writers have had to wait a long period -for their readers, and by the time that the English mind has recovered -itself, they are often quite dead. It is likely to be the same with -Nietzsche. Having the plausible excuse for being “off” Nietzsche which -the war provided, the English intellectual classes—note that I do not -say the intellectual English classes, for there are none—will continue -to neglect Nietzsche until he has been superseded, as I believe he will -be before very long. Psycho-analysis has taken a good deal of Nietzsche -in its stride, and it is quite possible that the re-reading of Indian -philosophy in the light of psycho-analysis will gather most of the -remainder. - -Nevertheless, the remaining fragments will be worth preserving, since -indubitably they will be the fragments of a giant of thought. As -Heraclitus is represented by a small collection of aphorisms, each so -concentrated that one would serve for an ordinary man’s equipment for -intellectual life, the Nietzsche of the future may be contained in a -very small volume, chiefly of aphorisms. He aimed, he said, at saying in -a sentence what other writers say in a book, and he characteristically -added that he aimed at saying in a sentence what other writers did _not_ -say in a book. And he very often succeeded. These successes are his real -contribution to his own immortality, and they will, I think, ensure it. I -should advise Dr. Oscar Levy to prepare such a volume without delay. It -may be the case that Nietzsche will be read in his entirety again, though -I doubt it; but, in any event, such a volume as I have in mind would -serve either to reintroduce him or handsomely to bury the mortal part of -him. - -I cannot, however, really believe that Nietzsche is about to be read, -as never before, in Germany. Dr. Levy has assured us, on the report of -a Berlin bookseller, that this was indicated in the sales of Nietzsche -in Germany; but the wish was father to the deduction from the very -small fact. Nietzsche was, before anything else, a great culture-hero; -as a critic of art he has been surpassed by no man. But is there any -appeal in culture to a Germany situated as Germany is to-day? I am here -only a literary _causeur_. With the dinosaurs and other monsters of -international politics I cannot be supposed to be on familiar terms. My -opinion, nevertheless, based upon my own material, is that Germany is -most unlikely to resume the pursuit of culture where she interrupted it -after 1870, or, indeed, to pursue culture at all. And the reason for -my opinion is that Russia is too close at hand, too accessible, and, -above all, too tempting to German cupidity. Think what the proximity to -Germany—to a Germany headed off from the Western world—of a commercially -succulent country like Russia really means. Germans are human, even if -they are not sub-human, and the temptation of an El Dorado at their doors -will prove to be more seductive than the cry from the muezzin to come -to culture, come to culture. Nietzsche on the one side calling them to -spiritual conquests will be met by the big bagmen calling them, on the -other side, to commercial conquests. Who can doubt which appeal will be -the stronger? Germany refused to attend to Nietzsche after 1870, when he -spoke to them as one alive; they are less likely to listen to a voice -from the dead after 1918. On second thoughts, I should advise Dr. Oscar -Levy to publish his volume in Germany first. For there he would show by -one satiric touch that no country needed it so much. - -THE END OF FICTION.—Fiction nowadays, we are told, is not what it used -to be. We are told that it is the modern university. It is certainly a -very obliging medium. But on this very account it is as delusive as it is -obliging. It receives impressions easily, readily adapts itself to every -kind of material, and assumes at the word of command any and every mood. -But precisely because it does these things, the effects it produces are -transient. Lightly come, lightly go; and if, as has been said, fiction -is the modern reader’s university, it is a school in which he learns -everything and forgets everything. Modern as I am, and hopeful as I am -of modernity, I cannot think that the predominance of fiction, even of -such fiction as is written to-day, is a good sign; and when we see that -it leads nowhere, that the people who read much of it never read anything -else, and that it is an intellectual _cul-de-sac_, our alarm at the -phenomenon is the greater. What kind of minds do we expect to develop on -a diet of forty parts fiction to two of all other forms of literature? -Assuming the free libraries to be the continuation schools of the public, -what is their value if the only lessons taken in them are the lessons of -fiction? I will not dwell on the obvious discouragement the figures are -to every serious _writer_, for the effect on the readers must be worse. - -THE CRITERIA OF CULTURE.—The suppression of the display of feeling, or, -better, the control of the display of feeling, is the first condition -of thought, and only those who have aimed at writing with studied -simplicity, studied lucidity, and studied detachment realise the amount -of feeling that has to be trained to run quietly in harness. The modern -failure (as compared with the success of the Greeks) to recognise -feeling as an essential element of lucidity and the rest of the virtues -of literary form is due to an excess of fiction. Just because fiction -expresses everything it really impresses nothing. Its feeling evaporates -as fast as it exudes. The sensation, nevertheless, is pleasant, for the -reader appears to be witnessing genuine feeling genuinely expressing -itself; and he fails to remember that what is true of a person is likely -to be true of a book, that the more apparent, obvious, and demonstrated -the feelings, the more superficial, unreal, and transient they probably -are. As a matter of cold-blooded fact, it has been clearly shown during -the course of the war that precisely our most “passionate” novelists have -been our least patriotic citizens. I name no names, since they are known -to everybody. - -Culture I define as being, amongst other things, a capacity for subtle -discrimination of words and ideas. Epictetus made the discrimination of -words the foundation of moral training, and it is true enough that every -stage of moral progress is indicated by the degree of our perception -of the meaning of words. Tell me what words have a particular interest -for you, and I will tell you what class of the world-school you are in. -Tell me what certain words mean for you and I will tell you what you -mean for the world of thought. One of the most subtle words, and one of -the key-words of culture, is simplicity. Can you discriminate between -natural simplicity and studied simplicity, between Nature and Art? In -appearance they are indistinguishable, but in reality, they are æons -apart; and whoever has learned to distinguish between them is entitled to -regard himself as on the way to culture. Originality is another key-word, -and its subtlety may be suggested by a paradox which was a commonplace -among the Greeks; namely, that the most original minds strive to conceal -their originality, and that the master-minds succeed. Contrast this -counsel of perfect originality with the counsels given in our own day, -in which the aim of originality is directed to appearing original—you -will be brought, thereby, face to face with still another key-idea of -Culture, the relation of Appearance to Reality. All these exercises in -culture are elementary, however, in comparison with the master-problem of -“disinterestedness.” No word in the English language is more difficult to -define or better worth attempting to define. Somewhere or other in its -capacious folds it contains all the ideas of ethics, and even, I should -say, of religion. The _Bhagavad Gita_ (to name only one classic) can be -summed up in the word. Duty is only a pale equivalent of it. I venture -to say that whoever has understood the meaning of “disinterestedness” is -not far off understanding the goal of human culture. - -THE FATE OF SCULPTURE.—The art-critic of _The Times_ having remarked that -“the public hardly looks at the sculpture in the Academy, or outside it,” -Mr. John Tweed, an eminent sculptor himself, has now uttered a public -lamentation in agreement with him. Sculpture to-day, he says, is an art -without an audience; and he quotes a Belgian artist who told him what -heroes our contemporary sculptors in this country must be to continue -their work in the face of a unanimous neglect. It is not certain, -however, that the sculptors of to-day do not thoroughly well deserve the -fate to which they now find themselves condemned. In the economy of the -arts, or, if this phrase be preferred, in the strategy of æsthetics, -nothing is more necessary from time to time in each of the arts than an -iconoclast—by which I indicate not a destroyer simply, but a creator of -new forms. Such a pioneer is of necessity a little rude to his immediate -predecessors and to such of his contemporaries as are sheep. But in -the end, nevertheless, if they will only accept and recognise him, he -will revive their art for them. But in the case of sculpture the two -such iconoclasts as have recently appeared—Mr. Epstein and the late -Gaudier-Brzeska—were instantly set upon, not by the public, but by their -contemporaries, and walled within a neglect far more complete than the -neglect sculpture in general has received. Just when it appeared that -they might be about to reawaken public interest in carven forms, the rest -of the sculptors hurried to silence them, with the consequence that at -this moment there is literally nobody engaged in sculpture in whom the -intelligent public takes the smallest interest. As sculptors have treated -sculpture, so the public now treats sculptors. It is a pretty piece of -karma. - -THE TOO CLEVER.—Neglect means nothing very much; success is a matter -of time for everything that is really classic. On the other hand, -deliberately to incur neglect by writing for the few involves the further -risk of more and more deserving it. Whoever makes a boast of writing -for a coterie sooner or later finds himself writing for a coterie of a -coterie, and at last for himself alone. It cannot be otherwise. As the -progress of the classic is from the one to the many, the progress of -the romantic is from the many to the one; and the more sincerely the -latter is a romantic, the sooner he arrives at his journey’s end. The -involution of aim thus brought about is obvious already in the succession -of works of the chief writers of the _Little Review_. They grow cleverer -and cleverer, and, at the same time, more and more unintelligible. I am -staggered by the cleverness of such a writer as Mr. Wyndham Lewis, and a -little more so at the cleverness of Mr. James Joyce. But in the case of -both of them I find myself growing more and more mystified, bewildered, -and repelled. Is it, I ask, that they do not write for readers like me? -Then their circle must be contracting, for I am one of many who used to -read them with pleasure. And who are they gaining while losing us? Are -their new readers more intensive if fewer, and better worth while for -their quality than we were for our numbers? But I decline to allow the -favourable answers. The fact is that the writers of the _Little Review_ -are getting too clever even for coterie, and will soon be read only by -each other, or themselves. - -A characteristic example is to be found in the opening chapter of Mr. -James Joyce’s new novel, _Ulysses_. This is how it begins:— - - Stately, plump Buck Milligan came from the stairway, bearing - a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. - A yellow dressing-gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently - behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and - intoned.... - -Now it is clear that such a passage has not been written without a -great deal of thought, and if thought were art, it might be called an -artistic passage. But thought is not only not art, but the aim of art -is to conceal thought. In its perfection art is indistinguishable from -nature. The conspicuous thoughtfulness of the passage I have quoted is, -therefore, an objection to it; and the more so since it provokes an -inspection it is unable to sustain. Challenged to “think” about what the -writer is saying, the reader at once discovers that the passage will not -bear thinking about. He asks, for instance, _whence_ Buck Milligan came -from the staircase; _how_ he managed to balance a crossed mirror and -razor on a bowl’s edge—and, particularly, while bearing them aloft; and -what mild air it was that sustained the tails of a man’s dressing-gown. -To these questions deliberately provoked by the ostentatious care of -the writer there is either no answer or none forthcoming without more -thought than the detail is worth. The passage, in short, suffers from -being aimed at a diminishing coterie; and it succeeds in satisfying, I -imagine, only the writer of it who is alone in all its secrets. Mr. James -Joyce had once the makings of a great writer—not a popular writer, but -a classic writer. To become what he was he needed to be opened out, to -be simplified, to conceal his cleverness, to write more and more for the -world. But first in the _Egoist_ and now in the _Little Review_ he has -been directed to cultivate his faults, his limitations, his swaddling -clothes of genius, with the result that he is in imminent danger of -brilliant provincialism. - -HOMAGE TO PROPERTIUS.—Mr. Ezra Pound’s _Homage to Propertius_ has drawn -an American Professor of Latin into the pages of the American magazine -_Poetry_. Professor Hales is indignant at the attempt of Mr. Pound to -make Propertius intelligible as well as merely accessible to the modern -English reader, and in the name of Scholarship, he begs Mr. Pound -to “lay aside the mask of erudition” and to confess himself nothing -better than a poet. With some of Professor Hales’s literal criticisms -it is impossible not to agree. Speaking in the name of the schools, he -is frequently correct. But in the name of the humanities of life, of -art, of literature, what in the world does it matter that Mr. Pound -has spelled Punic with a capital when he meant a small letter, or that -he has forgotten the existence of the Marcian aqueduct? Mr. Pound did -not set out with the intention of making a literal translation of -Propertius. He set out with the intention of creating in English verse a -verse reincarnation, as it were, of Propertius, a “homage” to Propertius -that should take the form of rendering him a contemporary of our own. -And, secondly, all criticism based on the text of Propertius is invalid -unless it is accompanied by a perception of the psychological quality -of Propertius as he lived. But Professor Hales, it is clear, has no -sense for this higher kind of criticism, for he complains that there -is “no hint” in Propertius’s text of “certain decadent meanings” which -Mr. Pound attributes to him. Is there not, indeed? Accepting decadence -in its modern American meaning, Propertius can only be said to be full -of it. No literary critic, accustomed to reading through and between -an author’s lines, whether they be Latin, Greek, or English, can doubt -the evidence of his trained senses that the mind behind the text of -Propertius was a mind which the Latin Professor of the Chicago University -would call decadent, if only it expressed itself in English. The facts -that Propertius was a poet contemporary with Ovid, that he wrote of the -life of the luxurious Roman Empire, as one who habitually lived it, -that he wrote of love and of his own adventures, are quite sufficient -to prove that he was a child of his age; and if his age was, as it -undoubtedly was, decadent, in a professorial sense, Propertius, we may -be sure, shared its decadence. I am not saying, it will be observed, -nor, I think, would Mr. Pound say, that to have shared in decadence and -to be sympathetic to it are the same thing as to be decadent in oneself. -What, in fact, distinguishes Propertius is his æsthetic reaction against -decadence, against the very decadence in which he had been brought up, -and with which he had sympathised. But this is not to admit that “no hint -of certain decadent meanings” is to be found in him. On the contrary, he -could not very well have become the æsthetic reaction against decadence -without importing into his verse more than a hint of certain decadent -meanings. In effect, Propertius is the compendium of the Roman Empire at -its turning point in the best minds. Long before history with its slow -sequence of events proved to the gross senses of mankind that Empire was -a moral and æsthetic blunder, Propertius discovered the fact for himself -and recorded his judgment in the æsthetic form of his exquisite verse. -But he must have passed through decadence in order to have arrived at -his final judgment; and, indeed, as I have said, his verse bears witness -of it. Professor Hales has been misled by Propertius’s reflections, by -his habit of sublimating his experiences, by his criticism of decadence. -But that reflection was only an accompaniment, or, rather, sequel of -Propertius’s mode of life; it did not, any more than such reflection does -to-day, make impossible or even improbable a mode of life in violent -contrast with the reflection made upon it. - -MR. POUND AND MR. WYNDHAM LEWIS IN PUBLIC.—Mr. Ezra Pound has for some -months been the “foreign” or exile editor of the _Little Review_; and -I gather from the nature of the contributions that he has practically -commandeered most of the space. A series of letters and some stories -by Mr. Wyndham Lewis; letters, stories and verse, by Mr. Pound; ditto, -ditto, ditto, by other—shall I say London?—writers—are evidence that -Mr. Pound’s office is no sinecure. He delivers the goods. The aim of -the _Little Review_, as defined without the least attempt at camouflage -by the editress (that is to say, the real American director of the -venture), is to publish articles, stories, verses, and drawings of pure -art—whatever that may be. It is not demanded of them that they shall be -true—or false; that they shall have a meaning—single or double; that -they shall be concerned with life—or fancy. Nothing, in fact, is asked -of them but that they shall be art, just art. Less explicitly, but to -the same effect, both Mr. Pound and Mr. Wyndham Lewis subscribe to the -same formula. They, too, are after art, nothing but art. But in other -respects they define themselves more clearly. From Mr. Wyndham Lewis, -for instance, I gather that the aim of the _Little Review_ artists is -to differentiate themselves from the mob. Art would seem to consist, -indeed, in this differentiation or self-separation. Whatever puts a gulf -between yourself and the herd, and thus “distinguishes” you, is and -must be art, because of this very effect. And Mr. Pound carries on the -doctrine a stage by insisting that the only thing that matters about the -mob is to deliver individuals from it. Art, in short, is the discovery, -maintenance, and culture of individuals. - -We have all heard of this doctrine; and there is no doubt that it is -very seductive. But to whom? It has been remarked before that the appeal -of Nietzsche has often been to the last persons in the world you would -have thought capable of responding to him; or, let us say, to the last -persons that ought to respond to him—weak-willed, moral imbeciles, with -not enough intelligence to be even efficient slaves. These, as Nietzsche -discovered, were only too often the sort of person that was attracted -by his muscular doctrine of the Will to Power. It is the case likewise -with the doctrine of individuality. Among its disciples there are, of -course, the few who understand it; but the majority of them are precisely -the persons who prove by their devotion their personal need of it. -Individuality is for these as much a cult as health is a cult among the -sick; and it is to be observed that they also have to take a good deal of -care of themselves. They must never associate with the mob, they must be -careful what they eat in the way of æsthetics; they must pick and choose -among people, places and things with all the delicacy of an eggshell -among potsherds. Above all, they must keep their art pure. Neither Mr. -Wyndham Lewis nor Mr. Ezra Pound belongs to this class of æsthetic -valetudinarians. Both are robust persons with excellent digestions, and -with a great deal of substantial common sense. Nevertheless, both of -them, to my mind, pose as invalids, and simulate all the whimperings and -fastidiousness of the _malades imaginaires_. Read Mr. Lewis’s letters, -for example, in the issues of the _Little Review_ here under notice. -The writer is obviously a very clever man, with a good experience and -judgment of life, and possessed of a powerful style. But he has chosen to -exhibit himself as a clever gymnast of words, with innumerable finnicking -fancies against this or that lest he should be confused with the “mob.” -And Mr. Pound is in much the same state. What is the need of it in their -case, I ask? Unlike most of the other writers, neither Mr. Lewis nor Mr. -Pound has any need to “cultivate” an individuality, or to surround it -with walls and moats of poses. Neither has any need whatever to appear -clever in order to be clever. On the contrary, both of them have need to -do exactly the reverse—namely, to cut their too exuberant individuality -down to the quick, and to reveal their cleverness by concealing it. -Simplicity, as Oscar Wilde said—he, of course, only said it, he never -really thought it—is the last refuge of complexity. And I put it to -Mr. Lewis and Mr. Pound that with just a little more individuality, -and with just a little more cleverness, their ambition will be to be -indistinguishable from the mob, either by their individuality or their -cleverness. They will not succeed in it. Individuality and cleverness, -like murder, will out. The aim, however, of the wise possessor of either, -is to conceal it in subtler and subtler forms of common sense and -simplicity. - -Among the clever poses of this type of “stage player of the spirit,” as -Nietzsche called them, is the pose of the _enfant terrible_. They are -mightily concerned to shock the bourgeoisie, and are never so happy as -when they have said something naughty, and actually got it into print. -Now it is, of course, very stupid for the bourgeoisie to be shocked. -The bourgeoisie would be wiser to yawn. But it argues a similar kind -of stupidity—anti-stupidity—to wish to shock them. But we do not wish -to shock them, they say! We are indifferent to the existence of the -bourgeoisie! Our aim is simply to write freely as artists, and to be at -liberty to publish our work for such as can understand it. Publishing, -however, is a public act; and I agree with the bourgeoisie that the art -of an intimate circle or group is not of necessity a public art. Between -private and public morality, personal and public policy, individual -and communal art, there is all the difference of two differing scales -of value. Queen Victoria did not wish to be addressed by Mr. Gladstone -as if she were a public meeting. A public meeting does not like to be -addressed as if it were a party of personal friends. The introduction of -personal considerations into public policy is felt to be an intrusion; -and to treat your friends as if you were legislating on their behalf is -an impertinence. From all this it follows that to thrust all private art -into the public eye is to mix the two worlds. Only that part of private -art that is in good public taste ought to be exhibited in public; the -rest is for private, personal, individual consumption, and ought to be -left unpublished, or circulated only privately. Let the artist write -what pleases him; let him circulate it among his friends; the only -criterion here is personal taste. But immediately he proposes to publish -his work, he should ask himself, the question: Is this in good public -taste? - -MR. EZRA POUND AS METRICIST.—Under the title of _Ezra Pound: His Metric -and Poetry_, a whole book—really, however, only an essay—has been devoted -to the work of this literary enigma. For this honour, if honour it be, -Mr. Pound is indebted more to what he has preached than to what he has -practised; for on his actual achievement, considerable though it is, not -even in America could anybody have been found to write a book. Mr. Pound -will not deny that he is an American in this respect, if in none other, -that he always likes to hitch his wagon to a star. He has always a ton of -precept for a pound of example. And in America, more than in any other -country save, perhaps, Germany, it appears to be required of a man that -there shall be “significant” intention, aim, theory—anything you like -expressive of direction—in everything he does. There does not appear to -me to be anything _very_ original in the creation of poetic images, or -even in the employment of irregular metric; neither of them can be said -to constitute a new departure in poetic technique. Yet Mr. Pound has -elevated each of them to be the star of a cult, with the consequence that -we now have professed “schools” of poetry, calling themselves Imagist or -Verslibrist. These are examples of what I mean in saying that Mr. Pound -loves to hitch his wagon to a star. - -It must be admitted that this habit of Mr. Pound has its good as well -as its somewhat absurd side; there is only a step from the ridiculous -to the sublime. It must also be affirmed, however it may reflect upon -our English critics, that it is precisely the good side of Mr. Pound’s -technique which they usually condemn. For the good side consists of -this, that all the poets who can claim to belong to the school of -Mr. Pound must display in addition to the above-mentioned defects, -the certain and positive merits of study of their art and deliberate -craftsmanship. No poet dare claim to be a pupil of Mr. Pound who cannot -prove that he has been to school to poetry, and submitted himself to a -craft-apprenticeship; and no poet will long command Mr. Pound’s approval -who is not always learning and experimenting. Now this, which I call -the good side of Mr. Pound’s doctrine, is disliked in England, where -it has for years been the habit of critics to pretend that poetry grows -on bushes or in parsley-beds. That poetry should be the practice of “a -learned, self-conscious craft,” to be carried on by a “guild of adepts,” -appears to Mr. Archer, for example, to be a heresy of the first order. -How much of the best poetry, he exclaims, has been written with “little -technical study behind it”; and how little necessary, therefore, any -previous learning is. To the dogs with Mr. Pound’s doctrine! Let the -motto over the gates of the Temple of Poetry be: “No previous experience -required.” It will be seen, of course, how the confusion in Mr. Archer’s -mind has arisen. Because it is a fact that the “best” poetry looks -effortless, he has fallen into the spectator’s error of concluding that -it is effortless. And because, again, a considerable part of the work of -the “learned, self-conscious craftsmen” is pedantic and artificial, he -has been confirmed in his error. The truth of the matter, however, is -with Mr. Pound. Dangerous as it may be to require that a poet shall be -learned in his profession, it is much more dangerous to deprecate his -learning. By a happy fluke, it may be, a perfect poem may occasionally be -written “without previous study”; from too much previous study there may -also occasionally result only verse smelling of the lamp; but in the long -run, and for the cultivation of poetry as an art, there is no doubt that -the most fruitful way is the way of the craftsman and the adept. - -MR. EZRA POUND ON RELIGION.—Mr. Pound has been called over the coals for -his impolite dismissal of Mr. G. K. Chesterton as a danger to English -literature. But, good gracious, Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s reputation is -not so frail that it cannot take care of itself against a spirited -idiosyncrasy. Mr. Pound has expressed his honest opinion; but what -is discussion for but to elicit honest opinions, and then to extract -the truth from them? There is undoubtedly a fragment of truth in Mr. -Pound’s view of Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s influence, and it is this: that -Mr. Chesterton is a most dangerous man to imitate. His imitators become -apes. But that is not to say that Mr. Chesterton is not himself a great -writer. Shakespeare is likewise a dangerous man to imitate; and we should -only be repeating good criticism if we affirmed that the influence of -Shakespeare upon English style has been on the whole bad. But this is -not to detract from the greatness of Shakespeare. Every writer of a -unique style is liable to ruin his imitators; and, from this point of -view, the wise thing to be done is to classify good writers as writers -to be imitated and writers never to be imitated. Among the former are -the writers whom personally I prefer; for I love best the men of the -eighteenth century, who aimed at writing as nearly as possible like the -world, and through whom the common genius of the English language spoke. -But there is pleasure and profit also in the highly individualised styles -of the latter sort of writers, beginning, let us say, with _Euphues_, and -represented to-day by Mr. G. K. Chesterton. Mr. Pound may have no fancy -for the unique and personally conducted style of Mr. Chesterton, but it -is a matter entirely of taste and not of judgment. Should he announce -that he cannot tolerate Swift or Burke or Sterne, writers of pure -English, then, indeed, I should join in deploring his judgment. As it is, -I listen to his remarks on Mr. Chesterton as I should hear his opinions -of crab-soup. - -Coming to his views upon religion and upon Christianity, I find myself -not so much hostile to Mr. Pound as bewildered by him; and yet not -bewildered to the degree of much curiosity. Certain critical views of -religion are stimulating. Nietzsche’s, for example, or Huxley’s, or W. -K. Clifford’s, or even Frazer’s. You feel they come from minds serious -enough to take religion seriously, and that they are expressive rather -of impatience with the superficiality of current religion than of -hostility to religion itself. Nietzsche and the rest, in fact, were not -critical of religion and of Christianity because they were themselves -indifferent to religion, but because they were too intensely concerned -with the religious problem to accept the popular solutions. Mr. Pound, -on the other hand, does not appear to me to be a serious thinker on the -subject. He dismisses the current popular solutions not only as if they -were, as they mostly are, superficial and absurd, but as if the problems -of conscience, the soul, sin, and of salvation, to which these solutions -are trial replies, were non-existent or trivial. It is his indifference -to the reality of the problems, and not his criticism of the popular -solutions, that keeps my mind at a distance from Mr. Pound’s when he is -writing on religion. He does not so much as even irritate me, he simply -leaves me as indifferent to his opinions as he is himself. - -MR. POUND, CARICATURIST.—Mr. Ezra Pound comes in for it again—as he -always does. His idiosyncrasies are the enemies of his personality, and -they will always, unless he can amend them, militate against both his -work and his success. Mr. Pound appears to love to give his readers the -impression that he is no end of a fire-eater, and that he is a charlatan -of the first-water, setting up to lecture better men on the virtues he -himself has never cultivated. It is an absolutely incorrect picture, -an exceedingly bad self-portrait, a malicious caricature of himself. A -psycho-analyst would attribute it all to “compensation,” to an attempt on -the part of Mr. Pound to disguise his qualities as defects. In brief, Mr. -Pound has not the courage of his virtues. “No one,” says Mr. Hartley in -the _Little Review_, “admires Ezra Pound more than I do ... but it is his -celestial sneer I admire.” A sneer, celestial or mundane, is, however, -the last gesture of which Mr. Pound is capable. If anything, he is too -benignant, too enthusiastic, too anxious to find excuse for admiration. - -THE ADMIRABLE VICTORIANS.—I am prepared to apologise if I have ever used -“Victorian” in a derogatory sense. But I know I have not. I have too -deep a respect for the Victorian character ever to make light of it, and -especially for my own generation, that can afford to laugh at so little. -Mr. Strachey’s “brilliant” essays, therefore, leave me laughing at him -rather than with him. One is impelled to take him personally, and to turn -the tables upon Mr. Strachey with the _argumentum ad hominem_. How do you -compare with the people you write about? For it is the peculiarity of -the Victorians—our grandfathers and great-grandfathers—that whatever we -may feel about them in our current opinions, someone has only to sneer -at them to provoke us to their defence; and what better defence can they -ask than to be compared, man for man, with their critics? As a set-off -to the “brilliant” essays of Mr. Strachey—how easy it is to be brilliant -nowadays! I have recently read, on the loan of his great-grandson, the -privately printed personal memoir of Wm. Mattingly Soundy, who died in -1862, at the full age of 96. For 24 years he was a member of his local -Congregational church, and for 46 years he was deacon. During nearly the -whole of that time he never missed a meeting, Sunday or week-day, and -was never known to be late, though he lived two miles from the church. -It is the round of a machine, you may say, and there is no wonder that -the age was mechanical. But I think of the passionate mainspring that -kept a “machine” going for so long without a psychological breakdown. -What an intensity it must have had! What a character! If to love it is -impossible, it is impossible not to admire it; and since we truly live -by admiration, hope and love, it is something for the Victorians that -they can still fill us with admiration. My own generation (now past as a -force) has provided the soul of the world with nothing so fine. - -FRENCH CLARTÉ.—M. Vannier’s _La Clarté Française_ does not throw much -light upon the mysteries of French lucidity. He accepts as self-evident -Rivarol’s axiom that “what is not clear is not French”—surely worthy to -be the national device of France; and he analyses with admirable humour -a considerable number of examples of “clarté,” and the want of it. But -the mystery of lucidity remains a mystery still. Flaubert’s practice of -reading his compositions aloud puts us on the most promising scent, for -it is certain that the French “clarté” is eminently readable aloud and in -company. A great deal of our own literature is meant for the eye and not -for the ear, for the study and not for the salon, with the consequence -that at its best it is the grand style simple, but at its worst shocking. -Written for the ear, and meant to be read in company, French literature -is never grand, but neither is it ever silly. Its range is society, while -ours is solitude. - -WHEN SHALL WE TRANSLATE?—There is nothing particularly “masterly” from -the modern English point of view in Hobbes’s translation of Pericles’s -_Funeral Oration_. His period of English prose appears to have been -ill-adapted for the translation of the Greek idiom of the time of -Pericles. To the usual cautions against translations in general, we ought -to add the caution against translations made in dissimilar epochs. It is -not at any time in the history of a language that a translation from a -foreign language can safely be undertaken. In all probability, indeed, -the proper period for translation is no longer in point of time than the -period within which the original itself was written. If the Periclean -Age lasted, let us say, fifty years, it is within a period in English -history of the same length that an adequate translation can be made. -Once let that period go by, and a perfect translation will be for ever -impossible. And equally the result will be a failure, if the translation -is attempted before its time has come. I do not think that the Hobbesian -period of English was in key with the period of Periclean Greek; nor, -again, do I think that our period for perfect translation has yet come. -A “masterpiece” of translation of Pericles’s _Oration_ is still, in my -opinion, to be done. But I am confident that we are approaching the -proper period, and in proof of this I would remark on the superiority of -Jowett’s translation over that of Hobbes. Jowett, as a writer of original -English, nobody, I think, would compare with Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes -was a great pioneer, a creator of language; Jowett was only a good -writer. Nevertheless, the idiom in which Jowett wrote, was more nearly -perfect (that is, fully developed) English than the idiom in which Hobbes -wrote. And since, in point of development, the correspondence between -Periclean Greek and Jowett’s English is closer than the correspondence -between Periclean Greek and Hobbes’s English, Jowett’s translation is -nearer the original than Hobbes’s. - -It would be a pleasant exercise in style to criticise Jowett’s -translation, and a still more profitable exercise to amend it. To a mere -student of comparative values in Periclean Greek and idiomatic English, -some of the errors in Jowett’s translation are obvious. Such a student -needs not to refer with the scholar’s precision to the original Greek -to be able, with the approval of all men of taste, to pronounce that -such and such a phrase or word is most certainly not what may be called -Periclean _English_. It stands to the totality of reason that it is not -so. We may be certain, for instance, that Pericles, were he delivering -his _Oration_ in English, with all the taste and training he possessed -as a Greek of his age, would never have employed such phrases as these: -“commended the law-giver,” “a worthy thing,” “burial to the dead,” -“reputation ... imperilled on ... the eloquence,” “who knows the facts,” -“suspect exaggeration.” Pericles, we cannot but suppose both from the man -and his age, spoke with studied simplicity, that is to say, with perfect -naturalness. The words and phrases he used were in all probability the -most ordinary to the ear of the Athenian, and well within the limits of -serious conversation. But such phrases as I have mentioned are not of -the same English character; they are written, not spoken phrases, and -approximate more to a leading commemorative article in _The Times_ than -to a speech we should all regard as excellent. It would be interesting to -have Lord Rosebery’s version of Pericles’ speech, or even Mr. Asquith’s. -Both, it is probable, would be nearer the original than Jowett’s, though -still some distance off perfection. In another fifty years perfection -will be reached. - -NATURE IN MIND.—The _Quest_ contains an article by Mr. G. R. S. Mead, in -which he suggests—and, perhaps, rather more than suggests—an affinity, if -not an identity, between the “laws” of nature and the “laws” of mind. -Ever since I read the following sentence in Coleridge’s _Biographia -Literaria_: “The highest perfection of natural philosophy would consist -in the perfect spiritualisation of all the laws of nature into laws of -intuition and intellect,” it has been at the back of my mind as an aim -to keep before philosophy. Whether or not there is a drummer in every -age with whom the active thinkers keep in step, even without being aware -of the fact, I can only say that more and more evidence of this tendency -of thought is coming to light. Boutroux’s _Contingency of the Laws of -Nature_ may be said to have most explicitly attempted the sublimation—or, -dare we say, the humanisation?—of the natural laws; but Boutroux is -only one of many philosophers working in the same direction. Other -areas of study than that of “pure” philosophy seem to have yielded, or -to be yielding, the same result. Mr. Mead quotes, for instance, some -recent studies of Animism to show that Animism, which, together with -Anthropomorphism, we used to dismiss as merely a primitive mode of -thought, may, after all, prove to contain a truth, the truth, namely, -that Nature _is_ living and intelligent, and, on that account, not so -far from human nature as we had come to imagine. “The more we penetrate -Matter,” says Mr. Mead, “the more akin to Mind we find it to be.” The -world is a creation of mind; and the more either of the world or of mind -we understand the more we understand of both. It is a thrilling idea, -the conception of the world of nature as being the externalisation of an -intelligence akin to our own. At the same time, it is, like all thrilling -ideas, associated with considerable danger. The “superstitions” connected -with it are perhaps best left under the shadow that has been cast upon -them. - -MR. CLIVE BELL’S POT.—Mr. Clive Bell cannot escape the charge of literary -insolence by giving to his collection of essays the deprecatory name -of _Pot Boilers_. That the articles he has reprinted were designed to -boil Mr. Clive Bell’s pot, and did, in fact, keep it simmering, may be -true enough; for the _Athenæum_, in which most of them appeared, was an -eclectic journal with a surprising taste for the bad as well as for the -good. Mr. Clive Bell’s modesty, however, is titular only, for not merely -has he republished these ashes of his yesterday’s fire, but he imagines -them to be still ablaze. “It charms me,” he says, “to notice as I read -these essays, with what care and conscience they are done.... I seem -consistently to have cared much for four things—Art, Truth, Liberty, and -Peace.” These are things which a more modest man would have left his -biographer and eulogist to say of him; and even then not even friendship -would have made them true. To Art and Truth, there are, of course, a good -many references in Mr. Clive Bell’s essays, but the mere mention of these -names ought not to be regarded as an evidence of care for the things -themselves. Cannot the names of Art and Truth be also taken in vain? In -the two concluding essays of the book are to be found most clearly Mr. -Clive Bell’s conception of Art. It is indistinguishable from what may be -called the Bohemian conception. Art is not moral, art is not useful, art -is not a relative fact; it is an absolute to which all these other things -are relative. The artist, again, is not a “practical” person, and it is -no use expecting of him an interest in the non-artistic affairs of the -world. The war, for instance? It is only a means to art, and what should -be said of artists who abandon the end to occupy themselves with the -means? - -But this Bohemian and superior attitude is consistent apparently with -some very mundane bitterness. Mr. Clive Bell does not appreciate the -war, which appears to have put him considerably out, in spite of his -Kensington Olympianism. He is shocked at hearing that “this is no time -for art.” But, on the other hand, he does not appear to be able to escape -from the war. The penultimate essay is about _Art and the War_, and the -first essay is a palinode for the state of affairs to which the war -put an end. According to Mr. Clive Bell, the world before the war was -in a most promising condition of renaissance—of æsthetic renaissance. -“Our governing classes,” he says, “were drifting out of barbarism.... -‘Society’ was becoming open-minded, tired of being merely decent, and was -beginning to prefer the ‘clever’ to the ‘good.’” But with the war all -this was interrupted—probably never to be resumed; for what is the use -of attempting to establish an æsthetic culture upon the state of poverty -which will certainly ensue after the war? Poverty and art, he as nearly -as possible says, are incompatible; it is only by means of wealth, wealth -in superabundance, that art is possible. And since war is destructive of -wealth, “war has ruined our little patch of civility” without bringing -us anything in exchange for it. The Bohemian view of art is own brother -to the Sardanapalian view of culture in general; it presupposes great -wealth, while denying that art is a luxury. Art is not a luxury or an -elegant amenity added to life, says Mr. Clive Bell. At the same time, it -is only when Society is wealthy that art can flourish. The contradiction -is obvious, and it pervades Mr. Clive Bell’s work. It is not worth -dwelling on a moment. - -THE CRITICISM OF POETS.—Professor Rudmose-Brown, the author of _French -Literary Studies_, is under the fatal illusion that it is necessary (or, -at any rate, proper), to write about poetry poetically; and his comments -are too often in this style: “The illimitable night of his obscurity -is strewn with innumerable stars.” But it is a style which is not only -repellent in itself, but doubly repellent from its association with -an exposition of poetry. Dr. Johnson has written about poetry in the -proper style. He was respectful in the very distance his prose kept from -poetic imagery. Cold and detached he may have seemed to be, but all good -criticism, comment, and even appreciation labour of necessity under this -charge. What would be said of a judge who demonstrated the emotions of -the persons before him; or, equally, of a judge who did not feel them? -To be a critic or judge of poetry, or of any art, requires, in the first -instance, an intense sympathetic power; but, in the second instance, a -powerful self-restraint in expression, manifested in poetical criticism, -I should say, by a prose style free from the smallest suggestion of -poetry. - -“JOHN EGLINTON.”—Mr. “John Eglinton” has been called “the Irish Emerson”; -but the description of the “Irish Thoreau” would fit him much better. -He is transcendental, like Emerson, but after a different, and a -less high-falutin’ manner—the manner of transcendental common sense. -On the other hand, he shares with Thoreau the quality of passionate -independence, and what may be called adventurous solitude. “John -Eglinton” names his essays _Anglo-Irish_, and they answer even more -accurately to the description than the compound implies; for they are -essays upon the hyphen that joins them. Exactly as Thoreau was most -completely at home in no other man’s land between the world and the wood, -“John Eglinton” is at his easiest somewhere between England and Ireland. -He is not Irish, nor is he English. He is not Anglo-Irish either; but, -once more, the hyphen between them. It is this sense of difference from -both elements that makes of “John Eglinton” at once so attractive, so -significant, and so illuminating a writer and thinker. Being between -two worlds, and with a foot in each, he understands each world in a -double sense, from within and from without. To each in turn he can be -both interpreter and critic; and in these delightful essays he is to be -found alternately defending and attacking each of the national elements -between which his perch is placed. “Candid friend” would, perhaps, be -a fair description of his attitude towards both nations, if the phrase -were not associated with the disagreeable. But since “John Eglinton” is -anything but acid in his comments, and writes of both nations in a spirit -of mingled admiration and judgment, I can think of nothing better at -the moment than my image of the hyphen. He is alone between two worlds, -friendly but critical equally of both. - -IRISH HUMOUR.—Mr. Stephen Gwynn’s _Irish Books and Irish People_ contains -an essay on “Irish Humour.” Mr. Gwynn is severe but just. He refers to -the “damning effects” of the “easy fluency of wit” and the “careless -spontaneity of laughter” which characterise Irish humour. It would be -terrible, however, to have to admit that these divine qualities are -“defects” in the accepted sense of qualities _manqués_; and the “defect” -arises, I think, not from the presence of these qualities in the Irish -genius, but from the absence of the counterbalancing qualities of -weight, high seriousness, and good judgment. It would almost seem that -the “elder gods” departed from Ireland centuries ago, leaving in sole -possession the “younger gods” of irresponsible and incontinent laughter. -As Mr. Gwynn says, “Irish humour makes you laugh”; it always takes one -by surprise. But the laughter has no echoes in the deeper levels of -consciousness; it rings true but shallow. Dogmatism on racial psychology -is dangerous, and I have no wish to exacerbate feelings already too -sore; but, as a literary critic, I venture my judgment that the Irish -genius, as manifested in literature during the last century, is wanting -in the solidity that comes only from hard work. Every Irishman, speaking -roughly, is a born genius; but few Irishmen complete their birth by -“making” themselves. Wit comes to them too easily to be anything but a -tempting line of least resistance. - -THE LITERARY DRAMA OF IRELAND.—While exceedingly painstaking, thorough, -and well-documented, Mr. Boyd’s essay on _The Contemporary Drama of -Ireland_ cannot be said to add much value to the value of a record. -Unlike his recent volume of _Appreciations and Depreciations_, his -present work carefully, and I should almost say, timidly, avoids coming -to any large and personal conclusions, save in the case, perhaps, of the -plays of Mr. St. John Ervine. The reason for this diffidence I take -to be rather an apprehension of what he might discover were his real -conclusions than any inability to arrive at them; for I cannot think that -upon any other ground so usually decisive a mind would have been content -to leave his readers in the dark. But what then is it that Mr. Boyd may -conceivably have feared to discover? It is obvious enough, I think, to an -outsider—to one, I mean, who does not belong to the coterie that calls -itself the Irish literary movement; it is that the contemporary drama of -Ireland is the history of a rapid decline. - -Mr. Boyd is, of course, honest with his facts, and the material is thus -before us for a judgment. He does not conceal from us, for instance, -the illuminating circumstances that the Irish dramatic movement -actually began under the impulse of the Continental movement, and that -its earliest authors were desirous, not so much of creating an Irish -drama, as of creating a drama for Ireland. Mr. Edward Martyn, who was -undoubtedly the chief pioneer, was himself a follower of Ibsen and -aimed at writing and producing what may be called Ibsen plays. But this -praiseworthy attempt to reintroduce the world into Ireland was defeated -by the apparently incorrigible tendency of the native Irish mind to -reduce the world to the size of Dublin. In rather less than two years, -during which time some six or seven plays were produced, the Irish -Literary Theatre, founded by Martyn and Yeats, came to an end, to have -its place taken almost immediately by the Irish _National_ Theatre, -which was formed about the group of Irish players calling themselves -the Irish National Drama Society. But what has been the consequence of -this contraction of aim and of interest? That plays of some value as -folk-drama have resulted from it nobody would deny; but equally nobody -would maintain that the world has been enriched by it in its dramatic -literature. Ireland, in other words, has accepted a gift from the world -without returning it; her literary coterie has taken the inspiration of -the Continent and converted it to a purely nationalist use. - -Even against this there would be nothing to be said if it succeeded; but -fortunately for the world-principle it can be shown that such a procedure -ends in sterility. As the reader turns over the pages of Mr. Boyd’s -faithful record of the course of the drama in Ireland, he cannot but -be aware of a gradual obscuration. One by one the lamps lit by Martyn, -Moore, and others, which illuminate the earlier pages, go out, leaving -the reader in the later pages groping his way through petty controversies -acid with personality, and through an interminable undergrowth of sickly -and stunted productions about which even Mr. Boyd grows impatient. The -vision splendid with which the record begins dies down to a twilight, to -a darkness, and finally to black night. The world has once more been shut -out. - -MR. STANDISH O’GRADY.—Mr. Standish O’Grady’s _The Flight of the Eagle_ -is not a romance in the ordinary sense; it is not an invented story, -but an actual historical episode treated romantically. The period is -Elizabethan, and the story turns mainly on the careers of Sir William -Parrett, an English “Lord-Lieutenant” of Ireland, who appears to -have suffered the usual fate of a popular English Governor, and Red -Hugh O’Donnell or Hue Roe of Tir-Connall, which is now Donegal. If -acquaintance with Irish history is ever to be made by English readers, -the means must be romances of this kind. History proper is, as a rule, -carefully ignored by the average reader, who must therefore have facts, -if he is ever to have them, presented in the form of a story. It is -only by this means, and thanks to Scott in the first instance, that the -history of Scotland has penetrated in any degree beyond the border. -Only by this means, again, have various countries and nations been -brought home to the intellectually idle English reader by writers like -Kipling. Both as a story-writer and as the first and greatest of the -Irish historians of Ireland, Mr. Standish O’Grady is qualified to do for -Ireland what Scott after his own fashion has done for Scotland, namely, -bring his country into the historic consciousness of the world. - -MR. STANDISH O’GRADY, ENCHANTER.—_The Selected Essays and Passages from -Standish O’Grady_ is a priceless anthology of this neglected author. Very -few people in England realise that Mr. Standish O’Grady is more than -any other Irishman the rediscoverer of ancient and, in consequence, the -creator of modern Ireland. His very first work on the _Heroic Period_ -of Irish history appeared in 1878; it was published at his own expense, -and had a small and a slow sale; but to-day it is the inspiration of the -Celtic revival. “Legends,” says Mr. O’Grady, “are the kind of history -which a nation desires to possess.” For the same reason, legends are the -kind of history which a nation tends to produce. I am not certain that it -would not have been well to leave the legends of ancient Ireland in their -dust and oblivion. They go back to remote periods in time, and seem, even -then, to echo still earlier ages. It is possible, for instance, that -Ireland was a nation over four thousand years ago. Some contend that a -Buddhist civilisation preceded the Christian. Characteristically, it has -been thought that Ireland supported Carthage against Rome. But what is -the present value of these revivals of infantile memories? They cannot be -realised to-day, and to dwell upon them is to run the risk of a psychic -regression from waking to dreaming. “Enchantment,” Mr. O’Grady tells -us, “is a fact in nature.” So potent a charm as himself has created may -have been responsible—who dare say?—for the recall to present-day Irish -consciousness of early historic experience that were best forgotten. Is -it not a fact that the mood of Ireland to-day is between the legendary -and the dreaming? Is not the “ideal” Irishman to-day Cuculain of Dundalk -talking and acting in his sleep? It is a question for psycho-analysis. - -LES SENTIMENTS DE JULIEN BENDA.—I thought for some time of translating -_Les Sentiments de Critias_, recently published in Paris by M. Julien -Benda. The style is excellent, and M. Benda has the gifts of epigram and -irony; but, upon second thoughts, the inappositeness of such a style to -the situation in which we find ourselves forbade me. As M. Benda himself -says, “there is no elegance about the war.” And success in writing about -it elegantly must needs, therefore, be a literary failure. Critias’s -“sentiments,” moreover, appear, when compared with the real sentiments -evoked by the contemplation of the war, a little literary. He is like -a sadder and a wiser Mr. Bernard Shaw flickering epigrammatically over -the carnage. Impeccable as his opinions usually are, they are expressed -too lightly to be impressive, and too carefully to be regarded as wholly -natural. And that M. Benda can do no other is evident in his _Open Letter -to M. Romain Rolland_, whom he considers a prig. If he had been capable -of impassioned rhetoric it is in this address that he would have shown -his skill, for the subject is to his liking, and the material for an -indictment is ample. But the most striking sentence he achieves is that -“We asked for judgment and you gave us a sermon.” It is pretty, but it is -“art.” - -CONVALESCENCE AFTER NEWSPAPER.—Matthew Arnold used to say that to get -his feet wet spoiled his style for days. But there is a far worse enemy -of style than natural damp; it is too much newspaper-reading. Too much -newspaper not only spoils one’s style, it takes off the edge of one’s -taste, so that I know not what grindstones are necessary to put it on -again. Indulgent readers, I have been compelled for some weeks to read -too much newspaper, with the consequence that at the end of my task I was -not only certain that my little of style was gone, but I was indifferent -in my taste. The explanation of the _reductio ad absurdum_ to which an -overdose of newspaper leads is to be found, I think, in the uniformity, -mass and collectivity of newspaper literature. The writing that fills -the Press is neither individual nor does it aim at individuality. If a -citizen’s meeting, a jury, or the House of Commons were to perform the -feat of making its voice heard, the style of their oracles would be -perfect newspaper. But literature, I need not say, is not made after this -fashion; nor is it inspired by such performances. Literature, like all -art, is above everything, individual expression. _Gardez-vous!_ I do not -mean that literature is a personal expression of the personal opinion of -the writer. On the contrary, it is the rôle of newspaper to give common -expression to personal opinions, but it is the function of literature -to give personal expression to common opinions. And since it is only -personal expression that provokes and inspires personal expression, -from newspapers one can derive no stimulus to literature, but only the -opposite, a disrelish and a distaste. - -How to recover one’s health after newspaper poisoning is a problem. -To plunge back forthwith into books was for me an impossibility. It -was necessary to begin again from the very beginning and gradually to -accustom myself to the taste for literature again. Re-arranging my -books, and throwing away the certainly-done with was, I found, as useful -a preliminary tonic as any other I could devise. In particular there -is a satisfaction in throwing out books which makes this medicine as -pleasant as it is tonic. It visibly reduces the amount left to be read; -there is then not so much on one’s plate that the appetite revolts at -the prospect. And who can throw away a book without glancing into it to -make sure that it will never again be wanted? Picking and tasting in this -indeliberate way, the invalid appetite is half coaxed to sit up and take -proper nourishment. This destruction and reconstruction I certainly found -recovering, and I can, therefore, commend them to be included in the -pharmacopæias. - -Another nourishing exercise when you are in this state is the overhauling -of your accumulations of memoranda, cuttings and note-books. I have -sat for hours during the last few days, like a beaver unbuilding its -dam, turning out with a view to destroying their contents, drawer after -drawer and shelf upon shelf. It is fatal to set about the operation with -any tenderness. Your aim must be to destroy everything which does not -command you to spare it. The tragic recklessness of the procedure is the -virtue of the medicine. As a matter of fact there is little or nothing -now left in my drawers for future use. Nearly all my paper-boats have -been burned, including some three-decked galleons which were originally -designed to bring me fame. No matter; the Rubicon is crossed, and to be -on the other side of newspaper with no more than a thin portfolio of -notes is to have escaped cheaply. - -For the humour of it, however, I will record a careful exception. -It appears, after all, that I was not so mad as I seemed. Perchance -newspaper, being only a feigned literature, induces only a feigned -madness. Be it as it may. I find that my current note-book, though -as handy and tempting to be destroyed as any other, was nevertheless -destroyed only after the cream of it had been whipped into the permanent -book which I have kept through many rages for a good many years. The -extracts are here before me as I write in convalescence. It is amusing to -me to observe, moreover, that their cream is not very rich. Much better -has gone into the bonfire. Why, then, did I save these and sacrifice -those? Look at a few of them. “Nobody’s anything always”—is there aught -irrecoverable in that to have compelled me to spare it? “Lots of window, -but no warehouse”—a remark, I fancy, intended to hit somebody or other -very hard indeed—but _does_ it? Is any of the present company fitted -with a cap? “The judgment of the world is good, but few can put it into -words.” That is a premonitory symptom, you will observe, of a remark made -a few lines above to the effect that literature is a personal expression -of a common opinion or judgment. I have plainly remembered it. _Apropos_ -of the _New Age_, I must have told somebody, and stolen home to write it -down, that its career is that of a rocking-horse, all ups and downs but -never any getting forward. It is too true to be wholly amusing; let me -horse-laugh at it and pass it on. “A simple style is like sleep, it will -not come by effort.” Not altogether true, but true enough. The rest are -not much worse or better, and the puzzle is to explain why those should -be taken and these left. - -Again _apropos_, may a physician who has healed himself offer this piece -of advice? Read your own note-books often. I have known some people who -have a library of note-books worth a dukedom, who never once looked into -them after having filled them. That is collecting mania pure and simple. -From another offensive angle what a confession of inferior taste is -made in preferring the note-books of others to one’s own. A little more -self-respect in this matter is clearly necessary if your conversation -is to be personal at all; for in all probability the references and -quotations you make _without_ the authority of your own collection are -hackneyed. They are the reach-me-downs of every encyclopædia. Is this the -reason that the vast majority of current quotations are as worn as they -are; that a constant reader, forewarned of the subject about to be dealt -with, is usually forearmed against the tags he will find employed in -it? In any case, the advice I have just given is the corrective of this -depressing phenomenon of modern writing. You have only to trade in your -own note-books to be, and to give the air of being, truly original. - -Browsing is a rather more advanced regimen for convalescence than the -re-arrangement of books. The latter can be performed without the smallest -taste for reading. It is a matter of sizing them up, and any bookseller’s -apprentice can do it. But browsing means dipping into the contents here -and there; it is both a symptom of returning health and a means to it. In -the last few days I must have nibbled in a hundred different pastures, -chiefly, I think, in the pastures of books about books. De Quincey, -Matthew Arnold, Bagehot, Macaulay, Johnson, etc.—what meadows, what -lush grass, what feed! After all, one begins to say, literature cannot -be unsatisfying that fed such bulls and that so plumped their minds. -It cannot be only a variety of newspaper. Thus a new link with health -is established, and one becomes able to take one’s books again. Here I -should end, but that a last observation in the form of a question occurs -to me. Is not or can not a taste for literature be acquired by the same -means by which it can be re-acquired? Are not the child and the invalid -similar? In that case the foregoing directions may be not altogether -useless. - -NATURE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.—In observation of Nature English literature -excels all others. But that is by no means to say that every English -writer upon Nature is good. The astonishing thing is that contemporary -with such masters of both Nature-observation and literary expression -as—to name but two—Mr. W. H. Hudson and Mr. Warde Fowler (and half a -dozen others could be named in the same street) there should still be so -many writers insensible enough to perfection to write about Nature when -they have little to say and few gifts of expression. You would think that -having seen the sun they would not light a candle, or that if they did, -nobody would look at it. But the truth is that not only are many candles -lit, but they are all much admired—much more, indeed, than the suns -themselves. There may be a good reason for it, namely, that the reading -public is so much in love with Nature-writing that the best is not good -enough for us. Or, again, everybody living in the country and having a -pen at all, wishes to write his own Nature-observations as everybody -wishes to write his own love-lyrics, regardless of the fact that the best -love-lyrics have already been written. It may be so; but the admission -appears to me to be over-generous. - -Mr. Percy W. D. Izzard has published in book form his “Year of Country -Days” under the general title of _Homeland_. The series has appeared -in the _Daily Mail_, where it appears to have given pleasure to a -considerable number of readers. I do not doubt the fact. Even the -least suggestion of Nature would be a relief in the stuffy and bawling -atmosphere of the _Daily Mail_. But in the form of a book, in which three -hundred and sixty-five of them appear, they are almost intolerable. Their -value lay in their contrast to the surrounding columns of the journal in -which they were published. Take away that background and let them stand -by themselves, and they are seen to be what they are—pale, anæmic, and -not very knowledgeable commonplace observations. Nothing really exciting -appears to have happened in the country under Mr. Izzard’s observation. -When reading Jefferies or Hudson or Ward Fowler or Selous, you are made -to feel, in a simple walk along a hedgerow, that something dramatic is -afoot. Discovery is in the air. But Mr. Izzard is never fortunate, and -all he has to record are the commonplaces of the country-side, which I -could as easily reconstruct from a calendar as gather from his text. “The -silver clouds are heaped together in billowy masses that sail with deeps -of Italian blue between.” How pretty! But the delight is wanting. - -S.S.S.—The Simplified Spelling Society has broken loose from obscurity -again in the issue of a new pamphlet, called _Breaking the Spell; an -Appeal to Common Sense_. A preface contributed by Dr. Macan rehearses all -the old “reasons” for simplifying our spelling with as little attention -as ever to the real reasons against it. “Spelling,” we are told, “should -be the simplest of all arts.” It is so in Spanish, in Italian, in Welsh, -and in Dutch, and it was so in Greek and Latin. Why not, therefore, in -English? The reasoning, however, is ridiculous, for it assumes that it -was by some deliberate and self-conscious design that these languages -came to be spelled phonetically, and hence that we have only to follow -them faithfully (and the advice of the S.S.S.) in order to place our -language in a similar state. Language, however, is not a product -of logic and science, but of art and taste. It is determined not by -reason alone, but by the totality of our judgment, in which many other -factors than reason are included. To ask us to “reform” our spelling in -order to make it “reasonable” is to ask us to forgo the satisfaction -of every intellectual taste save that of logic; a procedure that would -not only “reform” our spelling, but all literature into the bargain. It -is pretended that the adoption of simplified spelling would have, at -worst, only a passing effect upon the well-being of literature. If, for -example, all the English classics were re-spelled in conformity with -phonetic rules, and their use made general, very soon, we are told, we -should forget their original idiosyncrasies, and love them in their new -spelling as much as ever. But people who argue in this way must have been -blinded in their taste in their pursuit of rationalistic uniformity. -Literature employs words not for their rational meaning alone, not even -for their sound alone, but for their combined qualities of meaning, -sound, _sight_, association, history, and a score of other attributes. By -reducing words to a rational rule of phonetic spelling, more than half -of these qualities would be entirely, or almost entirely, eliminated. A -re-spelled Shakespeare, for instance, if it should ever take the place of -the present edition, would be a new Shakespeare—a Shakespeare translated -from the coloured language in which he thought and wrote into a language -of logical symbols. An exact analogy—as far as any analogy can be -exact—for the proposal of the S.S.S. would be to propose to abolish the -use of colour in pictorial art, and to produce everything in black and -white. The colour-blind would, no doubt, be satisfied in the one case, -and, in the other, the word-blind would be equally pleased. Fortunately, -both proposals have the same chance of success. - -STERNE CRITICISM.—Everybody knows that Sterne’s _Sentimental Journey_ -broke off suddenly in the second book at the crisis of a Shandian -incident. What everybody does not know—I confess I only learnt it myself -a few days ago—is that Sterne’s Editor “Eugenius” not only concluded -the incident, but carried on the journey to the extent of another two -books. He did this, he informs us, from notes and materials left or -communicated to him by Sterne himself, and he is so frank as to say -that he has striven to complete the work in the style and manner of his -late friend. Having a particular admiration for the style of Sterne, -which, to my mind, is the easiest ever achieved in English, I have now -a double resentment against the presumptuous Eugenius. In the first -place, I question the man’s veracity almost as much as the veracity of -Sterne himself is to be questioned in the matter of Sterne’s intention -of completing his journey. The _Journey_ was a _tour de force_; it was -the result, as it were, of a challenge. Sterne had made a bet that he -would maintain the reader’s interest in a series of the most trivial -incidents by his mere manner of writing about them. That he had any -other intention than that of showing his power I do not for a moment -believe; least of all the suggestion that he had a plan of writing -in his mind which required the book to be finished in four sections, -four and just four. Eugenius’s excuses that he had often discussed the -completion of the _Journey_ with Sterne, and had heard from him the -“facts, events, and observations,” intended to be introduced into the -unwritten book, are thus a mere literary device for getting his own work -tied to Sterne’s kite. Even if Sterne gave him authority for it, I should -refuse to believe it, since Sterne may easily have been badgered into -consenting; and, in any case, is not necessarily to be believed upon a -matter of fact. One’s resentment is embittered by the manner in which -Eugenius makes the continuation. It is notorious that Sterne never made -a statement that could definitely incriminate himself. It was his whole -art to leave everything to his readers’ imagination, and to put upon -them the odium of the obvious interpretation. An admission on his part -would have been fatal not only to himself, but to the style and intention -of his work, which may be described as skating upon thin ice. Eugenius, -however, in spite of all the intimacy which he says subsisted between -himself and Mr. Sterne, was so far from having appreciated the elementary -quality of the _Journey_ that in completing the very incident on which -Book Two breaks off, he falls into the blunder of committing Sterne to a -“criminal” confession. I need not say what the confession is; it is the -obvious deduction to be drawn from the description provided by Sterne -himself. And it is precisely on this account that I am certain Sterne -would never have made it. - -STERNE ON LOVE IN FRANCE.—One of my correspondents must have been reading -Sterne at the same time that I was being annoyed by Eugenius, for he has -written to remind me of Sterne’s opinion of Love as it is understood in -France. “The French,” wrote Sterne, “have certainly got the credit of -understanding more of Love, and making it better than any other nation -upon earth; but for my own part I think them arrant bunglers, and in -truth, the worst set of marksmen that ever tried Cupid’s patience.” -My correspondent recalls the fact from the dark backward and abysm of -time that, in a discussion of Stendhal, I expressed the same opinion; -and he has, no doubt, supplied the parallel in order to gratify me. -Gratifying it is, in one sense, to find oneself confirmed in a somewhat -novel opinion—which, moreover, was thought to be original as well—by an -observer of the penetration of Sterne. But it is less gratifying when one -reflects that Sterne was the last person in the world to have the right -to talk about Love at all. What should a genuine as well as a professed -sentimentalist have to say of Love more than that in its practice the -French were not sentimental enough for him? But it is not the defect of -sentimentality that stamps Love as understood in France with the mark of -inferiority, but the presence of too much egoism—a fault Sterne would -never have observed. - -ENGLISH STYLE.—The same correspondent copies out for me Quincey’s “fine -analysis of Swift’s style,” as follows:— - - The main qualification for such a style was plain good sense, - natural feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly - practice in the putting together of sentences so as to avoid - mechanical awkwardness of construction, but above all, the - advantage of a _subject_ such in its nature as instinctively - to reject ornament lest it should draw attention from itself. - Such subjects are common; but grand impassioned subjects - insist upon a different treatment; and there it is that the - true difficulties of style commence, and there it is that your - worshipful Master Jonathan would have broken down irrecoverably. - -This “fine analysis” of Swift’s style does not appear to me to be -anything more than a powerful attack delivered by an apostle of the -opposing school. Swift and de Quincey are obviously poles apart in the -direction of their style, and I have no doubt that I could find in Swift -as severe an analysis of de Quincey as my correspondent has found in -de Quincey of Swift. At bottom the controversy carries us back to the -very foundations of European culture. On the whole, Swift followed the -Greek tradition—exemplified by Demosthenes—while de Quincey followed the -Latin—exemplified by Cicero. There can be no doubt of the school to which -Swift belonged; his _Drapier’s Letters_, for instance, were confessedly -modelled on Demosthenes. Likewise there can be no doubt of the school -which de Quincey attended; he learned his style of Cicero. The question, -however, is one of taste, by no means a matter of _non est disputandum_. -Which of the two schools of style is capable of the highest absolute -development; and, above all, which is the most suited to the English -language? My mind is fully made up; I am for the Greek and Demosthenes -against the Latin and Cicero. I am for Swift against de Quincey; for the -simple against the ornate. - -De Quincey appears to me to fall into an almost vulgar error in -assuming that the style of plain good sense cultivated by Swift is fit -only for commonplace subjects, and that “grand impassioned subjects” -demand an ornate style. The style of Demosthenes was obviously quite as -well fitted to the high subjects of his Discourse on the Crown as to -the details for the fitting out of an expedition against Philip. The -_Apology_ of Plato is in much the same style, and not even de Quincey -would say that the subject was not anything but commonplace. With the -majority of English critics, I have a horror of fine writing, and -especially about fine things. The proper rule is, in fact, the very -reverse of that laid down by de Quincey; it is on no account to write -upon “grand impassioned subjects” in a grand impassioned style. After -all, as the Greeks understood, there are an infinite number of degrees -of simplicity, ranging from the simple colloquial to the simple grand. -The ornate Latin style, with its degrees of ornateness, is, on the other -hand, a bastard style. The conclusion seems to be this: that the simple -style is capable of anything, even of dealing with “grand impassioned -subjects”; whereas the ornate style is only barely tolerable in the most -exceptional circumstances. I would sooner trust Swift than de Quincey not -to embarrass a reader on a difficult occasion, as, for the same reason, I -prefer Shakespeare the Greek to Ben Jonson the Latinist. - -LITERARY CULS-DE-SAC.—A cul-de-sac occurs in literary history when a -direction is taken away from the main highway of the national language -and literature; when the stream it represents is not part of the main -stream of the traditional language, but a backwater or a side stream. -There have been dozens of such private streams in the course of our -literary history, and I am not denying for an instant that their final -contribution to the main stream has been considerable. - -THE DECLINE OF FREE INTELLIGENCE.—Pure intelligence I should define as -displaying itself in disinterested interest in things; in things, that -is to say, of no _personal_ advantage, but only of general, public, or -universal importance. Interest (to turn the cat in the pan) is the -growing end of the mind, and its direction and strength are marked by -a motiveless curiosity to know; it reveals itself, while it is still -active, as a love of knowledge for its own sake. Later on it often -appears that this motiveless love had a motive; in other words, the -knowledge acquired under its impulse is discovered in the end to “come -in handy,” and to have been of use. But the process of acquiring this -knowledge is for the most part, indeliberate, unaware of any other aim -than that of the satisfaction of curiosity; utility is remote from its -mind. This is what I have called disinterested interest, and it is this -free intelligence of which it appears to me that there is a diminishing -amount in our day. Were it not the case, the fortunes of the really -free Press would be much brighter than they are. An organ of free -opinion would not need to discover a utilitarian attraction for its free -opinions, but would be able to command a sale on its own merits. Such, -indeed, is the case in several European countries, notably in France, -Italy, and Germany. I am told that it is the case also in Bohemia (in -which country there is not only no illiterate, but no un-read adult) and -in the provinces of Yugo Slavia. In these countries a journal of opinions -can live without providing its readers with any commercial or specialist -bribe in the way of exclusive utilitarian information; it can live, that -is to say, by the sale of its free intelligence. Happy countries—in one -sense of the word; happy if also tragical; for their existence is not -always, at any rate, a paradise for the rich, a hell for the poor, and a -purgatory for the able! - -To what is due this decline amongst us of free intelligence? There -are several explanations possible, though none is wholly satisfying. -It can be attributed to the industrialisation of our own country, -a metamorphosis of occupation which has been longer in being in -England than anywhere else. The economic balance between primary and -secondary production has been for a longer period lost in this country -than elsewhere, with the consequence that we have been the first to -exhibit the effects of over-industrialisation in the loss of the free -intelligence associated with primary production. The other nations may -be expected to follow suit as the same metamorphosis overtakes them. -Another explanation is the reaction against the intellectualism of the -nineteenth century. It is a familiar topic, but it is obvious that if -faith in the ultimate _use_ of intelligence is lost, men become cynical -in regard to the passion itself. Let us suppose that every love affair -always and invariably ended in disappointment or disaster. Let us suppose -that it became the accepted belief that such would always be the case. -Would it not soon become fashionable to nip the first stirrings of love -in the bud, and to salt its path whenever its shoots began to appear? -The nineteenth century reached its climax in a vast disappointment with -science, with the intellect, with intellectualism. The fifth act of -the thrilling drama inaugurated after the French Revolution closed in -utter weariness and ennui. It was no wonder that the twentieth century -opened in a return to impulse and in a corresponding reaction from -intellectuality. That the reaction has gone too far is the very disease -we are now trying to diagnose; for only an excessive reaction towards -impulse and away from thought can account for the poverty of free -intelligence. Sooner or later, the pendulum must be set free again, if -not in this country, then in America, or in some of the countries whose -rebirth we are now witnessing. It cannot be the will of God that free -intelligence should be extinguished from the planet; the world, somehow -or other, must be made safe for intelligence as well as for democracy. - -My last guess at the origin of the phenomenon is the decline of the -religious spirit. Religion, I conceive, is the study and practice of -perfection, and it is summed up in the text: “Be ye perfect, even as your -Father in Heaven is perfect.” This impossible and infinite aim includes, -as a matter of course, the employment and development of intelligence as -one of the most powerful aids to perfection. Fools, the Indian Scriptures -inform us, can enter heaven, but only wise men know how to stay there. -And if the perfection we seek is to be lasting and incorruptible, it is -certain that an infinite amount of intelligence will be necessary to its -accomplishment. The loss of the belief in the perfectibility of the human -spirit, in the religious duty of perfection, might easily account for the -diminution of our regard for one of the chief instruments of perfection, -namely, intelligence. Why should we strive to set the crooked straight, -since it is not only impossible, but is no duty of ours? And why labour -with the instrumental means when the end is of no value? None of these -explanations, however, really satisfies me. - -The free Press is more severely criticised by its readers than the “kept” -Press by its clientèle. The reason is, no doubt, that in comparison -with the “kept” Press it protests its freedom and sets itself up on a -pedestal. Every “excuse” is consequently denied to it, and the smallest -complaint is enlarged to a grievance. The “kept” Press may be caught -in flagrant self-contradiction, in lies, in chicanery of all kinds, in -every form of intellectual and other dishonesty—it continues to be read -and “followed” as if the oracle were infallible. No newspaper in this -country has ever died of exposure; many live by being found out. The free -Press, on the other hand, has often for its readers not only the most -exigent of critics, but the most contradictory. They are not only hard to -please (which is a merit), but their reasons for being pleased, or the -reverse, are bewilderingly various. And, moreover, when they are pleased -they are usually silent, and when they are displeased they cease to buy -the journal. - -LITERARY COPYRIGHT IN AMERICA.—Horace Walpole used to say that the -Americans were the only people by whom he would wish to be admired. Let -me put the compliment a little differently and say that the Americans -are the people among all others whom we would most wish to admire most. -Having done so much to command our admiration already, we are not only -willing, we are desirous and anxious, that they should leave no amendable -fault unamended in themselves. Our command to them is that they should -become perfect. - -This must be my excuse for joining in the discussion concerning the law -of literary copyright in America, and the effect it has on the literary -relations of this country and America. I must agree with Mr. Pound that -the literary relations of our two countries are bad, and that much of -this estrangement, if not all of it, is due to remediable causes lying -at present on the American book of statutes. The actual facts of the -situation are simple. The copyright laws of America, unlike those of -any other civilised country, with the exception of ex-Tsarist Russia, -require as a condition of extending the protection of its copyright -to any work of foreign publication, that the latter shall be set up, -printed, and published in America within a period of thirty to sixty -days after its publication in the country of its origin. Failing such -practically simultaneous publication in America, not only is an American -publisher thereafter entitled to proceed immediately to publish the work -in question without the permission of the author, but the author and -his national publisher are not entitled to demand any royalties or fees -on the sale of the same. In other words, as far as the original author -and publisher are concerned, they are non-existent in America unless -they have made arrangements for the publication of their work in America -within one, or, at most, two months of its original publication in their -own country. - -Not to exaggerate in describing such a procedure it can be exactly -characterised by no other phrase than looting under the form of law. -Every author and publisher in this country knows how difficult it is to -arrange for the simultaneous publication of works at home and in America. -The time-conditions of publication are seldom the same in both countries. -A book that is timely in this country may not be simultaneously timely in -America, and it would be very odd if it always were. - -Again, a couple of months is a small period of time in which to arrange -to have an English work dispatched, accepted, set up, printed, and -published in America. Commercial difficulties of all kinds arise in -the course of the transaction, and every delay brings the day of the -accursed shears of the American Copyright Act nearer. Is an English -publisher to bargain with the advantage of time always on the side of -America, with the certain knowledge that, unless he comes to terms at -once, he will lose everything both for himself and his author? But either -that or indefinitely delaying publication in _this_ country is his only -possible course. The American Copyright Law is thus seen to be a modern -example of Morton’s fork. By requiring that the foreign author shall -publish his work in America within one or two months of its publication -at home, the law compels him to make a choice (in the majority of cases) -between forfeiting his copyright in America, and delaying, at his own -cost, the publication of his book in his own country. Upon either prong -he is impaled. If he elects for American publication he must forgo the -chance of the immediate market at home, and if he elects for immediate -publication at home he must forgo the protection of American copyright. - -Such an ingenious device for Dick-Turpining European authors cannot have -been invented and enforced without some presumed moral justification. -America cannot be conceived as a willing party to the legislation of -literary piracy, and it was and is, no doubt, under some cover of -justification that the law was enacted and now runs. The defence for it, -I should suppose, is the presumed necessity for protecting the industry -of book-making in America on behalf of American authors, printers, and -publishers alike. Its defence, in short, is the same defence that is -set up for protection in commercial matters in this country, namely, -the desirability of excluding foreign competition, and of encouraging -home-industry. Against this defence, however, there is a great deal to -be said that ought to weigh with the American people, and that ought -to weigh in their calculations as well as in their taste and sense of -right. For, as to the latter, I take it that no American would undertake -to defend his Copyright Law on the principles either of good taste -or common justice. It cannot be in conformity with good taste for the -literary artists of America to procure protection for themselves by -penalising their European confrères, and it cannot be justice to rob -a European author of his copyrights, or to compel him to delay his -publication in Europe. These admissions I take for granted, and the only -defence left is the calculation that such a Copyright Act is good for the -American book-making interests. - -If books were like other commodities, their sale, like the sale of other -commodities, would fall under the economic law of diminishing returns. -Thereunder, as their supply increased, the demand for books would tend -to decrease, as is the case with cotton, say, or wooden spoons. And upon -such an assumption there might be some reason for prohibiting the free -importation of printed books, since the imported articles would compete -in the home market for a relatively inelastic demand. But books, it is -obvious, are not a commodity in this sense of the word. They do not -_satisfy_ demand, but _stimulate_ it, and their sale, therefore, does not -fall under the economic law of diminishing returns, but under the very -contrary, that of increasing returns. Books, there is no doubt of it, -are the cause of books. New books do not take the place of old books; -nor do books really compete, as a general rule, with each other. On the -contrary, the more books there are, the more are demanded and the more -are produced. The free importation of books is not a means of contracting -the home-production of books; it is the very opposite, the most effective -means of stimulating home-production to its highest possible degree. If -I were an American author, resident in America, and concerned for the -prosperity of the American book-making profession, craft, and industry, I -should not be in the least disposed to thank the American Copyright Law -for the protection it professes to give me. The appetite for books, upon -which appetite I and my craft live, grows, I should say, by what it feeds -on. Addressing the Copyright Act as it now exists, I should say to it: -“In discouraging the free importation of foreign books, and in alienating -the good-will of foreign authors and publishers, you are robbing foreign -authors (that is true), but, much worse, you are depriving my public -of the stimulus necessary to its demand for my books. Since we authors -in America have a vital interest in increasing literary demand, and -the more books the more demand is created, our real protection lies in -freely importing books, and not in placing any impediment in their way. -Intending to help us, you—the Copyright Law—are really our enemy.” I -cannot see what reply the Copyright Law could make to this attack upon it -by its protégés, and I believe, moreover, that if they were to make it, -the Law would soon be amended. - -RIGHT CRITICISM.—To abandon the aim of “finality” of judgment is to -let in the jungle into the cultivated world of art; it is to invite -Tom, Dick, and Harry to offer their opinions as of equal value with the -opinions of the cultivated. It is no escape from this conclusion to -inquire into the “mentality” of the critic and to attach importance to -his judgment as his mentality is or is not interesting. In appraising a -judgment I am not concerned with the mentality, interesting or otherwise, -of the judge who delivers it. My concern is not with him, but with -the work before us; nor is the remark to be made upon his verdict the -personal comment, “How interesting!” but the critical comment, “How -true!” or “How false!” Personal preferences turn the attention in the -nature of the case from the object criticised to the critic himself. The -method substitutes for the criticism of art the criticism of psychology. -In a word, it is not art criticism at all. - -It may be said that if we dismiss personal preference as a criterion of -art judgment, there is either nothing left or only some “scientific” -standard which has no relevance to æsthetics. It is the common plea -of the idiosyncrats that, inconclusive as their opinions must be, and -anything but universally valid, no other method within the world of art -is possible. I dissent. A “final” judgment is as possible of a work of -art as of any other manifestation of the spirit of man; there is nothing -in the nature of things to prevent men arriving at a universally valid -(that is, universally accepted) judgment of a book, a picture, a sonata, -a statue or a building, any more than there is to prevent a legal judge -from arriving at a right judgment concerning any other human act; and, -what is more, such judgments of art are not only made daily, but in the -end they actually prevail and constitute in their totality the tradition -of art. The test is not scientific, but as little is it merely personal. -Its essential character is simply that it is right; right however arrived -at, and right whoever arrives at it. That the judge in question may or -may not have “studied” the history of the art-work he is judging is a -matter of indifference. Neither his learning nor his natural ignorance is -of any importance. That he is or is not notoriously this, that, or the -other, is likewise no concern. All that matters is that his judgment, -when delivered, should be “right.” But who is to settle this, it may be -asked? Who is to confirm a right judgment or to dispute a wrong one? -The answer is contained in the true interpretation of the misunderstood -saying, _De gustibus non est disputandum_. The proof of right taste -is that there is no real dispute about its judgment; its finality is -evidenced by the cessation of debate. The truth may be simply stated; a -judge—that is to say, a true judge—is he with whom everybody is compelled -to agree, not because he says it, but because it is so. - -MAN’S SURVIVAL OF BODILY DEATH.—What the circulation of the _Quest_ is -I have no idea, but it should be ten times greater. Is there, however, -a sufficiently large class of cultured persons in England—in the -Empire—in the world? Assuming that the spread of culture can be reckoned -numerically as well as qualitatively, can we pride ourselves on the -extension of culture while the number of free intelligences is relatively -decreasing? But how does one know that this class is really on the -decrease? Only by the same means that we judge the number of the curious -lepidoptera in any area—by holding a light up in the dark and counting -the hosts attracted by it. In the case of the _Quest_ there is no doubt -whatever that a light is being held up in our darkness. Its articles are -upon the most exalted topics; they are, for the most part, luminously -written, and their purity of motive may be taken for granted. The _Quest_ -is the literary Platonic Academy of our day. Yet it is seldom spoken of -in literary circles. We “good” are very apathetic, and it is lucky for -the devil that his disciples are unlike us in this respect. They see to -it that everything evil shall flourish like the bay-tree, while we allow -the bays of the intelligent to fade into the sere. - -Mr. Mead contributes an article on a topic which has not yet been -exhausted, “Man’s Survival of Bodily Death.” Mr. Randall is not the -first to deny “immortality” while affirming an absolute morality, nor -even the first to attempt to explain religion without recourse to a -dogma of survival. The Sadducees did it before him; and the Confucians -managed somehow or other to combine ancestor-worship with a lively denial -of their continued existence. There is, moreover, an ethical value in -the denial which almost makes the denial of survival an act of moral -heroism. For if a man can pursue the highest moral aims without the -smallest hope of personal reward hereafter, and, still less, here, his -disinterestedness is obvious; he pursues virtue as the pupil is enjoined -in the _Bhagavad Gita_ to act, namely, without hope or fear of fruit. -I am not of the heroic breed myself, and, in any case, the problem is -one of fact as well as of moral discipline. It may be heroic to put the -telescope of truth to a deliberately blinded eye, but unless you suspect -yourself of being unable to master the fact, I see no indispensable -virtue in its wilful denial. At all risks to my morality I should prefer -to keep my weather-eye open for such evidences of survival as may loom up -behind the fog. - -Premising that “no high religion can exist which is not based on faith -in survival,” Mr. Mead proceeds to examine the two forms of inquiry -which conceivably promise conclusions: the comparative study of the -mystic philosophers and their recorded religious experiences in all -ages, and the more material examination of the spiritualistic phenomena -of modern psychical research. For himself, Mr. Mead has chosen the -former method, and I am interested to observe his testimony, in a -rare personal statement, to the satisfaction, more or less, that is -possible from following this road. At the same time, though without any -experience in the second method, Mr. Mead is explicitly of the opinion -that it is one that should be employed by science with increasing -earnestness. The difficulties are tremendous, and as subtle as they -are considerable. Before survival can be scientifically demonstrated, -a host of working hypotheses must be invented and discredited, and -the utmost veracity will be necessary in the students. With such facts -before us as telepathy, dissociated personality, subconscious complexes, -autosuggestion and suggestion, the phenomena that superficially point to -survival may plainly be nothing of the kind. Survival, in short, must be -expected to be about the last rather than the first psychic fact to be -scientifically established. The student must, therefore, be exigent as -well as hopeful. - -There is a third method from which we may hope to hear one day something -to our advantage—assuming that the certain knowledge of survival would be -to mankind’s advantage—the method of psycho-analysis. If psycho-analysis -of the first degree can make us acquainted with the subconscious, why -should not a psycho-analysis of the second degree make us acquainted -with the super-conscious; and as the language of the subconscious may -be sleeping dreams, the language of the super-conscious may be waking -visions. To return to Mr. Mead’s article, an interesting account is -contained in it of a recent census taken in America by Professor Leuba of -the creeds of more or less eminent men. The returns for the article of -faith in survival and immortality are curious, not to say surprising. Of -the eminent physicists canvassed, 40 per cent. confessed their belief in -man’s survival of bodily death. Thereafter the percentage falls through -the stages of historians 35 per cent., and sociologists 27 per cent., to -psychologists with the degraded percentage of 9. It is a strange reversal -of the procession that might have been anticipated, and it expresses, -perhaps, the condition of real culture in America. For that the -physicists should be the most hopeful class of scientists in America, and -the psychologists the most hopeless is an indication that the best brains -in America are still engaged in physical problems. The poor psychologists -are scarcely even hopeful of discovering anything. - -BEARDSLEY AND ARTHUR SYMONS.—“Unbounded” admiration is precisely what I -cannot feel for Aubrey Beardsley’s work, even “within its own sphere.” -I ought to say, perhaps, “because of its sphere.” Pure æsthetic is a -matter for contemplation only, and we should be prepared upon occasion -to suspend every other kind of judgment. Or, would it not be true to -say that the purely æsthetic does itself suspend in the beholder every -other form of judgment or reaction—such as the moral, the intellectual, -and the practical? A great tragedy, for instance, is a kind of focus -of the whole nature of man; every faculty is engaged in it, and all -are lifted up and transfigured into the pure æsthetic of contemplation. -But one is not aware, in that case, of moral or other reservations; -one has not to apologise for the experience by pretending that the -“essentially repulsive and diabolic decadence” contained in the tragedy -is merely an expression of the age. Beardsley is only “something of a -genius” precisely because he failed to transfigure the moral and other -reactions of the spectator of his work. He did not occupy the _whole_ -of one’s mind. All the while that one’s æsthetic sense was being led -captive by his art, several other of one’s senses were in rebellion. -His command (his genius, in short) was not “absolute,” but only a quite -limited monarchy. This is not to deny that he was an artist; it is to -deny only that he was one of the greatest of artists. Other artists owe -him a greater debt than the world at large. He was a great art-master, -but not a master of art. The doctrine of Mr. Arthur Symons is dangerous. -Juggling with the terms good and evil is always dangerous, since in a -prestidigital exhibition of them, one can so easily be made to look like -the other. _Demon est Deus inversus._ The paradoxical truth about the -matter, however, is that evil is good only so long as it is regarded as -evil. The moment it is thought of as good it is nothing but evil. Mr. -Arthur Symons has confused in his mind the problem of good and evil with -the quite alien problem of quantity of energy. - -“Æ’S” “CANDLE OF VISION.”—“Æ’s” _Candle of Vision_ is not a book for -everybody, yet I wish that everybody might read it. Rarely and more -rarely does any artist or poet interest himself in the processes of his -mental and spiritual life, with the consequence, so often deplored by Mr. -Penty, that books on æsthetics, philosophy, and, above all, psychology, -are left to be written by men who have no immediate experience of what -they are writing of. “Æ’s” narrative, and criticism of his personal -experiences may be said to take the form of intimate confessions made -_pour encourager les autres_. For, happily for us, he is an artist who is -also a philosopher, a visionary who is also an “intellectual”; and, being -interested in both phases of his personality, he has had the impulse and -the courage to express both. What the ordinary mind—the mind corrupted -by false education—would say to “Æ’s” affirmations concerning his -psychological experiences, it would not be difficult to forecast. What -is not invention, it would be said, is moonshine, and what is neither is -a pose to be explained on some alienist hypothesis. Only readers who -can recall some experiences similar to those described by “Æ” will find -themselves able to accept the work for what it is—a statement of uncommon -fact; and only those who have developed their intuition to some degree -will be able to appreciate the spirit of truth in which the _Candle of -Vision_ is written. A review of such work is not to be undertaken by me, -but I have made a few notes on some passages. - - * * * * * - -Page 2. “_I could not so desire what was not my own, and what is our own -we cannot lose.... Desire is hidden identity._” This is a characteristic -doctrine of mysticism, and recurs invariably in all the confessions. -Such unanimity is an evidence of the truth of the doctrine, since it is -scarcely to be supposed that the mystics borrow from one another. But the -doctrine, nevertheless, is difficult for the mere mind to accept, for it -involves the belief that nothing happens to us that is not ourselves. -Character in that event is destiny—to quote a variant of “Æ’s” sentence; -and our lives are thus merely the dramatisation of our given psychology. -Without presuming to question the doctrine, I feel a reserve concerning -its absoluteness. Fate appears to me to be above destiny in the same -sense that the old lady conceived that there was One above that would -see that Providence did not go too far. To the extent that character -is destiny or, as “Æ” says, desire is hidden identity, a correct -psychological forecast would be at the same time a correct temporal -forecast. And while this may be true, in the abstract and under, so to -say, ideal conditions, I cannot yet agree that everything that happens to -the individual is within his character. The unforeseeable, the margin of -what we call Chance, allows for events that belong to Fate rather than to -Destiny. - - * * * * * - -Page 3. “Æ” says he “_was not conscious in boyhood (up to the age of -sixteen or seventeen) of any heaven lying about me._” “Childhood,” he -thinks, is no nearer the “eternally young” than age may be. Certainly -it appears to be so in the case of “Æ” himself, for the intimations of -immortality which Wordsworth (and the world in general) attributed to -children were only begun to be experienced by “Æ” after his sixteenth -or seventeenth year. From that time onwards, as this book testifies, -he has been growing younger in precisely those characteristics. There -is a good deal to be thought, if not said, on this subject. Children -are, I conceive, rather symbols of youth than youth itself; they are -unconsciously young. Age, on the other hand, has the power of converting -the symbol into the reality, and of being young and knowing it. -Unless ye become, _not_ little children, but _as_ little children, -ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. At the same time it -is comparatively rare for the ordinary child, that “Æ” says he was, -to develop childlikeness in later life. Usually a return occurs to a -state unconsciously experienced in early youth. But there appear to be -strata of characteristics in every mind, and life is their successive -revelation. Without knowing anything of the facts, I surmise that “Æ’s” -heredity was mixed, and that the first layer or stratum to appear was -that of some possibly Lowland Scot ancestry. When that was worked -through, by the age of sixteen, another layer came to the surface, -whereupon “Æ” entered on another phase of “desire.” - - * * * * * - -Page 7. “_We may have a personal wisdom, but spiritual wisdom is not to -speak of as ours._” This illustrates another characteristic of the mystic -that while his experiences are personal, the wisdom revealed in them is -always attributed to “Him that taught me”—in other words, to something -not ourselves. An egoist mysticism is a contradiction in terms. Not only -no man is entitled to claim originality for a spiritual truth, but no -man can. The truth is no longer true when it has a name to it. “Truth -bears no man’s name” is an axiom of mysticism. The reason, I presume, is -that the very condition of the appreciation of a spiritual truth is the -absence of the sense of egoism. Such truths are simply not revealed to -the egoistic consciousness, and therefore cannot appear as the product of -human wisdom. Their character is that of a revelation from without rather -than that of a discovery from within, and the report of the matter is -thus objective rather than subjective. - - * * * * * - -Page 16. “_I could prophesy from the uprising of new moods in myself that -without search I should soon meet people of a certain character, and so -I met them.... I accepted what befell with resignation.... What we are -alone has power.... No destiny other than we make for ourselves._” I -have already expressed my doubts whether this is the whole truth. It is, -of course, the familiar doctrine of Karma; but I do not think it can be -interpreted quite literally. There is what is called the Love of God, as -well as the Justice of God, and I would venture to add, with Blake, the -Wrath of God. Judgment is something more than simple justice; it implies -the consent of the whole of the judging nature, and not of its sense -of justice only. Love enters into it, and so, perhaps, do many other -qualities not usually attributed to the Supreme Judge. In interpreting -such doctrines we must allow for the personal equation even of the -highest personality we can conceive. - - * * * * * - -Page 19. “_None needs special gifts of genius._” “Æ’s” _Candle of Vision_ -is confessedly propagandist. It aims deliberately at encouraging age -to discover eternal youth, and to lay hold of everlasting life. It is -to this end that “Æ” describes his own experiences, and offers to his -readers the means of their verification. He is quite explicit that no -“special gifts” or “genius” are necessary. “This do and ye shall find -even as I have found.” The special gift of genius does not, I agree, lie -in the nature of fact of the experience (though here, again, favour seems -sometimes to be shown), but it does, I think, lie in the bent towards -the effort involved. Anybody, it is true, may by the appropriate means -experience the same results, but not everybody has the “desire” to employ -them. Desire, moreover, is susceptible of many degrees of strength. -Like other psychological characteristics, it appears to peel off like -the skins of Peer Gynt’s onion. What is it that I really desire? Ask -me to-day, and I shall answer one thing. Ask me next year, and it may -be another. Years hence it may have changed again. But desire, in the -mystical sense, is the desire that is left when all the transient wishes -or fancies have either vanished or been satisfied. Only such a desire -leads the student to make the effort required by “Æ,” and the possession -of such a desire is something like a “special gift” or “genius.” - - * * * * * - -Page 20. “_Our religions make promises to be fulfilled beyond the grave, -because they have no knowledge now to be put to the test.... Mistrust -the religion that does not cry out: ‘Test me that we can become as -gods.’_” This is an excellent observation, and accounts, to my mind, for -all the so-called scepticism of modern times. It is usual to attribute -to our predecessors, the most remote as well as the more recent, a -quality of “faith” superior to our own. They are said to have been more -religious than we are. I do not believe it; or, rather, I believe that -they were religious because they had very good reason to be; in other -words, they were not only told the mysteries, but they were shown them. -Either they or their priests had the “open vision.” Is it conceivable -that the primitive peoples had the confidence-trick played on them? -Or, again, is it the fact that credulity is less to-day than before? -I feel sure that if our ancestors were brought to belief, it was by -means which would equally carry conviction to the present generation. -To repeat myself: They believed because they were shown. “Æ” suggests -that the after-life promises of modern religion are a substitute for -or an invasion of present demonstration. Religions, that is to say, -concentrate upon the invisible because their power over the visible is -gone. It is not the fact, however, that the earlier religions ignored the -after-death adventures of the soul; they were quite as much concerned -with the life beyond the grave as our own religions. What they did, and -what our religions fail to do, was to give present guarantees for their -future promises. Their priests could procure belief in the after-life on -the strength of their demonstrated power over this life. It is probable, -indeed, that many of the elect experienced “death” before it occurred -physically. The Egyptian mysteries were a kind of experimental death. - -Page 21. Here and on the neighbouring pages “Æ” expounds his method of -meditation—the means by which any “ordinary” person may acquire spiritual -experience. “Æ’s” method follows the familiar line of the mystic schools, -namely, unwavering concentration on some mental object. “Five minutes of -this effort,” “Æ” says, “will at first leave us trembling as at the end -of a laborious day.” I can testify that this is no exaggeration, for, -like “Æ,” I have practised meditation after the methods prescribed. -It is no easy job, and after months of regular practice I was still an -amateur at the simplest exercises. There is no doubt, however, about the -benefit of it. Much is learned in meditation that cannot be realised by -any other mental exercise. The _mind_ becomes a real organ, as distinct -from the personality as a physical limb. And gradually one learns to -acquire sufficient control over it, if not to use it like a master, at -any rate, to realise that it _can_ be so used. I have not the smallest -doubt that one day men will be able to “use” their minds, and thus to -cease to be “used” by them; for it is obvious that at present we are -victims rather than masters of our mind. Meditation, as a means of -mind-control, is the appointed method, and “Æ’s” personal experience -should encourage his readers to take up the discipline. - - * * * * * - -Page 41. In regard to “visions,” they are usually dismissed by the -commonalty as products of imagination, “as if,” says “Æ,” “imagination -were as easily explained as a problem in Euclid.” This habit of referring -one mystery to another, as if this latter were no mystery, is very -common; and it arises, no doubt, from intellectual apathy. We cannot be -bothered to reduce mysteries to knowledge, and, moreover, the realisation -that literally everything is a mystery, that we simply live in mystery, -is a little disconcerting. Hence our preference for assuming some -things, at any rate, to be below the need of explanation. Imagination, -however, provides us with no escape from the mysteries of vision, any -more than matter provides us with an escape from the problems of spirit. -“Æ” raises some difficult, and, probably, insoluble problems concerning -imagination itself. _What_ is it in us that imagines? _How_ does it cast -thoughts into form? Even allowing (which we cannot) that imagination is -only “the re-fashioning of memory,” what re-fashions and transforms out -of their original resemblance the memories of things seen? “Æ” has had -many visions, some of which, no doubt, he could trace to recollected -impressions; but, leaving aside once more the difficulty involved in this -reconstruction, what of the visions that had, or appeared to have, no -earthly progenitors? “Æ’s” conclusion appears to be indisputable, that -“we swim in an æther of deity”—for “in Him we live and move and have our -being.” - -Passim. Is it possible that telepathy occurs between people having the -same mental “wavelength”? Coincidences (another Mesopotamian word, by the -way) are too frequent to be accountable on any other supposition than -that of an established communication. Like many another, I could give -some remarkable instances of telepathy, but they would be tedious to -relate. Mental training, however, is certainly a means to this end; for -in proportion as the mind is brought under control, its susceptibility -to thoughts from outside palpably increases. The experience of the Old -Testament prophet who knew the plans of the enemy before they were -uttered is not unique, even in these days. It will be far less uncommon -in the days to come. - - * * * * * - -Page 54. “_Is there a centre within us through which all the threads of -the universe are drawn?_” An ingenious image for a recurrent doctrine -of mysticism, the doctrine, namely, that everything is everywhere. One -of the earliest discoveries made in meditation is the magnitude of the -infinitesimal. The tiniest point of space appears to have room enough -for a world of images; and the mediæval discussion concerning the number -of angels that could dance on the point of a needle was by no means -ridiculous. If I am not mistaken, “Æ’s” problem is identical with it. - - * * * * * - -Page 89. The Architecture of Dreams. In this chapter “Æ” sets himself to -casting some doubts (shall we say?) on the sufficiency of the Freudian -theory of dreams. Dreams, according to Freud, are the dramatisation of -suppressed desires; but what, asks “Æ,” is the means by which desires, -suppressed or otherwise, dramatise themselves? “A mood or desire may -_attract_ its affinities”; in other words, there may be a congruity -between the desire and the dream which serves the Freudian purpose -of interpretation; but desire can hardly be said “to _create_ what -it attracts.” Between anger, for instance, and a definite vision of -conflict, such as the dream may represent, there is a gulf which the -theory of Freud does not enable us to cross. What, in fact, _are_ dreams? -_Who_ or _what_ carries out the dramatisation? Assuming, with Freud, -that their impulse is a desire, what power shapes this desire into the -dream-cartoon? “Æ” throws no light on the mystery, but, at any rate, he -does not dismiss it as no mystery at all. Its philosophical discussion is -to be found in the Indian philosophy known as the Sankhya. - - * * * * * - -Page 89. “_The process must be conscious on some plane_”—the -dramatisation, that is to say, must be the conscious work of some -intelligent agent or quality. I am a little doubtful of this, for -reasons to be discovered in the Sankhya philosophy just referred to. Is -the pattern taken by sand on a shaken plate a “conscious” design? Are -frost-flowers the work of intelligence? Forms, according to the Sankhya, -are the reflection in matter (Prakriti) of the activities of the spirit -(Purusha); they are consciousness visible. But it would not follow that -they are themselves conscious or that their creation is a “conscious” -process. - - * * * * * - -Page 90. “Have imaginations body?” In other words, are the figures seen -in dream and vision three-dimensional? “Æ” describes several incidents -within his experience that certainly seem to suggest an objective reality -in dream-figures, and the occasional projection of dream-figures into -phantasms is a further evidence of it. But, once again, I would refer -“Æ” to the Sankhya aphorisms, and to Kapila’s commentary on them. The -question is really of the general order of the relation of form to -thought. - - * * * * * - -Page 114. Here, and in the succeeding essay, “Æ” develops his intuitional -thesis that sound and thought have definite affinities. For every -thought there is a sound, and every sound is at the same time a thought. -The idea is, of course, familiar, and, like many more in the _Candle -of Vision_, is found recurring like a decimal throughout mystical and -occult literature in all ages. The most ancient occult literature—dispute -whether that of India or Egypt—is most precise on the subject, the -general proposition being therein reduced to a series of equivalents in -which form, sound, colour, thought, emotion, and number, all seem to -be interchangeable. Each of these, in fact, is said to be a language—a -complete language; and to the initiate it is a matter of indifference -whether the text before him is “written” in form, in colour, in number, -or sound. Unfortunately, neither “Æ” nor anybody within our knowledge, -is able to procure even the skeleton key to the mystery. The records -are so perversely confused that I cannot believe that their authors -were not deliberately playing a game with us. It would be rather like -the old initiates to “dis” their type before leaving it to be examined -by the barbarian invaders; and certainly nobody of ordinary faculty -can begin to make head or tail of the “correspondences” recorded in -the Indian scriptures. It is the same, strangely enough, with Plato, -whose _Cratylus_ deals with the relation of verbal language to mental -conception. A master of simple exposition, he becomes in the _Cratylus_, -whether from design or feebleness of understanding, as cryptic as the -Indians themselves. I have read the _Cratylus_ all ways, with no better -result than to feel that I have wasted my time. “Æ” has approached the -problem, however, experimentally, with the aid of his intuition. If, he -said to himself, there is really a definite correspondence between sound -and idea, meditation on one or the other should be able to discover it. -In other words, he has attempted to re-discover the lost language, and -to find for himself the key whose fragments bestrew the ancient occult -works. This again, however, is no novelty, but another of the recurrent -ideas of mystics and would-be occultists. All of them have tried it, -but, unfortunately, most of them come to different conclusions. “Æ’s” -guesses must, therefore, be taken as guesses only, to be compared with -the guesses of other students. - - * * * * * - -Page 132. One of the features of the _Candle of Vision_ is the occasional -ray cast by “Æ” upon the obscure texts of the Bible. The Bible, of -course, is for the most part unmistakably “occult”; and not only its -stories are myths (“which things are an allegory”), but many of its texts -are echoes of a gnosis infinitely older than the Christian era. Greece, -it has now been established, was an infant when Egypt was old; and Egypt, -in its turn, was an infant when some civilisation anterior to it was in -its dotage. The Bible is a kind of ark, in which were stored (without -much order, I imagine) some of the traditions of the world that was -about to be submerged. They can be brought to life again, however, and -here and there, in the course of the _Candle of Vision_, “Æ” undoubtedly -rejuvenates a Biblical text, and restores to it its ancient meaning. -“He made every flower before it was in the field, and every herb before -it grew.” This points, says “Æ,” to the probability that the Garden of -Eden was the “Garden of the Divine Mind,” in which flowers and herbs and -all the rest of creation lived before they were made—visible! Such a -conception is very illuminating. Moreover, it brings the story of Genesis -into line with the genesis stories of both ancient India and the most -recent psychology. For modern psycho-analysis, in the researches of Jung -in particular, is undoubtedly trembling on the brink of the discovery -of the divine mind which precedes visible creation. The process is -indissolubly linked up with the psychology of imagination, phantasm, and -vision. - - * * * * * - -Page 137. On Power. “_If we have not power we are nothing, and must -remain outcasts of Heaven._” In this chapter “Æ” shakes the fringes of -the most dangerous subject in the world, that of the acquisition of -“spiritual” power. I put the word under suspicion, because while in the -comparative sense spiritual, the powers here spoken of may be anything -but beneficent. The instructions to be found in, let us say, Patanjali, -are full of warnings against the acquisition of occult powers before -the character of the student is “purified.” We are a long way, of -course, from the plane of conventional goodness in the use of this word -purity. The conventionally good may have all the characteristics of -the black magician (so-called) when he finds himself in the possession -of power. Purity, in the sense implied, connotes non-attachment, and -non-attachment, again, implies the non-existence of any personal -desire—even for the good. Nietzsche died before he began to understand -himself. His pre-occupation with the problem of power was undoubtedly -an occult exercise; and his discovery that spiritual power needs to be -exercised “beyond good and evil,” was a hint of the progress he had made. -Unfortunately for Nietzsche, his _Beyond Good and Evil_ was still not -clear of the element of egotism; he carried into the occult world the -attachment and the desire that emphatically belong to the world of both -Good and Evil. In short, he attempted to take Heaven by egoistic storm, -and his defeat was a foregone conclusion and a familiar tragedy in occult -history. “Æ,” like his authorities, is full of warning against the quest -of power. At the same time, like them, he realises that without power the -student can do nothing. Here is the paradox, the mightiest in psychology, -that the weakest is the strongest and the strongest the weakest. I -commend this chapter to Nietzscheans in particular. They have most to -learn from it. - - * * * * * - -Page 153 et seq. “Æ” makes an attempt to systematise “Celtic cosmogony.” -It appears to me to be altogether premature, and of as little value -as the “interpretation” of Blake’s cosmogony, which Messrs. Yeats and -Ellis formerly attempted. Celtic cosmogony, as found in Irish legend and -tradition, may be a cosmogony, and perhaps one of the oldest in the world -(for Ireland is always with us!). But the fragmentary character of the -records, the absence of any living tradition in them, coupled with the -difficulty of re-interpretation in rational terms, make even “Æ’s” effort -a little laborious. There is little illumination in the _Candle_ when it -becomes an Irish bog-light. - -HOW TO READ.—The greatest books are only to be grasped by the total -understanding which is called intuition. As an aid to the realisation -of the truth, we may fall back upon the final proofs of idiom and -experience. Idiom is the fruit of wisdom on the tree of language; and -experience is both the end and the beginning of idiom. What more familiar -idiom is there than that which expresses the idea and the experience of -reading a book “between the lines”; reading, in fact, what is not there -in the perception of our merely logical understanding? And what, again, -is more familiar than the experience of “having been done good” by -reading a great, particularly a great mystical or poetical work, like the -Bible or Milton; still more, by reading such works as the _Mahabharata_? -Idiom and experience do not deceive us. The “subconscious” of every great -book is vastly greater than its conscious element, as the “subconscious” -of each of us is many times richer in content than our conscious minds. -Reading between the lines, resulting often and usually in a sense of -illuminated bewilderment difficult to put into words, is in reality -intuitional reading; the subconscious in the reader is put into relation -with the subconscious of the writer. Deep communicates with deep. No -“interpretation” of an allegorical kind need result from it. We may be -unable at once to put into words any of the ideas we have gathered. -Patience! The truths thus grasped will find their way to the conscious -mind, and one day, perhaps, to our lips. - -THE OLD COUNTRY.—A country may grow aged in mind long before it is really -old in history, and it may be the case with England that long before -she is old in history her mind is becoming aged. The peculiarity of the -aged mind is not that it cannot think, but that it cannot think new -thoughts. All its energy runs in grooves, and there is none to spare -for the cutting of a new road into new ideas. There is little and less -“free mind” in England. Like the commons and the commonwealth, all the -mind-energy has been appropriated by one interest or another, with the -consequence that every fresh idea is compelled either to starve at home -or to emigrate abroad. America, as an intellectually youthful nation -(may it never grow aged!) reaps the advantage of the decline of its aged -parent. Ideas that cannot pick up a living in this country, owing to -the appropriations of energy already made, may emigrate to America and -flourish there. - -LOOKING FOR THE DAWN.—The Spring issue of _Art and Letters_ has been -long enough out to have had its run for its money. Consequently I am -free to say that it is not only not so good as the first issue, but -that the descent has been steep as well as rapid. This decline from -the almost sublime to the more than ridiculous was inevitable from -the peculiar characteristics of our immediately contemporary epoch; -for it is the sober truth that our contemporary world does not supply -youthful stuff enough to make more than a single issue of a literary -magazine of high pretension. I have looked about me with the eye of an -eagle and the appetite of a raven to discover youthful talent possibly -budding into genius. A few sprigs and sprays have fallen within my -vision, and I have counted myself recompensed for hours and years of -trouble. But at this present moment such apparitions and premonitions -of the future are fewer than ever I have known them to be. Whether it -is that more than individual—_collective_ talent—has fallen in the war; -whether the increasing pre-occupation of men’s minds with economics -has proportionately impoverished the will to literature of our young -men; or whether a critical taste is losing generosity, the number of -fresh talents just being committed to us appears utterly unequal to the -unequalled opportunity for employing them. There never was a time when -it was easier for a young writer to find publication in one form or -another. The number of new magazines projected and issued recently has -been legion. I have examined most of them; for it is my hobby to collect -the earliest specimens, and it is my unpleasant opinion that most of them -would be better for never having been born. - -They manage, or, at any rate, they are beginning to manage these things -better in America. That America is the country of the future is open -to less doubt as a prophecy when the critic has made acquaintance with -the new and renewed magazines now appearing in that country. A tone -of provinciality still dominates a considerable part of the American -literary Press, but it is obvious that tremendous efforts are being made -to recover or, let us say, to discover centrality. American literary -editors are more and more aiming to interest the world of readers rather -than a mere province of them. I need scarcely say that the world of -readers is not the same thing as a world of readers. A world of readers -connotes large numbers, consisting chiefly of readers in search of -amusement; but the world of readers consists of the few in every country -who really read for their living, or rather, for their lives. To appeal -to the latter class is to be “of the centre,” for the centre of every -movement of life is not only the most vital, it is the smallest element, -of the whole. The most recent American literary journals appear to me -to be endeavouring to become organs for this class of reader. It is not -indicated more plainly in the fact that they are enlisting European -writers than in the fact that their American contributors are writing to -be read in Europe as well as in America. America has begun to discover -Europe. America is on the way to absorb Europe. In the course of a -few generations, if the present American magazines may be taken as -indicating direction, European writers will be as intelligible in America -as in Europe; and, perhaps, more so. - -FIELDING FOR AMERICA.—It is very doubtful whether anybody reads Fielding -nowadays. Nevertheless, like all the eighteenth century writers, he is -more than worth all the time we waste on certain contemporaries. There -is nothing of the “damned literary” about Fielding; but also there is -nothing of what usually goes with the absence of letters, sentimentality. -Fielding’s letters, one feels, were absorbed into his blood; they did not -remain like crumbs on the lips after a barbarian repast. Fielding could -carry his letters as his contemporaries boasted they could carry their -port—without showing it. And it was no less the case that he carried his -feelings with the same well-bred ease, without displaying them, and, -even more, without permitting them to rule his intelligence. Richardson -seems born to have provoked Fielding to write. He incarnated everything -that Fielding thought worth a negative. But for Richardson, Fielding -would possibly have never found his true _métier_; Richardson was his -twin opposite. Fielding, however, must always pay the penalty of being -a reactionary, of requiring a stimulant; he is no creator, for the stuff -of creation was not native to him. He is an amusing _causeur_ with his -eye always upon Richardson; a man of the world telling a story _à la_ -Richardson, but with the explanations common to the class of English -gentlemen. He is put among the English _Men of Letters_ in the series -edited by Lord Morley, and now he is receiving attention in America. -America needs Fielding; for what is America in danger of becoming but -a kind of Richardson continent? Our eighteenth century writers are a -school to which American literature must go as a means of escape from -the Roundhead tradition which otherwise America will scarcely succeed in -overpassing. I cannot conceive, however, that _Tom Jones_ will be popular -in America yet awhile. He has more resistance to encounter there than in -any other civilised nation. But until _Tom Jones_ can be read in America -without a blush, American literature will remain several centuries behind -English and European literature. - -POOR AUTHORS!—Is it a fact that the dearness of literature alone or -mainly restricts its sale? Is it certain that either cheap publication -or (what amounts to the same thing) a generous diffusion of money among -the masses would ensure the success of, let us say, good first novels—in -the present state of public taste? We have had some experience both of -cheapness and of the diffusion of money. Publication was cheap enough -before the war in all conscience. New novels could be brought out for -a shilling. Was it the common experience that the best of them proved -a commercial success? The best of them were nine times out of ten a -commercial failure. And in respect of the diffusion of money, what has -been our experience of the direction in which the diffused money has been -spent? Have the masses accumulated libraries? Have they patronised the -arts? Have they encouraged literature with discriminating taste? Have -they sought out and bought the young authors, the promising writers, the -writers of to-morrow? We know they have done nothing of the kind. The -diffused money has fallen, for the most part, into two sets of hands, the -hands of the ignorant profiteers and the hands of the ignorant masses. -And both classes have neglected literature in favour of sports and furs, -display and amusement. It is idle to pretend that things are other than -they are. We need not necessarily be discouraged by the fact, but it is -necessary to recognise the facts. And the facts in the present case -are that the people who have the money (much or little) do not care a -shilling for literature and accept no responsibility for its existence. -Their _excuse_ for the moment is that literature is too dear; but it -would be all the same if it were cheap. I have never observed that rich -or poor have complained that their sports and amusements are too dear. -Nobody appeals to cinema-proprietors or yachting entrepreneurs to pity -their clients and ruin themselves commercially. When the public wants -literature as much as it wants to be entertained, there will be no need -for anybody’s charity. - -In the meanwhile, what is the young writer to do? In particular, the -young novelist? He appears to be about to be among the most miserable of -mankind. To be published and to be a commercial failure is bad enough in -a country like our own, where a _succès d’estime_ is almost a certificate -for pity. But not to be published at all is infinitely worse. Instead -of appealing to commercial publishers, however, is it not possible to -appeal to the Guild of Authors, to the fraternity whose function and -responsibility are the creation and encouragement of literature? Who -should be patrons of literature if not men of letters themselves? And -whose duty should it be, if not that of novelists as a guild, to secure -the succession and to provide for the future princes? If publishers are -willing to assume the burdens of literature—always heavy in proportion -to the ignorance of the public—let them by all means. So much the more -honour to them. But the proper shoulders for the burden, in the absence -of an enlightened public, are the shoulders of the Guild of Letters, -the shoulders, in particular, of the _successful_ men. There is no lack -of money among them. I should roughly calculate that the income of our -successful novelists is more than equal to that of all our publishers -put together. Why should they not subsidise literature? Why, out of -their abundance, should they not set aside a portion for their literary -posterity? - -ON GUARD.—As one of the thirty thousand who take in and occasionally read -_The Times Literary Supplement_, I may draw attention to the danger to -truth its composite character is always creating. Being familiar with the -back-ways of publishing I am not taken in, of course, by the uniform use -of the editorial “we” in a journal like _The Times Literary Supplement_. -“We” represents a score of different people, all or most of whom are -as much at intellectual sixes and sevens as any other score; and the -editor-in-chief, whoever he may be, is just as powerless as a sovereign -is over its twenty shillings. That being granted, the situation is still -a little strange from the fact that certain sentiments are allowed -to appear in the _Literary Supplement_ which, to say the least, are -incongruous with _The Times_ and all _The Times_ stands for. Here, for -instance, are three quotations from recent issues: “Whether you beat your -neighbour by militarism or buy him by industrialism—the effect is the -same.” “That most false and nauseating of legends—‘the happy warrior.’” -“The organisation of trade is of secondary moment: what is of the first -moment is the organisation of a humane enjoyment of its benefits.” These -sentiments are true, and they are sufficiently strikingly put. But in -_The Times Literary Supplement_ they are not only incongruous, but they -are in a very subtle sense actually lies, and the more dangerous lies -from their identity with the truth. It is one of the paradoxes of truth -that a statement is only true when it is in truthful company. As the -corruption of the best is the worst, so evil communications corrupt good -statements, and a truth in bad company is the worst of lies. It is a -mystery not easily to be understood, but the intuition may, perhaps, make -something of it. Is it not the fact that the occurrence of statements -like those just quoted in _The Times Literary Supplement_ causes a -feeling of nausea? On examining the cause it will be found to lie in the -unconscious realisation that such statements are there made for no good -purpose, but are only decoy ducks for the better snaring of our suffrages -for the real policy of _The Times_ itself. - -THE COMING RENAISSANCE.—The prognostication of the approach of a new -Renaissance has quite naturally been received with incredulity. Is it not -the fact that civilisation is in a thoroughly morbid condition bordering -on hysteria, and was ever the outlook for culture darker than it is at -this moment? I have just been discussing the subject with a friend who -laid this evidence before me with a touch of reproach: how _could_ I, in -the face of such a circle of gloom, pretend that we were even possibly -(which is all I affirm) on the eve of a new Renaissance? My explanation -of this part of the story is, however, quite simple. The war has -precipitated a development in external events _faster_ than the average -mind has been able to adapt itself to them, with the consequence that the -average mind has had to take refuge in hysteria. For the greater part of -hysteria is due to nothing more than an inadequacy of the mind to a given -situation; and when the situation as given to-day is a situation that -should and would, but for the war, have arisen only, let us say, twenty -years hence, there is no wonder that in the mass of the slowly developing -minds of our people an inadequacy to the occasion should be experienced -or that the result should appear as hysteria. On the other hand, hysteria -is not a stable condition of the mind; it is a transition to a more -complete adaptation to reality, or, in the alternative, to complete -disintegration. But what is to be expected from the present situation? -Not, surely, disintegration in the general sense, though it may take -place in individual cases, but a forward movement in the direction of -adaptation. This forward movement is the Renaissance, and it is thus from -the very circumstances of gloom and hysteria that we may draw the hope -that a fresh advance of the human spirit is about to be made. - -It is significant that concurrently with such a social diagnosis as -anyone may make, special observers, with or without a bee in their -bonnet, are arriving at the same conclusion. There are very confident -guesses now being disseminated by the various religious and mystic -schools concerning what, in their vocabulary, they call the Second -Advent—which, however, may well be the seven hundredth or the seven -thousandth for all we know. Attach no importance, if you like, to the -phenomena in question, but the fact of the coincidence of forecast is -somewhat impressive; for while it is absurd to believe the “Second -Adventists” of all denominations when they stand alone in their -prognostications, their testimony is not negligible when it is supported -by what amounts to science. And the fact is that to-day science, no less -than mysticism, is apprehensive of a New Coming of some kind or other. -What the nature of that New Coming is likely to be, and when or how it -will manifest itself, are matters beyond direct knowledge, but the ear of -science, no less than the ear of mysticism, is a little thrilled with the -spirit of expectation. - -LEONARDO DA VINCI AS PIONEER.—Leonardo da Vinci’s name has been -frequently mentioned among the intelligent during the last few years, and -it cannot be without a meaning. It may be said that his reappearance as a -subject for discussion is due to a fortuitous concurrence of publishers. -But accidents of this kind are like miracles: they do not happen; and -I, for one, am inclined to suspect the “collective unconscious” of a -design in thrusting forward at this moment the name and personality of -the great Renaissance humanist. What can we guess the design to be? What -is the interpretation of this prominent figure in our current collective -dreams? The symbols appearing in dreams are the expressive language of -the unconscious mind, and the appearance of the symbol of da Vinci is -or may be an indication that the “unconscious” is “dreaming” of a new -Renaissance. And since the dreams of the unconscious to-day are or may be -the acts of the conscious to-morrow, the prevalent interest in Leonardo -is a further possible piece of evidence that we are or may be on the eve -of a recurrence of the Italian Renaissance. - -Leonardo as an artist interests us less than Leonardo as a person. That -is not to say that Leonardo was not a great artist, for, of course, he -was one of the greatest. But it is to say that the promise of which -he was an incarnation was even greater than the fulfilment which he -achieved. There is a glorious sentence in one of the Upanishads which is -attributed to the Creator on the morrow of His completion of the creation -of the whole manifested universe. “Having pervaded all this,” he says, -“I remain.” Not even the creation of the world had exhausted His powers -or even so much as diminished His self-existence. When that greatest of -works of art had been accomplished, He, the Creator, “remained.” Leonardo -was, if I may use the expression, a chip of the original block in this -respect. His works, humanly speaking, were wonderful; they were both -multitudinous and various. Nevertheless, after the last of them had been -performed, Leonardo remained as a great “promise,” still unfulfilled. -That is the character of the Renaissance type, as it is also the -character of a Renaissance period; its promise remains over even after -great accomplishment. The Renaissance man is greater than his work; he -pervades his work, but he is not submerged in it. - -I should be trespassing on the domain of the psycho-analysts if I were -to attempt to indicate the _means_ by which a collective hysteria -may be resolved into an integration. Taking the Italian Renaissance, -however, as a sort of working model, and Leonardo da Vinci as its typical -figure, it would appear that the method of resolution is all-round -expression—expression in as many forms and fields as the creative powers -direct. Leonardo was not only an artist, he was a sculptor, a poet, an -epigrammatist, an engineer, a statesman, a soldier, a musician, and I -do not know what else besides. He indulged his creative or expressive -impulses in every direction his “fancy” indicated. Truly enough he was -not equally successful in an objective or critical sense in all these -fields; but quite as certainly he owed his surpassing excellence in -one or two of them to the fact that he tried them all. The anti- or -non-Renaissance type of mind would doubtless conclude that if Leonardo, -let us say, had been content to be only a painter, or only a sculptor, -he would have succeeded even more perfectly in that single mode of -expression into which _ex hypothesi_ he might have poured the energy -otherwise squandered in various subordinate channels. But concentrations -of energy of this kind are not always successful; the energies, in fact, -are not always convertible; and the attempt to concentrate may thus have -the effect, not only of failing of its direct object, but of engaging one -part of the total energy in suppressing another. At any rate, the working -hypothesis (and it did work) of the Renaissance type is that a natural -multiplicity of modes of expression is better than an unnatural or forced -concentration. The latter, if successful, may possibly lead to something -wonderful; but if unsuccessful, it ends in hysteria, in unresolved -conflicts. The former, on the other hand, while it may lead to no great -excellence in any direction (though equally it may be the condition of -excellence) is, at any rate, a resolution of the internal conflict. We -shall be well advised to deny ourselves nothing in the region of æsthetic -creation. Let us “dabble” to our hearts’ content in every art-form to -which our “fancy” invites us. The results in a critical sense may be -unimportant; “art happens,” as Whistler used to say, and it “happens,” -it may be added, in the course of play. The play is the thing, and I -have little doubt that the approaching Renaissance will be heralded by a -revival of dilettantism in all the arts. - -“SHAKESPEARE” SIMPLIFIED.—English literary criticism lies under the -disgrace of accepting Shakespeare, the tenth-rate player, as Shakespeare -the divine author, and so long as a mistake of this magnitude is -admitted into the canon, nobody of any perception can treat the canon -with respect. My theory of authorship is simple, rational, and within -the support of common experience. All it requires is that we should -assume that Shakespeare the theatre-manager had on his literary staff or -within call a wonderful dramatic genius whose name we do not yet know; -that this genius was as modest as he was wonderful, and as adaptable -as he was original; and that, of the plays passed to him for licking -into shape (plays drawn from Shakespeare the actor-manager’s store), -some he scarcely touched, others he changed only here and there, while -a few, the few that appealed to his “fancy,” he completely transformed -and re-created in his own likeness. There is nothing incredible, -nothing even requiring much subtlety to accept, in this hypothesis. The -Elizabethan age was a strange age. It had very little of the passion -for self-advertisement that distinguishes our own. It contained many -anonymous geniuses of whom the obscure translators of the Bible were -only one handful. The author of the plays may well have been one of the -number—a quiet, modest, retiring sort of man, thankful to be able to -find congenial work in reshaping plays to his own liking. That, at any -rate, is my surmise, and so far from thinking the theory unimportant, I -believe it throws a beam of light on the psychology of genius during the -Elizabethan age. - -THE “LONDON MERCURY” AND ENGLISH.—It goes without saying that the _London -Mercury_ had what is called a “good Press.” Without imputing it to Mr. -Squire for unrighteousness, it is a fact that Mr. Squire has a “good -Press” for whatever he chooses to do. He appears to have been born with a -silver pen in his mouth, and for quite a number of years now it has been -impossible to take up a literary journal without finding praise of Mr. -Squire in it. As a poet Mr. Squire deserves _nearly_ all that is said of -him; not for the mass of his work, but for an occasional poem of almost -supreme excellence. As a literary _causeur_, of whom _The Times_ said in -compliment that “he never makes you think,” he has the first and great -qualification of readableness. Finally, as a parodist he is without a -superior in contemporary literature. But when one has said this, one -has said all; for Mr. Squire is not a great or even a sound critic, he -is not an impressive writer, and he is not a distinguished or original -thinker. Time and Mr. Squire may prove my judgment wrong, but I do not -think, either, that he will make a great or an inspiring editor. Great -editorship is a form of creation, and the great editor is measured by -the number and quality of the writers he brings to birth—or to ripeness. -We shall see in course of time whether Mr. Squire is a creator in this -sense. So far, he has not even a dark horse in his stable. - -Among the objects set out to be accomplished by the _London Mercury_ is -the advancement of English style. It is a worthy and even a momentous -object, but the _London Mercury_ is not the first modern journal to -venture upon this quest. After all, I, in my way, during the last seven -years or so, have made occasional references to current English style, -and my comments cannot be said to be distinguished by any particular -tenderness to bad English, by whomsoever it has been written. It amused -me, therefore, to read sundry and divers exhortations to Mr. Squire -to be severe, and, if need be, “savage” in criticism, and especially -when I observed that some of the names appended to the advice were of -writers who have anything but appreciated the severity, let alone the -“savagery,” of reviews addressed to themselves. Let it pass. The thing -in question is English style, and nobody can be too enthusiastic in its -maintenance and improvement. The peril of English style, I take it, lies -in its very virtue, that of directness, and its fighting edges are to -be found where the colloquial and the vernacular (or, let us say, the -idiomatic) meet and mix. The English vernacular is the most powerful -and simple language that was ever written, but the danger always lies -in wait for it of slipping into the English colloquial, which, by the -same token, is one of the worst of languages. The difference between -them is precisely the difference between Ariel and Caliban; and I am -not sure that “Shakespeare” had not this, among other things, in mind -when he dreamed his myth. Caliban is a direct enough creature to be -English, and there are writers who imagine his style to be the mirror of -perfection. But Ariel is no less direct; he is only Caliban transformed -and purified and become a thing of light. There is, of course, no -rule for distinguishing between them; between the permissible and the -forbidden use of the colloquial; for it is obvious that the vernacular -is finally derived from the colloquial. The decision rests with taste, -which alone can decide what of the colloquial shall be allowed to enter -into the vernacular. In general, I should say, the criterion is grace; -the hardest, the rarest, but the most exquisite of all the qualities of -style. I hope one day to see English written in the vernacular, with -all its strength and directness, but with grace added unto it. Newman, -perhaps, was furthest of all writers on the way to it. But Newman did -not always charm. Now I have written the word, I would substitute charm -for grace, and say that the perfect English style, which nobody has yet -written, will charm by its power. - -MR. G. K. CHESTERTON ON ROME AND GERMANY.—Hovelaque’s _Les Causes -profondes de la Guerre_ is either the original or a plagiarism of Mr. -G. K. Chesterton’s theory that the war was only an episode in the -eternal “revolt” of “Germany” against “Rome.” I put these words into -quarantine to signify that they are to be handled with care; for it is -not only Germany or Rome that is in question, but the psychological -characteristics and the relation between them which they embody. Thus -raised to psychological dimensions, Germany and Rome become principles, -types of mentality: in radical opposition. Germany is of one camp, -Rome is of the other, and given the fact of their inherent antagonism, -war between them is endless. Mr. Mann, a German writer, has carried -the subject further; he has entered into particulars. In the following -pairs of qualities, tabulated by Mr. Mann, the first of each is to be -attributed to “Germany” and the other to “Rome.” Heroic, rational; -people, masses; personality, individuality; culture, civilisation; -spiritual life, social life; aristocracy, democracy; romance, classicism; -nationalism, internationalism. I do not know how Mr. Chesterton will fare -among these pairs of opposites, for it appears to me that his preferences -are to be found at least as often among the “German” group as among the -“Roman” group. There, however, they are, as drawn up by a supporter of -his general theory, and we must leave him to make the best of them. - -There is another pair which Mr. Mann has not mentioned, though it has -been brought close home to many of us. The German “Persius” has confessed -that “the lie has always been one of Germany’s chief weapons, both by -land and sea.” The lie, however, is not the “Roman” way; the “Roman” way -is silence, and anybody engaged in the dissemination of ideas knows which -of the two forms of opposition is the more difficult to meet. After all, -the liar takes risks; moreover, he does the idea he opposes the honour of -noticing it if only to lie about it. But silence risks nothing; it kills -without leaving a trace. - -Leaving the subject where, for the moment, it is, we can inquire whether -the suggested antagonism is not altogether false. _Is_ Rome so eternal -as all that, or Germany either? We have been familiarised with a view -that represents the map of Europe as a map primarily of mind; but I can -discover in such a map no confirmation of the statement that it is Rome -and Germany that are in permanent conflict. On the contrary, what we call -“formal mind”—in other words, the rationalistic consciousness—appears to -me to distinguish “Rome” quite as much as “Germany.” It may be true that -on the whole the “Roman” qualities are better integrated and that the -“Roman” type is more completely a “man of the world.” But, in comparison -with a type of the universal man, the man of the whole world, I doubt -whether it can be said that the “Roman” is much more inclusive than the -German. Both exclude a good deal, and thus the opposition between them is -not of principle, but of accident, the accident being that the anthology -of qualities which we call “Rome” differs from the anthology called -German. It would follow from this that so far from being in necessarily -eternal conflict “Rome” and “Germany” are susceptible of a synthesis -in which the qualities of each will complement the qualities of the -other. “Germany,” in other words, needs to Romanise, while “Rome” needs -to “Germanise.” Their approach to each other would mark the end of the -conflict. - -In so far as it is true that “Germany” represents the “elemental -instincts” always in revolt against “Rome,” “the representative of the -supremacy of reason” (Hovelaque), there are grounds for believing that -a psychological _rapprochement_ is necessary to the psychic health no -less than to the peace of Europe. Long before the war we heard, even -in this country, criticism of the right of reason to supremacy; and, -strangely enough, it was from the “Roman” Mr. Chesterton that the -criticism came most powerfully. “Germany,” in that case, may certainly -be said to have taken the lead in the active revolt against Rome; but -it was, we must observe, against a Rome already weakened from within -by the dissatisfaction with Romanism of many of the leading “Romans.” -The fact is that the “supremacy of reason,” for which “Rome” stands, -is always in danger, like every other supremacy, of degenerating into -a dictatorship; and the dictatorship which reason was establishing -before the war involved precisely the suppression of the “elemental -instincts” attributed to Germany. The so-called encirclement of Germany -was, in fact, and in psychological terms, the rational encirclement -of instinct; and I must again observe that it was not in geographical -Germany alone that the encirclement was felt to be oppressive, but in -every “Germany within us,” in so far as each of us contained “elemental -instincts” of any kind. The meaning of what I am saying is that the -elemental instincts, call them German, or anything you please, cannot -be permanently tyrannised over by “reason”; nor should they be. Nor -is it necessary that reason should attempt such a dictatorship. Its -rule should be that of a constitutional monarch under the direction of -representatives, not of itself, but of the elemental instincts. The -practical conclusion to be drawn is that the “eternal antagonism” of -“Rome” and “Germany” is not a necessary fact in psychology. It becomes a -fact only when “Rome” aims at a dictatorship of reason to the inevitable -isolation and suppression of “Germany.” Reason must learn how to -cultivate its instincts. - -I do not imagine that Mr. Chesterton identifies “Rome” with the Holy See, -though others, no doubt, do. It is interesting, however, to remark that -before the war, and for a considerable period during the war, the policy -of the Holy See was directed to the support of Germany. I have often -wondered how a Catholic like M. Hovelaque accommodates his thesis with -that fact. If the war, as he says, was only an episode in the secular -conflict of Germany with Rome (meaning the Roman Church as the spiritual -successor of the Roman Empire), how came it that before and during the -war the directors of the Roman Church were pro-German? Something must -surely be wrong here; for either the Roman Church did not take that -view of Germany which M. Hovelaque has defined, or, as seems to me more -probable, the Holy See had another end in view than victory over Germany, -namely, alliance with a prospectively victorious Germany! With this key, -I think, the mystery is unlocked for the ordinary man, however much it -continues sealed to the faithful. As _The Times Literary Supplement_ -said: “Modernists understand no better than Newman the springs of Roman -ecclesiastical policy, which is never fanatical or idealistic, but -always based on cool political calculation.” And, undoubtedly, the “cool -political calculation” of the Holy See, both before and during the first -years of the war, was that Germany would win. If this was not the case, -how are we to explain the sudden change over of policy when it began -to appear that Germany, after all, was not to be the victor? That at -a certain stage in the war such a change took place is well known to -everybody, and it was openly admitted in the Catholic _Dublin Review_. -“The pendulum of Catholicism,” said the _Dublin Review_, “has swung away -from Germany ... with Austria and Spain ... and with the English-speaking -peoples and their Latin Allies the Catholic order in the era of the -future.” The “eternal conflict” theory must go by the board after this, -for it obviously fails to fit the facts. - -THE ORIGINS OF MARX.—It is to be hoped that the reputation of Marx will -not long survive the war unimpaired. I can scarcely think that the German -Socialists will be so proud of their Marxism in the future as they have -been in the past, since it will have clearly betrayed them into one of -the most shameful moral surrenders in all history. It is dangerous for -a man’s writings to be regarded as the “Bible” even of Socialists; and -when, in addition, the Marxian Bible, unlike the other, aims at and, -in a sense, achieves, logical consistency, the peril of it is greater -upon minds lacking the inestimable virtue of common sense. Marx was not -himself a slave of his own inspiration; he was anything but a Marxian -in the sense in which his followers are Marxian. He had, indeed, a very -sharp word for certain of the disciples whose breed, unfortunately, has -not been extinguished by it. “Amateur anarchists,” he called them, who -“make up by rabid declarations and bloodthirsty rampings for the utter -insignificance of their political existence.” Groups of his disciples, -answering perfectly to this description, are to be found to-day in -English as well as in other Labour circles. In between their rampings -they reveal their political insignificance by inquiring of each other -such elementary facts about literature and history as schoolboys should -be ashamed to have forgotten. And the surprising thing is that even these -open confessions induce no reaction upon their conviction that they -understand Marx. - -It is a common supposition among Marx’s followers that not only has he -left nothing to be said on the subject of economics, but that nothing was -said before him. One German Socialist, at any rate, has rid himself of -this notion, for Dr. Menger has remarked that “Marx was completely under -the influence of the earlier English Socialists, and more particularly -of William Thompson.” In a valuable essay upon Marx, by Professor Alfred -Rahilly, the facts are let out. Marx, it appears, came across Thompson’s -work on _The Distribution of Wealth_ (1824) in the British Museum, and -read it with great profit. From Thompson he took practically all his -chief doctrines, with the exception of his peculiar interpretation -of history in terms of economics. The theory of Value as measured by -labour-power, the distinction between capital and capitalism, the law -of decreasing utility, and, above all, the very phrase as well as the -very idea of Surplus Value—all of these “Marxian” doctrines Marx found -in Thompson. I am not arguing that Marx was the less for having been -indebted to his English predecessors. He would, indeed, in my opinion, -have been a greater man if he had borrowed more of Thompson, for -Thompson possessed the common sense to realise that it was possible that -the concentration of capital might take place simultaneously, with a -diffusion of ownership—an idea which would have spared Marx the ignominy -of many of his most fanatical disciples. What, on the other hand, was -great in Marx, was his capacity for large generalisations, and his -industry in establishing them. In this respect he belonged to the great -Victorians, and, as such, he deserves more credit than his present-day -followers will permit him to receive. - -MARX AS POLITICIAN.—The centenary celebrations of Marx ought not to -conclude without a tribute to his astonishing political insight. -Philosophically Marx was confused; as an economist he has suffered from -his disciples; but as a political critic he has seldom been surpassed. -Particular attention may be drawn to his analysis of the circumstances -of Bismarck’s annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and to his forecast of -the consequences. Though writing in London, and without our historic -knowledge of the Ems telegram, or our present knowledge of the world-war, -Marx might have written his manifesto to-day; but, in that case, I doubt -whether he would be published in Germany, or read with much attention by -Marx’s followers in this country. It is a strange reflection, indeed, -upon the fate of the works of Marx that it is precisely the most clear -and prophetic part of them which his professed followers neglect. For his -dubious forecasts and his riddling analyses they have a reverence that -transcends bibliolatry; but, concerning his most absolute and explicit -political policies—not a word! - -The war of 1870, as we all know, was for Germany a declared war of -defence, exactly like the present war. Germany is always defending -herself at the world’s expense. No sooner, however, had the ostensible -motive of defence been satisfied by Sedan, than the real objects of -German militarism began to be revealed. Unhindered by the earlier -protestations of the Emperor William that Germany was at war only -with Napoleon and not with France, the militarists inspired the German -liberal bourgeoisie to press for annexations in the name of race and -security. They dared to pretend, said Marx, that the people of the -two provinces were burning to be annexed to Germany, and they adopted -without reflection the excuse of the military party that a rectification -of the Imperial frontiers was a strategic necessity. Thus, concluded -Marx, they insisted upon sowing in the terms of peace the seeds of new -wars—the phrase is Marx’s own. And what wars, too! Marx was not blind -to their probable character. History, he said, would not measure the -German offence by the number of miles of territory annexed, but by -the significance of the fact of annexation. This significance was no -less than a declaration of “a policy of conquest,” from which might be -anticipated in logical order a German racial war against “the Slav and -Latin races combined.” The war of 1870, having thus ended, would, he -said, be the precursor of a series of international wars, in the course -of which it was probable that the working-classes everywhere would -succumb to the forces of militarism and capitalism. What comment has the -_Call_ or any of our contemporary Marxian pacifists to make upon this? -It is not right that they should ignore it, more especially when it is -recalled that Marx paid a tribute to the English working-classes of his -day, who “protested with all their might against the dismemberment of -France.” - -JOHN MITCHEL AS THE SAME.—Marx, however, was not the only observer of -the events of 1870 to be moved to prophecy by them. As a matter of fact, -everything has been foreseen. John Mitchel, the Irish Nationalist, whose -name is invoked by Sinn Feiners to-day, was in Paris before the 1870 war, -and wrote of the events of the war in the _Irish Citizen_ and elsewhere -during its progress. He, too, had no illusions concerning the nature of -Prussian militarism, and though his sympathies were mainly with France, -he had a word of warning for England. “Prussia,” he said, “cannot be -England’s friend. Prussia has her own aspirations and ambitions; one of -these is to be a great maritime power, or rather _the_ great maritime -Power of Europe; and nothing in the future can be more sure than that -Prussia, if successful in this struggle with France, will take Belgium, -and threaten from Antwerp the mouth of the Thames.” Things have not -worked out exactly as Mitchel prophesied, but they have worked out -nearly enough to justify his political clairvoyance. Like Marx, he was -not deceived by the events before him, and both saw in them the shadows -of the events which have now befallen us. I remark with irony that just -as the self-styled followers of the economist Marx ignore the political -judgments of their master, the professed inheritors of the Nationalist -opinions of Mitchel ignore his international opinions. It is in this -way that the garments of the great are divided, and the seamless coat -shredded to make partisan ribbons. - -NORSE IN ENGLISH.—Professor C. H. Herford makes a meritorious attempt -to recall attention to the influence and value of the Norse Myths -upon English Poetry. William Morris was most powerfully and directly -influenced by the Sagas, and of Morris Professor Herford says that -“no other English poet has felt so keenly the power of Norse myth; -none has done so much to restore its terrible beauty, its heroism, its -earth-shaking humour, and its heights of tragic passion and pathos, to -a place in our memories, and a home in our hearts.” It will not do, -however, for (let me whisper it) who reads Morris’s poetry to-day? Has -he a home in our hearts? Are his Norse enthusiasms really anything to -us? I am not defending our generation for neglecting Morris, or for -being indifferent to the Norse theogony, of which he was a prophet. Our -age is one of prose, and the passion of prose is justice—reasonable and -regulated justice. Terrible beauty, earth-shaking humour, tragic passion, -and so on—the stuff of epic poetry—are relegated nowadays to the police -court. Moreover, the Norse mythology is not only “pagan” in the sense of -being non-Christian, it is pagan in the sense of being sub- as much as -pre-Christian, differing in this respect from the Indian mythology of the -_Mahabharata_, or the Egyptian mythology of the _Book of the Dead_. We -can never return to it without committing an act of regression, since it -is a paganism of a world inferior rather than superior to the “Christian” -world. At the same time, since we must carry all our sheaves with us in -order to enjoy the complete harvest of the human soul, it is necessary -not to drop from consciousness the heroic past, albeit a past to which we -may not return. Let it be enshrined and enjoyed in poetry and music now -that it is no longer possible in life. - -THE COMEDY OF IT.—Comedy still remains a secret hid from the English -mind, and not all the efforts of Mr. John Francis Hope to bring it into -popularity will succeed where the prior efforts of Meredith have failed. -The reason, as Mr. Hope has often explained it, even more clearly than -Meredith, is not only that the spirit of Comedy demands “a society of -cultivated men and women, wherein ideas are current and perceptions -quick”—a condition certainly not now existing—but the absence of three -qualities, each of which, unfortunately, blooms luxuriantly among -us—“sentimentalism, puritanism, and bacchanalianism.” Comedy, the play -of the mind about real ideas, is quite incompatible with any one of -these three vices. If you sentimentalise, play is over, and equally it -is over if you are shocked, or if you carry the _suggested_ humour of -the situation too far. But one of these things the ordinary English man -or woman is almost bound to do; and thus it comes about that “play,” the -sparkle of common sense, is so rare among us. - -Meredith certainly worked very hard to instil Comedy into the English -mind. His essay is a classic, and our only classic on the subject. And -he may be said to have written the whole of his novels in order to -illustrate his idea. Meredith’s novels are much more than a mirror held -up in Nature; they are a model held up to human nature; and, from this -point of view, they are only an appendix to the _Essay on Comedy_. The -serious way in which Meredith’s novels are read, however, is an evidence -of his failure, and it would be interesting to hear his secret comment -on the critics who acclaim him as the grand portrait-painter of women. -Did Meredith even set himself to draw a woman? Was his art not rather to -“draw out” a woman from the imperfect society his times provided him? -Were not his “portraits,” in fact, constructive criticisms of the women -he knew? I put these opinions into interrogation out of mere courtesy, -for there is really no doubt whatever about them. Meredith drew women -still to be, as he hoped they would become. - -“To love comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women -well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still hope -for good.” That is an almost complete summary of the conditions of the -comic spirit; but there must be added the “sense of society,” the social -sense, which is quite as important. This also introduces a considerable -difficulty for us, since if “our English school had not clearly imagined -society” in 1877, when Meredith wrote, it is less than ever probable -to-day. In 1877, such people of intelligence as were living in England -were still more or less homogeneous in their general views about life. -They were not eighteenth century—the century of our highest English -social culture; but they were not yet what we have subsequently become, -discrete and warring atoms of intellectuality. It was possible when -Meredith was alive for a group of people to meet, and to create something -remotely resembling a salon. The hope of realising a “salon spirit” was -not entirely dead. To-day nothing is more improbable than even an attempt -to restore a salon. Not only would nobody undertake to do it, but to -nobody would it occur that its restoration is highly desirable. But the -salon is, as it were, the foyer of the theatre of Comedy, as the theatre -of Comedy is itself the foyer of the Civilised Life of Brilliant Common -Sense; and if we cannot re-create a salon it is perfectly certain that -the greater mysteries are beyond us. We may continue, however, to “hope -for good,” since that also is an essential of Comedy. - -THE EPIC SERBS.—_Kossovo: the Heroic Songs of the Serbs_, translated by -Miss Helen Rootham, has now been published for some months. If there is -any “epic sense” alive in this country, it must surely be gratified by -the appearance of these Serbian ballads, which are much more truly epic -fragments than ballads as we understand the term. In the ballad proper -the prevailing note is tragedy—sometimes individual, sometimes family, -sometimes clan; but in the Serbian, as in the Homeric, the tragedy -expressed in the popular poetry is more spacious even than the nation; -the nation becomes the race, and the race symbolises a psychological -power, which may very well be called a god—a suffering god. Grimm said of -these ballads that there had been “nothing since Homer to compare with -them; they were the best of all times and nations.” Goethe compared them -to the _Song of Songs_. Certainly there is something Homeric in them; and -since they are sung to-day, they can be regarded as unique. Long dwelling -on them, with a view to discovering their innermost secret, convinces -me, however, that they differ from the Homeric mood in their comparative -hopelessness. Mr. Baring says in his Introduction that these Serbian -ballad-writers “saw the world with the eyes of a child and the heart -of a man.” “Child” is a word of multiple _entente_; and the difference -between the Homeric and the Serbian “childhood” is that the latter -appears doubtful whether it can grow up. Homer, we know, occasionally -let fall a sad regret that his splendid heroes should still be children; -and in the plays of Æschylus the high philosophical meditations of Homer -are considerably elaborated. But in these Serbian ballads there does not -appear to me any sign of the _mind_ of a man, however much of the heart -there may be. No Serbian Plato will ever find in them such a text as -the Greek Plato found in Homer. It is not to be wondered at. Serbia has -always been on the frontier of European civilisation, and perpetually in -the trenches. Since 1389 Serbia has been in unbroken but unsubmissive -captivity, and her deliverance from alien bondage is only an event -of yesterday. But if the elements of the future are contained in the -quintessence of these ballads, there is no sight of a new Athens in them. - -ERNEST DOWSON.—Mr. Arthur Symons’s Introduction to the reprinted _Poems -and Prose_ of the late Ernest Dowson has all the characteristics of the -age to which both he and Dowson belonged. It is delicately appreciative, -and not lacking in good judgment. Mr. Symons says, for instance, that -Dowson was small enough to be overwhelmed by experiences that would -have been nourishing food to a great man. But the style and manner of -passing judgment almost completely contradict the matter of the judgment -itself, and leave us in doubt whether Mr. Symons is not judging against -his judgment. Literary criticism does not need to be literature; least -of all does it need to be belles-lettres. Yet Mr. Arthur Symons and his -whole school seem to aim at precisely this effect, that of writing in the -same style as the work criticised. Thus we find him saying of Dowson: -“all the fever and turmoil and the unattained dreams of a life which had -so much of the swift, disastrous, and suicidal impetus of genius”—words -and phrases which might have been written by Dowson himself. They are -apologiastic of the person when what we ask of criticism is judgment of -the quality of the style, and in the unfortunate identification of genius -with disaster and suicide they are almost an incentive to the little -artists to trade on their neuroses. I do not know whether Mr. Symons knew -Dowson personally; it is of no importance; but his bedside manner with -ailing geniuses would have been anything but tonic. - -It is symptomatic of Dowson’s state of mind, though Mr. Symons misses -the subtlety of it, that he was always repeating Poe’s line: “the viol, -the violet, and the vine.” A special affection for labials and liquids -is conclusive evidence of minority, not to say infantilism; and stylists -with any ambition to excel, and to develop both themselves and their -style, will be wise to watch their “v’s” and “m’s” and “l’s,” in fact, -their labials and liquids generally. Dowson wallowed in liquids and -labials to the end of his short life; his vocabulary never grew up, and -I have no doubt that, had he been asked to quote his own best lines, he -would have pointed, not to the notorious “Cynara,” which is sufficiently -pretty-pretty, but to these lines, in which he came as near to Poe as -originality permits:— - - Violets and leaves of vine - For Love that lives a day. - -“One is essentially of the autumn,” he wrote of himself. But that is not -true, for Dowson was not ripe, but (I say it of course with respect) -rotten. He remained in the cradle sucking sensations long after he should -have been out in the world creating sensations. Life never got beyond his -lips. - -A SENTIMENTAL EXCURSION.—The writers of the _Venture_, a literary -magazine published from Bristol, and written chiefly by members of the -Postal Service, are sincere in that they are manifestly striving to -acquire a good English style; and they are modest in that they do not -pretend to have attained to it. Even better, and unlike so many current -“stylists,” they do not say that the unreachable grapes are sour, -while those only which they can pluck are the perfect fruit; in other -words, they do not try to pass off their defects as new beauties of -style. Their models are good, and their exercises are promising. The -introductory note contains, however, a little cant, rather out of key -with the prevailing mood of the journal. It demands “stalwart criticism,” -not for itself only, but for literature in general. The _London Mercury_ -appeared before the world in the same austere attitude, calling in -prophetic tones for sterner criticism, more outspoken criticism, -criticism that should both say and mean something, criticism, in short, -of the kind which has for years ensured the ostracism of precisely that -kind of critic. It is the easiest thing in the world to demand such -criticism, and very popular on one condition—that it be never actually -provided. For the fact is that the criticism in question is really -killing; and how many of those who ask for stern criticism would welcome -their own extinction? - -Special attention is directed to the longish poem by Mr. Francis Andrews. -It is entitled “Mother,” and the opening stanza is as follows:— - - You can see from the gate which once enclosed my world - The tinted woods o’ the hill and the white road wending, - And among the nearer boughs whereon my stars were hung - The blown and shifting wraith of the blue smoke curled. - -Let us stop at that and collect our impressions. It is a very dangerous -subject that Mr. Andrews has chosen. The temptation to indulge in -“sob-stuff” in reflecting on “Mother,” is well-nigh irresistible, since -the sentiment goes back to the childhood not only of the individual, but -of the race, and probably earlier. It is almost inextricably mingled with -the tears of things. But tears are not a proper accompaniment of poetry -or of beauty. The mission of Art is to dry all tears, and the utmost -severity and serenity are needed in dealing with a profoundly emotional -subject exactly to keep the tears from welling into it. That Mr. Andrews -has not succeeded is evident from the opening stanza which I have just -quoted. It is almost drenched with sentiment. Listen to the rhythm -which is nearly a lullaby in reverie, and let us ask ourselves whether -it is not calculated, quite apart from the words, to throw the reader -backwards into his mother’s arms. “Which once enclosed my world,” “and -the white road wending,” “whereon my stars were hung,” “the blown and -shifting wraith of blue smoke curled”—these are sentimental rhythms, and -their inevitable effect is to induce a reverie of the past rather than a -meditation or contemplation of the future. The mood is backward-looking, -and not forward-looking, an indulgence and not an effort of spirit. It -is quite in accordance with the diagnosis that a concluding stanza of -the poem should repeat the opening stanza, since there is no release -in a mood of this kind. In great reveries it will be observed that -the movement is forward and upwards. The action starts from a profound -sentiment, but it works its way upward to a triumphant assertion of -spiritual realisation. Look, for instance, at _Lycidas_ or _Adonais_, -both sentimental in origin, but both exalted in conclusion. There the -song springs from a dewy bed, drenched with tears, but it mounts and -mounts until it ends in the sky. Mr. Andrews keeps well to the ground, -and, as I have said, his concluding stanza is only a slight variation -of the prelude. The influence of Kipling is to be discerned at work, -especially Kipling’s “Envoi,” beginning, “There’s a whisper down the -field.” Kipling is another of the writers whose sentiment is still tied -to his mother’s apron-strings; and his “Envoi” and “Mother o’ Mine” are -almost as poisonous to poetry as Meredith’s “Love in the Valley.” We need -not be averse to sentiment as such, but the most careful discrimination -between the nest and the sky is essential to an æsthetic use of it. Let -us start in sentiment, by all means, but let us rise from it as quickly -as possible. - -THE NEWEST TESTAMENT.—Various attempts have been made from time to time -to “render” the New Testament into colloquial English in order to bring -it “up-to-date.” None of these, we may congratulate ourselves, has so far -been more than a nine days’ sensation, and even less than that length -of life is destined for the latest attempt, _Sayings and Stories_, a -translation into “colloquial English” of the Sermon on the Mount and -some Parables. The Yates Professor of New Testament Greek and Exegesis -at Mansfield College gives us his assurance that however “startlingly -unlike the familiar versions” these translations by Mr. Hoare may be, -they are nevertheless “actual translations and not mere paraphrases,” -and he commends the “style” to the “candid judgment of the reader.” The -prose sections, in particular, he says, are “curiously reminiscent” -of the “homely speech in which the sayings of Jesus Christ have been -preserved.” It may be so, but then, again, it may not; since, after all, -it is not a question of reproducing in colloquial English the colloquial -Greek of the original, but a question rather of reproducing in English -the meaning of the Gospel writers; and this may very well require, not -colloquial English, but the English vernacular in its highest degree -of purity, simplicity, and grandeur. I am not sufficiently acquainted -with the popular Greek in which much of the New Testament was written -to pass a candid judgment on its quality as a Greek style, but if the -aim of the original writers was the grand style simple—as it must have -been—whether they achieved it or not, it is indubitably achieved in the -English of the authorised translation. Assuming the original, in fact, -to be “faithfully” represented in the colloquial English of Mr. Hoare, -I unhesitatingly say that the English of the authorised translation is -nearer the spirit of the original than the present translation, and, in -that sense, more fully faithful to the intentions of the original authors. - -It would be tedious to cite more than one example, and I will take it in -the very first sentence of Mr. Hoare’s translation. “What joy,” he says, -“for those with the poor man’s feelings! Heaven’s Empire is for them,” -the authorised translation of which is too familiar to need quotation. I -do not see what is gained, setting aside the cost, by the substitution of -the exclamatory “What joy ...” for the ecstatic affirmation, “Blessed are -the poor.” Why again, “the poor man,” and, after that, the “poor man’s -feelings”? Why also “Heaven’s Empire” instead of “the Kingdom of Heaven”; -and why “is for them” instead of “theirs is”? The gain, even literally, -is imperceptible, and in cost a world of meaning has been sacrificed. -“Blessed” is an incomparably more spiritual word than “joy”—in English, -at any rate, whatever their respective originals may indicate; and there -is a plane of difference between an incontinent ejaculation such as “What -joy,” which resembles “What fun,” and has in view rather a prospect -than a fact—and the serene and confident utterance of an assured truth. -Further, and again without regard to the literal original, “a poor man’s -feelings” must be miles away, from the intention of the original authors, -since it definitely conveys to us associations derived from social -surroundings, social reform, and what not. Was _this_ the intention of -the Sermon on the Mount, the very location of which symbolised a state -of mind above that of the dwellers in the plain of common life? Was it a -socialist or communist discourse? If not, the “poor man’s feelings,” in -our English colloquial sense, is utterly out of place, and the original -must have meant something symbolically different. The substitution, -again, of “Heaven’s Empire” for the “Kingdom of Heaven” may be, as -Professor Dodd assures us, a more correct literal translation of the -original phrase; but only a literary barbarian can contemplate it without -grieving over the lost worlds of meaning. What is the prospect of an -“Empire,” even Heaven’s Empire, to us to-day? As certainly as the phrase -“Kingdom of Heaven” has come to mean, in English, a state of beatitude, -the reversion to an “Empire” marks the decline of that state to one of -outward pomp and circumstance. The spiritual meaning which must have -characterised the intention of the Sermon on the Mount is completely -sacrificed in the substitution of Empire for Kingdom. The volume is -published by the “Congregational Union of England and Wales,” and it -serves to indicate the depths to which Nonconformist taste can sink. We -only need now this “colloquial English” version in the “nu speling” to -touch bottom. - -NOTHING FOREIGN.—It is better for a nation to “import” art than to go -without it altogether; and it is the _duty_ of its critics to stimulate -home-production by importing as many as possible of the best foreign -models. That home-production may fail to find itself encouraged to the -point of creation is perfectly possible; inspiration may continue to be -wanting; but of the two states of no home-production and no imports and -no home-production and imports, the latter is to be preferred. - -“Foreign” is a word that should be employed with increasing -discrimination, and, most of all, by English writers. There is an English -genius the perfect flower of which we have still to see; for perfect -English has never yet been written. But nothing foreign ought to be -alien to a race as universal in character and mentality as the English; -and in the end, the perfection of the English genius is only possible in -a spiritual synthesis of all the cultures of the world. Two tendencies -equal and opposite are at work in this direction, and have always been -in English history. On the one side, we find an ever-present tendency -towards cosmopolitanism, an excess of which would certainly result in -the complete loss of essential national characteristics. On the other -side, and usually balancing the first, we find an ever-present tendency -towards insularity and æsthetic chauvinism, the excess of which would -undoubtedly result in a caricature of the English genius—the development -of idiosyncrasies in place of style. Somewhere between these two -tendencies the critic of English art must fix his seat, in order that his -judgment may determine, as far as possible, the perfect resultant of the -blend of opposites. It is a matter, too, of time as well as of forms of -culture. Not only are not all times alike, but there is a time for import -and a time for export and a time for “protection”; but, equally, there is -room for discrimination in the kind of art that may wisely be imported or -exported. In general, we should import only what we need and export only -what other nations need, and thus, in the old mediæval sense, traffic -in treasure. Thus guarded, nothing but good can come of the greatest -possible international commerce of the arts. - -PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.—Psycho-analysis is not the last word in psychological -method; and a great deal more of experiment is needed. Freud’s theory of -dreams, for instance, is excellent pioneer work in a field hitherto left -more or less uncultivated, but it is very far from being exhaustively -explanatory of the facts. Suppose it were possible to _control_ dreams—in -other words, to dream of what you will—would not the theory of Freud that -dreams are subconscious wish-fulfilments stand in need of amendment? But -to control dreams is not an utter impossibility. Sufficient experimental -work has been done in this direction to prove that the gate of dreams is -open to the intelligent will. And there is warrant for the attempt in a -good deal of mystical literature. I was reading only recently the poems -of Vaughan the Silurist, and what should I come across but the following -passage: - - Being laid and dress’d for sleep, close not thy eyes - Up with the curtains; give thy soul the wing - In some good thoughts; so when the day shall rise - And thou unrak’st thy fire, those sparks will bring - New flames; besides, where these lodge, vain heats mourn - And die; that bush where God is shall not burn. - -Vaughan’s lines are not great poetry, but they contain a useful -psychological hint. - -PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE MYSTERIES.—It would be unwise to make a dogma -of any of the present conclusions of psycho-analysis. As a means of -examining the contents of the subconscious, psycho-analysis is an -instrument of the highest value, but in the interpretation of what it -finds there, and in the conclusions it draws as to their origin—how the -apple got into the dumpling, in fact—psycho-analysis requires to be -checked by all the knowledge we have at our command. Mr. Mead has raised -the question of origins, but it is just as easy to raise the question of -interpretation. I am not satisfied that the interpretation placed by Jung -on myths is any more than correct as far as it goes, and I am disposed to -think that it does not go far enough. His reduction, for example, of a -whole group of myths to the “incest” motive, appears to me, even in the -light of his definition of incest as the “backward urge into childhood,” -to give us only a partial truth, an aspect of truth. For there is a -sense in which an “urge into childhood” is not backward but forward, -not a regression into an old, but a progression into a new childhood. -“Unless ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter the Kingdom -of Heaven.” “Incest” is a strictly improper term to apply to such a -transformation; the new birth might suit the case better. Mr. Mead takes -the same view. The interpretations of psycho-analysis carry us back, he -suggests, to the lesser mysteries; but they need to be “elevated” in the -Thomist sense in order to carry us back to the greater. So long as it -confines itself to the “body” psycho-analysis must plainly be confined -to the lesser mysteries, for the lesser mysteries are all concerned with -generation. The greater mysteries are concerned with regeneration, and, -hence, with the “soul”; and even if we assume the “soul” to require a -body, we are outside the region of ordinary generation if that body is -not the physical body. The psycho-analytic interpretation suffers from -this confinement of its text to the physical body, since “the genuine -myth has first and foremost to do with the life of the soul.” - -Another caution to remember is that reality cannot be grasped with one -faculty or with several; it requires them all. Only the whole can grasp -the whole. For this reason it is impossible to “think” reality; for -though the object of thought may be reality, all reality is not to -be thought. Similarly, it is impossible to “feel” or to “will” or to -“sense” reality completely. Each of these modes of experiencing reality -reports us only a mode of reality, and not the whole of it. Before we -can say certainly that a thing is true—before, that is, we can affirm a -reality—it must not only think true, but feel true, sense true, and do -true. The pragmatic criterion that reports a thing to be true because it -works may be contradicted by the intellectual criterion that reports a -thing to be true because it “thinks” true; and when these both agree in -their report, their common conclusion may fail to be confirmed by the -criterion of feeling that reports a thing to be true when it “feels” -true. It is from an appreciation of the many-sided nature of truth, and, -consequently, from an appreciation of the many faculties required to -grasp it, that the value set by the world on common sense is derived. For -common sense is the community of the senses or faculties; in its outcome -it is the agreement of their reports. A thing is said to be common sense -when it satisfies the heart, the mind, the emotion, and the senses; when, -in fact, it satisfies all our various criteria of reality. Otherwise a -statement may be logical, it may be pleasing, it may be practical, it may -be obvious; but only when it is all is it really common sense. - -But can we, with only our present faculties, however developed and -harmonised, ever arrive at reality? It may be that in the natural order -of things, humanity implies by definition a certain state of ignorance, -and that this state is only to be transcended by the overpassing of the -“human” condition. Psycho-analysis is still only at the beginning of its -discoveries, but on the very threshold we are met by the problem of the -nascent or germinal faculties of the mind. Are there in the subconscious, -“yearning to mix themselves with life,” faculties for which “humanity” -has not yet developed end-organs? If this be so, as our fathers have told -us, the next step in evolution is to develop them. - -GENTLY WITH PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.—I am doubtful whether we have sufficiently -developed the ideas of psycho-analysis to make a fruitful parallel -possible between them and the ideas contained in Patanjali. -Psycho-analysis, as the name indicates, is more concerned with analysis -than with synthesis, and “Yoga,” whose dominant idea is re-union or -synthesis, appears to be rather a complement than an analogue of -psycho-analysis in the broad sense. Take, for example, the idea of Yoga -as a means to the re-union of the individual with the world-soul: “Thou -art That; Thou shalt become That.” According to Jung, this attempt at -re-union may be nothing more than a megalomaniac regressive introversion, -representing on a grand scale a return to the mother and infantilism. -Since it is separation from the mother (actual and metaphorical), that, -in Jung’s view, creates the basis of consciousness, any attempt to become -re-united with the “mother” is an act of regression. It is obvious from -this dissonance of doctrine that Yoga and psycho-analysis have not as yet -discovered any profound common ground; in fact, in some respects they -appear to be opposed. - -I count myself among the increasing number of enthusiastic students of -psycho-analysis. It is the hopeful science of the dawning era. No new era -appears to me to be possible without it, and such a work as Dr. Ernest -Jones’s _Psycho-Analysis_ is one of the books most worth buying at the -present time. But it is elsewhere that I find the best justification -for my enthusiasm, in these words from an old Hermetic text: “The -beginning of perfection is gnosis of man; but gnosis of God is perfected -perfection.” Psycho-analysis thus appears to be the beginning of the -gnosis of man, and, in this sense, the beginning of perfection. But -it is only the beginning. Mere morality, however psychological, is no -substitute for religion; and the most profoundly and sincerely moral of -men—Ibsen, for example—end in a state of despair unless at the point at -which their morality gives out, religion of some kind comes to their aid. -Psycho-analysis, I think it will be found, is doomed, while it remains -analysis, to end in the same state of despair. It will teach us all -there is to be known about the nature of man; but the gnosis of man is -not satisfying. For it is only thereafter and when man is transcended as -an object of gnosis that perfected perfection is possible. I would not, -however, hasten by a single impatient step this second and completing -phase of the process of our learning. The gnosis of man is necessary to -the gnosis of God, and God can well look after Himself and bide our time. -Furthermore, a premature attempt to know God before we are initiated into -the mysteries of the gnosis of man must be heavily paid for. Religion -without humanity is more dangerous than humanity without religion. Let us -then settle down with concentrated attention to the problem before us, -the material and method of which are to be found in psycho-analysis. We -shall be able to afford to whistle when we are through that wood. - -A CAMBRIDGE “COCOON.”—The new Cambridge magazine, _The Cocoon_, cannot -be regarded as superfluous, the editors suggest, since its point of -view is unique. It is not written by “theological” minds that “estimate -affairs in relation to unchangeable dogmas and fixed beliefs,” but by -minds that hold that things “are capable of more than one truthful -interpretation.” The second of these contentions is true enough, but, -unfortunately, the new interpretations of _The Cocoon_, however truthful, -are trivial. Age, we are told, sees the Moon as just a “heavenly body”; -whereas the youth who spin _The Cocoon_ see the Moon as “a wonderful -cheese” or a prehistoric coin. Age, again, looks at the Great Pyramid -and interprets it as a pyramidal structure; but our spinning youth -interpret it as a “colossal and awe-inspiring cube,” with emphasis on -the awe. The difference between the interpretations is, to my mind, -all in favour of age. It may be true that the Moon is translatable in -terms of cheese, and the Great Pyramid may really be a cube, but the -interpretations are without interest or value. If _The Cocoon_ had said -that the Moon might conceivably be the Devil, or the Great Pyramids the -psychic meeting-place of the Rosicrucians, the new “interpretation” -might have had some interest. As it is, we are back in the nursery, -and not by any means in the nursery of the race. The earlier editorial -affirmation is not even sense, but a contradiction of sense. “To estimate -affairs in relation to unchangeable dogmas and fixed beliefs,” is not -theological only, it is only means of estimating at all. Things _are_ -so and so, and the unchangeability of dogma and fixity of belief are -determined, or should be, by the corresponding unchangeability and -fixity of things as they are. When we find that the nature of things -changes arbitrarily from day to day, we may consider the advisability -of changing our belief that it is fixed as rapidly as nature itself is -transformed. Otherwise, if anything we say is to be “true,” it must be -because there is a fixed and unchangeable nature to which our dogmas and -beliefs refer. The alternative is not youth and imagination and “other -truthful interpretations of things,” it is nursery chatter about cheese -and pyramidal cubes. - -Pass the articles on Balzac and D’Annunzio, both of which might have -been written by Old Age or even by Middle Age, and let us see how -the state of mind calling itself Youth deals with history. Remember -that Cambridge, where the Cocoons come from, regards itself as “the -nursery of the nation”; and then listen to Mr. L. J. Cheney, no doubt -one of our future representatives on the World-League, preparing his -programme. “It is stupid,” he says, “to write history or to study -history, on the assumption that we Western Europeans are the salt of -the earth.” And Mr. H. Y. Oulsham, on the same subject, remarks that -“we must keep the sociological aim of history in sight”; ... “the -be-all and end-all of history is sociology.” No wonder the _Manchester -Guardian_—the guardian, that is to say, of Manchester—found _The -Cocoon_ so promising, for the opinions expressed by Mr. Cheney and Mr. -Oulsham are embryos of _Manchester Guardian_ “leaders,” they are _so_ -cosmopolitan and _so_ humanitarian. Apart, however, from their extreme -Age, bordering on decrepitude, I find in them not even an unimportant -“truthful interpretation.” It is not true that sociology is the be-all -and end-all of history as it ought to be written; and to deny, in the -name of history, that Western Europe _is_ the salt of the earth (however -it may have lost its savour) is just to deny and repudiate European -world-responsibility. Things, again, _are_ so and so, and not otherwise, -let Youth interpret them as it will. Europe _is_ the responsible mind of -the world, and the be-all and end-all of history is the fulfilment of a -world-purpose whose objective is more than merely human sociology. If the -“nursery of the nation” has a different interpretation, the nursery of -the nation is wrong. - -_The Cocoon_ is under the impression that there is something valuable -in Youth in years; that Youth in years is the only kind of Youth; that -Youth in years is Youth indeed. Our first birth, however, is only a sleep -and a forgetting, and real Youth comes only after the second-birth. -The once-born are creatures of pure circumstance, owing their youth -to the accident of time alone; but the twice-born are self-creations -defying time; they never grow old, though they are always growing up. -_The Cocoon_ fairly describes Youth as “a condition of energy and -receptiveness”; but is Youth in years necessarily of that kind? As for -receptiveness, we have already seen that the “historians” of the “nursery -of the nation” either hark back or hark forward to ideas long since dead. -And as for “energy,” barring its animal manifestation in sport, the -highest culture demands the highest concentration of energy, and where -shall we find it but in the twice-born? Whoever can make a turn upon -himself and his habits of thought is young, whatever his years. On the -other hand, whoever cannot be “bothered” to think afresh, but contents -himself with what he used to think is old and lacking in energy, whatever -his years or his blues. - -It is the fate of the once-born to become pessimistic as they grow -old, as it is privilege of the twice-born to increase in hope as they -wax in youth. One of our Cocoonists, therefore, must be prematurely -old in the former sense, since he lifts up his lamentation that “the -beauty of English prose is already mainly a thing of the past.” It is -not a sentiment for “the nursery of the nation,” and it is altogether -untrue. Beautiful English prose has certainly been written, but the best -is yet to be. Beautiful qualities of English prose we have certainly -had revealed to us in abundance, and some of our greatest writers have -succeeded in making an anthology in their style of two or three or -even four of them; but an English prose with all its known qualities -harmonised and synthesised in a single style is a thing of the future -and not of the past. There are qualities in English still unrevealed. A -great deal of “energy,” however, will be necessary to such a synthesis. -Its creator must be not only twice-born, but, as the _Mahabharata_ -says of Indian sages, “blazing with spiritual energy,” for the fire of -imagination to fuse all the qualities of English prose into a style is -too intense for ordinary mortals. - -AN OXFORD MISCELLANY.—_A Queen’s College Miscellany_ is filially -dedicated to Walter Pater and Ernest Dowson, both of whom, it seems, were -Queen’s men in their day. Still another association with these writers -is sought in the comparison of the college coterie from which each arose -with the group responsible for the present miscellany. Something of the -nature of a cult is indicated; and I take it that the various items of -the miscellany are “corporate” as well as individual. The foreword says -as much. In a vocabulary that seems most ominous for literature, we are -referred to a “literary team” whose “output” is here presented, and to -an attempt to “prove that team-work is possible in prose and poetry.” -And the miscellany is the first “harvest” of “the refined product.” My -opinion of “team-work” is certainly that it is possible both in prose and -poetry. No individual has ever by himself written either great prose or -great poetry, and the greatest literary works of the world, not excepting -Shakespeare, are of anonymous—that is to say, of collective—authorship. -The elevation of the group-consciousness, however, is everything, and I -need not remark that a group whose highest aim is to emulate Pater and -Dowson, and whose considered “foreword” contains such terminological -ineptitudes as “team-work,” “output,” and the “harvest” of a “refined -product,” is not yet upon a very high plane of discourse. - -THE IMPOTENCE OF SATIRE.—A correspondent has made the admirable -suggestion that a new _Don Quixote_ be written to slay the dragon of -Capitalism with the pen of satire. The suggestion is unconditionally -free; no acknowledgment of its source need be made; but anybody is -at liberty to begin on the work at once. Some excellent arguments are -adduced why the work should be undertaken. Capitalism has long troubled -the land, and its evils are generally admitted. Reason has failed to -make any impression on the beast, and sentiment appears almost to be -its favourite food. Satire, therefore, is plainly indicated as the -appropriate weapon, and at its crack, my correspondent suggests, the -beast would dissolve into nothing amidst universal laughter. What more -need be said but “Cervantes, forward!”? - -Unfortunately my correspondent proceeds to weaken his appeal by affirming -that Cervantes himself had Capitalism in his mind when writing certain -chapters of the First Book of _Don Quixote_. In Chaps. 44 and 45 it -appears to me, he says, that Don Quixote’s identity as a capitalist is -undoubted. Sancho Panza’s identity with the mass of labour is equally -undoubted; and the middle classes are represented by a number of ladies -and gentlemen, a canon, a judge, and a doctor. These chapters standing -by themselves would be a good allegorical explanation of the present -financial position. But why of the “present” position, if satire is -capable of dissolving Capitalism in laughter? Without questioning the -allegorical character of the chapters referred to, which may, for all -I dare say, be a perfect anticipation of the economics of Douglas—it -is not encouraging to our present-day Cervantes to be told that their -proposed method has already been tried by a master only to leave the -dragon of Capitalism still to be tickled to death. Now one comes to think -of it, not even Chivalry, an even more undoubted object than Capitalism -of Cervantes’s satire, really died of the shock, for the very good -reason that it was dead before Cervantes rained his laughter upon it. -Even Cervantes’s satire killed nothing, and the task to be undertaken -for my correspondent is therefore greater than Cervantes’. In the spirit -of Squeers, I can only suggest that he who spells window, w-i-n-d-e-r, -should clean it. My correspondent, forward! - -The power of satire is usually much exaggerated; as a matter of fact, it -is one of the least effective of psychological weapons. Almost anything -can turn its edge. Juvenal is not reported to have done much more than -incur the dislike of his contemporaries; and Swift, the most serious -satirist since Juvenal, never effected anything by satire alone. His two -most immediately effective pamphlets, the _Drapier’s Letters_, and the -_Conduct of the Allies_, contained passages of satire, irony, and every -other sort of appeal, but neither of them can be called satirical as a -whole. Satire, like wit, is effective in small doses given at opportune -moments; but, as in the case of wit, sustained satire defeats its own -object. It owes what power it wields to the contrast in which it stands -to the prevailing mood of the work in which it appears: its unexpected -appearance therein. Surprise is the condition of its doing any work at -all. Surely if this were not the case the satirical journals of, let -us say, Germany or France, would have dissolved in laughter the vices -aimed at long before now. But satire is expected of them, is discounted -in advance, and positively adds to the attractiveness of the objects -satirised. I will not go so far as to say that Cervantes recalled -dead Chivalry to life by satirising it, though the crop of romances -that followed _Don Quixote_ in England may almost be said to justify -the charge; but it can safely be said that a satire directed against -Capitalism would lengthen rather than contract the life of the dragon, by -adding amusement to its claims to exist. - -THE “DIAL” OF AMERICA.—The American _Dial_ is perhaps the most fully -realised of all the promising literary magazines now current in the -world. It is in all probability considerably in advance of the American -reading public for whom it is intended, but it is all the better on -that account. Culture is always called upon to sacrifice popularity, -and, usually, even its existence, in the interests of civilisation; -for civilisation is the child of culture, and has in general as little -consideration for culture as a human child for its own education. The -custodians of culture (or the disinterested pursuit of human perfection) -are the adults of the race of which civilisation is the children’s -school: and, fortunately or unfortunately, in these democratic days, -their function is largely under the control of their pupils. Gone are -the times when a Brahmanic caste can lay down and enforce a curriculum -of education for its civilisation. Modern civilisations believe -themselves to be, and possibly are, “old enough” to exercise their -right of selecting their teachers. It cannot be said, as yet, that -they exercise their choice with remarkable discretion, but the process -of popular self-education, if slow, may at any rate be expected to be -sure. In any event there is no use in kicking against the stars. If the -forces of culture are to rule modern civilisations, they must do so -constitutionally. The days of the dictatorship of the intelligentzia are -past. - -There are two kinds of judgment which it is essential for civilisation -to acquire: judgment of men and judgment of things. Things are of -primary importance, but so also are persons. One is not before or -after the other. For instance, culture itself is a “thing” in the -philosophic sense; it is a reality in the world of ideas; but of quite -equal importance in our mixed world of ideas and individuals, are the -actual persons and personalities claiming to embody and direct culture. -Hence the transcendent importance of criticism next to creation in -both spheres: criticism of personalities and criticism of “works.” The -mistaking of a little man for a great man, or the reverse, may easily -mean the delay of the work of culture for whole generations. And, -equally, the confusion of the objects of culture with the objects of -civilisation may spell the ruin of a nation. Few critics realise the -magnitude and responsibility of their function, or the degree to which -personal disinterestedness is indispensable to its fulfilment. Holding -the office of inspectors of the munitions of culture, they are often -guilty of “passing” contraband upon the public, and, still more often, -of failing to ensure delivery of Culture’s most effective weapons. More -seriousness is needed, very much more, in matters of criticism. We must -be capable of killing if we are to be capable of giving life. - -The _Dial_ is particularly to be praised for its courageous criticism -of great dead Americans. America, like Europe, suffers from necrophily, -a kind of worship of the dead. Indeed, as a good Injun was synonymous -with a dead Injun, a great American writer is usually a dead American -writer. All his faults die with him, and only his myth remains, with the -result that people who would not have acknowledged the existence of, let -us say, Whitman living, will not acknowledge a fault in Whitman dead. -For a nation thus under a critical statute of Mortmain, the utterance of -what seems like blasphemy is a necessary part of their education. They -must know that the dead great, by very virtue of their greatness and the -survival of their works, are still alive and active, and that the same -kind of criticism must be kept playing on them as upon the living forces. -The _Dial_ reviewers show no disposition to shirk this unpleasing duty. -One by one, as the occasion suggests, the dead great are given the honour -of living criticism, and treated as the immortal present which they are. -Since their spirits go marching on, criticism must go marching along with -them. - -One of the recently so honoured dead in the pages of the _Dial_ has been -Whitman; and in an essay on _Whitman’s Love Affairs_ Mr. Emery Holloway -throws a fresh light on an old but still obscure subject. His “love -affairs” were obviously more matter for criticism in Whitman than in -some other writers, since Whitman was pre-eminently an autobiographical -writer who sang himself. What, then, does Mr. Holloway find? A little -surprisingly—at least to readers who have not already divined Whitman’s -secret—that Whitman “suffered” from love, and struggled against it -rather as a raw tyro than as the “master of himself” of his poetic -fiction. In some private diaries of Whitman, quoted by Mr. Holloway, -we are presented with the spectacle of Whitman grappling with his own -soul after the manner of saints mortifying the flesh, or, as I would -suggest, after the distinctively modern fashion. Instinct was at war -with reason, even in Whitman, and, in the end, as usually occurs with -modern men, it was reason that won. Mr. Holloway divides Whitman’s works -between two periods: the first, in which he sang “untrammelled natural -impulses”; and a second, in which he was concerned about democracy and -the immortality of the soul; in short, with reason. And between these two -periods, or worlds of discourse, Mr. Holloway tells us, was a purgatory, -in which Whitman’s soul was tried as by fire. The diaries already -mentioned contain some of the records of Whitman’s conflict with himself. -Here, for example, is an entry bearing all the marks of a painful -resolution. “I must,” he says, “pursue her no more” ... and resolve “to -give up absolutely and for good, from this present hour, the feverish, -fluctuating, useless, undignified pursuit of 164 ... avoid seeing her -or any meeting whatever from this hour forth, for life.” The reader is -to be pitied who does not understand, however dimly, what Whitman must -have gone through in imagination and reality to confide to the author -of _Leaves of Grass_ such a shocking confession. He emerged from the -experience with that past behind him, but still, I think, unresolved. For -it was not his to reconcile instinct with reason in an epigenesis; he -passed from one phase to the next without carrying his sheaves with him. -From being within sight of real greatness, he declined to the stature of -a great American. - -Following its faithful treatment of the Whitman myth, the _Dial_ examines -the case of Mark Twain. It is undoubtedly a pathological case, and not -only Mark Twain but America was the victim in it. A nation suffers the -fate of its great men; as is their odyssey so is the odyssey of the -nation to which they belong. Does a great man in any nation become -corrupt; does he succumb to falsehood and to the morality of the herd? -Even so his nation is on the downward path. On the other hand, does he -maintain his integrity, even though his life should pay for it? There -is a sign that his nation also will battle through. From this point of -view, Mark Twain presents the spectacle both of a tragedy and a portent. -Nobody can read his works without realising the essential truthfulness of -the man, his marvellous capacity for intellectual honesty, his unerring -perception of the norm of things. Mark Twain, permitted and encouraged -to pass free judgment upon American and human life, might have been one -of the cultural forces of the new world; he was one of God’s best gifts -to America. We know, however, what America did for Mark Twain; it slowly -but surely emasculated him in the supposed interests of the female (not -the feminine) in the American soul. Under the influence of his wife who, -as he said, not only “edited everything I wrote, but edited me,” under -the similar influence of all that was bourgeois in America—Mark Twain -consented to “make fun” of everything he held dear. Talents and powers -which it is spiritual death to trade, Mark Twain prostituted for the -amusement of a people whose deepest need was high seriousness. As Mr. -Lovett says, Mark Twain “flattered a country without art, letters, beauty -or standards to laugh at these things.” The judgment is severe, but it is -just; and Mark Twain, I believe, would be the first to acquiesce in it. - -That he preserved, in the back of his mind, his spiritual vision and -knowledge, there can be no doubt. He sinned not only against the light, -but in the light. One or two revealing phrases in his works have escaped -the censorship of the female American he married. “In our country,” he -said, “we have three unspeakably precious things: freedom of thought, -freedom of speech, and the prudence never to practise either.” It must -be admitted that this is a “snag” in the smooth current of a work of -amusement; it betokened the existence of depths and danger. But it is -nothing to the remarks let off in conversation on the rare occasions when -the censor was absent. “I’ve a good mind,” he once said to a friend, “to -blow the gaff on the whole damned human race.” It is tragedy, indeed, -that he never did. We have the gaff blown on us all too seldom, and -usually by men whose idiosyncrasies and abnormalities allow us to ignore -them. Mark Twain was such a normal man that his blowing of the gaff could -not possibly have been attributed to a neurotic complex derived from -infantile suppression: it would have been the judgment of man upon Man. -His failure to bestow this inestimable gift upon America and the world we -owe to America, and if, as I have said, a nation suffers the fate of its -great men, we may be sure that America will pay for it. - -AMERICA REGRESSING.—Just when we in Europe were beginning to envy America -her promise, contrasting it with the winter of our own discontent, “the -authorities” (as one might say the furies, the parcæ or the weird -sisters) have descended upon our unfortunate but deserving friend, -the _Little Review_, and suspended its mail service on account of its -publication of a chapter of Mr. James Joyce’s new novel, _Ulysses_. That -such an absurd act of puritanic spleen should be possible after and -before years of world-war is evidence that spiritual meanness is hard to -transcend; and it confirms the justice or, at least, the apprehension -expressed in Mr. Ezra Pound’s _bon mot_ that the U.S.A. should be renamed -the Y.M.C.A. Not only is the _Little Review_ perfectly harmless; would to -heaven, indeed, that it were, or could be otherwise, for never can any -good be done by something incapable of doing harm; but the _Ulysses_ of -Mr. James Joyce is one of the most interesting symptoms in the present -literary world, and its publication is very nearly a public obligation. -Such sincerity, such energy, such fearlessness as Mr. Joyce’s are rare -in any epoch, and most of all in our own, and on that very account they -demand to be given at least the freedom of the Press. What the giant -America can fear from Mr. Joyce or from his publication in the _Little -Review_ passes understanding. Abounding in every variety of crime -and stupidity as America is, even if _Ulysses_ were a literary crime -committed in a journal of the largest circulation, one more or less could -not make much difference to America. But _Ulysses_ is no crime; but a -noble experiment; and its suppression will sadden the virtuous at the -same time that it gratifies the base. America, we my be sure, is not -going to “get culture” by stamping upon every germ of new life. America’s -present degree of cultural toleration may ensure a herb-garden, but not a -flower will grow upon the soil of Comstock. - -Among the scores of interesting experiments in composition and style -exhibited in _Ulysses_, not the least novel is Mr. Joyce’s attempt to -develop a theory of harmonics in language. By compounding nouns with -adjectives and adjectives with adverbs, Mr. Joyce tries to convey to -the reader a complex of qualities or ideas simultaneously instead of -successively. “Eglintoneyes looked up skybrightly.” In such a sentence -agglutination has been carried beyond the ordinary level of particles -into the plane of words, and the effect is to present a multitude of -images as if they were one. Thus “a new and complex knowledge of self” -finds its “appropriate medium of expression in terms of art.” I am not -so sure that Mr. Joyce has not carried the experiment too far, but this, -again, is a virtue rather than a defect in a pioneer. Moreover, the world -needs a few studio-magazines like the _Little Review_, and a few studio -writers like Mr. James Joyce. What does it matter if, in his enthusiasm, -Mr. Joyce travels beyond the limits of good taste, beyond, that is, the -already cultivated, if only a single new literary convention is thereby -brought into common use? - -THE BEST IS YET TO BE.—“One dreams of a prose,” says _The Times Literary -Supplement_, “that has never yet been written in English, though the -language is made for it and there are minds not incapable of it, a prose -dealing with the greatest things quietly and justly as men deal with -them in their secret meditations ... the English Plato is still to be.” -Alas, however, that _The Times_ should be just a little misled, for the -“quiet” of meditation is not the real genius of the English language, -and the emphasis in the phrase, “English Plato,” should be on the word -English. Greek Plato translated into English would not give us what we -are seeking. What we need is Plato’s mind. It is characteristic, however, -this demand for quiet, or, rather, quietism, in _The Times Literary -Supplement_, since, on the whole, the _Supplement_ is about the deadest -mouse in the world of journalism. Above all, it is suggested, writers -must keep their voices low, speak in whispers, even, perhaps, a little -under their breath as if in meditation, in case—well, in case of what? Is -there not a _hush_ in the _Literary Supplement_ which is not the hush of -reverence for literature, but of fear and prudence? - -Our writer observes very acutely that prose is usually thought greatest -when it is nearest poetry, and he properly dissents from this common -opinion. Prose, we should say, can only be great as it differs from -poetry, and the greatest prose is furthest away from poetry. And the -difference, we are told, is the difference between love and justice. -The cardinal virtue of poetry, he says, is love, while the cardinal -virtue of prose is justice. May we not rather say that the difference -is one of plane of consciousness, prose being at the highest level of -the rational mind, and poetry at the highest level of the spiritual -mind? Yes, but then, in all probability, _The Times_ would regard us as -fanciful, for note, anything _exact_ about spiritual things is likely -to be dismissed by the _Literary Supplement_ as fanciful and dangerous. -Again, “prose is the achievement of civilisation”; in other words, -it is the norm of social life. True, but let me add that it is the -register of Culture, marking the degree to which Culture has affected -its surrounding civilisation. Prose without poetry is impossible, and -the greatest prose presupposes the culture of the greatest poetry, for -the “justice” of prose is only the “love” of poetry _with seeing eyes_. -Finally, we must agree with our essayist when he quotes with approval -the excellent observation of Mr. Sturge Moore that “simplicity _may_ be a -form of decadence.” Simplicity is a sign of decadence when it sacrifices -profundity of thought to simplicity of expression—as in the classical -case of Voltaire, who positively dared not think deeply lest he should -be unable to write clearly, clarity of expression being more to him (and -often to the French genius generally) than depth of thought. And writers -like Mr. Clutton Brock are just as certainly symptoms of the decadence of -simplicity in our own time and place. On the other hand, I still dream -of a profound simplicity, the style of which is transparent over depths; -and in this, if no English writer has ever been a master, Lao Tse is -the world’s model, at least in fragments. We must learn to distinguish -between a puerile and a virile simplicity, between innocence and virtue; -and perhaps the first exercise in such judgment should be to put the -_Literary Supplement_ in its proper place. - -This brings us back to quietism and the question whether the perfect -English prose would deal with the highest things in the spirit of -man’s secret meditations. I do more than doubt it. Secret meditation -is incommunicably secret; it is thought without words, and disposed to -poetry rather than prose. I suspect our writer really means rumination, -in which case, however, he is no better off. For the genius of the -language does not run easily in reverie, it is a language that loves -action and life. It has few cloistered virtues, and to employ it for -cloistered thought would be to use only one or two of its many stops, -and those not the most characteristic. Lastly, I cannot but think that -the choice of “quietism” as the aim of perfect English prose is a sign -of decadence, for it indicates the will to retire into oneself, and to -cease to “act” by means of words. The scene it calls up is familiar and -bourgeois: a small circle of “cultured” men week-ending in a luxurious -country house and confessing “intimately” their literary weaknesses. -It is the prevalent atmosphere of the _Literary Supplement_ and the -_Spectator_. It is essential that there be “equality” between them, that -none should presume to wish to inspire another to any “new way of life,” -that action, in short, should be excluded. Once granted these conditions -of sterility, and the perfect prose, we are told, would emerge. - -The rest of us, however, have a very different conception of the perfect -English prose. The perfect English prose will be anything but a sedative -after a full meal of action. It will be not only action itself, but the -cause of action, and its deliberate aim will be to intensify and refine -action and to raise action to the level of a fine art. Anything less -than a real effect upon real people in a real world is beneath the -dignity even of common prose. The very “leaders” in the penny journals -aim at leaving a mark upon events. Is the perfect prose to be without -hope of posterity? On second thoughts, I shall withdraw Plato from the -position of model in which I put him. Plato, it is evident, is likely -to be abused; without intending it, his mood, translated into English, -appears to be compatible only with luxurious ease; he is read by modern -Epicureans. And I shall put in Plato’s place Demosthenes, the model -of Swift, the greatest English writer the world has yet seen. Yes, -Demosthenes let it be, since Plato is being used for balsam. We seek an -English Demosthenes. - - - - -Index - - - _Adonais_, 178 - - “Æ,” 117-34 - - Andrews, Francis, 176 - - _Anglo-Irish Essays_ (John Eglinton), 74 - - _Apology, The_ (Plato), 97 - - _Appreciations and Depreciations_ (Boyd), 76 - - Archer, William, 59 - - Arnold, Matthew, 82 - - _Art and Letters_, 136 - - Asquith, H. H., 68 - - _Athenæum, The_, 70 - - - Baring, Maurice, 27 - - Beardsley, Aubrey, 115 - - Beerbohm, Max, 23 - - Bell, Clive, 72 - - Benda, Julien, 81 - - _Beyond Good and Evil_ (Nietzsche), 133 - - _Bhagavad Gita, The_, 44, 112 - - _Biographia Literaria_ (Coleridge), 69 - - Björnson, B., 29 - - Blake, William, 134 - - Boutroux, Emile, 69 - - Boyd, E. A., 76 - - _Breaking the Spell_ (Macan), 90 - - Brock, A. Clutton, 211 - - - Caine, Hall, 28 - - _Call, The_, 165 - - _Candle of Vision, The_ (“Æ”), 117 - - Carlyle, Thomas, 36 - - _Causes profondes de la Guerre, Les_ (Hovelaque), 155 - - Cervantes, 197 - - Cheney, L. J., 192 - - Chesterton, G. K., 60, 155 - - Cicero, 96 - - _Clarté Française, La_ (Vannier), 65 - - _Cocoon, The_, 191 - - Coleridge, S. T., 29, 35, 69 - - Conrad, Joseph, 27 - - _Contemporary Drama of Ireland_ (Boyd), 76 - - _Contingency of the Laws of Nature, The_ (Boutroux), 69 - - _Cratylus, The_ (Plato), 130 - - Crees, G., 20 - - - _Daily Mail, The_, 89 - - Da Vinci, Leonardo, 96 - - De Quincey, 95 - - _Dial, The_, 199 - - _Distribution of Wealth, The_ (Thompson), 162 - - Dodd, Professor, 181 - - _Don Quixote_ (Cervantes), 196 - - Dostoievski, F., 28 - - Douglas, C. H., 198 - - Dowson, Ernest, 173, 195 - - _Drapier’s Letters, The_ (Swift), 96, 198 - - _Dublin Review, The_, 161 - - - “Eglinton, John,” 74 - - _Egyptian Book of the Dead_, 168 - - Ellis, Henry, 134 - - Epstein, Jacob, 46 - - Ervine, St. John, 76 - - _Essay on Comedy, An_ (Meredith), 168 - - _Euphues_, 61 - - - Fielding, Henry, 139 - - Flaubert, G., 65 - - _Flight of the Eagle, The_ (Standish O’Grady), 79 - - Fontenelle, 15 - - Fowler, Warde, 88 - - _French Literary Studies_ (Rudmose-Brown), 73 - - Freud, Professor, 127 - - _Funeral Oration, The_ (Pericles), 66 - - - Garnett, Edward, 27 - - Gaudier-Brzeska, 46 - - Gwynn, Stephen, 75 - - - Hales, Professor, 49 - - Harland, Henry, 23 - - Haumont, M., 27 - - Heraclitus, 39 - - Herford, Professor C. H., 167 - - Hoare, —., 179 - - Hobbes of Malmesbury, 67 - - Holloway, Emery, 202 - - _Homage to Propertius_ (Pound), 49 - - _Homeland_ (Izzard), 89 - - Hope, John Francis, 168 - - Hovelaque, M., 155 - - Hudson, W. H., 88 - - - Ibsen, Henrik, 29 - - _International Journal of Ethics, The_, 36 - - _Irish Books and Irish People_ (Gwynn), 75 - - _Irish Citizen, The_, 166 - - Izzard, P. W. D., 89 - - - James, Henry, 22-7 - - Jones, Dr. Ernest, 189 - - Jonson, Ben, 98 - - Jowett, B., 67 - - Joyce, James, 47, 207 - - Jung, Professor, 185, 189 - - Juvenal, 198 - - - Kautsky, K., 33 - - Kipling, Rudyard, 178 - - _Kossovo: Heroic Songs of the Serbs_ (Rootham), 171 - - - Landor, W. S., 15 - - Lawrence, D. H., 23 - - _Lay Sermons_ (Coleridge), 35 - - _Leaves of Grass_ (Whitman), 204 - - Leuba, Professor, 114 - - Levy, Dr. Oscar, 40 - - Lewis, Wyndham, 47, 52 - - _Little Review, The_, 22, 47, 52, 63, 207 - - _Lockhart’s Life of Scott_, 16 - - _London Mercury, The_, 152, 176 - - Lovett, R. A., 205 - - _Lycidas_, 178 - - Lyttelton, Dr., 17 - - - Macan, Dr., 90 - - Mackenna, Stephen, 29 - - _Mahabharata, The_, 30, 135, 168, 195 - - _Manchester Guardian, The_, 193 - - Mann, Henry, 156 - - Martyn, Edward, 77 - - Marx, Karl, 33, 161-7 - - Mayne, Ethel Coburn, 22 - - Mead, G. R. S., 68, 112, 185 - - Menger, Dr., 162 - - Meredith, George, 20, 168, 178 - - _Middle Years, The_ (Henry James), 24 - - Mitchel, John, 166 - - Moore, T. Sturge, 211 - - Morris, William, 167 - - - _New Age, The_, 86 - - Newman, Henry, 155 - - Nietzsche, Friedrich, 30, 37-41, 53, 55, 133 - - - O’Grady, Standish, 79-81 - - Oulsham, H. Y., 192 - - - Patanjali, 132, 188 - - Pater, Walter, 195 - - Pericles, 66 - - Plato, 130, 209 - - Plotinus, 29 - - _Poems and Prose_ (Dowson), 173 - - _Pot-boilers_ (Clive Bell), 70 - - Pound, Ezra, 15, 49, 52-63, 104, 207 - - _Pound, Ezra: His Metric and Poetry_, 57 - - Propertius, 49 - - _Psycho-Analysis_ (Dr. Ernest Jones), 189 - - - _Queen’s College Miscellany, A_, 195 - - _Quest, The_, 68, 111 - - - Rahilly, Professor A., 162 - - Randall, A. E., 112 - - Richardson, Samuel, 139 - - Rootham, Helen, 171 - - Rosebery, Lord, 68 - - Rousseau, J. J., 38 - - Rudmose-Brown, Professor, 73 - - Russell, Bertrand, 34 - - - _Sayings and Stories_ (Hoare), 179 - - Sedlák, Francis, 35 - - _Selected Essays and Passages_ (Standish O’Grady), 80 - - _Sentiments de Critias, Les_ (Benda), 81 - - _Sentimental Journey, A_ (Sterne), 92 - - Shakespeare, 60, 91, 151, 154 - - Shankara, 30 - - Shaw, G. Bernard, 82 - - _Song of Songs_, 172 - - Soundy, W. Mattingly, 64 - - _Spectator, The_, 211 - - Squire, J. C., 152 - - Stendhal, 95 - - Sterne, Laurence, 92 - - Stewart, Herbert, 36 - - Strachey, Lytton, 63 - - Swift, Benjamin, 95, 198 - - Symons, Arthur, 115, 173 - - - Thompson, William, 162 - - Thoreau, H. D., 74 - - _Times, The_, 45, 145, 153 - - _Times Literary Supplement, The_, 143, 160, 209 - - _Tom Jones_ (Fielding), 140 - - Turgenev, 27 - - Twain, Mark, 204 - - Tweed, John, 45 - - - _Ulysses_ (Joyce), 47, 207 - - - Vannier, M., 65 - - Vaughan, Henry, 184 - - _Venture, The_, 175 - - Voltaire, 211 - - Vyasa, 30 - - - Walpole, Horace, 103 - - Wells, H. G., 36 - - Whitman, Walt, 38, 202 - - _Whitman’s Love Affairs_ (Holloway), 202 - - Wilde, Oscar, 55 - - Wordsworth, William, 119 - - - Yeats, W. B., 134 - - _Yellow Book, The_, 23 - - - _Printed in Great Britain by_ - UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON - - - - -SOME SELECTIONS FROM MESSRS. 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