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diff --git a/887-0.txt b/887-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e2a22d3 --- /dev/null +++ b/887-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5698 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Intentions, by Oscar Wilde + + +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'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Intentions + + +Author: Oscar Wilde + + + +Release Date: October 26, 2014 [eBook #887] +[This file was first posted on April 24, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTENTIONS*** + + +Transcribed from the 1913 Methuen and Co edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + INTENTIONS + + + BY + OSCAR WILDE + + * * * * * + + METHUEN & CO. LTD. + 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. + LONDON + + * * * * * + + _First Published_, _at 1s. net_, _in 1913_ + + * * * * * + +_This Book was First Published_ _1891_ +_Second Edition_ _1894_ +_First Published_ (_Third Edition_) _by Methuen _1908_ +and Co._ +_Fourth Edition_ _1909_ +_Fifth Edition_ _1911_ + + * * * * * + + DEDICATED + TO + MRS. CAREW + BY + THE AUTHOR’S LITERARY EXECUTOR + + * * * * * + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +THE DECAY OF LYING 1 +PEN, PENCIL, AND POISON 57 +THE CRITIC AS ARTIST 95 +THE TRUTH OF MASKS 221 + + + + +THE DECAY OF LYING: +AN OBSERVATION + + + _A DIALOGUE_. _Persons_: _Cyril and_ + _Vivian_. _Scene_: _the Library of a country_ + _house in Nottinghamshire_. + +CYRIL (_coming in through the open window from the terrace_). My dear +Vivian, don’t coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly +lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods, +like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and +smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature. + +VIVIAN. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that +faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved +her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful +study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our +observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less +we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature’s lack of +design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely +unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as +Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a +landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, +however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have no art +at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature +her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure +myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the +imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at +her. + +CYRIL. Well, you need not look at the landscape. You can lie on the +grass and smoke and talk. + +VIVIAN. But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and lumpy and +damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris’s poorest +workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature +can. Nature pales before the furniture of ‘the street which from Oxford +has borrowed its name,’ as the poet you love so much once vilely phrased +it. I don’t complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would +never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. +In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is +subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Egotism +itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is +entirely the result of indoor life. Out of doors one becomes abstract +and impersonal. One’s individuality absolutely leaves one. And then +Nature is so indifferent, so unappreciative. Whenever I am walking in +the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle +that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the ditch. +Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates Mind. Thinking is the +most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die +of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is +not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our +national stupidity. I only hope we shall be able to keep this great +historic bulwark of our happiness for many years to come; but I am afraid +that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is +incapable of learning has taken to teaching—that is really what our +enthusiasm for education has come to. In the meantime, you had better go +back to your wearisome uncomfortable Nature, and leave me to correct my +proofs. + +CYRIL. Writing an article! That is not very consistent after what you +have just said. + +VIVIAN. Who wants to be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, +the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of +action, to the _reductio ad absurdum_ of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, +I write over the door of my library the word ‘Whim.’ Besides, my article +is really a most salutary and valuable warning. If it is attended to, +there may be a new Renaissance of Art. + +CYRIL. What is the subject? + +VIVIAN. I intend to call it ‘The Decay of Lying: A Protest.’ + +CYRIL. Lying! I should have thought that our politicians kept up that +habit. + +VIVIAN. I assure you that they do not. They never rise beyond the level +of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to +argue. How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, +fearless statements, his superb irresponsibility, his healthy, natural +disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine lie? Simply +that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative +to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the +truth at once. No, the politicians won’t do. Something may, perhaps, be +urged on behalf of the Bar. The mantle of the Sophist has fallen on its +members. Their feigned ardours and unreal rhetoric are delightful. They +can make the worse appear the better cause, as though they were fresh +from Leontine schools, and have been known to wrest from reluctant juries +triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those +clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakeably innocent. But +they are briefed by the prosaic, and are not ashamed to appeal to +precedent. In spite of their endeavours, the truth will out. +Newspapers, even, have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied +upon. One feels it as one wades through their columns. It is always the +unreadable that occurs. I am afraid that there is not much to be said in +favour of either the lawyer or the journalist. Besides, what I am +pleading for is Lying in art. Shall I read you what I have written? It +might do you a great deal of good. + +CYRIL. Certainly, if you give me a cigarette. Thanks. By the way, what +magazine do you intend it for? + +VIVIAN. For the _Retrospective Review_. I think I told you that the +elect had revived it. + +CYRIL. Whom do you mean by ‘the elect’? + +VIVIAN. Oh, The Tired Hedonists, of course. It is a club to which I +belong. We are supposed to wear faded roses in our button-holes when we +meet, and to have a sort of cult for Domitian. I am afraid you are not +eligible. You are too fond of simple pleasures. + +CYRIL. I should be black-balled on the ground of animal spirits, I +suppose? + +VIVIAN. Probably. Besides, you are a little too old. We don’t admit +anybody who is of the usual age. + +CYRIL. Well, I should fancy you are all a good deal bored with each +other. + +VIVIAN. We are. This is one of the objects of the club. Now, if you +promise not to interrupt too often, I will read you my article. + +CYRIL. You will find me all attention. + +VIVIAN (_reading in a very clear_, _musical voice_). THE DECAY OF LYING: +A PROTEST.—One of the chief causes that can be assigned for the curiously +commonplace character of most of the literature of our age is undoubtedly +the decay of Lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure. The +ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the +modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. +The Blue-Book is rapidly becoming his ideal both for method and manner. +He has his tedious _document humain_, his miserable little _coin de la +création_, into which he peers with his microscope. He is to be found at +the Librairie Nationale, or at the British Museum, shamelessly reading up +his subject. He has not even the courage of other people’s ideas, but +insists on going directly to life for everything, and ultimately, between +encyclopædias and personal experience, he comes to the ground, having +drawn his types from the family circle or from the weekly washerwoman, +and having acquired an amount of useful information from which never, +even in his most meditative moments, can he thoroughly free himself. + +‘The lose that results to literature in general from this false ideal of +our time can hardly be overestimated. People have a careless way of +talking about a “born liar,” just as they talk about a “born poet.” But +in both cases they are wrong. Lying and poetry are arts—arts, as Pinto +saw, not unconnected with each other—and they require the most careful +study, the most disinterested devotion. Indeed, they have their +technique, just as the more material arts of painting and sculpture have, +their subtle secrets of form and colour, their craft-mysteries, their +deliberate artistic methods. As one knows the poet by his fine music, so +one can recognise the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither +case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as +elsewhere, practice must, precede perfection. But in modern days while +the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common, and should, if +possible, be discouraged, the fashion of lying has almost fallen into +disrepute. Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for +exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic +surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into +something really great and wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to +nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy—’ + +CYRIL. My dear fellow! + +VIVIAN. Please don’t interrupt in the middle of a sentence. ‘He either +falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the +society of the aged and the well-informed. Both things are equally fatal +to his imagination, as indeed they would be fatal to the imagination of +anybody, and in a short time he develops a morbid and unhealthy faculty +of truth-telling, begins to verify all statements made in his presence, +has no hesitation in contradicting people who are much younger than +himself, and often ends by writing novels which are so lifelike that no +one can possibly believe in their probability. This is no isolated +instance that we are giving. It is simply one example out of many; and +if something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our +monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile, and beauty will pass +away from the land. + +‘Even Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, that delightful master of delicate and +fanciful prose, is tainted with this modern vice, for we know positively +no other name for it. There is such a thing as robbing a story of its +reality by trying to make it too true, and _The Black Arrow_ is so +inartistic as not to contain a single anachronism to boast of, while the +transformation of Dr. Jekyll reads dangerously like an experiment out of +the _Lancet_. As for Mr. Rider Haggard, who really has, or had once, the +makings of a perfectly magnificent liar, he is now so afraid of being +suspected of genius that when he does tell us anything marvellous, he +feels bound to invent a personal reminiscence, and to put it into a +footnote as a kind of cowardly corroboration. Nor are our other +novelists much better. Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a +painful duty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible “points of +view” his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and +caustic satire. Mr. Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose, but +then he writes at the top of his voice. He is so loud that one cannot +bear what he says. Mr. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing +what is not worth finding. He hunts down the obvious with the enthusiasm +of a short-sighted detective. As one turns over the pages, the suspense +of the author becomes almost unbearable. The horses of Mr. William +Black’s phaeton do not soar towards the sun. They merely frighten the +sky at evening into violent chromolithographic effects. On seeing them +approach, the peasants take refuge in dialect. Mrs. Oliphant prattles +pleasantly about curates, lawn-tennis parties, domesticity, and other +wearisome things. Mr. Marion Crawford has immolated himself upon the +altar of local colour. He is like the lady in the French comedy who +keeps talking about “le beau ciel d’Italie.” Besides, he has fallen into +the bad habit of uttering moral platitudes. He is always telling us that +to be good is to be good, and that to be bad is to be wicked. At times +he is almost edifying. _Robert Elsmere_ is of course a masterpiece—a +masterpiece of the “genre ennuyeux,” the one form of literature that the +English people seems thoroughly to enjoy. A thoughtful young friend of +ours once told us that it reminded him of the sort of conversation that +goes on at a meat tea in the house of a serious Nonconformist family, and +we can quite believe it. Indeed it is only in England that such a book +could be produced. England is the home of lost ideas. As for that great +and daily increasing school of novelists for whom the sun always rises in +the East-End, the only thing that can be said about them is that they +find life crude, and leave it raw. + +‘In France, though nothing so deliberately tedious as _Robert Elsmere_ +has been produced, things are not much better. M. Guy de Maupassant, +with his keen mordant irony and his hard vivid style, strips life of the +few poor rags that still cover her, and shows us foul sore and festering +wound. He writes lurid little tragedies in which everybody is +ridiculous; bitter comedies at which one cannot laugh for very tears. M. +Zola, true to the lofty principle that he lays down in one of his +pronunciamientos on literature, “L’homme de génie n’a jamais d’esprit,” +is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be +dull. And how well he succeeds! He is not without power. Indeed at +times, as in _Germinal_, there is something almost epic in his work. But +his work is entirely wrong from beginning to end, and wrong not on the +ground of morals, but on the ground of art. From any ethical standpoint +it is just what it should be. The author is perfectly truthful, and +describes things exactly as they happen. What more can any moralist +desire? We have no sympathy at all with the moral indignation of our +time against M. Zola. It is simply the indignation of Tartuffe on being +exposed. But from the standpoint of art, what can be said in favour of +the author of _L’Assommoir_, _Nana_ and _Pot-Bouille_? Nothing. Mr. +Ruskin once described the characters in George Eliot’s novels as being +like the sweepings of a Pentonville omnibus, but M. Zola’s characters are +much worse. They have their dreary vices, and their drearier virtues. +The record of their lives is absolutely without interest. Who cares what +happens to them? In literature we require distinction, charm, beauty and +imaginative power. We don’t want to be harrowed and disgusted with an +account of the doings of the lower orders. M. Daudet is better. He has +wit, a light touch and an amusing style. But he has lately committed +literary suicide. Nobody can possibly care for Delobelle with his “Il +faut lutter pour l’art,” or for Valmajour with his eternal refrain about +the nightingale, or for the poet in _Jack_ with his “mots cruels,” now +that we have learned from _Vingt Ans de ma Vie littéraire_ that these +characters were taken directly from life. To us they seem to have +suddenly lost all their vitality, all the few qualities they ever +possessed. The only real people are the people who never existed, and if +a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at +least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. +The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are +what they are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is +not a work of art. As for M. Paul Bourget, the master of the _roman +psychologique_, he commits the error of imagining that the men and women +of modern life are capable of being infinitely analysed for an +innumerable series of chapters. In point of fact what is interesting +about people in good society—and M. Bourget rarely moves out of the +Faubourg St. Germain, except to come to London,—is the mask that each one +of them wears, not the reality that lies behind the mask. It is a +humiliating confession, but we are all of us made out of the same stuff. +In Falstaff there is something of Hamlet, in Hamlet there is not a little +of Falstaff. The fat knight has his moods of melancholy, and the young +prince his moments of coarse humour. Where we differ from each other is +purely in accidentals: in dress, manner, tone of voice, religious +opinions, personal appearance, tricks of habit and the like. The more +one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner +or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature. +Indeed, as any one who has ever worked among the poor knows only too +well, the brotherhood of man is no mere poet’s dream, it is a most +depressing and humiliating reality; and if a writer insists upon +analysing the upper classes, he might just as well write of match-girls +and costermongers at once.’ However, my dear Cyril, I will not detain +you any further just here. I quite admit that modern novels have many +good points. All I insist on is that, as a class, they are quite +unreadable. + +CYRIL. That is certainly a very grave qualification, but I must say that +I think you are rather unfair in some of your strictures. I like _The +Deemster_, and _The Daughter of Heth_, and _Le Disciple_, and _Mr. +Isaacs_, and as for _Robert Elsmere_, I am quite devoted to it. Not that +I can look upon it as a serious work. As a statement of the problems +that confront the earnest Christian it is ridiculous and antiquated. It +is simply Arnold’s _Literature and Dogma_ with the literature left out. +It is as much behind the age as Paley’s _Evidences_, or Colenso’s method +of Biblical exegesis. Nor could anything be less impressive than the +unfortunate hero gravely heralding a dawn that rose long ago, and so +completely missing its true significance that he proposes to carry on the +business of the old firm under the new name. On the other hand, it +contains several clever caricatures, and a heap of delightful quotations, +and Green’s philosophy very pleasantly sugars the somewhat bitter pill of +the author’s fiction. I also cannot help expressing my surprise that you +have said nothing about the two novelists whom you are always reading, +Balzac and George Meredith. Surely they are realists, both of them? + +VIVIAN. Ah! Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos +illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered +everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything, except +tell a story: as an artist he is everything except articulate. Somebody +in Shakespeare—Touchstone, I think—talks about a man who is always +breaking his shins over his own wit, and it seems to me that this might +serve as the basis for a criticism of Meredith’s method. But whatever he +is, he is not a realist. Or rather I would say that he is a child of +realism who is not on speaking terms with his father. By deliberate +choice he has made himself a romanticist. He has refused to bow the knee +to Baal, and after all, even if the man’s fine spirit did not revolt +against the noisy assertions of realism, his style would be quite +sufficient of itself to keep life at a respectful distance. By its means +he has planted round his garden a hedge full of thorns, and red with +wonderful roses. As for Balzac, he was a most remarkable combination of +the artistic temperament with the scientific spirit. The latter he +bequeathed to his disciples. The former was entirely his own. The +difference between such a book as M. Zola’s _L’Assommoir_ and Balzac’s +_Illusions Perdues_ is the difference between unimaginative realism and +imaginative reality. ‘All Balzac’s characters;’ said Baudelaire, ‘are +gifted with the same ardour of life that animated himself. All his +fictions are as deeply coloured as dreams. Each mind is a weapon loaded +to the muzzle with will. The very scullions have genius.’ A steady +course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our +acquaintances to the shadows of shades. His characters have a kind of +fervent fiery-coloured existence. They dominate us, and defy scepticism. +One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de +Rubempré. It is a grief from which I have never been able completely to +rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when +I laugh. But Balzac is no more a realist than Holbein was. He created +life, he did not copy it. I admit, however, that he set far too high a +value on modernity of form, and that, consequently, there is no book of +his that, as an artistic masterpiece, can rank with _Salammbô_ or +_Esmond_, or _The Cloister and the Hearth_, or the _Vicomte de +Bragelonne_. + +CYRIL. Do you object to modernity of form, then? + +VIVIAN. Yes. It is a huge price to pay for a very poor result. Pure +modernity of form is always somewhat vulgarising. It cannot help being +so. The public imagine that, because they are interested in their +immediate surroundings, Art should be interested in them also, and should +take them as her subject-matter. But the mere fact that they are +interested in these things makes them unsuitable subjects for Art. The +only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not +concern us. As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us, or affects +us in any way, either for pain or for pleasure, or appeals strongly to +our sympathies, or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, +it is outside the proper sphere of art. To art’s subject-matter we +should be more or less indifferent. We should, at any rate, have no +preferences, no prejudices, no partisan feeling of any kind. It is +exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us that her sorrows are such an +admirable motive for a tragedy. I do not know anything in the whole +history of literature sadder than the artistic career of Charles Reade. +He wrote one beautiful book, _The Cloister and the Hearth_, a book as +much above _Romola_ as _Romola_ is above _Daniel Deronda_, and wasted the +rest of his life in a foolish attempt to be modern, to draw public +attention to the state of our convict prisons, and the management of our +private lunatic asylums. Charles Dickens was depressing enough in all +conscience when he tried to arouse our sympathy for the victims of the +poor-law administration; but Charles Reade, an artist, a scholar, a man +with a true sense of beauty, raging and roaring over the abuses of +contemporary life like a common pamphleteer or a sensational journalist, +is really a sight for the angels to weep over. Believe me, my dear +Cyril, modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter are entirely and +absolutely wrong. We have mistaken the common livery of the age for the +vesture of the Muses, and spend our days in the sordid streets and +hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside +with Apollo. Certainly we are a degraded race, and have sold our +birthright for a mess of facts. + +CYRIL. There is something in what you say, and there is no doubt that +whatever amusement we may find in reading a purely model novel, we have +rarely any artistic pleasure in re-reading it. And this is perhaps the +best rough test of what is literature and what is not. If one cannot +enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at +all. But what do you say about the return to Life and Nature? This is +the panacea that is always being recommended to us. + +VIVIAN. I will read you what I say on that subject. The passage comes +later on in the article, but I may as well give it to you now:— + +‘The popular cry of our time is “Let us return to Life and Nature; they +will recreate Art for us, and send the red blood coursing through her +veins; they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong.” +But, alas! we are mistaken in our amiable and well-meaning efforts. +Nature is always behind the age. And as for Life, she is the solvent +that breaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste her house.’ + +CYRIL. What do you mean by saying that Nature is always behind the age? + +VIVIAN. Well, perhaps that is rather cryptic. What I mean is this. If +we take Nature to mean natural simple instinct as opposed to +self-conscious culture, the work produced under this influence is always +old-fashioned, antiquated, and out of date. One touch of Nature may make +the whole world kin, but two touches of Nature will destroy any work of +Art. If, on the other hand, we regard Nature as the collection of +phenomena external to man, people only discover in her what they bring to +her. She has no suggestions of her own. Wordsworth went to the lakes, +but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had +already hidden there. He went moralising about the district, but his +good work was produced when he returned, not to Nature but to poetry. +Poetry gave him ‘Laodamia,’ and the fine sonnets, and the great Ode, such +as it is. Nature gave him ‘Martha Ray’ and ‘Peter Bell,’ and the address +to Mr. Wilkinson’s spade. + +CYRIL. I think that view might be questioned. I am rather inclined to +believe in ‘the impulse from a vernal wood,’ though of course the +artistic value of such an impulse depends entirely on the kind of +temperament that receives it, so that the return to Nature would come to +mean simply the advance to a great personality. You would agree with +that, I fancy. However, proceed with your article. + +VIVIAN (_reading_). ‘Art begins with abstract decoration, with purely +imaginative and pleasurable work dealing with what is unreal and +non-existent. This is the first stage. Then Life becomes fascinated +with this new wonder, and asks to be admitted into the charmed circle. +Art takes life as part of her rough material, recreates it, and +refashions it in fresh forms, is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, +imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable +barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment. The third +stage is when Life gets the upper hand, and drives Art out into the +wilderness. That is the true decadence, and it is from this that we are +now suffering. + +‘Take the case of the English drama. At first in the hands of the monks +Dramatic Art was abstract, decorative and mythological. Then she +enlisted Life in her service, and using some of life’s external forms, +she created an entirely new race of beings, whose sorrows were more +terrible than any sorrow man has ever felt, whose joys were keener than +lover’s joys, who had the rage of the Titans and the calm of the gods, +who had monstrous and marvellous sins, monstrous and marvellous virtues. +To them she gave a language different from that of actual use, a language +full of resonant music and sweet rhythm, made stately by solemn cadence, +or made delicate by fanciful rhyme, jewelled with wonderful words, and +enriched with lofty diction. She clothed her children in strange raiment +and gave them masks, and at her bidding the antique world rose from its +marble tomb. A new Cæsar stalked through the streets of risen Rome, and +with purple sail and flute-led oars another Cleopatra passed up the river +to Antioch. Old myth and legend and dream took shape and substance. +History was entirely re-written, and there was hardly one of the +dramatists who did not recognise that the object of Art is not simple +truth but complex beauty. In this they were perfectly right. Art itself +is really a form of exaggeration; and selection, which is the very spirit +of art, is nothing more than an intensified mode of over-emphasis. + +‘But Life soon shattered the perfection of the form. Even in Shakespeare +we can see the beginning of the end. It shows itself by the gradual +breaking-up of the blank-verse in the later plays, by the predominance +given to prose, and by the over-importance assigned to characterisation. +The passages in Shakespeare—and they are many—where the language is +uncouth, vulgar, exaggerated, fantastic, obscene even, are entirely due +to Life calling for an echo of her own voice, and rejecting the +intervention of beautiful style, through which alone should life be +suffered to find expression. Shakespeare is not by any means a flawless +artist. He is too fond of going directly to life, and borrowing life’s +natural utterance. He forgets that when Art surrenders her imaginative +medium she surrenders everything. Goethe says, somewhere— + + In der Beschränkung zeigt Fsich erst der Meister, + +“It is in working within limits that the master reveals himself,” and the +limitation, the very condition of any art is style. However, we need not +linger any longer over Shakespeare’s realism. _The Tempest_ is the most +perfect of palinodes. All that we desired to point out was, that the +magnificent work of the Elizabethan and Jacobean artists contained within +itself the seeds of its own dissolution, and that, if it drew some of its +strength from using life as rough material, it drew all its weakness from +using life as an artistic method. As the inevitable result of this +substitution of an imitative for a creative medium, this surrender of an +imaginative form, we have the modern English melodrama. The characters +in these plays talk on the stage exactly as they would talk off it; they +have neither aspirations nor aspirates; they are taken directly from life +and reproduce its vulgarity down to the smallest detail; they present the +gait, manner, costume and accent of real people; they would pass +unnoticed in a third-class railway carriage. And yet how wearisome the +plays are! They do not succeed in producing even that impression of +reality at which they aim, and which is their only reason for existing. +As a method, realism is a complete failure. + +‘What is true about the drama and the novel is no less true about those +arts that we call the decorative arts. The whole history of these arts +in Europe is the record of the struggle between Orientalism, with its +frank rejection of imitation, its love of artistic convention, its +dislike to the actual representation of any object in Nature, and our own +imitative spirit. Wherever the former has been paramount, as in +Byzantium, Sicily and Spain, by actual contact, or in the rest of Europe +by the influence of the Crusades, we have had beautiful and imaginative +work in which the visible things of life are transmuted into artistic +conventions, and the things that Life has not are invented and fashioned +for her delight. But wherever we have returned to Life and Nature, our +work has always become vulgar, common and uninteresting. Modern +tapestry, with its aërial effects, its elaborate perspective, its broad +expanses of waste sky, its faithful and laborious realism, has no beauty +whatsoever. The pictorial glass of Germany is absolutely detestable. We +are beginning to weave possible carpets in England, but only because we +have returned to the method and spirit of the East. Our rugs and carpets +of twenty years ago, with their solemn depressing truths, their inane +worship of Nature, their sordid reproductions of visible objects, have +become, even to the Philistine, a source of laughter. A cultured +Mahomedan once remarked to us, “You Christians are so occupied in +misinterpreting the fourth commandment that you have never thought of +making an artistic application of the second.” He was perfectly right, +and the whole truth of the matter is this: The proper school to learn art +in is not Life but Art.’ + +And now let me read you a passage which seems to me to settle the +question very completely. + +‘It was not always thus. We need not say anything about the poets, for +they, with the unfortunate exception of Mr. Wordsworth, have been really +faithful to their high mission, and are universally recognised as being +absolutely unreliable. But in the works of Herodotus, who, in spite of +the shallow and ungenerous attempts of modern sciolists to verify his +history, may justly be called the “Father of Lies”; in the published +speeches of Cicero and the biographies of Suetonius; in Tacitus at his +best; in Pliny’s _Natural History_; in Hanno’s _Periplus_; in all the +early chronicles; in the Lives of the Saints; in Froissart and Sir Thomas +Malory; in the travels of Marco Polo; in Olaus Magnus, and Aldrovandus, +and Conrad Lycosthenes, with his magnificent _Prodigiorum et Ostentorum +Chronicon_; in the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini; in the memoirs of +Casanova; in Defoe’s _History of the Plague_; in Boswell’s _Life of +Johnson_; in Napoleon’s despatches, and in the works of our own Carlyle, +whose _French Revolution_ is one of the most fascinating historical +novels ever written, facts are either kept in their proper subordinate +position, or else entirely excluded on the general ground of dulness. +Now, everything is changed. Facts are not merely finding a footing-place +in history, but they are usurping the domain of Fancy, and have invaded +the kingdom of Romance. Their chilling touch is over everything. They +are vulgarising mankind. The crude commercialism of America, its +materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, +and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely +due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, +according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it +is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the +cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any +other moral tale in the whole of literature.’ + +CYRIL. My dear boy! + +VIVIAN. I assure you it is the case, and the amusing part of the whole +thing is that the story of the cherry-tree is an absolute myth. However, +you must not think that I am too despondent about the artistic future +either of America or of our own country. Listen to this:— + +‘That some change will take place before this century has drawn to its +close we have no doubt whatsoever. Bored by the tedious and improving +conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the +genius to romance, tired of the intelligent person whose reminiscences +are always based upon memory, whose statements are invariably limited by +probability, and who is at any time liable to be corroborated by the +merest Philistine who happens to be present, Society sooner or later must +return to its lost leader, the cultured and fascinating liar. Who he was +who first, without ever having gone out to the rude chase, told the +wandering cavemen at sunset how he had dragged the Megatherium from the +purple darkness of its jasper cave, or slain the Mammoth in single combat +and brought back its gilded tusks, we cannot tell, and not one of our +modern anthropologists, for all their much-boasted science, has had the +ordinary courage to tell us. Whatever was his name or race, he certainly +was the true founder of social intercourse. For the aim of the liar is +simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of +civilised society, and without him a dinner-party, even at the mansions +of the great, is as dull as a lecture at the Royal Society, or a debate +at the Incorporated Authors, or one of Mr. Burnand’s farcical comedies. + +‘Nor will he be welcomed by society alone. Art, breaking from the +prison-house of realism, will run to greet him, and will kiss his false, +beautiful lips, knowing that he alone is in possession of the great +secret of all her manifestations, the secret that Truth is entirely and +absolutely a matter of style; while Life—poor, probable, uninteresting +human life—tired of repeating herself for the benefit of Mr. Herbert +Spencer, scientific historians, and the compilers of statistics in +general, will follow meekly after him, and try to reproduce, in her own +simple and untutored way, some of the marvels of which he talks. + +‘No doubt there will always be critics who, like a certain writer in the +_Saturday Review_, will gravely censure the teller of fairy tales for his +defective knowledge of natural history, who will measure imaginative work +by their own lack of any imaginative faculty, and will hold up their +ink-stained hands in horror if some honest gentleman, who has never been +farther than the yew-trees of his own garden, pens a fascinating book of +travels like Sir John Mandeville, or, like great Raleigh, writes a whole +history of the world, without knowing anything whatsoever about the past. +To excuse themselves they will try and shelter under the shield of him +who made Prospero the magician, and gave him Caliban and Ariel as his +servants, who heard the Tritons blowing their horns round the coral reefs +of the Enchanted Isle, and the fairies singing to each other in a wood +near Athens, who led the phantom kings in dim procession across the misty +Scottish heath, and hid Hecate in a cave with the weird sisters. They +will call upon Shakespeare—they always do—and will quote that hackneyed +passage forgetting that this unfortunate aphorism about Art holding the +mirror up to Nature, is deliberately said by Hamlet in order to convince +the bystanders of his absolute insanity in all art-matters.’ + +CYRIL. Ahem! Another cigarette, please. + +VIVIAN. My dear fellow, whatever you may say, it is merely a dramatic +utterance, and no more represents Shakespeare’s real views upon art than +the speeches of Iago represent his real views upon morals. But let me +get to the end of the passage: + +‘Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She +is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a +veil, rather than a mirror. She has flowers that no forests know of, +birds that no woodland possesses. She makes and unmakes many worlds, and +can draw the moon from heaven with a scarlet thread. Hers are the “forms +more real than living man,” and hers the great archetypes of which things +that have existence are but unfinished copies. Nature has, in her eyes, +no laws, no uniformity. She can work miracles at her will, and when she +calls monsters from the deep they come. She can bid the almond-tree +blossom in winter, and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield. At her +word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of June, and +the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the Lydian hills. The +dryads peer from the thicket as she passes by, and the brown fauns smile +strangely at her when she comes near them. She has hawk-faced gods that +worship her, and the centaurs gallop at her side.’ + +CYRIL. I like that. I can see it. Is that the end? + +VIVIAN. No. There is one more passage, but it is purely practical. It +simply suggests some methods by which we could revive this lost art of +Lying. + +CYRIL. Well, before you read it to me, I should like to ask you a +question. What do you mean by saying that life, ‘poor, probable, +uninteresting human life,’ will try to reproduce the marvels of art? I +can quite understand your objection to art being treated as a mirror. +You think it would reduce genius to the position of a cracked +looking-glass. But you don’t mean to say that you seriously believe that +Life imitates Art, that Life in fact is the mirror, and Art the reality? + +VIVIAN. Certainly I do. Paradox though it may seem—and paradoxes are +always dangerous things—it is none the less true that Life imitates art +far more than Art imitates life. We have all seen in our own day in +England how a certain curious and fascinating type of beauty, invented +and emphasised by two imaginative painters, has so influenced Life that +whenever one goes to a private view or to an artistic salon one sees, +here the mystic eyes of Rossetti’s dream, the long ivory throat, the +strange square-cut jaw, the loosened shadowy hair that he so ardently +loved, there the sweet maidenhood of ‘The Golden Stair,’ the blossom-like +mouth and weary loveliness of the ‘Laus Amoris,’ the passion-pale face of +Andromeda, the thin hands and lithe beauty of the Vivian in ‘Merlin’s +Dream.’ And it has always been so. A great artist invents a type, and +Life tries to copy it, to reproduce it in a popular form, like an +enterprising publisher. Neither Holbein nor Vandyck found in England +what they have given us. They brought their types with them, and Life +with her keen imitative faculty set herself to supply the master with +models. The Greeks, with their quick artistic instinct, understood this, +and set in the bride’s chamber the statue of Hermes or of Apollo, that +she might bear children as lovely as the works of art that she looked at +in her rapture or her pain. They knew that Life gains from art not +merely spirituality, depth of thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or +soul-peace, but that she can form herself on the very lines and colours +of art, and can reproduce the dignity of Pheidias as well as the grace of +Praxiteles. Hence came their objection to realism. They disliked it on +purely social grounds. They felt that it inevitably makes people ugly, +and they were perfectly right. We try to improve the conditions of the +race by means of good air, free sunlight, wholesome water, and hideous +bare buildings for the better housing of the lower orders. But these +things merely produce health, they do not produce beauty. For this, Art +is required, and the true disciples of the great artist are not his +studio-imitators, but those who become like his works of art, be they +plastic as in Greek days, or pictorial as in modern times; in a word, +Life is Art’s best, Art’s only pupil. + +As it is with the visible arts, so it is with literature. The most +obvious and the vulgarest form in which this is shown is in the case of +the silly boys who, after reading the adventures of Jack Sheppard or Dick +Turpin, pillage the stalls of unfortunate apple-women, break into +sweet-shops at night, and alarm old gentlemen who are returning home from +the city by leaping out on them in suburban lanes, with black masks and +unloaded revolvers. This interesting phenomenon, which always occurs +after the appearance of a new edition of either of the books I have +alluded to, is usually attributed to the influence of literature on the +imagination. But this is a mistake. The imagination is essentially +creative, and always seeks for a new form. The boy-burglar is simply the +inevitable result of life’s imitative instinct. He is Fact, occupied as +Fact usually is, with trying to reproduce Fiction, and what we see in him +is repeated on an extended scale throughout the whole of life. +Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterises modern +thought, but Hamlet invented it. The world has become sad because a +puppet was once melancholy. The Nihilist, that strange martyr who has no +faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he +does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by +Tourgénieff, and completed by Dostoieffski. Robespierre came out of the +pages of Rousseau as surely as the People’s Palace rose out of the +_débris_ of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not +copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we +know it, is largely an invention of Balzac. Our Luciens de Rubempré, our +Rastignacs, and De Marsays made their first appearance on the stage of +the _Comédie Humaine_. We are merely carrying out, with footnotes and +unnecessary additions, the whim or fancy or creative vision of a great +novelist. I once asked a lady, who knew Thackeray intimately, whether he +had had any model for Becky Sharp. She told me that Becky was an +invention, but that the idea of the character had been partly suggested +by a governess who lived in the neighbourhood of Kensington Square, and +was the companion of a very selfish and rich old woman. I inquired what +became of the governess, and she replied that, oddly enough, some years +after the appearance of _Vanity Fair_, she ran away with the nephew of +the lady with whom she was living, and for a short time made a great +splash in society, quite in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley’s style, and entirely by +Mrs. Rawdon Crawley’s methods. Ultimately she came to grief, disappeared +to the Continent, and used to be occasionally seen at Monte Carlo and +other gambling places. The noble gentleman from whom the same great +sentimentalist drew Colonel Newcome died, a few months after _The +Newcomer_ had reached a fourth edition, with the word ‘Adsum’ on his +lips. Shortly after Mr. Stevenson published his curious psychological +story of transformation, a friend of mine, called Mr. Hyde, was in the +north of London, and being anxious to get to a railway station, took what +he thought would be a short cut, lost his way, and found himself in a +network of mean, evil-looking streets. Feeling rather nervous he began +to walk extremely fast, when suddenly out of an archway ran a child right +between his legs. It fell on the pavement, he tripped over it, and +trampled upon it. Being of course very much frightened and a little +hurt, it began to scream, and in a few seconds the whole street was full +of rough people who came pouring out of the houses like ants. They +surrounded him, and asked him his name. He was just about to give it +when he suddenly remembered the opening incident in Mr. Stevenson’s +story. He was so filled with horror at having realised in his own person +that terrible and well-written scene, and at having done accidentally, +though in fact, what the Mr. Hyde of fiction had done with deliberate +intent, that he ran away as hard as he could go. He was, however, very +closely followed, and finally he took refuge in a surgery, the door of +which happened to be open, where he explained to a young assistant, who +happened to be there, exactly what had occurred. The humanitarian crowd +were induced to go away on his giving them a small sum of money, and as +soon as the coast was clear he left. As he passed out, the name on the +brass door-plate of the surgery caught his eye. It was ‘Jekyll.’ At +least it should have been. + +Here the imitation, as far as it went, was of course accidental. In the +following case the imitation was self-conscious. In the year 1879, just +after I had left Oxford, I met at a reception at the house of one of the +Foreign Ministers a woman of very curious exotic beauty. We became great +friends, and were constantly together. And yet what interested me most +in her was not her beauty, but her character, her entire vagueness of +character. She seemed to have no personality at all, but simply the +possibility of many types. Sometimes she would give herself up entirely +to art, turn her drawing-room into a studio, and spend two or three days +a week at picture galleries or museums. Then she would take to attending +race-meetings, wear the most horsey clothes, and talk about nothing but +betting. She abandoned religion for mesmerism, mesmerism for politics, +and politics for the melodramatic excitements of philanthropy. In fact, +she was a kind of Proteus, and as much a failure in all her +transformations as was that wondrous sea-god when Odysseus laid hold of +him. One day a serial began in one of the French magazines. At that +time I used to read serial stories, and I well remember the shock of +surprise I felt when I came to the description of the heroine. She was +so like my friend that I brought her the magazine, and she recognised +herself in it immediately, and seemed fascinated by the resemblance. I +should tell you, by the way, that the story was translated from some dead +Russian writer, so that the author had not taken his type from my friend. +Well, to put the matter briefly, some months afterwards I was in Venice, +and finding the magazine in the reading-room of the hotel, I took it up +casually to see what had become of the heroine. It was a most piteous +tale, as the girl had ended by running away with a man absolutely +inferior to her, not merely in social station, but in character and +intellect also. I wrote to my friend that evening about my views on John +Bellini, and the admirable ices at Florian’s, and the artistic value of +gondolas, but added a postscript to the effect that her double in the +story had behaved in a very silly manner. I don’t know why I added that, +but I remember I had a sort of dread over me that she might do the same +thing. Before my letter had reached her, she had run away with a man who +deserted her in six months. I saw her in 1884 in Paris, where she was +living with her mother, and I asked her whether the story had had +anything to do with her action. She told me that she had felt an +absolutely irresistible impulse to follow the heroine step by step in her +strange and fatal progress, and that it was with a feeling of real terror +that she had looked forward to the last few chapters of the story. When +they appeared, it seemed to her that she was compelled to reproduce them +in life, and she did so. It was a most clear example of this imitative +instinct of which I was speaking, and an extremely tragic one. + +However, I do not wish to dwell any further upon individual instances. +Personal experience is a most vicious and limited circle. All that I +desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far +more than Art imitates Life, and I feel sure that if you think seriously +about it you will find that it is true. Life holds the mirror up to Art, +and either reproduces some strange type imagined by painter or sculptor, +or realises in fact what has been dreamed in fiction. Scientifically +speaking, the basis of life—the energy of life, as Aristotle would call +it—is simply the desire for expression, and Art is always presenting +various forms through which this expression can be attained. Life seizes +on them and uses them, even if they be to her own hurt. Young men have +committed suicide because Rolla did so, have died by their own hand +because by his own hand Werther died. Think of what we owe to the +imitation of Christ, of what we owe to the imitation of Cæsar. + +CYRIL. The theory is certainly a very curious one, but to make it +complete you must show that Nature, no less than Life, is an imitation of +Art. Are you prepared to prove that? + +VIVIAN. My dear fellow, I am prepared to prove anything. + +CYRIL. Nature follows the landscape painter, then, and takes her effects +from him? + +VIVIAN. Certainly. Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get +those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring +the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows? To whom, +if not to them and their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that +brood over our river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved +bridge and swaying barge? The extraordinary change that has taken place +in the climate of London during the last ten years is entirely due to a +particular school of Art. You smile. Consider the matter from a +scientific or a metaphysical point of view, and you will find that I am +right. For what is Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. +She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. +Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, +depends on the Arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very +different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees +its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence. At +present, people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets +and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. +There may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. +But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did +not exist till Art had invented them. Now, it must be admitted, fogs are +carried to excess. They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and +the exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people bronchitis. +Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold. And so, +let us be humane, and invite Art to turn her wonderful eyes elsewhere. +She has done so already, indeed. That white quivering sunlight that one +sees now in France, with its strange blotches of mauve, and its restless +violet shadows, is her latest fancy, and, on the whole, Nature reproduces +it quite admirably. Where she used to give us Corots and Daubignys, she +gives us now exquisite Monets and entrancing Pissaros. Indeed there are +moments, rare, it is true, but still to be observed from time to time, +when Nature becomes absolutely modern. Of course she is not always to be +relied upon. The fact is that she is in this unfortunate position. Art +creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on +to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that imitation +can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect +until we all become absolutely wearied of it. Nobody of any real +culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. +Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was +the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism +of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on. Yesterday evening Mrs. +Arundel insisted on my going to the window, and looking at the glorious +sky, as she called it. Of course I had to look at it. She is one of +those absurdly pretty Philistines to whom one can deny nothing. And what +was it? It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad +period, with all the painter’s worst faults exaggerated and +over-emphasised. Of course, I am quite ready to admit that Life very +often commits the same error. She produces her false Renés and her sham +Vautrins, just as Nature gives us, on one day a doubtful Cuyp, and on +another a more than questionable Rousseau. Still, Nature irritates one +more when she does things of that kind. It seems so stupid, so obvious, +so unnecessary. A false Vautrin might be delightful. A doubtful Cuyp is +unbearable. However, I don’t want to be too hard on Nature. I wish the +Channel, especially at Hastings, did not look quite so often like a Henry +Moore, grey pearl with yellow lights, but then, when Art is more varied, +Nature will, no doubt, be more varied also. That she imitates Art, I +don’t think even her worst enemy would deny now. It is the one thing +that keeps her in touch with civilised man. But have I proved my theory +to your satisfaction? + +CYRIL. You have proved it to my dissatisfaction, which is better. But +even admitting this strange imitative instinct in Life and Nature, surely +you would acknowledge that Art expresses the temper of its age, the +spirit of its time, the moral and social conditions that surround it, and +under whose influence it is produced. + +VIVIAN. Certainly not! Art never expresses anything but itself. This +is the principle of my new æsthetics; and it is this, more than that +vital connection between form and substance, on which Mr. Pater dwells, +that makes music the type of all the arts. Of course, nations and +individuals, with that healthy natural vanity which is the secret of +existence, are always under the impression that it is of them that the +Muses are talking, always trying to find in the calm dignity of +imaginative art some mirror of their own turbid passions, always +forgetting that the singer of life is not Apollo but Marsyas. Remote +from reality, and with her eyes turned away from the shadows of the cave, +Art reveals her own perfection, and the wondering crowd that watches the +opening of the marvellous, many-petalled rose fancies that it is its own +history that is being told to it, its own spirit that is finding +expression in a new form. But it is not so. The highest art rejects the +burden of the human spirit, and gains more from a new medium or a fresh +material than she does from any enthusiasm for art, or from any lofty +passion, or from any great awakening of the human consciousness. She +develops purely on her own lines. She is not symbolic of any age. It is +the ages that are her symbols. + +Even those who hold that Art is representative of time and place and +people cannot help admitting that the more imitative an art is, the less +it represents to us the spirit of its age. The evil faces of the Roman +emperors look out at us from the foul porphyry and spotted jasper in +which the realistic artists of the day delighted to work, and we fancy +that in those cruel lips and heavy sensual jaws we can find the secret of +the ruin of the Empire. But it was not so. The vices of Tiberius could +not destroy that supreme civilisation, any more than the virtues of the +Antonines could save it. It fell for other, for less interesting +reasons. The sibyls and prophets of the Sistine may indeed serve to +interpret for some that new birth of the emancipated spirit that we call +the Renaissance; but what do the drunken boors and bawling peasants of +Dutch art tell us about the great soul of Holland? The more abstract, +the more ideal an art is, the more it reveals to us the temper of its +age. If we wish to understand a nation by means of its art, let us look +at its architecture or its music. + +CYRIL. I quite agree with you there. The spirit of an age may be best +expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract +and ideal. Upon the other hand, for the visible aspect of an age, for +its look, as the phrase goes, we must of course go to the arts of +imitation. + +VIVIAN. I don’t think so. After all, what the imitative arts really +give us are merely the various styles of particular artists, or of +certain schools of artists. Surely you don’t imagine that the people of +the Middle Ages bore any resemblance at all to the figures on mediæval +stained glass, or in mediæval stone and wood carving, or on mediæval +metal-work, or tapestries, or illuminated MSS. They were probably very +ordinary-looking people, with nothing grotesque, or remarkable, or +fantastic in their appearance. The Middle Ages, as we know them in art, +are simply a definite form of style, and there is no reason at all why an +artist with this style should not be produced in the nineteenth century. +No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would +cease to be an artist. Take an example from our own day. I know that +you are fond of Japanese things. Now, do you really imagine that the +Japanese people, as they are presented to us in art, have any existence? +If you do, you have never understood Japanese art at all. The Japanese +people are the deliberate self-conscious creation of certain individual +artists. If you set a picture by Hokusai, or Hokkei, or any of the great +native painters, beside a real Japanese gentleman or lady, you will see +that there is not the slightest resemblance between them. The actual +people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English +people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing +curious or extraordinary about them. In fact the whole of Japan is a +pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. One +of our most charming painters went recently to the Land of the +Chrysanthemum in the foolish hope of seeing the Japanese. All he saw, +all he had the chance of painting, were a few lanterns and some fans. He +was quite unable to discover the inhabitants, as his delightful +exhibition at Messrs. Dowdeswell’s Gallery showed only too well. He did +not know that the Japanese people are, as I have said, simply a mode of +style, an exquisite fancy of art. And so, if you desire to see a +Japanese effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go to Tokio. On +the contrary, you will stay at home and steep yourself in the work of +certain Japanese artists, and then, when you have absorbed the spirit of +their style, and caught their imaginative manner of vision, you will go +some afternoon and sit in the Park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you +cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect there, you will not see it +anywhere. Or, to return again to the past, take as another instance the +ancient Greeks. Do you think that Greek art ever tells us what the Greek +people were like? Do you believe that the Athenian women were like the +stately dignified figures of the Parthenon frieze, or like those +marvellous goddesses who sat in the triangular pediments of the same +building? If you judge from the art, they certainly were so. But read +an authority, like Aristophanes, for instance. You will find that the +Athenian ladies laced tightly, wore high-heeled shoes, dyed their hair +yellow, painted and rouged their faces, and were exactly like any silly +fashionable or fallen creature of our own day. The fact is that we look +back on the ages entirely through the medium of art, and art, very +fortunately, has never once told us the truth. + +CYRIL. But modern portraits by English painters, what of them? Surely +they are like the people they pretend to represent? + +VIVIAN. Quite so. They are so like them that a hundred years from now +no one will believe in them. The only portraits in which one believes +are portraits where there is very little of the sitter, and a very great +deal of the artist. Holbein’s drawings of the men and women of his time +impress us with a sense of their absolute reality. But this is simply +because Holbein compelled life to accept his conditions, to restrain +itself within his limitations, to reproduce his type, and to appear as he +wished it to appear. It is style that makes us believe in a +thing—nothing but style. Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed +to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what +the public sees, and the public never sees anything. + +CYRIL. Well, after that I think I should like to hear the end of your +article. + +VIVIAN. With pleasure. Whether it will do any good I really cannot say. +Ours is certainly the dullest and most prosaic century possible. Why, +even Sleep has played us false, and has closed up the gates of ivory, and +opened the gates of horn. The dreams of the great middle classes of this +country, as recorded in Mr. Myers’s two bulky volumes on the subject, and +in the Transactions of the Psychical Society, are the most depressing +things that I have ever read. There is not even a fine nightmare among +them. They are commonplace, sordid and tedious. As for the Church, I +cannot conceive anything better for the culture of a country than the +presence in it of a body of men whose duty it is to believe in the +supernatural, to perform daily miracles, and to keep alive that +mythopoeic faculty which is so essential for the imagination. But in the +English Church a man succeeds, not through his capacity for belief, but +through his capacity for disbelief. Ours is the only Church where the +sceptic stands at the altar, and where St. Thomas is regarded as the +ideal apostle. Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable +works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is +sufficient for some shallow uneducated passman out of either University +to get up in his pulpit and express his doubts about Noah’s ark, or +Balaam’s ass, or Jonah and the whale, for half of London to flock to hear +him, and to sit open-mouthed in rapt admiration at his superb intellect. +The growth of common sense in the English Church is a thing very much to +be regretted. It is really a degrading concession to a low form of +realism. It is silly, too. It springs from an entire ignorance of +psychology. Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe +the improbable. However, I must read the end of my article:— + +‘What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive +this old art of Lying. Much of course may be done, in the way of +educating the public, by amateurs in the domestic circle, at literary +lunches, and at afternoon teas. But this is merely the light and +graceful side of lying, such as was probably heard at Cretan +dinner-parties. There are many other forms. Lying for the sake of +gaining some immediate personal advantage, for instance—lying with a +moral purpose, as it is usually called—though of late it has been rather +looked down upon, was extremely popular with the antique world. Athena +laughs when Odysseus tells her “his words of sly devising,” as Mr. +William Morris phrases it, and the glory of mendacity illumines the pale +brow of the stainless hero of Euripidean tragedy, and sets among the +noble women of the past the young bride of one of Horace’s most exquisite +odes. Later on, what at first had been merely a natural instinct was +elevated into a self-conscious science. Elaborate rules were laid down +for the guidance of mankind, and an important school of literature grew +up round the subject. Indeed, when one remembers the excellent +philosophical treatise of Sanchez on the whole question, one cannot help +regretting that no one has ever thought of publishing a cheap and +condensed edition of the works of that great casuist. A short primer, +“When to Lie and How,” if brought out in an attractive and not too +expensive a form, would no doubt command a large sale, and would prove of +real practical service to many earnest and deep-thinking people. Lying +for the sake of the improvement of the young, which is the basis of home +education, still lingers amongst us, and its advantages are so admirably +set forth in the early books of Plato’s _Republic_ that it is unnecessary +to dwell upon them here. It is a mode of lying for which all good +mothers have peculiar capabilities, but it is capable of still further +development, and has been sadly overlooked by the School Board. Lying +for the sake of a monthly salary is of course well known in Fleet Street, +and the profession of a political leader-writer is not without its +advantages. But it is said to be a somewhat dull occupation, and it +certainly does not lead to much beyond a kind of ostentatious obscurity. +The only form of lying that is absolutely beyond reproach is lying for +its own sake, and the highest development of this is, as we have already +pointed out, Lying in Art. Just as those who do not love Plato more than +Truth cannot pass beyond the threshold of the Academe, so those who do +not love Beauty more than Truth never know the inmost shrine of Art. The +solid stolid British intellect lies in the desert sands like the Sphinx +in Flaubert’s marvellous tale, and fantasy, _La Chimère_, dances round +it, and calls to it with her false, flute-toned voice. It may not hear +her now, but surely some day, when we are all bored to death with the +commonplace character of modern fiction, it will hearken to her and try +to borrow her wings. + +‘And when that day dawns, or sunset reddens, how joyous we shall all be! +Facts will be regarded as discreditable, Truth will be found mourning +over her fetters, and Romance, with her temper of wonder, will return to +the land. The very aspect of the world will change to our startled eyes. +Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan, and sail round the +high-pooped galleys, as they do on the delightful maps of those ages when +books on geography were actually readable. Dragons will wander about the +waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the +air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the +toad’s head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our +stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful +and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, +of things that are not and that should be. But before this comes to pass +we must cultivate the lost art of Lying.’ + +CYRIL. Then we must entirely cultivate it at once. But in order to +avoid making any error I want you to tell me briefly the doctrines of the +new æsthetics. + +VIVIAN. Briefly, then, they are these. Art never expresses anything but +itself. It has an independent life, just as Thought has, and develops +purely on its own lines. It is not necessarily realistic in an age of +realism, nor spiritual in an age of faith. So far from being the +creation of its time, it is usually in direct opposition to it, and the +only history that it preserves for us is the history of its own progress. +Sometimes it returns upon its footsteps, and revives some antique form, +as happened in the archaistic movement of late Greek Art, and in the +pre-Raphaelite movement of our own day. At other times it entirely +anticipates its age, and produces in one century work that it takes +another century to understand, to appreciate and to enjoy. In no case +does it reproduce its age. To pass from the art of a time to the time +itself is the great mistake that all historians commit. + +The second doctrine is this. All bad art comes from returning to Life +and Nature, and elevating them into ideals. Life and Nature may +sometimes be used as part of Art’s rough material, but before they are of +any real service to art they must be translated into artistic +conventions. The moment Art surrenders its imaginative medium it +surrenders everything. As a method Realism is a complete failure, and +the two things that every artist should avoid are modernity of form and +modernity of subject-matter. To us, who live in the nineteenth century, +any century is a suitable subject for art except our own. The only +beautiful things are the things that do not concern us. It is, to have +the pleasure of quoting myself, exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us +that her sorrows are so suitable a motive for a tragedy. Besides, it is +only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. M. Zola sits down to +give us a picture of the Second Empire. Who cares for the Second Empire +now? It is out of date. Life goes faster than Realism, but Romanticism +is always in front of Life. + +The third doctrine is that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates +Life. This results not merely from Life’s imitative instinct, but from +the fact that the self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and +that Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realise +that energy. It is a theory that has never been put forward before, but +it is extremely fruitful, and throws an entirely new light upon the +history of Art. + +It follows, as a corollary from this, that external Nature also imitates +Art. The only effects that she can show us are effects that we have +already seen through poetry, or in paintings. This is the secret of +Nature’s charm, as well as the explanation of Nature’s weakness. + +The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue +things, is the proper aim of Art. But of this I think I have spoken at +sufficient length. And now let us go out on the terrace, where ‘droops +the milk-white peacock like a ghost,’ while the evening star ‘washes the +dusk with silver.’ At twilight nature becomes a wonderfully suggestive +effect, and is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to +illustrate quotations from the poets. Come! We have talked long enough. + + + + +PEN, PENCIL AND POISON +A STUDY IN GREEN + + +IT has constantly been made a subject of reproach against artists and men +of letters that they are lacking in wholeness and completeness of nature. +As a rule this must necessarily be so. That very concentration of vision +and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic +temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are +preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of much +importance. Yet there are many exceptions to this rule. Rubens served +as ambassador, and Goethe as state councillor, and Milton as Latin +secretary to Cromwell. Sophocles held civic office in his own city; the +humourists, essayists, and novelists of modern America seem to desire +nothing better than to become the diplomatic representatives of their +country; and Charles Lamb’s friend, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the +subject of this brief memoir, though of an extremely artistic +temperament, followed many masters other than art, being not merely a +poet and a painter, an art-critic, an antiquarian, and a writer of prose, +an amateur of beautiful things, and a dilettante of things delightful, +but also a forger of no mean or ordinary capabilities, and as a subtle +and secret poisoner almost without rival in this or any age. + +This remarkable man, so powerful with ‘pen, pencil and poison,’ as a +great poet of our own day has finely said of him, was born at Chiswick, +in 1794. His father was the son of a distinguished solicitor of Gray’s +Inn and Hatton Garden. His mother was the daughter of the celebrated Dr. +Griffiths, the editor and founder of the _Monthly Review_, the partner in +another literary speculation of Thomas Davis, that famous bookseller of +whom Johnson said that he was not a bookseller, but ‘a gentleman who +dealt in books,’ the friend of Goldsmith and Wedgwood, and one of the +most well-known men of his day. Mrs. Wainewright died, in giving him +birth, at the early age of twenty-one, and an obituary notice in the +_Gentleman’s Magazine_ tells us of her ‘amiable disposition and numerous +accomplishments,’ and adds somewhat quaintly that ‘she is supposed to +have understood the writings of Mr. Locke as well as perhaps any person +of either sex now living.’ His father did not long survive his young +wife, and the little child seems to have been brought up by his +grandfather, and, on the death of the latter in 1803, by his uncle George +Edward Griffiths, whom he subsequently poisoned. His boyhood was passed +at Linden House, Turnham Green, one of those many fine Georgian mansions +that have unfortunately disappeared before the inroads of the suburban +builder, and to its lovely gardens and well-timbered park he owed that +simple and impassioned love of nature which never left him all through +his life, and which made him so peculiarly susceptible to the spiritual +influences of Wordsworth’s poetry. He went to school at Charles Burney’s +academy at Hammersmith. Mr. Burney was the son of the historian of +music, and the near kinsman of the artistic lad who was destined to turn +out his most remarkable pupil. He seems to have been a man of a good +deal of culture, and in after years Mr. Wainewright often spoke of him +with much affection as a philosopher, an archæologist, and an admirable +teacher who, while he valued the intellectual side of education, did not +forget the importance of early moral training. It was under Mr. Burney +that he first developed his talent as an artist, and Mr. Hazlitt tells us +that a drawing-book which he used at school is still extant, and displays +great talent and natural feeling. Indeed, painting was the first art +that fascinated him. It was not till much later that he sought to find +expression by pen or poison. + +Before this, however, he seems to have been carried away by boyish dreams +of the romance and chivalry of a soldier’s life, and to have become a +young guardsman. But the reckless dissipated life of his companions +failed to satisfy the refined artistic temperament of one who was made +for other things. In a short time he wearied of the service. ‘Art,’ he +tells us, in words that still move many by their ardent sincerity and +strange fervour, ‘Art touched her renegade; by her pure and high +influence the noisome mists were purged; my feelings, parched, hot, and +tarnished, were renovated with cool, fresh bloom, simple, beautiful to +the simple-hearted.’ But Art was not the only cause of the change. ‘The +writings of Wordsworth,’ he goes on to say, ‘did much towards calming the +confusing whirl necessarily incident to sudden mutations. I wept over +them tears of happiness and gratitude.’ He accordingly left the army, +with its rough barrack-life and coarse mess-room tittle-tattle, and +returned to Linden House, full of this new-born enthusiasm for culture. +A severe illness, in which, to use his own words, he was ‘broken like a +vessel of clay,’ prostrated him for a time. His delicately strung +organisation, however indifferent it might have been to inflicting pain +on others, was itself most keenly sensitive to pain. He shrank from +suffering as a thing that mars and maims human life, and seems to have +wandered through that terrible valley of melancholia from which so many +great, perhaps greater, spirits have never emerged. But he was +young—only twenty-five years of age—and he soon passed out of the ‘dead +black waters,’ as he called them, into the larger air of humanistic +culture. As he was recovering from the illness that had led him almost +to the gates of death, he conceived the idea of taking up literature as +an art. ‘I said with John Woodvil,’ he cries, ‘it were a life of gods to +dwell in such an element,’ to see and hear and write brave things:— + + ‘These high and gusty relishes of life + Have no allayings of mortality.’ + +It is impossible not to feel that in this passage we have the utterance +of a man who had a true passion for letters. ‘To see and hear and write +brave things,’ this was his aim. + +Scott, the editor of the _London Magazine_, struck by the young man’s +genius, or under the influence of the strange fascination that he +exercised on every one who knew him, invited him to write a series of +articles on artistic subjects, and under a series of fanciful pseudonym +he began to contribute to the literature of his day. _Janus +Weathercock_, _Egomet Bonmot_, and _Van Vinkvooms_, were some of the +grotesque masks under which he choose to hide his seriousness or to +reveal his levity. A mask tells us more than a face. These disguises +intensified his personality. In an incredibly short time he seems to +have made his mark. Charles Lamb speaks of ‘kind, light-hearted +Wainewright,’ whose prose is ‘capital.’ We hear of him entertaining +Macready, John Forster, Maginn, Talfourd, Sir Wentworth Dilke, the poet +John Clare, and others, at _a petit-dîner_. Like Disraeli, he determined +to startle the town as a dandy, and his beautiful rings, his antique +cameo breast-pin, and his pale lemon-coloured kid gloves, were well +known, and indeed were regarded by Hazlitt as being the signs of a new +manner in literature: while his rich curly hair, fine eyes, and exquisite +white hands gave him the dangerous and delightful distinction of being +different from others. There was something in him of Balzac’s Lucien de +Rubempré. At times he reminds us of Julien Sorel. De Quincey saw him +once. It was at a dinner at Charles Lamb’s. ‘Amongst the company, all +literary men, sat a murderer,’ he tells us, and he goes on to describe +how on that day he had been ill, and had hated the face of man and woman, +and yet found himself looking with intellectual interest across the table +at the young writer beneath whose affectations of manner there seemed to +him to lie so much unaffected sensibility, and speculates on ‘what sudden +growth of another interest’ would have changed his mood, had he known of +what terrible sin the guest to whom Lamb paid so much attention was even +then guilty. + +His life-work falls naturally under the three heads suggested by Mr. +Swinburne, and it may be partly admitted that, if we set aside his +achievements in the sphere of poison, what he has actually left to us +hardly justifies his reputation. + +But then it is only the Philistine who seeks to estimate a personality by +the vulgar test of production. This young dandy sought to be somebody, +rather than to do something. He recognised that Life itself is in art, +and has its modes of style no less than the arts that seek to express it. +Nor is his work without interest. We hear of William Blake stopping in +the Royal Academy before one of his pictures and pronouncing it to be +‘very fine.’ His essays are prefiguring of much that has since been +realised. He seems to have anticipated some of those accidents of modern +culture that are regarded by many as true essentials. He writes about La +Gioconda, and early French poets and the Italian Renaissance. He loves +Greek gems, and Persian carpets, and Elizabethan translations of _Cupid +and Psyche_, and the _Hypnerotomachia_, and book-binding and early +editions, and wide-margined proofs. He is keenly sensitive to the value +of beautiful surroundings, and never wearies of describing to us the +rooms in which he lived, or would have liked to live. He had that +curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a +subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, +if not a decadence of morals. Like Baudelaire he was extremely fond of +cats, and with Gautier, he was fascinated by that ‘sweet marble monster’ +of both sexes that we can still see at Florence and in the Louvre. + +There is of course much in his descriptions, and his suggestions for +decoration, that shows that he did not entirely free himself from the +false taste of his time. But it is clear that he was one of the first to +recognise what is, indeed, the very keynote of æsthetic eclecticism, I +mean the true harmony of all really beautiful things irrespective of age +or place, of school or manner. He saw that in decorating a room, which +is to be, not a room for show, but a room to live in, we should never aim +at any archæological reconstruction of the past, nor burden ourselves +with any fanciful necessity for historical accuracy. In this artistic +perception he was perfectly right. All beautiful things belong to the +same age. + +And so, in his own library, as he describes it, we find the delicate +fictile vase of the Greek, with its exquisitely painted figures and the +faint ΚΑΛΟΣ finely traced upon its side, and behind it hangs an engraving +of the ‘Delphic Sibyl’ of Michael Angelo, or of the ‘Pastoral’ of +Giorgione. Here is a bit of Florentine majolica, and here a rude lamp +from some old Roman tomb. On the table lies a book of Hours, ‘cased in a +cover of solid silver gilt, wrought with quaint devices and studded with +small brilliants and rubies,’ and close by it ‘squats a little ugly +monster, a Lar, perhaps, dug up in the sunny fields of corn-bearing +Sicily.’ Some dark antique bronzes contrast with the pale gleam of two +noble _Christi Crucifixi_, one carved in ivory, the other moulded in +wax.’ He has his trays of Tassie’s gems, his tiny Louis-Quatorze +_bonbonnière_ with a miniature by Petitot, his highly prized +‘brown-biscuit teapots, filagree-worked,’ his citron morocco letter-case, +and his ‘pomona-green’ chair. + +One can fancy him lying there in the midst of his books and casts and +engravings, a true virtuoso, a subtle connoisseur, turning over his fine +collection of Mare Antonios, and his Turner’s ‘Liber Studiorum,’ of which +he was a warm admirer, or examining with a magnifier some of his antique +gems and cameos, ‘the head of Alexander on an onyx of two strata,’ or +‘that superb _altissimo relievo_ on cornelian, Jupiter Ægiochus.’ He was +always a great amateur of engravings, and gives some very useful +suggestions as to the best means of forming a collection. Indeed, while +fully appreciating modern art, he never lost sight of the importance of +reproductions of the great masterpieces of the past, and all that he says +about the value of plaster casts is quite admirable. + +As an art-critic he concerned himself primarily with the complex +impressions produced by a work of art, and certainly the first step in +æsthetic criticism is to realise one’s own impressions. He cared nothing +for abstract discussions on the nature of the Beautiful, and the +historical method, which has since yielded such rich fruit, did not +belong to his day, but he never lost sight of the great truth that Art’s +first appeal is neither to the intellect nor to the emotions, but purely +to the artistic temperament, and he more than once points out that this +temperament, this ‘taste,’ as he calls it, being unconsciously guided and +made perfect by frequent contact with the best work, becomes in the end a +form of right judgment. Of course there are fashions in art just as +there are fashions in dress, and perhaps none of us can ever quite free +ourselves from the influence of custom and the influence of novelty. He +certainly could not, and he frankly acknowledges how difficult it is to +form any fair estimate of contemporary work. But, on the whole, his +taste was good and sound. He admired Turner and Constable at a time when +they were not so much thought of as they are now, and saw that for the +highest landscape art we require more than ‘mere industry and accurate +transcription.’ Of Crome’s ‘Heath Scene near Norwich’ he remarks that it +shows ‘how much a subtle observation of the elements, in their wild +moods, does for a most uninteresting flat,’ and of the popular type of +landscape of his day he says that it is ‘simply an enumeration of hill +and dale, stumps of trees, shrubs, water, meadows, cottages and houses; +little more than topography, a kind of pictorial map-work; in which +rainbows, showers, mists, haloes, large beams shooting through rifted +clouds, storms, starlight, all the most valued materials of the real +painter, are not.’ He had a thorough dislike of what is obvious or +commonplace in art, and while he was charmed to entertain Wilkie at +dinner, he cared as little for Sir David’s pictures as he did for Mr. +Crabbe’s poems. With the imitative and realistic tendencies of his day +he had no sympathy and he tells us frankly that his great admiration for +Fuseli was largely due to the fact that the little Swiss did not consider +it necessary that an artist should paint only what he sees. The +qualities that he sought for in a picture were composition, beauty and +dignity of line, richness of colour, and imaginative power. Upon the +other hand, he was not a doctrinaire. ‘I hold that no work of art can be +tried otherwise than by laws deduced from itself: whether or not it be +consistent with itself is the question.’ This is one of his excellent +aphorisms. And in criticising painters so different as Landseer and +Martin, Stothard and Etty, he shows that, to use a phrase now classical, +he is trying ‘to see the object as in itself it really is.’ + +However, as I pointed out before, he never feels quite at his ease in his +criticisms of contemporary work. ‘The present,’ he says, ‘is about as +agreeable a confusion to me as Ariosto on the first perusal. . . . Modern +things dazzle me. I must look at them through Time’s telescope. Elia +complains that to him the merit of a MS. poem is uncertain; “print,” as +he excellently says, “settles it.” Fifty years’ toning does the same +thing to a picture.’ He is happier when he is writing about Watteau and +Lancret, about Rubens and Giorgione, about Rembrandt, Corregio, and +Michael Angelo; happiest of all when he is writing about Greek things. +What is Gothic touched him very little, but classical art and the art of +the Renaissance were always dear to him. He saw what our English school +could gain from a study of Greek models, and never wearies of pointing +out to the young student the artistic possibilities that lie dormant in +Hellenic marbles and Hellenic methods of work. In his judgments on the +great Italian Masters, says De Quincey, ‘there seemed a tone of sincerity +and of native sensibility, as in one who spoke for himself, and was not +merely a copier from books.’ The highest praise that we can give to him +is that he tried to revive style as a conscious tradition. But he saw +that no amount of art lectures or art congresses, or ‘plans for advancing +the fine arts,’ will ever produce this result. The people, he says very +wisely, and in the true spirit of Toynbee Hall, must always have ‘the +best models constantly before their eyes.’ + +As is to be expected from one who was a painter, he is often extremely +technical in his art criticisms. Of Tintoret’s ‘St. George delivering +the Egyptian Princess from the Dragon,’ he remarks:— + + The robe of Sabra, warmly glazed with Prussian blue, is relieved from + the pale greenish background by a vermilion scarf; and the full hues + of both are beautifully echoed, as it were, in a lower key by the + purple-lake coloured stuffs and bluish iron armour of the saint, + besides an ample balance to the vivid azure drapery on the foreground + in the indigo shades of the wild wood surrounding the castle. + +And elsewhere he talks learnedly of ‘a delicate Schiavone, various as a +tulip-bed, with rich broken tints,’ of ‘a glowing portrait, remarkable +for _morbidezza_, by the scarce Moroni,’ and of another picture being +‘pulpy in the carnations.’ + +But, as a rule, he deals with his impressions of the work as an artistic +whole, and tries to translate those impressions into words, to give, as +it were, the literary equivalent for the imaginative and mental effect. +He was one of the first to develop what has been called the +art-literature of the nineteenth century, that form of literature which +has found in Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Browning, its two most perfect exponents. +His description of Lancret’s _Repas Italien_, in which ‘a dark-haired +girl, “amorous of mischief,” lies on the daisy-powdered grass,’ is in +some respects very charming. Here is his account of ‘The Crucifixion,’ +by Rembrandt. It is extremely characteristic of his style— + + Darkness—sooty, portentous darkness—shrouds the whole scene: only + above the accursed wood, as if through a horrid rift in the murky + ceiling, a rainy deluge—‘sleety-flaw, discoloured water’—streams down + amain, spreading a grisly spectral light, even more horrible than + that palpable night. Already the Earth pants thick and fast! the + darkened Cross trembles! the winds are dropt—the air is stagnant—a + muttering rumble growls underneath their feet, and some of that + miserable crowd begin to fly down the hill. The horses snuff the + coming terror, and become unmanageable through fear. The moment + rapidly approaches when, nearly torn asunder by His own weight, + fainting with loss of blood, which now runs in narrower rivulets from + His slit veins, His temples and breast drowned in sweat, and His + black tongue parched with the fiery death-fever, Jesus cries, ‘I + thirst.’ The deadly vinegar is elevated to Him. + + His head sinks, and the sacred corpse ‘swings senseless of the + cross.’ A sheet of vermilion flame shoots sheer through the air and + vanishes; the rocks of Carmel and Lebanon cleave asunder; the sea + rolls on high from the sands its black weltering waves. Earth yawns, + and the graves give up their dwellers. The dead and the living are + mingled together in unnatural conjunction and hurry through the holy + city. New prodigies await them there. The veil of the temple—the + unpierceable veil—is rent asunder from top to bottom, and that + dreaded recess containing the Hebrew mysteries—the fatal ark with the + tables and seven-branched candelabrum—is disclosed by the light of + unearthly flames to the God-deserted multitude. + + Rembrandt never painted this sketch, and he was quite right. It + would have lost nearly all its charms in losing that perplexing veil + of indistinctness which affords such ample range wherein the doubting + imagination may speculate. At present it is like a thing in another + world. A dark gulf is betwixt us. It is not tangible by the body. + We can only approach it in the spirit. + +In this passage, written, the author tells us, ‘in awe and reverence,’ +there is much that is terrible, and very much that is quite horrible, but +it is not without a certain crude form of power, or, at any rate, a +certain crude violence of words, a quality which this age should highly +appreciate, as it is its chief defect. It is pleasanter, however, to +pass to this description of Giulio Romano’s ‘Cephalus and Procris’:— + + We should read Moschus’s lament for Bion, the sweet shepherd, before + looking at this picture, or study the picture as a preparation for + the lament. We have nearly the same images in both. For either + victim the high groves and forest dells murmur; the flowers exhale + sad perfume from their buds; the nightingale mourns on the craggy + lands, and the swallow in the long-winding vales; ‘the satyrs, too, + and fauns dark-veiled groan,’ and the fountain nymphs within the wood + melt into tearful waters. The sheep and goats leave their pasture; + and oreads, ‘who love to scale the most inaccessible tops of all + uprightest rocks,’ hurry down from the song of their wind-courting + pines; while the dryads bend from the branches of the meeting trees, + and the rivers moan for white Procris, ‘with many-sobbing streams,’ + + Filling the far-seen ocean with a voice. + + The golden bees are silent on the thymy Hymettus; and the knelling + horn of Aurora’s love no more shall scatter away the cold twilight on + the top of Hymettus. The foreground of our subject is a grassy + sunburnt bank, broken into swells and hollows like waves (a sort of + land-breakers), rendered more uneven by many foot-tripping roots and + stumps of trees stocked untimely by the axe, which are again throwing + out light-green shoots. This bank rises rather suddenly on the right + to a clustering grove, penetrable to no star, at the entrance of + which sits the stunned Thessalian king, holding between his knees + that ivory-bright body which was, but an instant agone, parting the + rough boughs with her smooth forehead, and treading alike on thorns + and flowers with jealousy-stung foot—now helpless, heavy, void of all + motion, save when the breeze lifts her thick hair in mockery. + + From between the closely-neighboured boles astonished nymphs press + forward with loud cries— + + And deerskin-vested satyrs, crowned with ivy twists, advance; + And put strange pity in their horned countenance. + + Laelaps lies beneath, and shows by his panting the rapid pace of + death. On the other side of the group, Virtuous Love with ‘vans + dejected’ holds forth the arrow to an approaching troop of sylvan + people, fauns, rams, goats, satyrs, and satyr-mothers, pressing their + children tighter with their fearful hands, who hurry along from the + left in a sunken path between the foreground and a rocky wall, on + whose lowest ridge a brook-guardian pours from her urn her + grief-telling waters. Above and more remote than the Ephidryad, + another female, rending her locks, appears among the vine-festooned + pillars of an unshorn grove. The centre of the picture is filled by + shady meadows, sinking down to a river-mouth; beyond is ‘the vast + strength of the ocean stream,’ from whose floor the extinguisher of + stars, rosy Aurora, drives furiously up her brine-washed steeds to + behold the death-pangs of her rival. + +Were this description carefully re-written, it would be quite admirable. +The conception of making a prose poem out of paint is excellent. Much of +the best modern literature springs from the same aim. In a very ugly and +sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other. + +His sympathies, too, were wonderfully varied. In everything connected +with the stage, for instance, he was always extremely interested, and +strongly upheld the necessity for archæological accuracy in costume and +scene-painting. ‘In art,’ he says in one of his essays, ‘whatever is +worth doing at all is worth doing well’; and he points out that once we +allow the intrusion of anachronisms, it becomes difficult to say where +the line is to be drawn. In literature, again, like Lord Beaconsfield on +a famous occasion, he was ‘on the side of the angels.’ He was one of the +first to admire Keats and Shelley—‘the tremulously-sensitive and poetical +Shelley,’ as he calls him. His admiration for Wordsworth was sincere and +profound. He thoroughly appreciated William Blake. One of the best +copies of the ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ that is now in +existence was wrought specially for him. He loved Alain Chartier, and +Ronsard, and the Elizabethan dramatists, and Chaucer and Chapman, and +Petrarch. And to him all the arts were one. ‘Our critics,’ he remarks +with much wisdom, ‘seem hardly aware of the identity of the primal seeds +of poetry and painting, nor that any true advancement in the serious +study of one art co-generates a proportionate perfection in the other’; +and he says elsewhere that if a man who does not admire Michael Angelo +talks of his love for Milton, he is deceiving either himself or his +listeners. To his fellow-contributors in the _London Magazine_ he was +always most generous, and praises Barry Cornwall, Allan Cunningham, +Hazlitt, Elton, and Leigh Hunt without anything of the malice of a +friend. Some of his sketches of Charles Lamb are admirable in their way, +and, with the art of the true comedian, borrow their style from their +subject:— + + What can I say of thee more than all know? that thou hadst the gaiety + of a boy with the knowledge of a man: as gentle a heart as ever sent + tears to the eyes. + + How wittily would he mistake your meaning, and put in a conceit most + seasonably out of season. His talk without affectation was + compressed, like his beloved Elizabethans, even unto obscurity. Like + grains of fine gold, his sentences would beat out into whole sheets. + He had small mercy on spurious fame, and a caustic observation on the + _fashion for men of genius_ was a standing dish. Sir Thomas Browne + was a ‘bosom cronie’ of his; so was Burton, and old Fuller. In his + amorous vein he dallied with that peerless Duchess of many-folio + odour; and with the heyday comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher he + induced light dreams. He would deliver critical touches on these, + like one inspired, but it was good to let him choose his own game; if + another began even on the acknowledged pets he was liable to + interrupt, or rather append, in a mode difficult to define whether as + misapprehensive or mischievous. One night at C-’s, the above + dramatic partners were the temporary subject of chat. Mr. X. + commended the passion and haughty style of a tragedy (I don’t know + which of them), but was instantly taken up by Elia, who told him + ‘_That_ was nothing; the lyrics were the high things—the lyrics!’ + +One side of his literary career deserves especial notice. Modern +journalism may be said to owe almost as much to him as to any man of the +early part of this century. He was the pioneer of Asiatic prose, and +delighted in pictorial epithets and pompous exaggerations. To have a +style so gorgeous that it conceals the subject is one of the highest +achievements of an important and much admired school of Fleet Street +leader-writers, and this school _Janus Weathercock_ may be said to have +invented. He also saw that it was quite easy by continued reiteration to +make the public interested in his own personality, and in his purely +journalistic articles this extraordinary young man tells the world what +he had for dinner, where he gets his clothes, what wines he likes, and in +what state of health he is, just as if he were writing weekly notes for +some popular newspaper of our own time. This being the least valuable +side of his work, is the one that has had the most obvious influence. A +publicist, nowadays, is a man who bores the community with the details of +the illegalities of his private life. + +Like most artificial people, he had a great love of nature. ‘I hold +three things in high estimation,’ he says somewhere: ‘to sit lazily on an +eminence that commands a rich prospect; to be shadowed by thick trees +while the sun shines around me; and to enjoy solitude with the +consciousness of neighbourhood. The country gives them all to me.’ He +writes about his wandering over fragrant furze and heath repeating +Collins’s ‘Ode to Evening,’ just to catch the fine quality of the moment; +about smothering his face ‘in a watery bed of cowslips, wet with May +dews’; and about the pleasure of seeing the sweet-breathed kine ‘pass +slowly homeward through the twilight,’ and hearing ‘the distant clank of +the sheep-bell.’ One phrase of his, ‘the polyanthus glowed in its cold +bed of earth, like a solitary picture of Giorgione on a dark oaken +panel,’ is curiously characteristic of his temperament, and this passage +is rather pretty in its way:— + + The short tender grass was covered with marguerites—‘such that men + called _daisies_ in our town’—thick as stars on a summer’s night. + The harsh caw of the busy rooks came pleasantly mellowed from a high + dusky grove of elms at some distance off, and at intervals was heard + the voice of a boy scaring away the birds from the newly-sown seeds. + The blue depths were the colour of the darkest ultramarine; not a + cloud streaked the calm æther; only round the horizon’s edge streamed + a light, warm film of misty vapour, against which the near village + with its ancient stone church showed sharply out with blinding + whiteness. I thought of Wordsworth’s ‘Lines written in March.’ + +However, we must not forget that the cultivated young man who penned +these lines, and who was so susceptible to Wordsworthian influences, was +also, as I said at the beginning of this memoir, one of the most subtle +and secret poisoners of this or any age. How he first became fascinated +by this strange sin he does not tell us, and the diary in which he +carefully noted the results of his terrible experiments and the methods +that he adopted, has unfortunately been lost to us. Even in later days, +too, he was always reticent on the matter, and preferred to speak about +‘The Excursion,’ and the ‘Poems founded on the Affections.’ There is no +doubt, however, that the poison that he used was strychnine. In one of +the beautiful rings of which he was so proud, and which served to show +off the fine modelling of his delicate ivory hands, he used to carry +crystals of the Indian _nux vomica_, a poison, one of his biographers +tells us, ‘nearly tasteless, difficult of discovery, and capable of +almost infinite dilution.’ His murders, says De Quincey, were more than +were ever made known judicially. This is no doubt so, and some of them +are worthy of mention. His first victim was his uncle, Mr. Thomas +Griffiths. He poisoned him in 1829 to gain possession of Linden House, a +place to which he had always been very much attached. In the August of +the next year he poisoned Mrs. Abercrombie, his wife’s mother, and in the +following December he poisoned the lovely Helen Abercrombie, his +sister-in-law. Why he murdered Mrs. Abercrombie is not ascertained. It +may have been for a caprice, or to quicken some hideous sense of power +that was in him, or because she suspected something, or for no reason. +But the murder of Helen Abercrombie was carried out by himself and his +wife for the sake of a sum of about £18,000, for which they had insured +her life in various offices. The circumstances were as follows. On the +12th of December, he and his wife and child came up to London from Linden +House, and took lodgings at No. 12 Conduit Street, Regent Street. With +them were the two sisters, Helen and Madeleine Abercrombie. On the +evening of the 14th they all went to the play, and at supper that night +Helen sickened. The next day she was extremely ill, and Dr. Locock, of +Hanover Square, was called in to attend her. She lived till Monday, the +20th, when, after the doctor’s morning visit, Mr. and Mrs. Wainewright +brought her some poisoned jelly, and then went out for a walk. When they +returned Helen Abercrombie was dead. She was about twenty years of age, +a tall graceful girl with fair hair. A very charming red-chalk drawing +of her by her brother-in-law is still in existence, and shows how much +his style as an artist was influenced by Sir Thomas Lawrence, a painter +for whose work he had always entertained a great admiration. De Quincey +says that Mrs. Wainewright was not really privy to the murder. Let us +hope that she was not. Sin should be solitary, and have no accomplices. + +The insurance companies, suspecting the real facts of the case, declined +to pay the policy on the technical ground of misrepresentation and want +of interest, and, with curious courage, the poisoner entered an action in +the Court of Chancery against the Imperial, it being agreed that one +decision should govern all the cases. The trial, however, did not come +on for five years, when, after one disagreement, a verdict was ultimately +given in the companies’ favour. The judge on the occasion was Lord +Abinger. _Egomet Bonmot_ was represented by Mr. Erle and Sir William +Follet, and the Attorney-General and Sir Frederick Pollock appeared for +the other side. The plaintiff, unfortunately, was unable to be present +at either of the trials. The refusal of the companies to give him the +£18,000 had placed him in a position of most painful pecuniary +embarrassment. Indeed, a few months after the murder of Helen +Abercrombie, he had been actually arrested for debt in the streets of +London while he was serenading the pretty daughter of one of his friends. +This difficulty was got over at the time, but shortly afterwards he +thought it better to go abroad till he could come to some practical +arrangement with his creditors. He accordingly went to Boulogne on a +visit to the father of the young lady in question, and while he was there +induced him to insure his life with the Pelican Company for £3000. As +soon as the necessary formalities had been gone through and the policy +executed, he dropped some crystals of strychnine into his coffee as they +sat together one evening after dinner. He himself did not gain any +monetary advantage by doing this. His aim was simply to revenge himself +on the first office that had refused to pay him the price of his sin. +His friend died the next day in his presence, and he left Boulogne at +once for a sketching tour through the most picturesque parts of Brittany, +and was for some time the guest of an old French gentleman, who had a +beautiful country house at St. Omer. From this he moved to Paris, where +he remained for several years, living in luxury, some say, while others +talk of his ‘skulking with poison in his pocket, and being dreaded by all +who knew him.’ In 1837 he returned to England privately. Some strange +mad fascination brought him back. He followed a woman whom he loved. + +It was the month of June, and he was staying at one of the hotels in +Covent Garden. His sitting-room was on the ground floor, and he +prudently kept the blinds down for fear of being seen. Thirteen years +before, when he was making his fine collection of majolica and Marc +Antonios, he had forged the names of his trustees to a power of attorney, +which enabled him to get possession of some of the money which he had +inherited from his mother, and had brought into marriage settlement. He +knew that this forgery had been discovered, and that by returning to +England he was imperilling his life. Yet he returned. Should one +wonder? It was said that the woman was very beautiful. Besides, she did +not love him. + +It was by a mere accident that he was discovered. A noise in the street +attracted his attention, and, in his artistic interest in modern life, he +pushed aside the blind for a moment. Some one outside called out, +‘That’s Wainewright, the Bank-forger.’ It was Forrester, the Bow Street +runner. + +On the 5th of July he was brought up at the Old Bailey. The following +report of the proceedings appeared in the _Times_:— + + Before Mr. Justice Vaughan and Mr. Baron Alderson, Thomas Griffiths + Wainewright, aged forty-two, a man of gentlemanly appearance, wearing + mustachios, was indicted for forging and uttering a certain power of + attorney for £2259, with intent to defraud the Governor and Company + of the Bank of England. + + There were five indictments against the prisoner, to all of which he + pleaded not guilty, when he was arraigned before Mr. Serjeant Arabin + in the course of the morning. On being brought before the judges, + however, he begged to be allowed to withdraw the former plea, and + then pleaded guilty to two of the indictments which were not of a + capital nature. + + The counsel for the Bank having explained that there were three other + indictments, but that the Bank did not desire to shed blood, the plea + of guilty on the two minor charges was recorded, and the prisoner at + the close of the session sentenced by the Recorder to transportation + for life. + +He was taken back to Newgate, preparatory to his removal to the colonies. +In a fanciful passage in one of his early essays he had fancied himself +‘lying in Horsemonger Gaol under sentence of death’ for having been +unable to resist the temptation of stealing some Marc Antonios from the +British Museum in order to complete his collection. The sentence now +passed on him was to a man of his culture a form of death. He complained +bitterly of it to his friends, and pointed out, with a good deal of +reason, some people may fancy, that the money was practically his own, +having come to him from his mother, and that the forgery, such as it was, +had been committed thirteen years before, which, to use his own phrase, +was at least a _circonstance attenuante_. The permanence of personality +is a very subtle metaphysical problem, and certainly the English law +solves the question in an extremely rough-and-ready manner. There is, +however, something dramatic in the fact that this heavy punishment was +inflicted on him for what, if we remember his fatal influence on the +prose of modern journalism, was certainly not the worst of all his sins. + +While he was in gaol, Dickens, Macready, and Hablot Browne came across +him by chance. They had been going over the prisons of London, searching +for artistic effects, and in Newgate they suddenly caught sight of +Wainewright. He met them with a defiant stare, Forster tells us, but +Macready was ‘horrified to recognise a man familiarly known to him in +former years, and at whose table he had dined.’ + +Others had more curiosity, and his cell was for some time a kind of +fashionable lounge. Many men of letters went down to visit their old +literary comrade. But he was no longer the kind light-hearted Janus whom +Charles Lamb admired. He seems to have grown quite cynical. + +To the agent of an insurance company who was visiting him one afternoon, +and thought he would improve the occasion by pointing out that, after +all, crime was a bad speculation, he replied: ‘Sir, you City men enter on +your speculations, and take the chances of them. Some of your +speculations succeed, some fail. Mine happen to have failed, yours +happen to have succeeded. That is the only difference, sir, between my +visitor and me. But, sir, I will tell you one thing in which I have +succeeded to the last. I have been determined through life to hold the +position of a gentleman. I have always done so. I do so still. It is +the custom of this place that each of the inmates of a cell shall take +his morning’s turn of sweeping it out. I occupy a cell with a bricklayer +and a sweep, but they never offer me the broom!’ When a friend +reproached him with the murder of Helen Abercrombie he shrugged his +shoulders and said, ‘Yes; it was a dreadful thing to do, but she had very +thick ankles.’ + +From Newgate he was brought to the hulks at Portsmouth, and sent from +there in the _Susan_ to Van Diemen’s Land along with three hundred other +convicts. The voyage seems to have been most distasteful to him, and in +a letter written to a friend he spoke bitterly about the ignominy of ‘the +companion of poets and artists’ being compelled to associate with +‘country bumpkins.’ The phrase that he applies to his companions need +not surprise us. Crime in England is rarely the result of sin. It is +nearly always the result of starvation. There was probably no one on +board in whom he would have found a sympathetic listener, or even a +psychologically interesting nature. + +His love of art, however, never deserted him. At Hobart Town he started +a studio, and returned to sketching and portrait-painting, and his +conversation and manners seem not to have lost their charm. Nor did he +give up his habit of poisoning, and there are two cases on record in +which he tried to make away with people who had offended him. But his +hand seems to have lost its cunning. Both of his attempts were complete +failures, and in 1844, being thoroughly dissatisfied with Tasmanian +society, he presented a memorial to the governor of the settlement, Sir +John Eardley Wilmot, praying for a ticket-of-leave. In it he speaks of +himself as being ‘tormented by ideas struggling for outward form and +realisation, barred up from increase of knowledge, and deprived of the +exercise of profitable or even of decorous speech.’ His request, +however, was refused, and the associate of Coleridge consoled himself by +making those marvellous _Paradis Artificiels_ whose secret is only known +to the eaters of opium. In 1852 he died of apoplexy, his sole living +companion being a cat, for which he had evinced at extraordinary +affection. + +His crimes seem to have had an important effect upon his art. They gave +a strong personality to his style, a quality that his early work +certainly lacked. In a note to the _Life of Dickens_, Forster mentions +that in 1847 Lady Blessington received from her brother, Major Power, who +held a military appointment at Hobart Town, an oil portrait of a young +lady from his clever brush; and it is said that ‘he had contrived to put +the expression of his own wickedness into the portrait of a nice, +kind-hearted girl.’ M. Zola, in one of his novels, tells us of a young +man who, having committed a murder, takes to art, and paints greenish +impressionist portraits of perfectly respectable people, all of which +bear a curious resemblance to his victim. The development of Mr. +Wainewright’s style seems to me far more subtle and suggestive. One can +fancy an intense personality being created out of sin. + +This strange and fascinating figure that for a few years dazzled literary +London, and made so brilliant a _début_ in life and letters, is +undoubtedly a most interesting study. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, his latest +biographer, to whom I am indebted for many of the facts contained in this +memoir, and whose little book is, indeed, quite invaluable in its way, is +of opinion that his love of art and nature was a mere pretence and +assumption, and others have denied to him all literary power. This seems +to me a shallow, or at least a mistaken, view. The fact of a man being a +poisoner is nothing against his prose. The domestic virtues are not the +true basis of art, though they may serve as an excellent advertisement +for second-rate artists. It is possible that De Quincey exaggerated his +critical powers, and I cannot help saying again that there is much in his +published works that is too familiar, too common, too journalistic, in +the bad sense of that bad word. Here and there he is distinctly vulgar +in expression, and he is always lacking in the self-restraint of the true +artist. But for some of his faults we must blame the time in which he +lived, and, after all, prose that Charles Lamb thought ‘capital’ has no +small historic interest. That he had a sincere love of art and nature +seems to me quite certain. There is no essential incongruity between +crime and culture. We cannot re-write the whole of history for the +purpose of gratifying our moral sense of what should be. + +Of course, he is far too close to our own time for us to be able to form +any purely artistic judgment about him. It is impossible not to feel a +strong prejudice against a man who might have poisoned Lord Tennyson, or +Mr. Gladstone, or the Master of Balliol. But had the man worn a costume +and spoken a language different from our own, had he lived in imperial +Rome, or at the time of the Italian Renaissance, or in Spain in the +seventeenth century, or in any land or any century but this century and +this land, we would be quite able to arrive at a perfectly unprejudiced +estimate of his position and value. I know that there are many +historians, or at least writers on historical subjects, who still think +it necessary to apply moral judgments to history, and who distribute +their praise or blame with the solemn complacency of a successful +schoolmaster. This, however, is a foolish habit, and merely shows that +the moral instinct can be brought to such a pitch of perfection that it +will make its appearance wherever it is not required. Nobody with the +true historical sense ever dreams of blaming Nero, or scolding Tiberius, +or censuring Cæsar Borgia. These personages have become like the puppets +of a play. They may fill us with terror, or horror, or wonder, but they +do not harm us. They are not in immediate relation to us. We have +nothing to fear from them. They have passed into the sphere of art and +science, and neither art nor science knows anything of moral approval or +disapproval. And so it may be some day with Charles Lamb’s friend. At +present I feel that he is just a little too modern to be treated in that +fine spirit of disinterested curiosity to which we owe so many charming +studies of the great criminals of the Italian Renaissance from the pens +of Mr. John Addington Symonds, Miss A. Mary F. Robinson, Miss Vernon Lee, +and other distinguished writers. However, Art has not forgotten him. He +is the hero of Dickens’s _Hunted Down_, the Varney of Bulwer’s +_Lucretia_; and it is gratifying to note that fiction has paid some +homage to one who was so powerful with ‘pen, pencil and poison.’ To be +suggestive for fiction is to be of more importance than a fact. + + + + +THE CRITIC AS ARTIST +WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE +IMPORTANCE OF DOING NOTHING + + + _A DIALOGUE_. _Part I._ _Persons_: _Gilbert_ + _and Ernest_. _Scene_: _the library of a house in_ + _Piccadilly_, _overlooking the Green Park_. + +GILBERT (_at the Piano_). My dear Ernest, what are you laughing at? + +ERNEST (_looking up_). At a capital story that I have just come across +in this volume of Reminiscences that I have found on your table. + +GILBERT. What is the book? Ah! I see. I have not read it yet. Is it +good? + +ERNEST. Well, while you have been playing, I have been turning over the +pages with some amusement, though, as a rule, I dislike modern memoirs. +They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their +memories, or have never done anything worth remembering; which, however, +is, no doubt, the true explanation of their popularity, as the English +public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to +it. + +GILBERT. Yes: the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives +everything except genius. But I must confess that I like all memoirs. I +like them for their form, just as much as for their matter. In +literature mere egotism is delightful. It is what fascinates us in the +letters of personalities so different as Cicero and Balzac, Flaubert and +Berlioz, Byron and Madame de Sévigné. Whenever we come across it, and, +strangely enough, it is rather rare, we cannot but welcome it, and do not +easily forget it. Humanity will always love Rousseau for having +confessed his sins, not to a priest, but to the world, and the couchant +nymphs that Cellini wrought in bronze for the castle of King Francis, the +green and gold Perseus, even, that in the open Loggia at Florence shows +the moon the dead terror that once turned life to stone, have not given +it more pleasure than has that autobiography in which the supreme +scoundrel of the Renaissance relates the story of his splendour and his +shame. The opinions, the character, the achievements of the man, matter +very little. He may be a sceptic like the gentle Sieur de Montaigne, or +a saint like the bitter son of Monica, but when he tells us his own +secrets he can always charm our ears to listening and our lips to +silence. The mode of thought that Cardinal Newman represented—if that +can be called a mode of thought which seeks to solve intellectual +problems by a denial of the supremacy of the intellect—may not, cannot, I +think, survive. But the world will never weary of watching that troubled +soul in its progress from darkness to darkness. The lonely church at +Littlemore, where ‘the breath of the morning is damp, and worshippers are +few,’ will always be dear to it, and whenever men see the yellow +snapdragon blossoming on the wall of Trinity they will think of that +gracious undergraduate who saw in the flower’s sure recurrence a prophecy +that he would abide for ever with the Benign Mother of his days—a +prophecy that Faith, in her wisdom or her folly, suffered not to be +fulfilled. Yes; autobiography is irresistible. Poor, silly, conceited +Mr. Secretary Pepys has chattered his way into the circle of the +Immortals, and, conscious that indiscretion is the better part of valour, +bustles about among them in that ‘shaggy purple gown with gold buttons +and looped lace’ which he is so fond of describing to us, perfectly at +his ease, and prattling, to his own and our infinite pleasure, of the +Indian blue petticoat that he bought for his wife, of the ‘good hog’s +hars-let,’ and the ‘pleasant French fricassee of veal’ that he loved to +eat, of his game of bowls with Will Joyce, and his ‘gadding after +beauties,’ and his reciting of _Hamlet_ on a Sunday, and his playing of +the viol on week days, and other wicked or trivial things. Even in +actual life egotism is not without its attractions. When people talk to +us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about +themselves they are nearly always interesting, and if one could shut them +up, when they become wearisome, as easily as one can shut up a book of +which one has grown wearied, they would be perfect absolutely. + +ERNEST. There is much virtue in that If, as Touchstone would say. But +do you seriously propose that every man should become his own Boswell? +What would become of our industrious compilers of Lives and Recollections +in that case? + +GILBERT. What has become of them? They are the pest of the age, nothing +more and nothing less. Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and +it is always Judas who writes the biography. + +ERNEST. My dear fellow! + +GILBERT. I am afraid it is true. Formerly we used to canonise our +heroes. The modern method is to vulgarise them. Cheap editions of great +books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely +detestable. + +ERNEST. May I ask, Gilbert, to whom you allude? + +GILBERT. Oh! to all our second-rate _littérateurs_. We are overrun by a +set of people who, when poet or painter passes away, arrive at the house +along with the undertaker, and forget that their one duty is to behave as +mutes. But we won’t talk about them. They are the mere body-snatchers +of literature. The dust is given to one, and the ashes to another, and +the soul is out of their reach. And now, let me play Chopin to you, or +Dvorák? Shall I play you a fantasy by Dvorák? He writes passionate, +curiously-coloured things. + +ERNEST. No; I don’t want music just at present. It is far too +indefinite. Besides, I took the Baroness Bernstein down to dinner last +night, and, though absolutely charming in every other respect, she +insisted on discussing music as if it were actually written in the German +language. Now, whatever music sounds like I am glad to say that it does +not sound in the smallest degree like German. There are forms of +patriotism that are really quite degrading. No; Gilbert, don’t play any +more. Turn round and talk to me. Talk to me till the white-horned day +comes into the room. There is something in your voice that is wonderful. + +GILBERT (_rising from the piano_). I am not in a mood for talking +to-night. I really am not. How horrid of you to smile! Where are the +cigarettes? Thanks. How exquisite these single daffodils are! They +seem to be made of amber and cool ivory. They are like Greek things of +the best period. What was the story in the confessions of the remorseful +Academician that made you laugh? Tell it to me. After playing Chopin, I +feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and +mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me +to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been +ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden +from one’s tears. I can fancy a man who had led a perfectly commonplace +life, hearing by chance some curious piece of music, and suddenly +discovering that his soul, without his being conscious of it, had passed +through terrible experiences, and known fearful joys, or wild romantic +loves, or great renunciations. And so tell me this story, Ernest. I +want to be amused. + +ERNEST. Oh! I don’t know that it is of any importance. But I thought +it a really admirable illustration of the true value of ordinary +art-criticism. It seems that a lady once gravely asked the remorseful +Academician, as you call him, if his celebrated picture of ‘A Spring-Day +at Whiteley’s,’ or, ‘Waiting for the Last Omnibus,’ or some subject of +that kind, was all painted by hand? + +GILBERT. And was it? + +ERNEST. You are quite incorrigible. But, seriously speaking, what is +the use of art-criticism? Why cannot the artist be left alone, to create +a new world if he wishes it, or, if not, to shadow forth the world which +we already know, and of which, I fancy, we would each one of us be +wearied if Art, with her fine spirit of choice and delicate instinct of +selection, did not, as it were, purify it for us, and give to it a +momentary perfection. It seems to me that the imagination spreads, or +should spread, a solitude around it, and works best in silence and in +isolation. Why should the artist be troubled by the shrill clamour of +criticism? Why should those who cannot create take upon themselves to +estimate the value of creative work? What can they know about it? If a +man’s work is easy to understand, an explanation is unnecessary. . . . + +GILBERT. And if his work is incomprehensible, an explanation is wicked. + +ERNEST. I did not say that. + +GILBERT. Ah! but you should have. Nowadays, we have so few mysteries +left to us that we cannot afford to part with one of them. The members +of the Browning Society, like the theologians of the Broad Church Party, +or the authors of Mr. Walter Scott’s Great Writers Series, seem to me to +spend their time in trying to explain their divinity away. Where one had +hoped that Browning was a mystic they have sought to show that he was +simply inarticulate. Where one had fancied that he had something to +conceal, they have proved that he had but little to reveal. But I speak +merely of his incoherent work. Taken as a whole the man was great. He +did not belong to the Olympians, and had all the incompleteness of the +Titan. He did not survey, and it was but rarely that he could sing. His +work is marred by struggle, violence and effort, and he passed not from +emotion to form, but from thought to chaos. Still, he was great. He has +been called a thinker, and was certainly a man who was always thinking, +and always thinking aloud; but it was not thought that fascinated him, +but rather the processes by which thought moves. It was the machine he +loved, not what the machine makes. The method by which the fool arrives +at his folly was as dear to him as the ultimate wisdom of the wise. So +much, indeed, did the subtle mechanism of mind fascinate him that he +despised language, or looked upon it as an incomplete instrument of +expression. Rhyme, that exquisite echo which in the Muse’s hollow hill +creates and answers its own voice; rhyme, which in the hands of the real +artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical beauty, but a +spiritual element of thought and passion also, waking a new mood, it may +be, or stirring a fresh train of ideas, or opening by mere sweetness and +suggestion of sound some golden door at which the Imagination itself had +knocked in vain; rhyme, which can turn man’s utterance to the speech of +gods; rhyme, the one chord we have added to the Greek lyre, became in +Robert Browning’s hands a grotesque, misshapen thing, which at times made +him masquerade in poetry as a low comedian, and ride Pegasus too often +with his tongue in his cheek. There are moments when he wounds us by +monstrous music. Nay, if he can only get his music by breaking the +strings of his lute, he breaks them, and they snap in discord, and no +Athenian tettix, making melody from tremulous wings, lights on the ivory +horn to make the movement perfect, or the interval less harsh. Yet, he +was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from +it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since +Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could +stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and +speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the +pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks +still burning from some girl’s hot kiss. There, stands dread Saul with +the lordly male-sapphires gleaming in his turban. Mildred Tresham is +there, and the Spanish monk, yellow with hatred, and Blougram, and Ben +Ezra, and the Bishop of St. Praxed’s. The spawn of Setebos gibbers in +the corner, and Sebald, hearing Pippa pass by, looks on Ottima’s haggard +face, and loathes her and his own sin, and himself. Pale as the white +satin of his doublet, the melancholy king watches with dreamy treacherous +eyes too loyal Strafford pass forth to his doom, and Andrea shudders as +he hears the cousins whistle in the garden, and bids his perfect wife go +down. Yes, Browning was great. And as what will he be remembered? As a +poet? Ah, not as a poet! He will be remembered as a writer of fiction, +as the most supreme writer of fiction, it may be, that we have ever had. +His sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled, and, if he could not +answer his own problems, he could at least put problems forth, and what +more should an artist do? Considered from the point of view of a creator +of character he ranks next to him who made Hamlet. Had he been +articulate, he might have sat beside him. The only man who can touch the +hem of his garment is George Meredith. Meredith is a prose Browning, and +so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose. + +ERNEST. There is something in what you say, but there is not everything +in what you say. In many points you are unjust. + +GILBERT. It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves. But let us +return to the particular point at issue. What was it that you said? + +ERNEST. Simply this: that in the best days of art there were no +art-critics. + +GILBERT. I seem to have heard that observation before, Ernest. It has +all the vitality of error and all the tediousness of an old friend. + +ERNEST. It is true. Yes: there is no use your tossing your head in that +petulant manner. It is quite true. In the best days of art there were +no art-critics. The sculptor hewed from the marble block the great +white-limbed Hermes that slept within it. The waxers and gilders of +images gave tone and texture to the statue, and the world, when it saw +it, worshipped and was dumb. He poured the glowing bronze into the mould +of sand, and the river of red metal cooled into noble curves and took the +impress of the body of a god. With enamel or polished jewels he gave +sight to the sightless eyes. The hyacinth-like curls grew crisp beneath +his graver. And when, in some dim frescoed fane, or pillared sunlit +portico, the child of Leto stood upon his pedestal, those who passed by, +δια λαμπροτάτου βαίνοντες αβρως αιθέρος, became conscious of a new +influence that had come across their lives, and dreamily, or with a sense +of strange and quickening joy, went to their homes or daily labour, or +wandered, it may be, through the city gates to that nymph-haunted meadow +where young Phædrus bathed his feet, and, lying there on the soft grass, +beneath the tall wind—whispering planes and flowering _agnus castus_, +began to think of the wonder of beauty, and grew silent with unaccustomed +awe. In those days the artist was free. From the river valley he took +the fine clay in his fingers, and with a little tool of wood or bone, +fashioned it into forms so exquisite that the people gave them to the +dead as their playthings, and we find them still in the dusty tombs on +the yellow hillside by Tanagra, with the faint gold and the fading +crimson still lingering about hair and lips and raiment. On a wall of +fresh plaster, stained with bright sandyx or mixed with milk and saffron, +he pictured one who trod with tired feet the purple white-starred fields +of asphodel, one ‘in whose eyelids lay the whole of the Trojan War,’ +Polyxena, the daughter of Priam; or figured Odysseus, the wise and +cunning, bound by tight cords to the mast-step, that he might listen +without hurt to the singing of the Sirens, or wandering by the clear +river of Acheron, where the ghosts of fishes flitted over the pebbly bed; +or showed the Persian in trews and mitre flying before the Greek at +Marathon, or the galleys clashing their beaks of brass in the little +Salaminian bay. He drew with silver-point and charcoal upon parchment +and prepared cedar. Upon ivory and rose-coloured terracotta he painted +with wax, making the wax fluid with juice of olives, and with heated +irons making it firm. Panel and marble and linen canvas became wonderful +as his brush swept across them; and life seeing her own image, was still, +and dared not speak. All life, indeed, was his, from the merchants +seated in the market-place to the cloaked shepherd lying on the hill; +from the nymph hidden in the laurels and the faun that pipes at noon, to +the king whom, in long green-curtained litter, slaves bore upon +oil-bright shoulders, and fanned with peacock fans. Men and women, with +pleasure or sorrow in their faces, passed before him. He watched them, +and their secret became his. Through form and colour he re-created a +world. + +All subtle arts belonged to him also. He held the gem against the +revolving disk, and the amethyst became the purple couch for Adonis, and +across the veined sardonyx sped Artemis with her hounds. He beat out the +gold into roses, and strung them together for necklace or armlet. He +beat out the gold into wreaths for the conqueror’s helmet, or into +palmates for the Tyrian robe, or into masks for the royal dead. On the +back of the silver mirror he graved Thetis borne by her Nereids, or +love-sick Phædra with her nurse, or Persephone, weary of memory, putting +poppies in her hair. The potter sat in his shed, and, flower-like from +the silent wheel, the vase rose up beneath his hands. He decorated the +base and stem and ears with pattern of dainty olive-leaf, or foliated +acanthus, or curved and crested wave. Then in black or red he painted +lads wrestling, or in the race: knights in full armour, with strange +heraldic shields and curious visors, leaning from shell-shaped chariot +over rearing steeds: the gods seated at the feast or working their +miracles: the heroes in their victory or in their pain. Sometimes he +would etch in thin vermilion lines upon a ground of white the languid +bridegroom and his bride, with Eros hovering round them—an Eros like one +of Donatello’s angels, a little laughing thing with gilded or with azure +wings. On the curved side he would write the name of his friend. ΚΑΛΟΣ +ΑΛΚΙΒΙΑΔΗΣ or ΚΑΛΟΣ ΧΑΡΜΙΔΗΣ tells us the story of his days. Again, on +the rim of the wide flat cup he would draw the stag browsing, or the lion +at rest, as his fancy willed it. From the tiny perfume-bottle laughed +Aphrodite at her toilet, and, with bare-limbed Mænads in his train, +Dionysus danced round the wine-jar on naked must-stained feet, while, +satyr-like, the old Silenus sprawled upon the bloated skins, or shook +that magic spear which was tipped with a fretted fir-cone, and wreathed +with dark ivy. And no one came to trouble the artist at his work. No +irresponsible chatter disturbed him. He was not worried by opinions. By +the Ilyssus, says Arnold somewhere, there was no Higginbotham. By the +Ilyssus, my dear Gilbert, there were no silly art congresses bringing +provincialism to the provinces and teaching the mediocrity how to mouth. +By the Ilyssus there were no tedious magazines about art, in which the +industrious prattle of what they do not understand. On the reed-grown +banks of that little stream strutted no ridiculous journalism +monopolising the seat of judgment when it should be apologising in the +dock. The Greeks had no art-critics. + +GILBERT. Ernest, you are quite delightful, but your views are terribly +unsound. I am afraid that you have been listening to the conversation of +some one older than yourself. That is always a dangerous thing to do, +and if you allow it to degenerate into a habit you will find it +absolutely fatal to any intellectual development. As for modern +journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own +existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the +vulgarest. I have merely to do with literature. + +ERNEST. But what is the difference between literature and journalism? + +GILBERT. Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. That +is all. But with regard to your statement that the Greeks had no +art-critics, I assure you that is quite absurd. It would be more just to +say that the Greeks were a nation of art-critics. + +ERNEST. Really? + +GILBERT. Yes, a nation of art-critics. But I don’t wish to destroy the +delightfully unreal picture that you have drawn of the relation of the +Hellenic artist to the intellectual spirit of his age. To give an +accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper +occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of +parts and culture. Still less do I desire to talk learnedly. Learned +conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession +of the mentally unemployed. And, as for what is called improving +conversation, that is merely the foolish method by which the still more +foolish philanthropist feebly tries to disarm the just rancour of the +criminal classes. No: let me play to you some mad scarlet thing by +Dvorák. The pallid figures on the tapestry are smiling at us, and the +heavy eyelids of my bronze Narcissus are folded in sleep. Don’t let us +discuss anything solemnly. I am but too conscious of the fact that we +are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live +in terror of not being misunderstood. Don’t degrade me into the position +of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but +it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth +knowing can be taught. Through the parted curtains of the window I see +the moon like a clipped piece of silver. Like gilded bees the stars +cluster round her. The sky is a hard hollow sapphire. Let us go out +into the night. Thought is wonderful, but adventure is more wonderful +still. Who knows but we may meet Prince Florizel of Bohemia, and hear +the fair Cuban tell us that she is not what she seems? + +ERNEST. You are horribly wilful. I insist on your discussing this +matter with me. You have said that the Greeks were a nation of +art-critics. What art-criticism have they left us? + +GILBERT. My dear Ernest, even if not a single fragment of art-criticism +had come down to us from Hellenic or Hellenistic days, it would be none +the less true that the Greeks were a nation of art-critics, and that they +invented the criticism of art just as they invented the criticism of +everything else. For, after all, what is our primary debt to the Greeks? +Simply the critical spirit. And, this spirit, which they exercised on +questions of religion and science, of ethics and metaphysics, of politics +and education, they exercised on questions of art also, and, indeed, of +the two supreme and highest arts, they have left us the most flawless +system of criticism that the world has ever seen. + +ERNEST. But what are the two supreme and highest arts? + +GILBERT. Life and Literature, life and the perfect expression of life. +The principles of the former, as laid down by the Greeks, we may not +realise in an age so marred by false ideals as our own. The principles +of the latter, as they laid them down, are, in many cases, so subtle that +we can hardly understand them. Recognising that the most perfect art is +that which most fully mirrors man in all his infinite variety, they +elaborated the criticism of language, considered in the light of the mere +material of that art, to a point to which we, with our accentual system +of reasonable or emotional emphasis, can barely if at all attain; +studying, for instance, the metrical movements of a prose as +scientifically as a modern musician studies harmony and counterpoint, +and, I need hardly say, with much keener æsthetic instinct. In this they +were right, as they were right in all things. Since the introduction of +printing, and the fatal development of the habit of reading amongst the +middle and lower classes of this country, there has been a tendency in +literature to appeal more and more to the eye, and less and less to the +ear which is really the sense which, from the standpoint of pure art, it +should seek to please, and by whose canons of pleasure it should abide +always. Even the work of Mr. Pater, who is, on the whole, the most +perfect master of English prose now creating amongst us, is often far +more like a piece of mosaic than a passage in music, and seems, here and +there, to lack the true rhythmical life of words and the fine freedom and +richness of effect that such rhythmical life produces. We, in fact, have +made writing a definite mode of composition, and have treated it as a +form of elaborate design. The Greeks, upon the other hand, regarded +writing simply as a method of chronicling. Their test was always the +spoken word in its musical and metrical relations. The voice was the +medium, and the ear the critic. I have sometimes thought that the story +of Homer’s blindness might be really an artistic myth, created in +critical days, and serving to remind us, not merely that the great poet +is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with +the eyes of the soul, but that he is a true singer also, building his +song out of music, repeating each line over and over again to himself +till he has caught the secret of its melody, chaunting in darkness the +words that are winged with light. Certainly, whether this be so or not, +it was to his blindness, as an occasion, if not as a cause, that +England’s great poet owed much of the majestic movement and sonorous +splendour of his later verse. When Milton could no longer write he began +to sing. Who would match the measures of _Comus_ with the measures of +_Samson Agonistes_, or of _Paradise Lost_ or _Regained_? When Milton +became blind he composed, as every one should compose, with the voice +purely, and so the pipe or reed of earlier days became that mighty +many-stopped organ whose rich reverberant music has all the stateliness +of Homeric verse, if it seeks not to have its swiftness, and is the one +imperishable inheritance of English literature sweeping through all the +ages, because above them, and abiding with us ever, being immortal in its +form. Yes: writing has done much harm to writers. We must return to the +voice. That must be our test, and perhaps then we shall be able to +appreciate some of the subtleties of Greek art-criticism. + +As it now is, we cannot do so. Sometimes, when I have written a piece of +prose that I have been modest enough to consider absolutely free from +fault, a dreadful thought comes over me that I may have been guilty of +the immoral effeminacy of using trochaic and tribrachic movements, a +crime for which a learned critic of the Augustan age censures with most +just severity the brilliant if somewhat paradoxical Hegesias. I grow +cold when I think of it, and wonder to myself if the admirable ethical +effect of the prose of that charming writer, who once in a spirit of +reckless generosity towards the uncultivated portion of our community +proclaimed the monstrous doctrine that conduct is three-fourths of life, +will not some day be entirely annihilated by the discovery that the pæons +have been wrongly placed. + +ERNEST. Ah! now you are flippant. + +GILBERT. Who would not be flippant when he is gravely told that the +Greeks had no art-critics? I can understand it being said that the +constructive genius of the Greeks lost itself in criticism, but not that +the race to whom we owe the critical spirit did not criticise. You will +not ask me to give you a survey of Greek art criticism from Plato to +Plotinus. The night is too lovely for that, and the moon, if she heard +us, would put more ashes on her face than are there already. But think +merely of one perfect little work of æsthetic criticism, Aristotle’s +_Treatise on Poetry_. It is not perfect in form, for it is badly +written, consisting perhaps of notes dotted down for an art lecture, or +of isolated fragments destined for some larger book, but in temper and +treatment it is perfect, absolutely. The ethical effect of art, its +importance to culture, and its place in the formation of character, had +been done once for all by Plato; but here we have art treated, not from +the moral, but from the purely æsthetic point of view. Plato had, of +course, dealt with many definitely artistic subjects, such as the +importance of unity in a work of art, the necessity for tone and harmony, +the æsthetic value of appearances, the relation of the visible arts to +the external world, and the relation of fiction to fact. He first +perhaps stirred in the soul of man that desire that we have not yet +satisfied, the desire to know the connection between Beauty and Truth, +and the place of Beauty in the moral and intellectual order of the +Kosmos. The problems of idealism and realism, as he sets them forth, may +seem to many to be somewhat barren of result in the metaphysical sphere +of abstract being in which he places them, but transfer them to the +sphere of art, and you will find that they are still vital and full of +meaning. It may be that it is as a critic of Beauty that Plato is +destined to live, and that by altering the name of the sphere of his +speculation we shall find a new philosophy. But Aristotle, like Goethe, +deals with art primarily in its concrete manifestations, taking Tragedy, +for instance, and investigating the material it uses, which is language, +its subject-matter, which is life, the method by which it works, which is +action, the conditions under which it reveals itself, which are those of +theatric presentation, its logical structure, which is plot, and its +final æsthetic appeal, which is to the sense of beauty realised through +the passions of pity and awe. That purification and spiritualising of +the nature which he calls κάθαρσις is, as Goethe saw, essentially +æsthetic, and is not moral, as Lessing fancied. Concerning himself +primarily with the impression that the work of art produces, Aristotle +sets himself to analyse that impression, to investigate its source, to +see how it is engendered. As a physiologist and psychologist, he knows +that the health of a function resides in energy. To have a capacity for +a passion and not to realise it, is to make oneself incomplete and +limited. The mimic spectacle of life that Tragedy affords cleanses the +bosom of much ‘perilous stuff,’ and by presenting high and worthy objects +for the exercise of the emotions purifies and spiritualises the man; nay, +not merely does it spiritualise him, but it initiates him also into noble +feelings of which he might else have known nothing, the word κάθαρσις +having, it has sometimes seemed to me, a definite allusion to the rite of +initiation, if indeed that be not, as I am occasionally tempted to fancy, +its true and only meaning here. This is of course a mere outline of the +book. But you see what a perfect piece of æsthetic criticism it is. Who +indeed but a Greek could have analysed art so well? After reading it, +one does not wonder any longer that Alexandria devoted itself so largely +to art-criticism, and that we find the artistic temperaments of the day +investigating every question of style and manner, discussing the great +Academic schools of painting, for instance, such as the school of Sicyon, +that sought to preserve the dignified traditions of the antique mode, or +the realistic and impressionist schools, that aimed at reproducing actual +life, or the elements of ideality in portraiture, or the artistic value +of the epic form in an age so modern as theirs, or the proper +subject-matter for the artist. Indeed, I fear that the inartistic +temperaments of the day busied themselves also in matters of literature +and art, for the accusations of plagiarism were endless, and such +accusations proceed either from the thin colourless lips of impotence, or +from the grotesque mouths of those who, possessing nothing of their own, +fancy that they can gain a reputation for wealth by crying out that they +have been robbed. And I assure you, my dear Ernest, that the Greeks +chattered about painters quite as much as people do nowadays, and had +their private views, and shilling exhibitions, and Arts and Crafts +guilds, and Pre-Raphaelite movements, and movements towards realism, and +lectured about art, and wrote essays on art, and produced their +art-historians, and their archæologists, and all the rest of it. Why, +even the theatrical managers of travelling companies brought their +dramatic critics with them when they went on tour, and paid them very +handsome salaries for writing laudatory notices. Whatever, in fact, is +modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is +due to mediævalism. It is the Greeks who have given us the whole system +of art-criticism, and how fine their critical instinct was, may be seen +from the fact that the material they criticised with most care was, as I +have already said, language. For the material that painter or sculptor +uses is meagre in comparison with that of words. Words have not merely +music as sweet as that of viol and lute, colour as rich and vivid as any +that makes lovely for us the canvas of the Venetian or the Spaniard, and +plastic form no less sure and certain than that which reveals itself in +marble or in bronze, but thought and passion and spirituality are theirs +also, are theirs indeed alone. If the Greeks had criticised nothing but +language, they would still have been the great art-critics of the world. +To know the principles of the highest art is to know the principles of +all the arts. + +But I see that the moon is hiding behind a sulphur-coloured cloud. Out +of a tawny mane of drift she gleams like a lion’s eye. She is afraid +that I will talk to you of Lucian and Longinus, of Quinctilian and +Dionysius, of Pliny and Fronto and Pausanias, of all those who in the +antique world wrote or lectured upon art matters. She need not be +afraid. I am tired of my expedition into the dim, dull abyss of facts. +There is nothing left for me now but the divine μονόχρονος ηδονή of +another cigarette. Cigarettes have at least the charm of leaving one +unsatisfied. + +ERNEST. Try one of mine. They are rather good. I get them direct from +Cairo. The only use of our _attachés_ is that they supply their friends +with excellent tobacco. And as the moon has hidden herself, let us talk +a little longer. I am quite ready to admit that I was wrong in what I +said about the Greeks. They were, as you have pointed out, a nation of +art-critics. I acknowledge it, and I feel a little sorry for them. For +the creative faculty is higher than the critical. There is really no +comparison between them. + +GILBERT. The antithesis between them is entirely arbitrary. Without the +critical faculty, there is no artistic creation at all, worthy of the +name. You spoke a little while ago of that fine spirit of choice and +delicate instinct of selection by which the artist realises life for us, +and gives to it a momentary perfection. Well, that spirit of choice, +that subtle tact of omission, is really the critical faculty in one of +its most characteristic moods, and no one who does not possess this +critical faculty can create anything at all in art. Arnold’s definition +of literature as a criticism of life was not very felicitous in form, but +it showed how keenly he recognised the importance of the critical element +in all creative work. + +ERNEST. I should have said that great artists work unconsciously, that +they were ‘wiser than they knew,’ as, I think, Emerson remarks somewhere. + +GILBERT. It is really not so, Ernest. All fine imaginative work is +self-conscious and deliberate. No poet sings because he must sing. At +least, no great poet does. A great poet sings because he chooses to +sing. It is so now, and it has always been so. We are sometimes apt to +think that the voices that sounded at the dawn of poetry were simpler, +fresher, and more natural than ours, and that the world which the early +poets looked at, and through which they walked, had a kind of poetical +quality of its own, and almost without changing could pass into song. +The snow lies thick now upon Olympus, and its steep scarped sides are +bleak and barren, but once, we fancy, the white feet of the Muses brushed +the dew from the anemones in the morning, and at evening came Apollo to +sing to the shepherds in the vale. But in this we are merely lending to +other ages what we desire, or think we desire, for our own. Our +historical sense is at fault. Every century that produces poetry is, so +far, an artificial century, and the work that seems to us to be the most +natural and simple product of its time is always the result of the most +self-conscious effort. Believe me, Ernest, there is no fine art without +self-consciousness, and self-consciousness and the critical spirit are +one. + +ERNEST. I see what you mean, and there is much in it. But surely you +would admit that the great poems of the early world, the primitive, +anonymous collective poems, were the result of the imagination of races, +rather than of the imagination of individuals? + +GILBERT. Not when they became poetry. Not when they received a +beautiful form. For there is no art where there is no style, and no +style where there is no unity, and unity is of the individual. No doubt +Homer had old ballads and stories to deal with, as Shakespeare had +chronicles and plays and novels from which to work, but they were merely +his rough material. He took them, and shaped them into song. They +become his, because he made them lovely. They were built out of music, + + And so not built at all, + And therefore built for ever. + +The longer one studies life and literature, the more strongly one feels +that behind everything that is wonderful stands the individual, and that +it is not the moment that makes the man, but the man who creates the age. +Indeed, I am inclined to think that each myth and legend that seems to us +to spring out of the wonder, or terror, or fancy of tribe and nation, was +in its origin the invention of one single mind. The curiously limited +number of the myths seems to me to point to this conclusion. But we must +not go off into questions of comparative mythology. We must keep to +criticism. And what I want to point out is this. An age that has no +criticism is either an age in which art is immobile, hieratic, and +confined to the reproduction of formal types, or an age that possesses no +art at all. There have been critical ages that have not been creative, +in the ordinary sense of the word, ages in which the spirit of man has +sought to set in order the treasures of his treasure-house, to separate +the gold from the silver, and the silver from the lead, to count over the +jewels, and to give names to the pearls. But there has never been a +creative age that has not been critical also. For it is the critical +faculty that invents fresh forms. The tendency of creation is to repeat +itself. It is to the critical instinct that we owe each new school that +springs up, each new mould that art finds ready to its hand. There is +really not a single form that art now uses that does not come to us from +the critical spirit of Alexandria, where these forms were either +stereotyped or invented or made perfect. I say Alexandria, not merely +because it was there that the Greek spirit became most self-conscious, +and indeed ultimately expired in scepticism and theology, but because it +was to that city, and not to Athens, that Rome turned for her models, and +it was through the survival, such as it was, of the Latin language that +culture lived at all. When, at the Renaissance, Greek literature dawned +upon Europe, the soil had been in some measure prepared for it. But, to +get rid of the details of history, which are always wearisome and usually +inaccurate, let us say generally, that the forms of art have been due to +the Greek critical spirit. To it we owe the epic, the lyric, the entire +drama in every one of its developments, including burlesque, the idyll, +the romantic novel, the novel of adventure, the essay, the dialogue, the +oration, the lecture, for which perhaps we should not forgive them, and +the epigram, in all the wide meaning of that word. In fact, we owe it +everything, except the sonnet, to which, however, some curious parallels +of thought-movement may be traced in the Anthology, American journalism, +to which no parallel can be found anywhere, and the ballad in sham Scotch +dialect, which one of our most industrious writers has recently proposed +should be made the basis for a final and unanimous effort on the part of +our second-rate poets to make themselves really romantic. Each new +school, as it appears, cries out against criticism, but it is to the +critical faculty in man that it owes its origin. The mere creative +instinct does not innovate, but reproduces. + +ERNEST. You have been talking of criticism as an essential part of the +creative spirit, and I now fully accept your theory. But what of +criticism outside creation? I have a foolish habit of reading +periodicals, and it seems to me that most modern criticism is perfectly +valueless. + +GILBERT. So is most modern creative work also. Mediocrity weighing +mediocrity in the balance, and incompetence applauding its brother—that +is the spectacle which the artistic activity of England affords us from +time to time. And yet, I feel I am a little unfair in this matter. As a +rule, the critics—I speak, of course, of the higher class, of those in +fact who write for the sixpenny papers—are far more cultured than the +people whose work they are called upon to review. This is, indeed, only +what one would expect, for criticism demands infinitely more cultivation +than creation does. + +ERNEST. Really? + +GILBERT. Certainly. Anybody can write a three-volumed novel. It merely +requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature. The +difficulty that I should fancy the reviewer feels is the difficulty of +sustaining any standard. Where there is no style a standard must be +impossible. The poor reviewers are apparently reduced to be the +reporters of the police-court of literature, the chroniclers of the +doings of the habitual criminals of art. It is sometimes said of them +that they do not read all through the works they are called upon to +criticise. They do not. Or at least they should not. If they did so, +they would become confirmed misanthropes, or if I may borrow a phrase +from one of the pretty Newnham graduates, confirmed womanthropes for the +rest of their lives. Nor is it necessary. To know the vintage and +quality of a wine one need not drink the whole cask. It must be +perfectly easy in half an hour to say whether a book is worth anything or +worth nothing. Ten minutes are really sufficient, if one has the +instinct for form. Who wants to wade through a dull volume? One tastes +it, and that is quite enough—more than enough, I should imagine. I am +aware that there are many honest workers in painting as well as in +literature who object to criticism entirely. They are quite right. +Their work stands in no intellectual relation to their age. It brings us +no new element of pleasure. It suggests no fresh departure of thought, +or passion, or beauty. It should not be spoken of. It should be left to +the oblivion that it deserves. + +ERNEST. But, my dear fellow—excuse me for interrupting you—you seem to +me to be allowing your passion for criticism to lead you a great deal too +far. For, after all, even you must admit that it is much more difficult +to do a thing than to talk about it. + +GILBERT. More difficult to do a thing than to talk about it? Not at +all. That is a gross popular error. It is very much more difficult to +talk about a thing than to do it. In the sphere of actual life that is +of course obvious. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write +it. There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share +with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, +or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, +of thought. Action, indeed, is always easy, and when presented to us in +its most aggravated, because most continuous form, which I take to be +that of real industry, becomes simply the refuge of people who have +nothing whatsoever to do. No, Ernest, don’t talk about action. It is a +blind thing dependent on external influences, and moved by an impulse of +whose nature it is unconscious. It is a thing incomplete in its essence, +because limited by accident, and ignorant of its direction, being always +at variance with its aim. Its basis is the lack of imagination. It is +the last resource of those who know not how to dream. + +ERNEST. Gilbert, you treat the world as if it were a crystal ball. You +hold it in your hand, and reverse it to please a wilful fancy. You do +nothing but re-write history. + +GILBERT. The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it. That is not +the least of the tasks in store for the critical spirit. When we have +fully discovered the scientific laws that govern life, we shall realise +that the one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of +action. He, indeed, knows neither the origin of his deeds nor their +results. From the field in which he thought that he had sown thorns, we +have gathered our vintage, and the fig-tree that he planted for our +pleasure is as barren as the thistle, and more bitter. It is because +Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find +its way. + +ERNEST. You think, then, that in the sphere of action a conscious aim is +a delusion? + +GILBERT. It is worse than a delusion. If we lived long enough to see +the results of our actions it may be that those who call themselves good +would be sickened with a dull remorse, and those whom the world calls +evil stirred by a noble joy. Each little thing that we do passes into +the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make +them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new +civilisation, more marvellous and more splendid than any that has gone +before. But men are the slaves of words. They rage against Materialism, +as they call it, forgetting that there has been no material improvement +that has not spiritualised the world, and that there have been few, if +any, spiritual awakenings that have not wasted the world’s faculties in +barren hopes, and fruitless aspirations, and empty or trammelling creeds. +What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the +world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless. By its +curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its +intensified assertion of individualism, it saves us from monotony of +type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one +with the higher ethics. And as for the virtues! What are the virtues? +Nature, M. Renan tells us, cares little about chastity, and it may be +that it is to the shame of the Magdalen, and not to their own purity, +that the Lucretias of modern life owe their freedom from stain. Charity, +as even those of whose religion it makes a formal part have been +compelled to acknowledge, creates a multitude of evils. The mere +existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so much +nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign of our imperfect +development. It must be merged in instinct before we become fine. +Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress, and +self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage, part of that +old worship of pain which is so terrible a factor in the history of the +world, and which even now makes its victims day by day, and has its +altars in the land. Virtues! Who knows what the virtues are? Not you. +Not I. Not any one. It is well for our vanity that we slay the +criminal, for if we suffered him to live he might show us what we had +gained by his crime. It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his +martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest. + +ERNEST. Gilbert, you sound too harsh a note. Let us go back to the more +gracious fields of literature. What was it you said? That it was more +difficult to talk about a thing than to do it? + +GILBERT (_after a pause_). Yes: I believe I ventured upon that simple +truth. Surely you see now that I am right? When man acts he is a +puppet. When he describes he is a poet. The whole secret lies in that. +It was easy enough on the sandy plains by windy Ilion to send the notched +arrow from the painted bow, or to hurl against the shield of hide and +flamelike brass the long ash-handled spear. It was easy for the +adulterous queen to spread the Tyrian carpets for her lord, and then, as +he lay couched in the marble bath, to throw over his head the purple net, +and call to her smooth-faced lover to stab through the meshes at the +heart that should have broken at Aulis. For Antigone even, with Death +waiting for her as her bridegroom, it was easy to pass through the +tainted air at noon, and climb the hill, and strew with kindly earth the +wretched naked corse that had no tomb. But what of those who wrote about +these things? What of those who gave them reality, and made them live +for ever? Are they not greater than the men and women they sing of? +‘Hector that sweet knight is dead,’ and Lucian tells us how in the dim +under-world Menippus saw the bleaching skull of Helen, and marvelled that +it was for so grim a favour that all those horned ships were launched, +those beautiful mailed men laid low, those towered cities brought to +dust. Yet, every day the swanlike daughter of Leda comes out on the +battlements, and looks down at the tide of war. The greybeards wonder at +her loveliness, and she stands by the side of the king. In his chamber +of stained ivory lies her leman. He is polishing his dainty armour, and +combing the scarlet plume. With squire and page, her husband passes from +tent to tent. She can see his bright hair, and hears, or fancies that +she hears, that clear cold voice. In the courtyard below, the son of +Priam is buckling on his brazen cuirass. The white arms of Andromache +are around his neck. He sets his helmet on the ground, lest their babe +should be frightened. Behind the embroidered curtains of his pavilion +sits Achilles, in perfumed raiment, while in harness of gilt and silver +the friend of his soul arrays himself to go forth to the fight. From a +curiously carven chest that his mother Thetis had brought to his +ship-side, the Lord of the Myrmidons takes out that mystic chalice that +the lip of man had never touched, and cleanses it with brimstone, and +with fresh water cools it, and, having washed his hands, fills with black +wine its burnished hollow, and spills the thick grape-blood upon the +ground in honour of Him whom at Dodona barefooted prophets worshipped, +and prays to Him, and knows not that he prays in vain, and that by the +hands of two knights from Troy, Panthous’ son, Euphorbus, whose +love-locks were looped with gold, and the Priamid, the lion-hearted, +Patroklus, the comrade of comrades, must meet his doom. Phantoms, are +they? Heroes of mist and mountain? Shadows in a song? No: they are +real. Action! What is action? It dies at the moment of its energy. It +is a base concession to fact. The world is made by the singer for the +dreamer. + +ERNEST. While you talk it seems to me to be so. + +GILBERT. It is so in truth. On the mouldering citadel of Troy lies the +lizard like a thing of green bronze. The owl has built her nest in the +palace of Priam. Over the empty plain wander shepherd and goatherd with +their flocks, and where, on the wine-surfaced, oily sea, οινοψ πόντος, as +Homer calls it, copper-prowed and streaked with vermilion, the great +galleys of the Danaoi came in their gleaming crescent, the lonely +tunny-fisher sits in his little boat and watches the bobbing corks of his +net. Yet, every morning the doors of the city are thrown open, and on +foot, or in horse-drawn chariot, the warriors go forth to battle, and +mock their enemies from behind their iron masks. All day long the fight +rages, and when night comes the torches gleam by the tents, and the +cresset burns in the hall. Those who live in marble or on painted panel, +know of life but a single exquisite instant, eternal indeed in its +beauty, but limited to one note of passion or one mood of calm. Those +whom the poet makes live have their myriad emotions of joy and terror, of +courage and despair, of pleasure and of suffering. The seasons come and +go in glad or saddening pageant, and with winged or leaden feet the years +pass by before them. They have their youth and their manhood, they are +children, and they grow old. It is always dawn for St. Helena, as +Veronese saw her at the window. Through the still morning air the angels +bring her the symbol of God’s pain. The cool breezes of the morning lift +the gilt threads from her brow. On that little hill by the city of +Florence, where the lovers of Giorgione are lying, it is always the +solstice of noon, of noon made so languorous by summer suns that hardly +can the slim naked girl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of +clear glass, and the long fingers of the lute-player rest idly upon the +chords. It is twilight always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free +among the silver poplars of France. In eternal twilight they move, those +frail diaphanous figures, whose tremulous white feet seem not to touch +the dew-drenched grass they tread on. But those who walk in epos, drama, +or romance, see through the labouring months the young moons wax and +wane, and watch the night from evening unto morning star, and from +sunrise unto sunsetting can note the shifting day with all its gold and +shadow. For them, as for us, the flowers bloom and wither, and the +Earth, that Green-tressed Goddess as Coleridge calls her, alters her +raiment for their pleasure. The statue is concentrated to one moment of +perfection. The image stained upon the canvas possesses no spiritual +element of growth or change. If they know nothing of death, it is +because they know little of life, for the secrets of life and death +belong to those, and those only, whom the sequence of time affects, and +who possess not merely the present but the future, and can rise or fall +from a past of glory or of shame. Movement, that problem of the visible +arts, can be truly realised by Literature alone. It is Literature that +shows us the body in its swiftness and the soul in its unrest. + +ERNEST. Yes; I see now what you mean. But, surely, the higher you place +the creative artist, the lower must the critic rank. + +GILBERT. Why so? + +ERNEST. Because the best that he can give us will be but an echo of rich +music, a dim shadow of clear-outlined form. It may, indeed, be that life +is chaos, as you tell me that it is; that its martyrdoms are mean and its +heroisms ignoble; and that it is the function of Literature to create, +from the rough material of actual existence, a new world that will be +more marvellous, more enduring, and more true than the world that common +eyes look upon, and through which common natures seek to realise their +perfection. But surely, if this new world has been made by the spirit +and touch of a great artist, it will be a thing so complete and perfect +that there will be nothing left for the critic to do. I quite understand +now, and indeed admit most readily, that it is far more difficult to talk +about a thing than to do it. But it seems to me that this sound and +sensible maxim, which is really extremely soothing to one’s feelings, and +should be adopted as its motto by every Academy of Literature all over +the world, applies only to the relations that exist between Art and Life, +and not to any relations that there may be between Art and Criticism. + +GILBERT. But, surely, Criticism is itself an art. And just as artistic +creation implies the working of the critical faculty, and, indeed, +without it cannot be said to exist at all, so Criticism is really +creative in the highest sense of the word. Criticism is, in fact, both +creative and independent. + +ERNEST. Independent? + +GILBERT. Yes; independent. Criticism is no more to be judged by any low +standard of imitation or resemblance than is the work of poet or +sculptor. The critic occupies the same relation to the work of art that +he criticises as the artist does to the visible world of form and colour, +or the unseen world of passion and of thought. He does not even require +for the perfection of his art the finest materials. Anything will serve +his purpose. And just as out of the sordid and sentimental amours of the +silly wife of a small country doctor in the squalid village of +Yonville-l’Abbaye, near Rouen, Gustave Flaubert was able to create a +classic, and make a masterpiece of style, so, from subjects of little or +of no importance, such as the pictures in this year’s Royal Academy, or +in any year’s Royal Academy for that matter, Mr. Lewis Morris’s poems, M. +Ohnet’s novels, or the plays of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, the true critic +can, if it be his pleasure so to direct or waste his faculty of +contemplation, produce work that will be flawless in beauty and instinct +with intellectual subtlety. Why not? Dulness is always an irresistible +temptation for brilliancy, and stupidity is the permanent _Bestia +Trionfans_ that calls wisdom from its cave. To an artist so creative as +the critic, what does subject-matter signify? No more and no less than +it does to the novelist and the painter. Like them, he can find his +motives everywhere. Treatment is the test. There is nothing that has +not in it suggestion or challenge. + +ERNEST. But is Criticism really a creative art? + +GILBERT. Why should it not be? It works with materials, and puts them +into a form that is at once new and delightful. What more can one say of +poetry? Indeed, I would call criticism a creation within a creation. +For just as the great artists, from Homer and Æschylus, down to +Shakespeare and Keats, did not go directly to life for their +subject-matter, but sought for it in myth, and legend, and ancient tale, +so the critic deals with materials that others have, as it were, purified +for him, and to which imaginative form and colour have been already +added. Nay, more, I would say that the highest Criticism, being the +purest form of personal impression, is in its way more creative than +creation, as it has least reference to any standard external to itself, +and is, in fact, its own reason for existing, and, as the Greeks would +put it, in itself, and to itself, an end. Certainly, it is never +trammelled by any shackles of verisimilitude. No ignoble considerations +of probability, that cowardly concession to the tedious repetitions of +domestic or public life, affect it ever. One may appeal from fiction +unto fact. But from the soul there is no appeal. + +ERNEST. From the soul? + +GILBERT. Yes, from the soul. That is what the highest criticism really +is, the record of one’s own soul. It is more fascinating than history, +as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than +philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not +vague. It is the only civilised form of autobiography, as it deals not +with the events, but with the thoughts of one’s life; not with life’s +physical accidents of deed or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods +and imaginative passions of the mind. I am always amused by the silly +vanity of those writers and artists of our day who seem to imagine that +the primary function of the critic is to chatter about their second-rate +work. The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it +is just a little less vulgar than reality, and so the critic, with his +fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement, will +prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil, and will +turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamour of actual existence, though +the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn. His sole aim is to +chronicle his own impressions. It is for him that pictures are painted, +books written, and marble hewn into form. + +ERNEST. I seem to have heard another theory of Criticism. + +GILBERT. Yes: it has been said by one whose gracious memory we all +revere, and the music of whose pipe once lured Proserpina from her +Sicilian fields, and made those white feet stir, and not in vain, the +Cumnor cowslips, that the proper aim of Criticism is to see the object as +in itself it really is. But this is a very serious error, and takes no +cognisance of Criticism’s most perfect form, which is in its essence +purely subjective, and seeks to reveal its own secret and not the secret +of another. For the highest Criticism deals with art not as expressive +but as impressive purely. + +ERNEST. But is that really so? + +GILBERT. Of course it is. Who cares whether Mr. Ruskin’s views on +Turner are sound or not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic +prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so +rich in its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, +in subtle choice of word and epithet, is at least as great a work of art +as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted +canvases in England’s Gallery; greater indeed, one is apt to think at +times, not merely because its equal beauty is more enduring, but on +account of the fuller variety of its appeal, soul speaking to soul in +those long-cadenced lines, not through form and colour alone, though +through these, indeed, completely and without loss, but with intellectual +and emotional utterance, with lofty passion and with loftier thought, +with imaginative insight, and with poetic aim; greater, I always think, +even as Literature is the greater art. Who, again, cares whether Mr. +Pater has put into the portrait of Monna Lisa something that Lionardo +never dreamed of? The painter may have been merely the slave of an +archaic smile, as some have fancied, but whenever I pass into the cool +galleries of the Palace of the Louvre, and stand before that strange +figure ‘set in its marble chair in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in +some faint light under sea,’ I murmur to myself, ‘She is older than the +rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many +times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep +seas, and keeps their fallen day about her: and trafficked for strange +webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of +Troy, and, as St. Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her +but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with +which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and +the hands.’ And I say to my friend, ‘The presence that thus so strangely +rose beside the waters is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand +years man had come to desire’; and he answers me, ‘Hers is the head upon +which all “the ends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a little +weary.’ + +And so the picture becomes more wonderful to us than it really is, and +reveals to us a secret of which, in truth, it knows nothing, and the +music of the mystical prose is as sweet in our ears as was that +flute-player’s music that lent to the lips of La Gioconda those subtle +and poisonous curves. Do you ask me what Lionardo would have said had +any one told him of this picture that ‘all the thoughts and experience of +the world had etched and moulded therein that which they had of power to +refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the +lust of Rome, the reverie of the Middle Age with its spiritual ambition +and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the +Borgias?’ He would probably have answered that he had contemplated none +of these things, but had concerned himself simply with certain +arrangements of lines and masses, and with new and curious +colour-harmonies of blue and green. And it is for this very reason that +the criticism which I have quoted is criticism of the highest kind. It +treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It +does not confine itself—let us at least suppose so for the moment—to +discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final. +And in this it is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing +is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in +his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the +beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and +sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital +portion of our lives, and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of +what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive. The longer I +study, Ernest, the more clearly I see that the beauty of the visible arts +is, as the beauty of music, impressive primarily, and that it may be +marred, and indeed often is so, by any excess of intellectual intention +on the part of the artist. For when the work is finished it has, as it +were, an independent life of its own, and may deliver a message far other +than that which was put into its lips to say. Sometimes, when I listen +to the overture to _Tannhäuser_, I seem indeed to see that comely knight +treading delicately on the flower-strewn grass, and to hear the voice of +Venus calling to him from the caverned hill. But at other times it +speaks to me of a thousand different things, of myself, it may be, and my +own life, or of the lives of others whom one has loved and grown weary of +loving, or of the passions that man has known, or of the passions that +man has not known, and so has sought for. To-night it may fill one with +that ΕΡΩΣ ΤΩΝ ΑΔΥΝΑΤΩΝ, that _Amour de l’Impossible_, which falls like a +madness on many who think they live securely and out of reach of harm, so +that they sicken suddenly with the poison of unlimited desire, and, in +the infinite pursuit of what they may not obtain, grow faint and swoon or +stumble. To-morrow, like the music of which Aristotle and Plato tell us, +the noble Dorian music of the Greek, it may perform the office of a +physician, and give us an anodyne against pain, and heal the spirit that +is wounded, and ‘bring the soul into harmony with all right things.’ And +what is true about music is true about all the arts. Beauty has as many +meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty +reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us +itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world. + +ERNEST. But is such work as you have talked about really criticism? + +GILBERT. It is the highest Criticism, for it criticises not merely the +individual work of art, but Beauty itself, and fills with wonder a form +which the artist may have left void, or not understood, or understood +incompletely. + +ERNEST. The highest Criticism, then, is more creative than creation, and +the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really +is not; that is your theory, I believe? + +GILBERT. Yes, that is my theory. To the critic the work of art is +simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not necessarily +bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticises. The one +characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can put into it whatever +one wishes, and see in it whatever one chooses to see; and the Beauty, +that gives to creation its universal and æsthetic element, makes the +critic a creator in his turn, and whispers of a thousand different things +which were not present in the mind of him who carved the statue or +painted the panel or graved the gem. + +It is sometimes said by those who understand neither the nature of the +highest Criticism nor the charm of the highest Art, that the pictures +that the critic loves most to write about are those that belong to the +anecdotage of painting, and that deal with scenes taken out of literature +or history. But this is not so. Indeed, pictures of this kind are far +too intelligible. As a class, they rank with illustrations, and, even +considered from this point of view are failures, as they do not stir the +imagination, but set definite bounds to it. For the domain of the +painter is, as I suggested before, widely different from that of the +poet. To the latter belongs life in its full and absolute entirety; not +merely the beauty that men look at, but the beauty that men listen to +also; not merely the momentary grace of form or the transient gladness of +colour, but the whole sphere of feeling, the perfect cycle of thought. +The painter is so far limited that it is only through the mask of the +body that he can show us the mystery of the soul; only through +conventional images that he can handle ideas; only through its physical +equivalents that he can deal with psychology. And how inadequately does +he do it then, asking us to accept the torn turban of the Moor for the +noble rage of Othello, or a dotard in a storm for the wild madness of +Lear! Yet it seems as if nothing could stop him. Most of our elderly +English painters spend their wicked and wasted lives in poaching upon the +domain of the poets, marring their motives by clumsy treatment, and +striving to render, by visible form or colour, the marvel of what is +invisible, the splendour of what is not seen. Their pictures are, as a +natural consequence, insufferably tedious. They have degraded the +invisible arts into the obvious arts, and the one thing not worth looking +at is the obvious. I do not say that poet and painter may not treat of +the same subject. They have always done so and will always do so. But +while the poet can be pictorial or not, as he chooses, the painter must +be pictorial always. For a painter is limited, not to what he sees in +nature, but to what upon canvas may be seen. + +And so, my dear Ernest, pictures of this kind will not really fascinate +the critic. He will turn from them to such works as make him brood and +dream and fancy, to works that possess the subtle quality of suggestion, +and seem to tell one that even from them there is an escape into a wider +world. It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist’s life is that +he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of +most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when +the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and +becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than +itself. This is the reason why music is the perfect type of art. Music +can never reveal its ultimate secret. This, also, is the explanation of +the value of limitations in art. The sculptor gladly surrenders +imitative colour, and the painter the actual dimensions of form, because +by such renunciations they are able to avoid too definite a presentation +of the Real, which would be mere imitation, and too definite a +realisation of the Ideal, which would be too purely intellectual. It is +through its very incompleteness that art becomes complete in beauty, and +so addresses itself, not to the faculty of recognition nor to the faculty +of reason, but to the æsthetic sense alone, which, while accepting both +reason and recognition as stages of apprehension, subordinates them both +to a pure synthetic impression of the work of art as a whole, and, taking +whatever alien emotional elements the work may possess, uses their very +complexity as a means by which a richer unity may be added to the +ultimate impression itself. You see, then, how it is that the æsthetic +critic rejects these obvious modes of art that have but one message to +deliver, and having delivered it become dumb and sterile, and seeks +rather for such modes as suggest reverie and mood, and by their +imaginative beauty make all interpretations true, and no interpretation +final. Some resemblance, no doubt, the creative work of the critic will +have to the work that has stirred him to creation, but it will be such +resemblance as exists, not between Nature and the mirror that the painter +of landscape or figure may be supposed to hold up to her, but between +Nature and the work of the decorative artist. Just as on the flowerless +carpets of Persia, tulip and rose blossom indeed and are lovely to look +on, though they are not reproduced in visible shape or line; just as the +pearl and purple of the sea-shell is echoed in the church of St. Mark at +Venice; just as the vaulted ceiling of the wondrous chapel at Ravenna is +made gorgeous by the gold and green and sapphire of the peacock’s tail, +though the birds of Juno fly not across it; so the critic reproduces the +work that he criticises in a mode that is never imitative, and part of +whose charm may really consist in the rejection of resemblance, and shows +us in this way not merely the meaning but also the mystery of Beauty, +and, by transforming each art into literature, solves once for all the +problem of Art’s unity. + +But I see it is time for supper. After we have discussed some Chambertin +and a few ortolans, we will pass on to the question of the critic +considered in the light of the interpreter. + +ERNEST. Ah! you admit, then, that the critic may occasionally be allowed +to see the object as in itself it really is. + +GILBERT. I am not quite sure. Perhaps I may admit it after supper. +There is a subtle influence in supper. + + + + +THE CRITIC AS ARTIST +WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE IMPORTANCE +OF DISCUSSING EVERYTHING + + + _A DIALOGUE_: _Part II._ _Persons_: _the same_. + _Scene_: _the same_. + +ERNEST. The ortolans were delightful, and the Chambertin perfect, and +now let us return to the point at issue. + +GILBERT. Ah! don’t let us do that. Conversation should touch +everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing. Let us talk about +_Moral Indignation_, _its Cause and Cure_, a subject on which I think of +writing: or about _The Survival of Thersites_, as shown by the English +comic papers; or about any topic that may turn up. + +ERNEST. No; I want to discuss the critic and criticism. You have told +me that the highest criticism deals with art, not as expressive, but as +impressive purely, and is consequently both creative and independent, is +in fact an art by itself, occupying the same relation to creative work +that creative work does to the visible world of form and colour, or the +unseen world of passion and of thought. Well, now, tell me, will not the +critic be sometimes a real interpreter? + +GILBERT. Yes; the critic will be an interpreter, if he chooses. He can +pass from his synthetic impression of the work of art as a whole, to an +analysis or exposition of the work itself, and in this lower sphere, as I +hold it to be, there are many delightful things to be said and done. Yet +his object will not always be to explain the work of art. He may seek +rather to deepen its mystery, to raise round it, and round its maker, +that mist of wonder which is dear to both gods and worshippers alike. +Ordinary people are ‘terribly at ease in Zion.’ They propose to walk arm +in arm with the poets, and have a glib ignorant way of saying, ‘Why +should we read what is written about Shakespeare and Milton? We can read +the plays and the poems. That is enough.’ But an appreciation of Milton +is, as the late Rector of Lincoln remarked once, the reward of consummate +scholarship. And he who desires to understand Shakespeare truly must +understand the relations in which Shakespeare stood to the Renaissance +and the Reformation, to the age of Elizabeth and the age of James; he +must be familiar with the history of the struggle for supremacy between +the old classical forms and the new spirit of romance, between the school +of Sidney, and Daniel, and Johnson, and the school of Marlowe and +Marlowe’s greater son; he must know the materials that were at +Shakespeare’s disposal, and the method in which he used them, and the +conditions of theatric presentation in the sixteenth and seventeenth +century, their limitations and their opportunities for freedom, and the +literary criticism of Shakespeare’s day, its aims and modes and canons; +he must study the English language in its progress, and blank or rhymed +verse in its various developments; he must study the Greek drama, and the +connection between the art of the creator of the Agamemnon and the art of +the creator of Macbeth; in a word, he must be able to bind Elizabethan +London to the Athens of Pericles, and to learn Shakespeare’s true +position in the history of European drama and the drama of the world. +The critic will certainly be an interpreter, but he will not treat Art as +a riddling Sphinx, whose shallow secret may be guessed and revealed by +one whose feet are wounded and who knows not his name. Rather, he will +look upon Art as a goddess whose mystery it is his province to intensify, +and whose majesty his privilege to make more marvellous in the eyes of +men. + +And here, Ernest, this strange thing happens. The critic will indeed be +an interpreter, but he will not be an interpreter in the sense of one who +simply repeats in another form a message that has been put into his lips +to say. For, just as it is only by contact with the art of foreign +nations that the art of a country gains that individual and separate life +that we call nationality, so, by curious inversion, it is only by +intensifying his own personality that the critic can interpret the +personality and work of others, and the more strongly this personality +enters into the interpretation the more real the interpretation becomes, +the more satisfying, the more convincing, and the more true. + +ERNEST. I would have said that personality would have been a disturbing +element. + +GILBERT. No; it is an element of revelation. If you wish to understand +others you must intensify your own individualism. + +ERNEST. What, then, is the result? + +GILBERT. I will tell you, and perhaps I can tell you best by definite +example. It seems to me that, while the literary critic stands of course +first, as having the wider range, and larger vision, and nobler material, +each of the arts has a critic, as it were, assigned to it. The actor is +a critic of the drama. He shows the poet’s work under new conditions, +and by a method special to himself. He takes the written word, and +action, gesture and voice become the media of revelation. The singer or +the player on lute and viol is the critic of music. The etcher of a +picture robs the painting of its fair colours, but shows us by the use of +a new material its true colour-quality, its tones and values, and the +relations of its masses, and so is, in his way, a critic of it, for the +critic is he who exhibits to us a work of art in a form different from +that of the work itself, and the employment of a new material is a +critical as well as a creative element. Sculpture, too, has its critic, +who may be either the carver of a gem, as he was in Greek days, or some +painter like Mantegna, who sought to reproduce on canvas the beauty of +plastic line and the symphonic dignity of processional bas-relief. And +in the case of all these creative critics of art it is evident that +personality is an absolute essential for any real interpretation. When +Rubinstein plays to us the _Sonata Appassionata_ of Beethoven, he gives +us not merely Beethoven, but also himself, and so gives us Beethoven +absolutely—Beethoven re-interpreted through a rich artistic nature, and +made vivid and wonderful to us by a new and intense personality. When a +great actor plays Shakespeare we have the same experience. His own +individuality becomes a vital part of the interpretation. People +sometimes say that actors give us their own Hamlets, and not +Shakespeare’s; and this fallacy—for it is a fallacy—is, I regret to say, +repeated by that charming and graceful writer who has lately deserted the +turmoil of literature for the peace of the House of Commons, I mean the +author of _Obiter Dicta_. In point of fact, there is no such thing as +Shakespeare’s Hamlet. If Hamlet has something of the definiteness of a +work of art, he has also all the obscurity that belongs to life. There +are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies. + +ERNEST. As many Hamlets as there are melancholies? + +GILBERT. Yes: and as art springs from personality, so it is only to +personality that it can be revealed, and from the meeting of the two +comes right interpretative criticism. + +ERNEST. The critic, then, considered as the interpreter, will give no +less than he receives, and lend as much as he borrows? + +GILBERT. He will be always showing us the work of art in some new +relation to our age. He will always be reminding us that great works of +art are living things—are, in fact, the only things that live. So much, +indeed, will he feel this, that I am certain that, as civilisation +progresses and we become more highly organised, the elect spirits of each +age, the critical and cultured spirits, will grow less and less +interested in actual life, and _will seek to gain their impressions +almost entirely from what Art has touched_. For life is terribly +deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the +wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its +tragedies seem to culminate in farce. One is always wounded when one +approaches it. Things last either too long, or not long enough. + +ERNEST. Poor life! Poor human life! Are you not even touched by the +tears that the Roman poet tells us are part of its essence. + +GILBERT. Too quickly touched by them, I fear. For when one looks back +upon the life that was so vivid in its emotional intensity, and filled +with such fervent moments of ecstasy or of joy, it all seems to be a +dream and an illusion. What are the unreal things, but the passions that +once burned one like fire? What are the incredible things, but the +things that one has faithfully believed? What are the improbable things? +The things that one has done oneself. No, Ernest; life cheats us with +shadows, like a puppet-master. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to +us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. We come across some +noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our +days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place, +and on some grey windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we +find ourselves looking with callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at +the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and +so madly kissed. + +ERNEST. Life then is a failure? + +GILBERT. From the artistic point of view, certainly. And the chief +thing that makes life a failure from this artistic point of view is the +thing that lends to life its sordid security, the fact that one can never +repeat exactly the same emotion. How different it is in the world of +Art! On a shelf of the bookcase behind you stands the _Divine Comedy_, +and I know that, if I open it at a certain place, I shall be filled with +a fierce hatred of some one who has never wronged me, or stirred by a +great love for some one whom I shall never see. There is no mood or +passion that Art cannot give us, and those of us who have discovered her +secret can settle beforehand what our experiences are going to be. We +can choose our day and select our hour. We can say to ourselves, +‘To-morrow, at dawn, we shall walk with grave Virgil through the valley +of the shadow of death,’ and lo! the dawn finds us in the obscure wood, +and the Mantuan stands by our side. We pass through the gate of the +legend fatal to hope, and with pity or with joy behold the horror of +another world. The hypocrites go by, with their painted faces and their +cowls of gilded lead. Out of the ceaseless winds that drive them, the +carnal look at us, and we watch the heretic rending his flesh, and the +glutton lashed by the rain. We break the withered branches from the tree +in the grove of the Harpies, and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds +with red blood before us, and cries aloud with bitter cries. Out of a +horn of fire Odysseus speaks to us, and when from his sepulchre of flame +the great Ghibelline rises, the pride that triumphs over the torture of +that bed becomes ours for a moment. Through the dim purple air fly those +who have stained the world with the beauty of their sin, and in the pit +of loathsome disease, dropsy-stricken and swollen of body into the +semblance of a monstrous lute, lies Adamo di Brescia, the coiner of false +coin. He bids us listen to his misery; we stop, and with dry and gaping +lips he tells us how he dreams day and night of the brooks of clear water +that in cool dewy channels gush down the green Casentine hills. Sinon, +the false Greek of Troy, mocks at him. He smites him in the face, and +they wrangle. We are fascinated by their shame, and loiter, till Virgil +chides us and leads us away to that city turreted by giants where great +Nimrod blows his horn. Terrible things are in store for us, and we go to +meet them in Dante’s raiment and with Dante’s heart. We traverse the +marshes of the Styx, and Argenti swims to the boat through the slimy +waves. He calls to us, and we reject him. When we hear the voice of his +agony we are glad, and Virgil praises us for the bitterness of our scorn. +We tread upon the cold crystal of Cocytus, in which traitors stick like +straws in glass. Our foot strikes against the head of Bocca. He will +not tell us his name, and we tear the hair in handfuls from the screaming +skull. Alberigo prays us to break the ice upon his face that he may weep +a little. We pledge our word to him, and when he has uttered his +dolorous tale we deny the word that we have spoken, and pass from him; +such cruelty being courtesy indeed, for who more base than he who has +mercy for the condemned of God? In the jaws of Lucifer we see the man +who sold Christ, and in the jaws of Lucifer the men who slew Cæsar. We +tremble, and come forth to re-behold the stars. + +In the land of Purgation the air is freer, and the holy mountain rises +into the pure light of day. There is peace for us, and for those who for +a season abide in it there is some peace also, though, pale from the +poison of the Maremma, Madonna Pia passes before us, and Ismene, with the +sorrow of earth still lingering about her, is there. Soul after soul +makes us share in some repentance or some joy. He whom the mourning of +his widow taught to drink the sweet wormwood of pain, tells us of Nella +praying in her lonely bed, and we learn from the mouth of Buonconte how a +single tear may save a dying sinner from the fiend. Sordello, that noble +and disdainful Lombard, eyes us from afar like a couchant lion. When he +learns that Virgil is one of Mantua’s citizens, he falls upon his neck, +and when he learns that he is the singer of Rome he falls before his +feet. In that valley whose grass and flowers are fairer than cleft +emerald and Indian wood, and brighter than scarlet and silver, they are +singing who in the world were kings; but the lips of Rudolph of Hapsburg +do not move to the music of the others, and Philip of France beats his +breast and Henry of England sits alone. On and on we go, climbing the +marvellous stair, and the stars become larger than their wont, and the +song of the kings grows faint, and at length we reach the seven trees of +gold and the garden of the Earthly Paradise. In a griffin-drawn chariot +appears one whose brows are bound with olive, who is veiled in white, and +mantled in green, and robed in a vesture that is coloured like live fire. +The ancient flame wakes within us. Our blood quickens through terrible +pulses. We recognise her. It is Beatrice, the woman we have worshipped. +The ice congealed about our heart melts. Wild tears of anguish break +from us, and we bow our forehead to the ground, for we know that we have +sinned. When we have done penance, and are purified, and have drunk of +the fountain of Lethe and bathed in the fountain of Eunoe, the mistress +of our soul raises us to the Paradise of Heaven. Out of that eternal +pearl, the moon, the face of Piccarda Donati leans to us. Her beauty +troubles us for a moment, and when, like a thing that falls through +water, she passes away, we gaze after her with wistful eyes. The sweet +planet of Venus is full of lovers. Cunizza, the sister of Ezzelin, the +lady of Sordello’s heart, is there, and Folco, the passionate singer of +Provence, who in sorrow for Azalais forsook the world, and the +Canaanitish harlot whose soul was the first that Christ redeemed. +Joachim of Flora stands in the sun, and, in the sun, Aquinas recounts the +story of St. Francis and Bonaventure the story of St. Dominic. Through +the burning rubies of Mars, Cacciaguida approaches. He tells us of the +arrow that is shot from the bow of exile, and how salt tastes the bread +of another, and how steep are the stairs in the house of a stranger. In +Saturn the soul sings not, and even she who guides us dare not smile. On +a ladder of gold the flames rise and fall. At last, we see the pageant +of the Mystical Rose. Beatrice fixes her eyes upon the face of God to +turn them not again. The beatific vision is granted to us; we know the +Love that moves the sun and all the stars. + +Yes, we can put the earth back six hundred courses and make ourselves one +with the great Florentine, kneel at the same altar with him, and share +his rapture and his scorn. And if we grow tired of an antique time, and +desire to realise our own age in all its weariness and sin, are there not +books that can make us live more in one single hour than life can make us +live in a score of shameful years? Close to your hand lies a little +volume, bound in some Nile-green skin that has been powdered with gilded +nenuphars and smoothed with hard ivory. It is the book that Gautier +loved, it is Baudelaire’s masterpiece. Open it at that sad madrigal that +begins + + Que m’importe que tu sois sage? + Sois belle! et sois triste! + +and you will find yourself worshipping sorrow as you have never +worshipped joy. Pass on to the poem on the man who tortures himself, let +its subtle music steal into your brain and colour your thoughts, and you +will become for a moment what he was who wrote it; nay, not for a moment +only, but for many barren moonlit nights and sunless sterile days will a +despair that is not your own make its dwelling within you, and the misery +of another gnaw your heart away. Read the whole book, suffer it to tell +even one of its secrets to your soul, and your soul will grow eager to +know more, and will feed upon poisonous honey, and seek to repent of +strange crimes of which it is guiltless, and to make atonement for +terrible pleasures that it has never known. And then, when you are tired +of these flowers of evil, turn to the flowers that grow in the garden of +Perdita, and in their dew-drenched chalices cool your fevered brow, and +let their loveliness heal and restore your soul; or wake from his +forgotten tomb the sweet Syrian, Meleager, and bid the lover of Heliodore +make you music, for he too has flowers in his song, red pomegranate +blossoms, and irises that smell of myrrh, ringed daffodils and dark blue +hyacinths, and marjoram and crinkled ox-eyes. Dear to him was the +perfume of the bean-field at evening, and dear to him the odorous +eared-spikenard that grew on the Syrian hills, and the fresh green thyme, +the wine-cup’s charm. The feet of his love as she walked in the garden +were like lilies set upon lilies. Softer than sleep-laden poppy petals +were her lips, softer than violets and as scented. The flame-like crocus +sprang from the grass to look at her. For her the slim narcissus stored +the cool rain; and for her the anemones forgot the Sicilian winds that +wooed them. And neither crocus, nor anemone, nor narcissus was as fair +as she was. + +It is a strange thing, this transference of emotion. We sicken with the +same maladies as the poets, and the singer lends us his pain. Dead lips +have their message for us, and hearts that have fallen to dust can +communicate their joy. We run to kiss the bleeding mouth of Fantine, and +we follow Manon Lescaut over the whole world. Ours is the love-madness +of the Tyrian, and the terror of Orestes is ours also. There is no +passion that we cannot feel, no pleasure that we may not gratify, and we +can choose the time of our initiation and the time of our freedom also. +Life! Life! Don’t let us go to life for our fulfilment or our +experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its +utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which +is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament. +It makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the +meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite. + +ERNEST. Must we go, then, to Art for everything? + +GILBERT. For everything. Because Art does not hurt us. The tears that +we shed at a play are a type of the exquisite sterile emotions that it is +the function of Art to awaken. We weep, but we are not wounded. We +grieve, but our grief is not bitter. In the actual life of man, sorrow, +as Spinoza says somewhere, is a passage to a lesser perfection. But the +sorrow with which Art fills us both purifies and initiates, if I may +quote once more from the great art critic of the Greeks. It is through +Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through +Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid +perils of actual existence. This results not merely from the fact that +nothing that one can imagine is worth doing, and that one can imagine +everything, but from the subtle law that emotional forces, like the +forces of the physical sphere, are limited in extent and energy. One can +feel so much, and no more. And how can it matter with what pleasure life +tries to tempt one, or with what pain it seeks to maim and mar one’s +soul, if in the spectacle of the lives of those who have never existed +one has found the true secret of joy, and wept away one’s tears over +their deaths who, like Cordelia and the daughter of Brabantio, can never +die? + +ERNEST. Stop a moment. It seems to me that in everything that you have +said there is something radically immoral. + +GILBERT. All art is immoral. + +ERNEST. All art? + +GILBERT. Yes. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, +and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life, and of that +practical organisation of life that we call society. Society, which is +the beginning and basis of morals, exists simply for the concentration of +human energy, and in order to ensure its own continuance and healthy +stability it demands, and no doubt rightly demands, of each of its +citizens that he should contribute some form of productive labour to the +common weal, and toil and travail that the day’s work may be done. +Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer. The +beautiful sterile emotions that art excites in us are hateful in its +eyes, and so completely are people dominated by the tyranny of this +dreadful social ideal that they are always coming shamelessly up to one +at Private Views and other places that are open to the general public, +and saying in a loud stentorian voice, ‘What are you doing?’ whereas +‘What are you thinking?’ is the only question that any single civilised +being should ever be allowed to whisper to another. They mean well, no +doubt, these honest beaming folk. Perhaps that is the reason why they +are so excessively tedious. But some one should teach them that while, +in the opinion of society, Contemplation is the gravest sin of which any +citizen can be guilty, in the opinion of the highest culture it is the +proper occupation of man. + +ERNEST. Contemplation? + +GILBERT. Contemplation. I said to you some time ago that it was far +more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it. Let me say to you +now that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, +the most difficult and the most intellectual. To Plato, with his passion +for wisdom, this was the noblest form of energy. To Aristotle, with his +passion for knowledge, this was the noblest form of energy also. It was +to this that the passion for holiness led the saint and the mystic of +mediæval days. + +ERNEST. We exist, then, to do nothing? + +GILBERT. It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited +and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at +ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams. But we who are +born at the close of this wonderful age are at once too cultured and too +critical, too intellectually subtle and too curious of exquisite +pleasures, to accept any speculations about life in exchange for life +itself. To us the _città divina_ is colourless, and the _fruitio Dei_ +without meaning. Metaphysics do not satisfy our temperaments, and +religious ecstasy is out of date. The world through which the Academic +philosopher becomes ‘the spectator of all time and of all existence’ is +not really an ideal world, but simply a world of abstract ideas. When we +enter it, we starve amidst the chill mathematics of thought. The courts +of the city of God are not open to us now. Its gates are guarded by +Ignorance, and to pass them we have to surrender all that in our nature +is most divine. It is enough that our fathers believed. They have +exhausted the faith-faculty of the species. Their legacy to us is the +scepticism of which they were afraid. Had they put it into words, it +might not live within us as thought. No, Ernest, no. We cannot go back +to the saint. There is far more to be learned from the sinner. We +cannot go back to the philosopher, and the mystic leads us astray. Who, +as Mr. Pater suggests somewhere, would exchange the curve of a single +rose-leaf for that formless intangible Being which Plato rates so high? +What to us is the Illumination of Philo, the Abyss of Eckhart, the Vision +of Böhme, the monstrous Heaven itself that was revealed to Swedenborg’s +blinded eyes? Such things are less than the yellow trumpet of one +daffodil of the field, far less than the meanest of the visible arts, +for, just as Nature is matter struggling into mind, so Art is mind +expressing itself under the conditions of matter, and thus, even in the +lowliest of her manifestations, she speaks to both sense and soul alike. +To the æsthetic temperament the vague is always repellent. The Greeks +were a nation of artists, because they were spared the sense of the +infinite. Like Aristotle, like Goethe after he had read Kant, we desire +the concrete, and nothing but the concrete can satisfy us. + +ERNEST. What then do you propose? + +GILBERT. It seems to me that with the development of the critical spirit +we shall be able to realise, not merely our own lives, but the collective +life of the race, and so to make ourselves absolutely modern, in the true +meaning of the word modernity. For he to whom the present is the only +thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives. To +realise the nineteenth century, one must realise every century that has +preceded it and that has contributed to its making. To know anything +about oneself one must know all about others. There must be no mood with +which one cannot sympathise, no dead mode of life that one cannot make +alive. Is this impossible? I think not. By revealing to us the +absolute mechanism of all action, and so freeing us from the self-imposed +and trammelling burden of moral responsibility, the scientific principle +of Heredity has become, as it were, the warrant for the contemplative +life. It has shown us that we are never less free than when we try to +act. It has hemmed us round with the nets of the hunter, and written +upon the wall the prophecy of our doom. We may not watch it, for it is +within us. We may not see it, save in a mirror that mirrors the soul. +It is Nemesis without her mask. It is the last of the Fates, and the +most terrible. It is the only one of the Gods whose real name we know. + +And yet, while in the sphere of practical and external life it has robbed +energy of its freedom and activity of its choice, in the subjective +sphere, where the soul is at work, it comes to us, this terrible shadow, +with many gifts in its hands, gifts of strange temperaments and subtle +susceptibilities, gifts of wild ardours and chill moods of indifference, +complex multiform gifts of thoughts that are at variance with each other, +and passions that war against themselves. And so, it is not our own life +that we live, but the lives of the dead, and the soul that dwells within +us is no single spiritual entity, making us personal and individual, +created for our service, and entering into us for our joy. It is +something that has dwelt in fearful places, and in ancient sepulchres has +made its abode. It is sick with many maladies, and has memories of +curious sins. It is wiser than we are, and its wisdom is bitter. It +fills us with impossible desires, and makes us follow what we know we +cannot gain. One thing, however, Ernest, it can do for us. It can lead +us away from surroundings whose beauty is dimmed to us by the mist of +familiarity, or whose ignoble ugliness and sordid claims are marring the +perfection of our development. It can help us to leave the age in which +we were born, and to pass into other ages, and find ourselves not exiled +from their air. It can teach us how to escape from our experience, and +to realise the experiences of those who are greater than we are. The +pain of Leopardi crying out against life becomes our pain. Theocritus +blows on his pipe, and we laugh with the lips of nymph and shepherd. In +the wolfskin of Pierre Vidal we flee before the hounds, and in the armour +of Lancelot we ride from the bower of the Queen. We have whispered the +secret of our love beneath the cowl of Abelard, and in the stained +raiment of Villon have put our shame into song. We can see the dawn +through Shelley’s eyes, and when we wander with Endymion the Moon grows +amorous of our youth. Ours is the anguish of Atys, and ours the weak +rage and noble sorrows of the Dane. Do you think that it is the +imagination that enables us to live these countless lives? Yes: it is +the imagination; and the imagination is the result of heredity. It is +simply concentrated race-experience. + +ERNEST. But where in this is the function of the critical spirit? + +GILBERT. The culture that this transmission of racial experiences makes +possible can be made perfect by the critical spirit alone, and indeed may +be said to be one with it. For who is the true critic but he who bears +within himself the dreams, and ideas, and feelings of myriad generations, +and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure? +And who the true man of culture, if not he who by fine scholarship and +fastidious rejection has made instinct self-conscious and intelligent, +and can separate the work that has distinction from the work that has it +not, and so by contact and comparison makes himself master of the secrets +of style and school, and understands their meanings, and listens to their +voices, and develops that spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the +real root, as it is the real flower, of the intellectual life, and thus +attains to intellectual clarity, and, having learned ‘the best that is +known and thought in the world,’ lives—it is not fanciful to say so—with +those who are the Immortals. + +Yes, Ernest: the contemplative life, the life that has for its aim not +_doing_ but _being_, and not _being_ merely, but _becoming_—that is what +the critical spirit can give us. The gods live thus: either brooding +over their own perfection, as Aristotle tells us, or, as Epicurus +fancied, watching with the calm eyes of the spectator the tragicomedy of +the world that they have made. We, too, might live like them, and set +ourselves to witness with appropriate emotions the varied scenes that man +and nature afford. We might make ourselves spiritual by detaching +ourselves from action, and become perfect by the rejection of energy. It +has often seemed to me that Browning felt something of this. Shakespeare +hurls Hamlet into active life, and makes him realise his mission by +effort. Browning might have given us a Hamlet who would have realised +his mission by thought. Incident and event were to him unreal or +unmeaning. He made the soul the protagonist of life’s tragedy, and +looked on action as the one undramatic element of a play. To us, at any +rate, the ΒΙΟΣ ΘΕΩΡΗΤΙΚΟΣ is the true ideal. From the high tower of +Thought we can look out at the world. Calm, and self-centred, and +complete, the æsthetic critic contemplates life, and no arrow drawn at a +venture can pierce between the joints of his harness. He at least is +safe. He has discovered how to live. + +Is such a mode of life immoral? Yes: all the arts are immoral, except +those baser forms of sensual or didactic art that seek to excite to +action of evil or of good. For action of every kind belongs to the +sphere of ethics. The aim of art is simply to create a mood. Is such a +mode of life unpractical? Ah! it is not so easy to be unpractical as the +ignorant Philistine imagines. It were well for England if it were so. +There is no country in the world so much in need of unpractical people as +this country of ours. With us, Thought is degraded by its constant +association with practice. Who that moves in the stress and turmoil of +actual existence, noisy politician, or brawling social reformer, or poor +narrow-minded priest blinded by the sufferings of that unimportant +section of the community among whom he has cast his lot, can seriously +claim to be able to form a disinterested intellectual judgment about any +one thing? Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for +a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the +overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so +industrious that they become absolutely stupid. And, harsh though it may +sound, I cannot help saying that such people deserve their doom. The +sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful. + +ERNEST. A charming doctrine, Gilbert. + +GILBERT. I am not sure about that, but it has at least the minor merit +of being true. That the desire to do good to others produces a plentiful +crop of prigs is the least of the evils of which it is the cause. The +prig is a very interesting psychological study, and though of all poses a +moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is +something. It is a formal recognition of the importance of treating life +from a definite and reasoned standpoint. That Humanitarian Sympathy wars +against Nature, by securing the survival of the failure, may make the man +of science loathe its facile virtues. The political economist may cry +out against it for putting the improvident on the same level as the +provident, and so robbing life of the strongest, because most sordid, +incentive to industry. But, in the eyes of the thinker, the real harm +that emotional sympathy does is that it limits knowledge, and so prevents +us from solving any single social problem. We are trying at present to +stave off the coming crisis, the coming revolution as my friends the +Fabianists call it, by means of doles and alms. Well, when the +revolution or crisis arrives, we shall be powerless, because we shall +know nothing. And so, Ernest, let us not be deceived. England will +never be civilised till she has added Utopia to her dominions. There is +more than one of her colonies that she might with advantage surrender for +so fair a land. What we want are unpractical people who see beyond the +moment, and think beyond the day. Those who try to lead the people can +only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying +in the wilderness that the ways of the gods must be prepared. + +But perhaps you think that in beholding for the mere joy of beholding, +and contemplating for the sake of contemplation, there is something that +is egotistic. If you think so, do not say so. It takes a thoroughly +selfish age, like our own, to deify self-sacrifice. It takes a +thoroughly grasping age, such as that in which we live, to set above the +fine intellectual virtues, those shallow and emotional virtues that are +an immediate practical benefit to itself. They miss their aim, too, +these philanthropists and sentimentalists of our day, who are always +chattering to one about one’s duty to one’s neighbour. For the +development of the race depends on the development of the individual, and +where self-culture has ceased to be the ideal, the intellectual standard +is instantly lowered, and, often, ultimately lost. If you meet at dinner +a man who has spent his life in educating himself—a rare type in our +time, I admit, but still one occasionally to be met with—you rise from +table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched +and sanctified your days. But oh! my dear Ernest, to sit next to a man +who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful +experience that is! How appalling is that ignorance which is the +inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions! How limited +in range the creature’s mind proves to be! How it wearies us, and must +weary himself, with its endless repetitions and sickly reiteration! How +lacking it is in any element of intellectual growth! In what a vicious +circle it always moves! + +ERNEST. You speak with strange feeling, Gilbert. Have you had this +dreadful experience, as you call it, lately? + +GILBERT. Few of us escape it. People say that the schoolmaster is +abroad. I wish to goodness he were. But the type of which, after all, +he is only one, and certainly the least important, of the +representatives, seems to me to be really dominating our lives; and just +as the philanthropist is the nuisance of the ethical sphere, so the +nuisance of the intellectual sphere is the man who is so occupied in +trying to educate others, that he has never had any time to educate +himself. No, Ernest, self-culture is the true ideal of man. Goethe saw +it, and the immediate debt that we owe to Goethe is greater than the debt +we owe to any man since Greek days. The Greeks saw it, and have left us, +as their legacy to modern thought, the conception of the contemplative +life as well as the critical method by which alone can that life be truly +realised. It was the one thing that made the Renaissance great, and gave +us Humanism. It is the one thing that could make our own age great also; +for the real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or +unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, +or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the +fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual. + +I do not deny that the intellectual ideal is difficult of attainment, +still less that it is, and perhaps will be for years to come, unpopular +with the crowd. It is so easy for people to have sympathy with +suffering. It is so difficult for them to have sympathy with thought. +Indeed, so little do ordinary people understand what thought really is, +that they seem to imagine that, when they have said that a theory is +dangerous, they have pronounced its condemnation, whereas it is only such +theories that have any true intellectual value. An idea that is not +dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. + +ERNEST. Gilbert, you bewilder me. You have told me that all art is, in +its essence, immoral. Are you going to tell me now that all thought is, +in its essence, dangerous? + +GILBERT. Yes, in the practical sphere it is so. The security of society +lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability +of society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any +intelligence amongst its members. The great majority of people being +fully aware of this, rank themselves naturally on the side of that +splendid system that elevates them to the dignity of machines, and rage +so wildly against the intrusion of the intellectual faculty into any +question that concerns life, that one is tempted to define man as a +rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act +in accordance with the dictates of reason. But let us turn from the +practical sphere, and say no more about the wicked philanthropists, who, +indeed, may well be left to the mercy of the almond-eyed sage of the +Yellow River Chuang Tsu the wise, who has proved that such well-meaning +and offensive busybodies have destroyed the simple and spontaneous virtue +that there is in man. They are a wearisome topic, and I am anxious to +get back to the sphere in which criticism is free. + +ERNEST. The sphere of the intellect? + +GILBERT. Yes. You remember that I spoke of the critic as being in his +own way as creative as the artist, whose work, indeed, may be merely of +value in so far as it gives to the critic a suggestion for some new mood +of thought and feeling which he can realise with equal, or perhaps +greater, distinction of form, and, through the use of a fresh medium of +expression, make differently beautiful and more perfect. Well, you +seemed to be a little sceptical about the theory. But perhaps I wronged +you? + +ERNEST. I am not really sceptical about it, but I must admit that I feel +very strongly that such work as you describe the critic producing—and +creative such work must undoubtedly be admitted to be—is, of necessity, +purely subjective, whereas the greatest work is objective always, +objective and impersonal. + +GILBERT. The difference between objective and subjective work is one of +external form merely. It is accidental, not essential. All artistic +creation is absolutely subjective. The very landscape that Corot looked +at was, as he said himself, but a mood of his own mind; and those great +figures of Greek or English drama that seem to us to possess an actual +existence of their own, apart from the poets who shaped and fashioned +them, are, in their ultimate analysis, simply the poets themselves, not +as they thought they were, but as they thought they were not; and by such +thinking came in strange manner, though but for a moment, really so to +be. For out of ourselves we can never pass, nor can there be in creation +what in the creator was not. Nay, I would say that the more objective a +creation appears to be, the more subjective it really is. Shakespeare +might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of +London, or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each +other in the open square; but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out +of his passion. They were elements of his nature to which he gave +visible form, impulses that stirred so strongly within him that he had, +as it were perforce, to suffer them to realise their energy, not on the +lower plane of actual life, where they would have been trammelled and +constrained and so made imperfect, but on that imaginative plane of art +where Love can indeed find in Death its rich fulfilment, where one can +stab the eavesdropper behind the arras, and wrestle in a new-made grave, +and make a guilty king drink his own hurt, and see one’s father’s spirit, +beneath the glimpses of the moon, stalking in complete steel from misty +wall to wall. Action being limited would have left Shakespeare +unsatisfied and unexpressed; and, just as it is because he did nothing +that he has been able to achieve everything, so it is because he never +speaks to us of himself in his plays that his plays reveal him to us +absolutely, and show us his true nature and temperament far more +completely than do those strange and exquisite sonnets, even, in which he +bares to crystal eyes the secret closet of his heart. Yes, the objective +form is the most subjective in matter. Man is least himself when he +talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the +truth. + +ERNEST. The critic, then, being limited to the subjective form, will +necessarily be less able fully to express himself than the artist, who +has always at his disposal the forms that are impersonal and objective. + +GILBERT. Not necessarily, and certainly not at all if he recognises that +each mode of criticism is, in its highest development, simply a mood, and +that we are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent. +The æsthetic critic, constant only to the principle of beauty in all +things, will ever be looking for fresh impressions, winning from the +various schools the secret of their charm, bowing, it may be, before +foreign altars, or smiling, if it be his fancy, at strange new gods. +What other people call one’s past has, no doubt, everything to do with +them, but has absolutely nothing to do with oneself. The man who regards +his past is a man who deserves to have no future to look forward to. +When one has found expression for a mood, one has done with it. You +laugh; but believe me it is so. Yesterday it was Realism that charmed +one. One gained from it that _nouveau frisson_ which it was its aim to +produce. One analysed it, explained it, and wearied of it. At sunset +came the _Luministe_ in painting, and the _Symboliste_ in poetry, and the +spirit of mediævalism, that spirit which belongs not to time but to +temperament, woke suddenly in wounded Russia, and stirred us for a moment +by the terrible fascination of pain. To-day the cry is for Romance, and +already the leaves are tremulous in the valley, and on the purple +hill-tops walks Beauty with slim gilded feet. The old modes of creation +linger, of course. The artists reproduce either themselves or each +other, with wearisome iteration. But Criticism is always moving on, and +the critic is always developing. + +Nor, again, is the critic really limited to the subjective form of +expression. The method of the drama is his, as well as the method of the +epos. He may use dialogue, as he did who set Milton talking to Marvel on +the nature of comedy and tragedy, and made Sidney and Lord Brooke +discourse on letters beneath the Penshurst oaks; or adopt narration, as +Mr. Pater is fond of doing, each of whose Imaginary Portraits—is not that +the title of the book?—presents to us, under the fanciful guise of +fiction, some fine and exquisite piece of criticism, one on the painter +Watteau, another on the philosophy of Spinoza, a third on the Pagan +elements of the early Renaissance, and the last, and in some respects the +most suggestive, on the source of that Aufklärung, that enlightening +which dawned on Germany in the last century, and to which our own culture +owes so great a debt. Dialogue, certainly, that wonderful literary form +which, from Plato to Lucian, and from Lucian to Giordano Bruno, and from +Bruno to that grand old Pagan in whom Carlyle took such delight, the +creative critics of the world have always employed, can never lose for +the thinker its attraction as a mode of expression. By its means he can +both reveal and conceal himself, and give form to every fancy, and +reality to every mood. By its means he can exhibit the object from each +point of view, and show it to us in the round, as a sculptor shows us +things, gaining in this manner all the richness and reality of effect +that comes from those side issues that are suddenly suggested by the +central idea in its progress, and really illumine the idea more +completely, or from those felicitous after-thoughts that give a fuller +completeness to the central scheme, and yet convey something of the +delicate charm of chance. + +ERNEST. By its means, too, he can invent an imaginary antagonist, and +convert him when he chooses by some absurdly sophistical argument. + +GILBERT. Ah! it is so easy to convert others. It is so difficult to +convert oneself. To arrive at what one really believes, one must speak +through lips different from one’s own. To know the truth one must +imagine myriads of falsehoods. For what is Truth? In matters of +religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of +science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one’s +last mood. And you see now, Ernest, that the critic has at his disposal +as many objective forms of expression as the artist has. Ruskin put his +criticism into imaginative prose, and is superb in his changes and +contradictions; and Browning put his into blank verse and made painter +and poet yield us their secret; and M. Renan uses dialogue, and Mr. Pater +fiction, and Rossetti translated into sonnet-music the colour of +Giorgione and the design of Ingres, and his own design and colour also, +feeling, with the instinct of one who had many modes of utterance; that +the ultimate art is literature, and the finest and fullest medium that of +words. + +ERNEST. Well, now that you have settled that the critic has at his +disposal all objective forms, I wish you would tell me what are the +qualities that should characterise the true critic. + +GILBERT. What would you say they were? + +ERNEST. Well, I should say that a critic should above all things be +fair. + +GILBERT. Ah! not fair. A critic cannot be fair in the ordinary sense of +the word. It is only about things that do not interest one that one can +give a really unbiassed opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an +unbiassed opinion is always absolutely valueless. The man who sees both +sides of a question, is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all. Art is +a passion, and, in matters of art, Thought is inevitably coloured by +emotion, and so is fluid rather than fixed, and, depending upon fine +moods and exquisite moments, cannot be narrowed into the rigidity of a +scientific formula or a theological dogma. It is to the soul that Art +speaks, and the soul may be made the prisoner of the mind as well as of +the body. One should, of course, have no prejudices; but, as a great +Frenchman remarked a hundred years ago, it is one’s business in such +matters to have preferences, and when one has preferences one ceases to +be fair. It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire +all schools of Art. No; fairness is not one of the qualities of the true +critic. It is not even a condition of criticism. Each form of Art with +which we come in contact dominates us for the moment to the exclusion of +every other form. We must surrender ourselves absolutely to the work in +question, whatever it may be, if we wish to gain its secret. For the +time, we must think of nothing else, can think of nothing else, indeed. + +ERNEST. The true critic will be rational, at any rate, will he not? + +GILBERT. Rational? There are two ways of disliking art, Ernest. One is +to dislike it. The other, to like it rationally. For Art, as Plato saw, +and not without regret, creates in listener and spectator a form of +divine madness. It does not spring from inspiration, but it makes others +inspired. Reason is not the faculty to which it appeals. If one loves +Art at all, one must love it beyond all other things in the world, and +against such love, the reason, if one listened to it, would cry out. +There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. It is too splendid to +be sane. Those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always +seem to the world to be pure visionaries. + +ERNEST. Well, at least, the critic will be sincere. + +GILBERT. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it +is absolutely fatal. The true critic will, indeed, always be sincere in +his devotion to the principle of beauty, but he will seek for beauty in +every age and in each school, and will never suffer himself to be limited +to any settled custom of thought or stereotyped mode of looking at +things. He will realise himself in many forms, and by a thousand +different ways, and will ever be curious of new sensations and fresh +points of view. Through constant change, and through constant change +alone, he will find his true unity. He will not consent to be the slave +of his own opinions. For what is mind but motion in the intellectual +sphere? The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth. You +must not be frightened by word, Ernest. What people call insincerity is +simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities. + +ERNEST. I am afraid I have not been fortunate in my suggestions. + +GILBERT. Of the three qualifications you mentioned, two, sincerity and +fairness, were, if not actually moral, at least on the borderland of +morals, and the first condition of criticism is that the critic should be +able to recognise that the sphere of Art and the sphere of Ethics are +absolutely distinct and separate. When they are confused, Chaos has come +again. They are too often confused in England now, and though our modern +Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing, yet, by means of their +extraordinary prurience, they can almost taint beauty for a moment. It +is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find +expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of +modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps +us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully +chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what +very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing +the unnecessary it makes us understand what things are requisite for +culture, and what are not. But it should not allow poor Tartuffe to +write articles upon modern art. When it does this it stultifies itself. +And yet Tartuffe’s articles and Chadband’s notes do this good, at least. +They serve to show how extremely limited is the area over which ethics, +and ethical considerations, can claim to exercise influence. Science is +out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. +Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things +beautiful and immortal and ever-changing. To morals belong the lower and +less intellectual spheres. However, let these mouthing Puritans pass; +they have their comic side. Who can help laughing when an ordinary +journalist seriously proposes to limit the subject-matter at the disposal +of the artist? Some limitation might well, and will soon, I hope, be +placed upon some of our newspapers and newspaper writers. For they give +us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with +degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the +conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details +of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatsoever. But the +artist, who accepts the facts of life, and yet transforms them into +shapes of beauty, and makes them vehicles of pity or of awe, and shows +their colour-element, and their wonder, and their true ethical import +also, and builds out of them a world more real than reality itself, and +of loftier and more noble import—who shall set limits to him? Not the +apostles of that new Journalism which is but the old vulgarity ‘writ +large.’ Not the apostles of that new Puritanism, which is but the whine +of the hypocrite, and is both writ and spoken badly. The mere suggestion +is ridiculous. Let us leave these wicked people, and proceed to the +discussion of the artistic qualifications necessary for the true critic. + +ERNEST. And what are they? Tell me yourself. + +GILBERT. Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic—a +temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various +impressions that beauty gives us. Under what conditions, and by what +means, this temperament is engendered in race or individual, we will not +discuss at present. It is sufficient to note that it exists, and that +there is in us a beauty-sense, separate from the other senses and above +them, separate from the reason and of nobler import, separate from the +soul and of equal value—a sense that leads some to create, and others, +the finer spirits as I think, to contemplate merely. But to be purified +and made perfect, this sense requires some form of exquisite environment. +Without this it starves, or is dulled. You remember that lovely passage +in which Plato describes how a young Greek should be educated, and with +what insistence he dwells upon the importance of surroundings, telling us +how the lad is to be brought up in the midst of fair sights and sounds, +so that the beauty of material things may prepare his soul for the +reception of the beauty that is spiritual. Insensibly, and without +knowing the reason why, he is to develop that real love of beauty which, +as Plato is never weary of reminding us, is the true aim of education. +By slow degrees there is to be engendered in him such a temperament as +will lead him naturally and simply to choose the good in preference to +the bad, and, rejecting what is vulgar and discordant, to follow by fine +instinctive taste all that possesses grace and charm and loveliness. +Ultimately, in its due course, this taste is to become critical and +self-conscious, but at first it is to exist purely as a cultivated +instinct, and ‘he who has received this true culture of the inner man +will with clear and certain vision perceive the omissions and faults in +art or nature, and with a taste that cannot err, while he praises, and +finds his pleasure in what is good, and receives it into his soul, and so +becomes good and noble, he will rightly blame and hate the bad, now in +the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why’: +and so, when, later on, the critical and self-conscious spirit develops +in him, he ‘will recognise and salute it as a friend with whom his +education has made him long familiar.’ I need hardly say, Ernest, how +far we in England have fallen short of this ideal, and I can imagine the +smile that would illuminate the glossy face of the Philistine if one +ventured to suggest to him that the true aim of education was the love of +beauty, and that the methods by which education should work were the +development of temperament, the cultivation of taste, and the creation of +the critical spirit. + +Yet, even for us, there is left some loveliness of environment, and the +dulness of tutors and professors matters very little when one can loiter +in the grey cloisters at Magdalen, and listen to some flute-like voice +singing in Waynfleete’s chapel, or lie in the green meadow, among the +strange snake-spotted fritillaries, and watch the sunburnt noon smite to +a finer gold the tower’s gilded vanes, or wander up the Christ Church +staircase beneath the vaulted ceiling’s shadowy fans, or pass through the +sculptured gateway of Laud’s building in the College of St. John. Nor is +it merely at Oxford, or Cambridge, that the sense of beauty can be formed +and trained and perfected. All over England there is a Renaissance of +the decorative Arts. Ugliness has had its day. Even in the houses of +the rich there is taste, and the houses of those who are not rich have +been made gracious and comely and sweet to live in. Caliban, poor noisy +Caliban, thinks that when he has ceased to make mows at a thing, the +thing ceases to exist. But if he mocks no longer, it is because he has +been met with mockery, swifter and keener than his own, and for a moment +has been bitterly schooled into that silence which should seal for ever +his uncouth distorted lips. What has been done up to now, has been +chiefly in the clearing of the way. It is always more difficult to +destroy than it is to create, and when what one has to destroy is +vulgarity and stupidity, the task of destruction needs not merely courage +but also contempt. Yet it seems to me to have been, in a measure, done. +We have got rid of what was bad. We have now to make what is beautiful. +And though the mission of the æsthetic movement is to lure people to +contemplate, not to lead them to create, yet, as the creative instinct is +strong in the Celt, and it is the Celt who leads in art, there is no +reason why in future years this strange Renaissance should not become +almost as mighty in its way as was that new birth of Art that woke many +centuries ago in the cities of Italy. + +Certainly, for the cultivation of temperament, we must turn to the +decorative arts: to the arts that touch us, not to the arts that teach +us. Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, +some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are +too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too +obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One exhausts what they +have to say in a very short time, and then they become as tedious as +one’s relations. I am very fond of the work of many of the Impressionist +painters of Paris and London. Subtlety and distinction have not yet left +the school. Some of their arrangements and harmonies serve to remind one +of the unapproachable beauty of Gautier’s immortal _Symphonie en Blanc +Majeur_, that flawless masterpiece of colour and music which may have +suggested the type as well as the titles of many of their best pictures. +For a class that welcomes the incompetent with sympathetic eagerness, and +that confuses the bizarre with the beautiful, and vulgarity with truth, +they are extremely accomplished. They can do etchings that have the +brilliancy of epigrams, pastels that are as fascinating as paradoxes, and +as for their portraits, whatever the commonplace may say against them, no +one can deny that they possess that unique and wonderful charm which +belongs to works of pure fiction. But even the Impressionists, earnest +and industrious as they are, will not do. I like them. Their white +keynote, with its variations in lilac, was an era in colour. Though the +moment does not make the man, the moment certainly makes the +Impressionist, and for the moment in art, and the ‘moment’s monument,’ as +Rossetti phrased it, what may not be said? They are suggestive also. If +they have not opened the eyes of the blind, they have at least given +great encouragement to the short-sighted, and while their leaders may +have all the inexperience of old age, their young men are far too wise to +be ever sensible. Yet they will insist on treating painting as if it +were a mode of autobiography invented for the use of the illiterate, and +are always prating to us on their coarse gritty canvases of their +unnecessary selves and their unnecessary opinions, and spoiling by a +vulgar over-emphasis that fine contempt of nature which is the best and +only modest thing about them. One tires, at the end, of the work of +individuals whose individuality is always noisy, and generally +uninteresting. There is far more to be said in favour of that newer +school at Paris, the _Archaicistes_, as they call themselves, who, +refusing to leave the artist entirely at the mercy of the weather, do not +find the ideal of art in mere atmospheric effect, but seek rather for the +imaginative beauty of design and the loveliness of fair colour, and +rejecting the tedious realism of those who merely paint what they see, +try to see something worth seeing, and to see it not merely with actual +and physical vision, but with that nobler vision of the soul which is as +far wider in spiritual scope as it is far more splendid in artistic +purpose. They, at any rate, work under those decorative conditions that +each art requires for its perfection, and have sufficient æsthetic +instinct to regret those sordid and stupid limitations of absolute +modernity of form which have proved the ruin of so many of the +Impressionists. Still, the art that is frankly decorative is the art to +live with. It is, of all our visible arts, the one art that creates in +us both mood and temperament. Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and +unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand +different ways. The harmony that resides in the delicate proportions of +lines and masses becomes mirrored in the mind. The repetitions of +pattern give us rest. The marvels of design stir the imagination. In +the mere loveliness of the materials employed there are latent elements +of culture. Nor is this all. By its deliberate rejection of Nature as +the ideal of beauty, as well as of the imitative method of the ordinary +painter, decorative art not merely prepares the soul for the reception of +true imaginative work, but develops in it that sense of form which is the +basis of creative no less than of critical achievement. For the real +artist is he who proceeds, not from feeling to form, but from form to +thought and passion. He does not first conceive an idea, and then say to +himself, ‘I will put my idea into a complex metre of fourteen lines,’ +but, realising the beauty of the sonnet-scheme, he conceives certain +modes of music and methods of rhyme, and the mere form suggests what is +to fill it and make it intellectually and emotionally complete. From +time to time the world cries out against some charming artistic poet, +because, to use its hackneyed and silly phrase, he has ‘nothing to say.’ +But if he had something to say, he would probably say it, and the result +would be tedious. It is just because he has no new message, that he can +do beautiful work. He gains his inspiration from form, and from form +purely, as an artist should. A real passion would ruin him. Whatever +actually occurs is spoiled for art. All bad poetry springs from genuine +feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be +inartistic. + +ERNEST. I wonder do you really believe what you say? + +GILBERT. Why should you wonder? It is not merely in art that the body +is the soul. In every sphere of life Form is the beginning of things. +The rhythmic harmonious gestures of dancing convey, Plato tells us, both +rhythm and harmony into the mind. Forms are the food of faith, cried +Newman in one of those great moments of sincerity that make us admire and +know the man. He was right, though he may not have known how terribly +right he was. The Creeds are believed, not because they are rational, +but because they are repeated. Yes: Form is everything. It is the +secret of life. Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to +you. Find expression for a joy, and you intensify its ecstasy. Do you +wish to love? Use Love’s Litany, and the words will create the yearning +from which the world fancies that they spring. Have you a grief that +corrodes your heart? Steep yourself in the Language of grief, learn its +utterance from Prince Hamlet and Queen Constance, and you will find that +mere expression is a mode of consolation, and that Form, which is the +birth of passion, is also the death of pain. And so, to return to the +sphere of Art, it is Form that creates not merely the critical +temperament, but also the æsthetic instinct, that unerring instinct that +reveals to one all things under their conditions of beauty. Start with +the worship of form, and there is no secret in art that will not be +revealed to you, and remember that in criticism, as in creation, +temperament is everything, and that it is, not by the time of their +production, but by the temperaments to which they appeal, that the +schools of art should be historically grouped. + +ERNEST. Your theory of education is delightful. But what influence will +your critic, brought up in these exquisite surroundings, possess? Do you +really think that any artist is ever affected by criticism? + +GILBERT. The influence of the critic will be the mere fact of his own +existence. He will represent the flawless type. In him the culture of +the century will see itself realised. You must not ask of him to have +any aim other than the perfecting of himself. The demand of the +intellect, as has been well said, is simply to feel itself alive. The +critic may, indeed, desire to exercise influence; but, if so, he will +concern himself not with the individual, but with the age, which he will +seek to wake into consciousness, and to make responsive, creating in it +new desires and appetites, and lending it his larger vision and his +nobler moods. The actual art of to-day will occupy him less than the art +of to-morrow, far less than the art of yesterday, and as for this or that +person at present toiling away, what do the industrious matter? They do +their best, no doubt, and consequently we get the worst from them. It is +always with the best intentions that the worst work is done. And +besides, my dear Ernest, when a man reaches the age of forty, or becomes +a Royal Academician, or is elected a member of the Athenæum Club, or is +recognised as a popular novelist, whose books are in great demand at +suburban railway stations, one may have the amusement of exposing him, +but one cannot have the pleasure of reforming him. And this is, I dare +say, very fortunate for him; for I have no doubt that reformation is a +much more painful process than punishment, is indeed punishment in its +most aggravated and moral form—a fact which accounts for our entire +failure as a community to reclaim that interesting phenomenon who is +called the confirmed criminal. + +ERNEST. But may it not be that the poet is the best judge of poetry, and +the painter of painting? Each art must appeal primarily to the artist +who works in it. His judgment will surely be the most valuable? + +GILBERT. The appeal of all art is simply to the artistic temperament. +Art does not address herself to the specialist. Her claim is that she is +universal, and that in all her manifestations she is one. Indeed, so far +from its being true that the artist is the best judge of art, a really +great artist can never judge of other people’s work at all, and can +hardly, in fact, judge of his own. That very concentration of vision +that makes a man an artist, limits by its sheer intensity his faculty of +fine appreciation. The energy of creation hurries him blindly on to his +own goal. The wheels of his chariot raise the dust as a cloud around +him. The gods are hidden from each other. They can recognise their +worshippers. That is all. + +ERNEST. You say that a great artist cannot recognise the beauty of work +different from his own. + +GILBERT. It is impossible for him to do so. Wordsworth saw in +_Endymion_ merely a pretty piece of Paganism, and Shelley, with his +dislike of actuality, was deaf to Wordsworth’s message, being repelled by +its form, and Byron, that great passionate human incomplete creature, +could appreciate neither the poet of the cloud nor the poet of the lake, +and the wonder of Keats was hidden from him. The realism of Euripides +was hateful to Sophokles. Those droppings of warm tears had no music for +him. Milton, with his sense of the grand style, could not understand the +method of Shakespeare, any more than could Sir Joshua the method of +Gainsborough. Bad artists always admire each other’s work. They call it +being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist +cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any +conditions other than those that he has selected. Creation employs all +its critical faculty within its own sphere. It may not use it in the +sphere that belongs to others. It is exactly because a man cannot do a +thing that he is the proper judge of it. + +ERNEST. Do you really mean that? + +GILBERT. Yes, for creation limits, while contemplation widens, the +vision. + +ERNEST. But what about technique? Surely each art has its separate +technique? + +GILBERT. Certainly: each art has its grammar and its materials. There +is no mystery about either, and the incompetent can always be correct. +But, while the laws upon which Art rests may be fixed and certain, to +find their true realisation they must be touched by the imagination into +such beauty that they will seem an exception, each one of them. +Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist +cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the æsthetic +critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of +music—his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of +painting—that which he himself employs. The æsthetic critic, and the +æsthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and modes. It is to him +that Art makes her appeal. + +ERNEST. Well, I think I have put all my questions to you. And now I +must admit— + +GILBERT. Ah! don’t say that you agree with me. When people agree with +me I always feel that I must be wrong. + +ERNEST. In that case I certainly won’t tell you whether I agree with you +or not. But I will put another question. You have explained to me that +criticism is a creative art. What future has it? + +GILBERT. It is to criticism that the future belongs. The subject-matter +at the disposal of creation becomes every day more limited in extent and +variety. Providence and Mr. Walter Besant have exhausted the obvious. +If creation is to last at all, it can only do so on the condition of +becoming far more critical than it is at present. The old roads and +dusty highways have been traversed too often. Their charm has been worn +away by plodding feet, and they have lost that element of novelty or +surprise which is so essential for romance. He who would stir us now by +fiction must either give us an entirely new background, or reveal to us +the soul of man in its innermost workings. The first is for the moment +being done for us by Mr. Rudyard Kipling. As one turns over the pages of +his _Plain Tales from the Hills_, one feels as if one were seated under a +palm-tree reading life by superb flashes of vulgarity. The bright +colours of the bazaars dazzle one’s eyes. The jaded, second-rate +Anglo-Indians are in exquisite incongruity with their surroundings. The +mere lack of style in the story-teller gives an odd journalistic realism +to what he tells us. From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is +a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is +a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it. +Dickens knew its clothes and its comedy. Mr. Kipling knows its essence +and its seriousness. He is our first authority on the second-rate, and +has seen marvellous things through keyholes, and his backgrounds are real +works of art. As for the second condition, we have had Browning, and +Meredith is with us. But there is still much to be done in the sphere of +introspection. People sometimes say that fiction is getting too morbid. +As far as psychology is concerned, it has never been morbid enough. We +have merely touched the surface of the soul, that is all. In one single +ivory cell of the brain there are stored away things more marvellous and +more terrible than even they have dreamed of, who, like the author of _Le +Rouge et le Noir_, have sought to track the soul into its most secret +places, and to make life confess its dearest sins. Still, there is a +limit even to the number of untried backgrounds, and it is possible that +a further development of the habit of introspection may prove fatal to +that creative faculty to which it seeks to supply fresh material. I +myself am inclined to think that creation is doomed. It springs from too +primitive, too natural an impulse. However this may be, it is certain +that the subject-matter at the disposal of creation is always +diminishing, while the subject-matter of criticism increases daily. +There are always new attitudes for the mind, and new points of view. The +duty of imposing form upon chaos does not grow less as the world +advances. There was never a time when Criticism was more needed than it +is now. It is only by its means that Humanity can become conscious of +the point at which it has arrived. + +Hours ago, Ernest, you asked me the use of Criticism. You might just as +well have asked me the use of thought. It is Criticism, as Arnold points +out, that creates the intellectual atmosphere of the age. It is +Criticism, as I hope to point out myself some day, that makes the mind a +fine instrument. We, in our educational system, have burdened the memory +with a load of unconnected facts, and laboriously striven to impart our +laboriously-acquired knowledge. We teach people how to remember, we +never teach them how to grow. It has never occurred to us to try and +develop in the mind a more subtle quality of apprehension and +discernment. The Greeks did this, and when we come in contact with the +Greek critical intellect, we cannot but be conscious that, while our +subject-matter is in every respect larger and more varied than theirs, +theirs is the only method by which this subject-matter can be +interpreted. England has done one thing; it has invented and established +Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organise the ignorance of the +community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force. But +Wisdom has always been hidden from it. Considered as an instrument of +thought, the English mind is coarse and undeveloped. The only thing that +can purify it is the growth of the critical instinct. + +It is Criticism, again, that, by concentration, makes culture possible. +It takes the cumbersome mass of creative work, and distils it into a +finer essence. Who that desires to retain any sense of form could +struggle through the monstrous multitudinous books that the world has +produced, books in which thought stammers or ignorance brawls? The +thread that is to guide us across the wearisome labyrinth is in the hands +of Criticism. Nay more, where there is no record, and history is either +lost, or was never written, Criticism can re-create the past for us from +the very smallest fragment of language or art, just as surely as the man +of science can from some tiny bone, or the mere impress of a foot upon a +rock, re-create for us the winged dragon or Titan lizard that once made +the earth shake beneath its tread, can call Behemoth out of his cave, and +make Leviathan swim once more across the startled sea. Prehistoric +history belongs to the philological and archæological critic. It is to +him that the origins of things are revealed. The self-conscious deposits +of an age are nearly always misleading. Through philological criticism +alone we know more of the centuries of which no actual record has been +preserved, than we do of the centuries that have left us their scrolls. +It can do for us what can be done neither by physics nor metaphysics. It +can give us the exact science of mind in the process of becoming. It can +do for us what History cannot do. It can tell us what man thought before +he learned how to write. You have asked me about the influence of +Criticism. I think I have answered that question already; but there is +this also to be said. It is Criticism that makes us cosmopolitan. The +Manchester school tried to make men realise the brotherhood of humanity, +by pointing out the commercial advantages of peace. It sought to degrade +the wonderful world into a common market-place for the buyer and the +seller. It addressed itself to the lowest instincts, and it failed. War +followed upon war, and the tradesman’s creed did not prevent France and +Germany from clashing together in blood-stained battle. There are others +of our own day who seek to appeal to mere emotional sympathies, or to the +shallow dogmas of some vague system of abstract ethics. They have their +Peace Societies, so dear to the sentimentalists, and their proposals for +unarmed International Arbitration, so popular among those who have never +read history. But mere emotional sympathy will not do. It is too +variable, and too closely connected with the passions; and a board of +arbitrators who, for the general welfare of the race, are to be deprived +of the power of putting their decisions into execution, will not be of +much avail. There is only one thing worse than Injustice, and that is +Justice without her sword in her hand. When Right is not Might, it is +Evil. + +No: the emotions will not make us cosmopolitan, any more than the greed +for gain could do so. It is only by the cultivation of the habit of +intellectual criticism that we shall be able to rise superior to +race-prejudices. Goethe—you will not misunderstand what I say—was a +German of the Germans. He loved his country—no man more so. Its people +were dear to him; and he led them. Yet, when the iron hoof of Napoleon +trampled upon vineyard and cornfield, his lips were silent. ‘How can one +write songs of hatred without hating?’ he said to Eckermann, ‘and how +could I, to whom culture and barbarism are alone of importance, hate a +nation which is among the most cultivated of the earth and to which I owe +so great a part of my own cultivation?’ This note, sounded in the modern +world by Goethe first, will become, I think, the starting point for the +cosmopolitanism of the future. Criticism will annihilate +race-prejudices, by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the +variety of its forms. If we are tempted to make war upon another nation, +we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element of our own +culture, and possibly its most important element. As long as war is +regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is +looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. The change will of +course be slow, and people will not be conscious of it. They will not +say ‘We will not war against France because her prose is perfect,’ but +because the prose of France is perfect, they will not hate the land. +Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than +those that can be forged by shopman or sentimentalist. It will give us +the peace that springs from understanding. + +Nor is this all. It is Criticism that, recognising no position as final, +and refusing to bind itself by the shallow shibboleths of any sect or +school, creates that serene philosophic temper which loves truth for its +own sake, and loves it not the less because it knows it to be +unattainable. How little we have of this temper in England, and how much +we need it! The English mind is always in a rage. The intellect of the +race is wasted in the sordid and stupid quarrels of second-rate +politicians or third-rate theologians. It was reserved for a man of +science to show us the supreme example of that ‘sweet reasonableness’ of +which Arnold spoke so wisely, and, alas! to so little effect. The author +of the _Origin of Species_ had, at any rate, the philosophic temper. If +one contemplates the ordinary pulpits and platforms of England, one can +but feel the contempt of Julian, or the indifference of Montaigne. We +are dominated by the fanatic, whose worst vice is his sincerity. +Anything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically unknown +amongst us. People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, +but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity. + +ERNEST. Ah! what an antinomian you are! + +GILBERT. The artistic critic, like the mystic, is an antinomian always. +To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously +quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a +certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for +middle-class respectability. Æsthetics are higher than ethics. They +belong to a more spiritual sphere. To discern the beauty of a thing is +the finest point to which we can arrive. Even a colour-sense is more +important, in the development of the individual, than a sense of right +and wrong. Æsthetics, in fact, are to Ethics in the sphere of conscious +civilisation, what, in the sphere of the external world, sexual is to +natural selection. Ethics, like natural selection, make existence +possible. Æsthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and +wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and +change. And when we reach the true culture that is our aim, we attain to +that perfection of which the saints have dreamed, the perfection of those +to whom sin is impossible, not because they make the renunciations of the +ascetic, but because they can do everything they wish without hurt to the +soul, and can wish for nothing that can do the soul harm, the soul being +an entity so divine that it is able to transform into elements of a +richer experience, or a finer susceptibility, or a newer mode of thought, +acts or passions that with the common would be commonplace, or with the +uneducated ignoble, or with the shameful vile. Is this dangerous? Yes; +it is dangerous—all ideas, as I told you, are so. But the night wearies, +and the light flickers in the lamp. One more thing I cannot help saying +to you. You have spoken against Criticism as being a sterile thing. The +nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of +the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of +Nature, the other the critic of the books of God. Not to recognise this +is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress +of the world. Creation is always behind the age. It is Criticism that +leads us. The Critical Spirit and the World-Spirit are one. + +ERNEST. And he who is in possession of this spirit, or whom this spirit +possesses, will, I suppose, do nothing? + +GILBERT. Like the Persephone of whom Landor tells us, the sweet pensive +Persephone around whose white feet the asphodel and amaranth are +blooming, he will sit contented ‘in that deep, motionless quiet which +mortals pity, and which the gods enjoy.’ He will look out upon the world +and know its secret. By contact with divine things he will become +divine. His will be the perfect life, and his only. + +ERNEST. You have told me many strange things to-night, Gilbert. You +have told me that it is more difficult to talk about a thing than to do +it, and that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the +world; you have told me that all Art is immoral, and all thought +dangerous; that criticism is more creative than creation, and that the +highest criticism is that which reveals in the work of Art what the +artist had not put there; that it is exactly because a man cannot do a +thing that he is the proper judge of it; and that the true critic is +unfair, insincere, and not rational. My friend, you are a dreamer. + +GILBERT. Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find +his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before +the rest of the world. + +ERNEST. His punishment? + +GILBERT. And his reward. But, see, it is dawn already. Draw back the +curtains and open the windows wide. How cool the morning air is! +Piccadilly lies at our feet like a long riband of silver. A faint purple +mist hangs over the Park, and the shadows of the white houses are purple. +It is too late to sleep. Let us go down to Covent Garden and look at the +roses. Come! I am tired of thought. + + + + +THE TRUTH OF MASKS +A NOTE ON ILLUSION + + +IN many of the somewhat violent attacks that have recently been made on +that splendour of mounting which now characterises our Shakespearian +revivals in England, it seems to have been tacitly assumed by the critics +that Shakespeare himself was more or less indifferent to the costumes of +his actors, and that, could he see Mrs. Langtry’s production of _Antony +and Cleopatra_, he would probably say that the play, and the play only, +is the thing, and that everything else is leather and prunella. While, +as regards any historical accuracy in dress, Lord Lytton, in an article +in the _Nineteenth Century_, has laid it down as a dogma of art that +archæology is entirely out of place in the presentation of any of +Shakespeare’s plays, and the attempt to introduce it one of the stupidest +pedantries of an age of prigs. + +Lord Lytton’s position I shall examine later on; but, as regards the +theory that Shakespeare did not busy himself much about the +costume-wardrobe of his theatre, anybody who cares to study Shakespeare’s +method will see that there is absolutely no dramatist of the French, +English, or Athenian stage who relies so much for his illusionist effects +on the dress of his actors as Shakespeare does himself. + +Knowing how the artistic temperament is always fascinated by beauty of +costume, he constantly introduces into his plays masques and dances, +purely for the sake of the pleasure which they give the eye; and we have +still his stage-directions for the three great processions in _Henry the +Eighth_, directions which are characterised by the most extraordinary +elaborateness of detail down to the collars of S.S. and the pearls in +Anne Boleyn’s hair. Indeed it would be quite easy for a modern manager +to reproduce these pageants absolutely as Shakespeare had them designed; +and so accurate were they that one of the court officials of the time, +writing an account of the last performance of the play at the Globe +Theatre to a friend, actually complains of their realistic character, +notably of the production on the stage of the Knights of the Garter in +the robes and insignia of the order as being calculated to bring ridicule +on the real ceremonies; much in the same spirit in which the French +Government, some time ago, prohibited that delightful actor, M. +Christian, from appearing in uniform, on the plea that it was prejudicial +to the glory of the army that a colonel should be caricatured. And +elsewhere the gorgeousness of apparel which distinguished the English +stage under Shakespeare’s influence was attacked by the contemporary +critics, not as a rule, however, on the grounds of the democratic +tendencies of realism, but usually on those moral grounds which are +always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty. + +The point, however, which I wish to emphasise is, not that Shakespeare +appreciated the value of lovely costumes in adding picturesqueness to +poetry, but that he saw how important costume is as a means of producing +certain dramatic effects. Many of his plays, such as _Measure for +Measure_, _Twelfth Night_, _The Two Gentleman of Verona_, _All’s Well +that Ends Well_, _Cymbeline_, and others, depend for their illusion on +the character of the various dresses worn by the hero or the heroine; the +delightful scene in _Henry the Sixth_, on the modern miracles of healing +by faith, loses all its point unless Gloster is in black and scarlet; and +the _dénoûment_ of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ hinges on the colour of +Anne Page’s gown. As for the uses Shakespeare makes of disguises the +instances are almost numberless. Posthumus hides his passion under a +peasant’s garb, and Edgar his pride beneath an idiot’s rags; Portia wears +the apparel of a lawyer, and Rosalind is attired in ‘all points as a +man’; the cloak-bag of Pisanio changes Imogen to the Youth Fidele; +Jessica flees from her father’s house in boy’s dress, and Julia ties up +her yellow hair in fantastic love-knots, and dons hose and doublet; Henry +the Eighth woos his lady as a shepherd, and Romeo his as a pilgrim; +Prince Hal and Poins appear first as footpads in buckram suits, and then +in white aprons and leather jerkins as the waiters in a tavern: and as +for Falstaff, does he not come on as a highwayman, as an old woman, as +Herne the Hunter, and as the clothes going to the laundry? + +Nor are the examples of the employment of costume as a mode of +intensifying dramatic situation less numerous. After slaughter of +Duncan, Macbeth appears in his night-gown as if aroused from sleep; Timon +ends in rags the play he had begun in splendour; Richard flatters the +London citizens in a suit of mean and shabby armour, and, as soon as he +has stepped in blood to the throne, marches through the streets in crown +and George and Garter; the climax of _The Tempest_ is reached when +Prospero, throwing off his enchanter’s robes, sends Ariel for his hat and +rapier, and reveals himself as the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in +_Hamlet_ changes his mystical apparel to produce different effects; and +as for Juliet, a modern playwright would probably have laid her out in +her shroud, and made the scene a scene of horror merely, but Shakespeare +arrays her in rich and gorgeous raiment, whose loveliness makes the vault +‘a feasting presence full of light,’ turns the tomb into a bridal +chamber, and gives the cue and motive for Romeo’s speech of the triumph +of Beauty over Death. + +Even small details of dress, such as the colour of a major-domo’s +stockings, the pattern on a wife’s handkerchief, the sleeve of a young +soldier, and a fashionable woman’s bonnets, become in Shakespeare’s hands +points of actual dramatic importance, and by some of them the action of +the play in question is conditioned absolutely. Many other dramatists +have availed themselves of costume as a method of expressing directly to +the audience the character of a person on his entrance, though hardly so +brilliantly as Shakespeare has done in the case of the dandy Parolles, +whose dress, by the way, only an archæologist can understand; the fun of +a master and servant exchanging coats in presence of the audience, of +shipwrecked sailors squabbling over the division of a lot of fine +clothes, and of a tinker dressed up like a duke while he is in his cups, +may be regarded as part of that great career which costume has always +played in comedy from the time of Aristophanes down to Mr. Gilbert; but +nobody from the mere details of apparel and adornment has ever drawn such +irony of contrast, such immediate and tragic effect, such pity and such +pathos, as Shakespeare himself. Armed cap-à-pie, the dead King stalks on +the battlements of Elsinore because all is not right with Denmark; +Shylock’s Jewish gaberdine is part of the stigma under which that wounded +and embittered nature writhes; Arthur begging for his life can think of +no better plea than the handkerchief he had given Hubert— + + Have you the heart? when your head did but ache, + I knit my handkerchief about your brows, + (The best I had, a princess wrought it me) + And I did never ask it you again; + +and Orlando’s blood-stained napkin strikes the first sombre note in that +exquisite woodland idyll, and shows us the depth of feeling that +underlies Rosalind’s fanciful wit and wilful jesting. + + Last night ’twas on my arm; I kissed it; + I hope it be not gone to tell my lord + That I kiss aught but he, + +says Imogen, jesting on the loss of the bracelet which was already on its +way to Rome to rob her of her husband’s faith; the little Prince passing +to the Tower plays with the dagger in his uncle’s girdle; Duncan sends a +ring to Lady Macbeth on the night of his own murder, and the ring of +Portia turns the tragedy of the merchant into a wife’s comedy. The great +rebel York dies with a paper crown on his head; Hamlet’s black suit is a +kind of colour-motive in the piece, like the mourning of the Chimène in +the _Cid_; and the climax of Antony’s speech is the production of Cæsar’s +cloak:— + + I remember + The first time ever Cæsar put it on. + ’Twas on a summer’s evening, in his tent, + The day he overcame the Nervii:— + Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through: + See what a rent the envious Casca made: + Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed. . . . + Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold + Our Cæsar’s vesture wounded? + +The flowers which Ophelia carries with her in her madness are as pathetic +as the violets that blossom on a grave; the effect of Lear’s wandering on +the heath is intensified beyond words by his fantastic attire; and when +Cloten, stung by the taunt of that simile which his sister draws from her +husband’s raiment, arrays himself in that husband’s very garb to work +upon her the deed of shame, we feel that there is nothing in the whole of +modern French realism, nothing even in _Thérèse Raquin_, that masterpiece +of horror, which for terrible and tragic significance can compare with +this strange scene in _Cymbeline_. + +In the actual dialogue also some of the most vivid passages are those +suggested by costume. Rosalind’s + + Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet + and hose in my disposition? + +Constance’s + + Grief fills the place of my absent child, + Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; + +and the quick sharp cry of Elizabeth— + + Ah! cut my lace asunder!— + +are only a few of the many examples one might quote. One of the finest +effects I have ever seen on the stage was Salvini, in the last act of +_Lear_, tearing the plume from Kent’s cap and applying it to Cordelia’s +lips when he came to the line, + + This feather stirs; she lives! + +Mr. Booth, whose Lear had many noble qualities of passion, plucked, I +remember, some fur from his archæologically-incorrect ermine for the same +business; but Salvini’s was the finer effect of the two, as well as the +truer. And those who saw Mr. Irving in the last act of _Richard the +Third_ have not, I am sure, forgotten how much the agony and terror of +his dream was intensified, by contrast, through the calm and quiet that +preceded it, and the delivery of such lines as + + What, is my beaver easier than it was? + And all my armour laid into my tent? + Look that my staves be sound and not too heavy— + +lines which had a double meaning for the audience, remembering the last +words which Richard’s mother called after him as he was marching to +Bosworth:— + + Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse, + Which in the day of battle tire thee more + Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st. + +As regards the resources which Shakespeare had at his disposal, it is to +be remarked that, while he more than once complains of the smallness of +the stage on which he has to produce big historical plays, and of the +want of scenery which obliges him to cut out many effective open-air +incidents, he always writes as a dramatist who had at his disposal a most +elaborate theatrical wardrobe, and who could rely on the actors taking +pains about their make-up. Even now it is difficult to produce such a +play as the _Comedy of Errors_; and to the picturesque accident of Miss +Ellen Terry’s brother resembling herself we owe the opportunity of seeing +_Twelfth Night_ adequately performed. Indeed, to put any play of +Shakespeare’s on the stage, absolutely as he himself wished it to be +done, requires the services of a good property-man, a clever wig-maker, a +costumier with a sense of colour and a knowledge of textures, a master of +the methods of making-up, a fencing-master, a dancing-master, and an +artist to direct personally the whole production. For he is most careful +to tell us the dress and appearance of each character. ‘Racine abhorre +la réalité,’ says Auguste Vacquerie somewhere; ‘il ne daigne pas +s’occuper de son costume. Si l’on s’en rapportait aux indications du +poète, Agamemnon serait vêtu d’un sceptre et Achille d’une épée.’ But +with Shakespeare it is very different. He gives us directions about the +costumes of Perdita, Florizel, Autolycus, the Witches in _Macbeth_, and +the apothecary in _Romeo and Juliet_, several elaborate descriptions of +his fat knight, and a detailed account of the extraordinary garb in which +Petruchio is to be married. Rosalind, he tells us, is tall, and is to +carry a spear and a little dagger; Celia is smaller, and is to paint her +face brown so as to look sunburnt. The children who play at fairies in +Windsor Forest are to be dressed in white and green—a compliment, by the +way, to Queen Elizabeth, whose favourite colours they were—and in white, +with green garlands and gilded vizors, the angels are to come to +Katherine in Kimbolton. Bottom is in homespun, Lysander is distinguished +from Oberon by his wearing an Athenian dress, and Launce has holes in his +boots. The Duchess of Gloucester stands in a white sheet with her +husband in mourning beside her. The motley of the Fool, the scarlet of +the Cardinal, and the French lilies broidered on the English coats, are +all made occasion for jest or taunt in the dialogue. We know the +patterns on the Dauphin’s armour and the Pucelle’s sword, the crest on +Warwick’s helmet and the colour of Bardolph’s nose. Portia has golden +hair, Phoebe is black-haired, Orlando has chestnut curls, and Sir Andrew +Aguecheek’s hair hangs like flax on a distaff, and won’t curl at all. +Some of the characters are stout, some lean, some straight, some +hunchbacked, some fair, some dark, and some are to blacken their faces. +Lear has a white beard, Hamlet’s father a grizzled, and Benedick is to +shave his in the course of the play. Indeed, on the subject of stage +beards Shakespeare is quite elaborate; tells us of the many different +colours in use, and gives a hint to actors always to see that their own +are properly tied on. There is a dance of reapers in rye-straw hats, and +of rustics in hairy coats like satyrs; a masque of Amazons, a masque of +Russians, and a classical masque; several immortal scenes over a weaver +in an ass’s head, a riot over the colour of a coat which it takes the +Lord Mayor of London to quell, and a scene between an infuriated husband +and his wife’s milliner about the slashing of a sleeve. + +As for the metaphors Shakespeare draws from dress, and the aphorisms he +makes on it, his hits at the costume of his age, particularly at the +ridiculous size of the ladies’ bonnets, and the many descriptions of the +_mundus muliebris_, from the long of Autolycus in the _Winter’s Tale_ +down to the account of the Duchess of Milan’s gown in _Much Ado About +Nothing_, they are far too numerous to quote; though it may be worth +while to remind people that the whole of the Philosophy of Clothes is to +be found in Lear’s scene with Edgar—a passage which has the advantage of +brevity and style over the grotesque wisdom and somewhat mouthing +metaphysics of _Sartor Resartus_. But I think that from what I have +already said it is quite clear that Shakespeare was very much interested +in costume. I do not mean in that shallow sense by which it has been +concluded from his knowledge of deeds and daffodils that he was the +Blackstone and Paxton of the Elizabethan age; but that he saw that +costume could be made at once impressive of a certain effect on the +audience and expressive of certain types of character, and is one of the +essential factors of the means which a true illusionist has at his +disposal. Indeed to him the deformed figure of Richard was of as much +value as Juliet’s loveliness; he sets the serge of the radical beside the +silks of the lord, and sees the stage effects to be got from each: he has +as much delight in Caliban as he has in Ariel, in rags as he has in cloth +of gold, and recognises the artistic beauty of ugliness. + +The difficulty Ducis felt about translating _Othello_ in consequence of +the importance given to such a vulgar thing as a handkerchief, and his +attempt to soften its grossness by making the Moor reiterate ‘Le bandeau! +le bandeau!’ may be taken as an example of the difference between _la +tragédie philosophique_ and the drama of real life; and the introduction +for the first time of the word _mouchoir_ at the Théâtre Français was an +era in that romantic-realistic movement of which Hugo is the father and +M. Zola the _enfant terrible_, just as the classicism of the earlier part +of the century was emphasised by Talma’s refusal to play Greek heroes any +longer in a powdered periwig—one of the many instances, by the way, of +that desire for archæological accuracy in dress which has distinguished +the great actors of our age. + +In criticising the importance given to money in _La Comédie Humaine_, +Théophile Gautier says that Balzac may claim to have invented a new hero +in fiction, _le héros métallique_. Of Shakespeare it may be said he was +the first to see the dramatic value of doublets, and that a climax may +depend on a crinoline. + +The burning of the Globe Theatre—an event due, by the way, to the results +of the passion for illusion that distinguished Shakespeare’s +stage-management—has unfortunately robbed us of many important documents; +but in the inventory, still in existence, of the costume-wardrobe of a +London theatre in Shakespeare’s time, there are mentioned particular +costumes for cardinals, shepherds, kings, clowns, friars, and fools; +green coats for Robin Hood’s men, and a green gown for Maid Marian; a +white and gold doublet for Henry the Fifth, and a robe for Longshanks; +besides surplices, copes, damask gowns, gowns of cloth of gold and of +cloth of silver, taffeta gowns, calico gowns, velvet coats, satin coats, +frieze coats, jerkins of yellow leather and of black leather, red suits, +grey suits, French Pierrot suits, a robe ‘for to goo invisibell,’ which +seems inexpensive at £3, 10s., and four incomparable fardingales—all of +which show a desire to give every character an appropriate dress. There +are also entries of Spanish, Moorish and Danish costumes, of helmets, +lances, painted shields, imperial crowns, and papal tiaras, as well as of +costumes for Turkish Janissaries, Roman Senators, and all the gods and +goddesses of Olympus, which evidence a good deal of archæological +research on the part of the manager of the theatre. It is true that +there is a mention of a bodice for Eve, but probably the _donnée_ of the +play was after the Fall. + +Indeed, anybody who cares to examine the age of Shakespeare will see that +archæology was one of its special characteristics. After that revival of +the classical forms of architecture which was one of the notes of the +Renaissance, and the printing at Venice and elsewhere of the masterpieces +of Greek and Latin literature, had come naturally an interest in the +ornamentation and costume of the antique world. Nor was it for the +learning that they could acquire, but rather for the loveliness that they +might create, that the artists studied these things. The curious objects +that were being constantly brought to light by excavations were not left +to moulder in a museum, for the contemplation of a callous curator, and +the _ennui_ of a policeman bored by the absence of crime. They were used +as motives for the production of a new art, which was to be not beautiful +merely, but also strange. + +Infessura tells us that in 1485 some workmen digging on the Appian Way +came across an old Roman sarcophagus inscribed with the name ‘Julia, +daughter of Claudius.’ On opening the coffer they found within its +marble womb the body of a beautiful girl of about fifteen years of age, +preserved by the embalmer’s skill from corruption and the decay of time. +Her eyes were half open, her hair rippled round her in crisp curling +gold, and from her lips and cheek the bloom of maidenhood had not yet +departed. Borne back to the Capitol, she became at once the centre of a +new cult, and from all parts of the city crowded pilgrims to worship at +the wonderful shrine, till the Pope, fearing lest those who had found the +secret of beauty in a Pagan tomb might forget what secrets Judæa’s rough +and rock-hewn sepulchre contained, had the body conveyed away by night, +and in secret buried. Legend though it may be, yet the story is none the +less valuable as showing us the attitude of the Renaissance towards the +antique world. Archæology to them was not a mere science for the +antiquarian; it was a means by which they could touch the dry dust of +antiquity into the very breath and beauty of life, and fill with the new +wine of romanticism forms that else had been old and outworn. From the +pulpit of Niccola Pisano down to Mantegna’s ‘Triumph of Cæsar,’ and the +service Cellini designed for King Francis, the influence of this spirit +can be traced; nor was it confined merely to the immobile arts—the arts +of arrested movement—but its influence was to be seen also in the great +Græco-Roman masques which were the constant amusement of the gay courts +of the time, and in the public pomps and processions with which the +citizens of big commercial towns were wont to greet the princes that +chanced to visit them; pageants, by the way, which were considered so +important that large prints were made of them and published—a fact which +is a proof of the general interest at the time in matters of such kind. + +And this use of archæology in shows, so far from being a bit of priggish +pedantry, is in every way legitimate and beautiful. For the stage is not +merely the meeting-place of all the arts, but is also the return of art +to life. Sometimes in an archæological novel the use of strange and +obsolete terms seems to hide the reality beneath the learning, and I dare +say that many of the readers of _Notre Dame de Paris_ have been much +puzzled over the meaning of such expressions as _la casaque à mahoitres_, +_les voulgiers_, _le gallimard taché d’encre_, _les craaquiniers_, and +the like; but with the stage how different it is! The ancient world +wakes from its sleep, and history moves as a pageant before our eyes, +without obliging us to have recourse to a dictionary or an encyclopædia +for the perfection of our enjoyment. Indeed, there is not the slightest +necessity that the public should know the authorities for the mounting of +any piece. From such materials, for instance, as the disk of Theodosius, +materials with which the majority of people are probably not very +familiar, Mr. E. W. Godwin, one of the most artistic spirits of this +century in England, created the marvellous loveliness of the first act of +_Claudian_, and showed us the life of Byzantium in the fourth century, +not by a dreary lecture and a set of grimy casts, not by a novel which +requires a glossary to explain it, but by the visible presentation before +us of all the glory of that great town. And while the costumes were true +to the smallest points of colour and design, yet the details were not +assigned that abnormal importance which they must necessarily be given in +a piecemeal lecture, but were subordinated to the rules of lofty +composition and the unity of artistic effect. Mr. Symonds, speaking of +that great picture of Mantegna’s, now in Hampton Court, says that the +artist has converted an antiquarian motive into a theme for melodies of +line. The same could have been said with equal justice of Mr. Godwin’s +scene. Only the foolish called it pedantry, only those who would neither +look nor listen spoke of the passion of the play being killed by its +paint. It was in reality a scene not merely perfect in its +picturesqueness, but absolutely dramatic also, getting rid of any +necessity for tedious descriptions, and showing us, by the colour and +character of Claudian’s dress, and the dress of his attendants, the whole +nature and life of the man, from what school of philosophy he affected, +down to what horses he backed on the turf. + +And indeed archæology is only really delightful when transfused into some +form of art. I have no desire to underrate the services of laborious +scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lemprière’s Dictionary is +of far more value to us than Professor Max Müller’s treatment of the same +mythology as a disease of language. Better _Endymion_ than any theory, +however sound, or, as in the present instance, unsound, of an epidemic +among adjectives! And who does not feel that the chief glory of +Piranesi’s book on Vases is that it gave Keats the suggestion for his +‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’? Art, and art only, can make archæology +beautiful; and the theatric art can use it most directly and most +vividly, for it can combine in one exquisite presentation the illusion of +actual life with the wonder of the unreal world. But the sixteenth +century was not merely the age of Vitruvius; it was the age of Vecellio +also. Every nation seems suddenly to have become interested in the dress +of its neighbours. Europe began to investigate its own clothes, and the +amount of books published on national costumes is quite extraordinary. +At the beginning of the century the _Nuremberg Chronicle_, with its two +thousand illustrations, reached its fifth edition, and before the century +was over seventeen editions were published of Munster’s _Cosmography_. +Besides these two books there were also the works of Michael Colyns, of +Hans Weigel, of Amman, and of Vecellio himself, all of them well +illustrated, some of the drawings in Vecellio being probably from the +hand of Titian. + +Nor was it merely from books and treatises that they acquired their +knowledge. The development of the habit of foreign travel, the increased +commercial intercourse between countries, and the frequency of diplomatic +missions, gave every nation many opportunities of studying the various +forms of contemporary dress. After the departure from England, for +instance, of the ambassadors from the Czar, the Sultan and the Prince of +Morocco, Henry the Eighth and his friends gave several masques in the +strange attire of their visitors. Later on London saw, perhaps too +often, the sombre splendour of the Spanish Court, and to Elizabeth came +envoys from all lands, whose dress, Shakespeare tells us, had an +important influence on English costume. + +And the interest was not confined merely to classical dress, or the dress +of foreign nations; there was also a good deal of research, amongst +theatrical people especially, into the ancient costume of England itself: +and when Shakespeare, in the prologue to one of his plays, expresses his +regret at being unable to produce helmets of the period, he is speaking +as an Elizabethan manager and not merely as an Elizabethan poet. At +Cambridge, for instance, during his day, a play of _Richard The Third_ +was performed, in which the actors were attired in real dresses of the +time, procured from the great collection of historical costume in the +Tower, which was always open to the inspection of managers, and sometimes +placed at their disposal. And I cannot help thinking that this +performance must have been far more artistic, as regards costume, than +Garrick’s mounting of Shakespeare’s own play on the subject, in which he +himself appeared in a nondescript fancy dress, and everybody else in the +costume of the time of George the Third, Richmond especially being much +admired in the uniform of a young guardsman. + +For what is the use to the stage of that archæology which has so +strangely terrified the critics, but that it, and it alone, can give us +the architecture and apparel suitable to the time in which the action of +the play passes? It enables us to see a Greek dressed like a Greek, and +an Italian like an Italian; to enjoy the arcades of Venice and the +balconies of Verona; and, if the play deals with any of the great eras in +our country’s history, to contemplate the age in its proper attire, and +the king in his habit as he lived. And I wonder, by the way, what Lord +Lytton would have said some time ago, at the Princess’s Theatre, had the +curtain risen on his father’s Brutus reclining in a Queen Anne chair, +attired in a flowing wig and a flowered dressing-gown, a costume which in +the last century was considered peculiarly appropriate to an antique +Roman! For in those halcyon days of the drama no archæology troubled the +stage, or distressed the critics, and our inartistic grandfathers sat +peaceably in a stifling atmosphere of anachronisms, and beheld with the +calm complacency of the age of prose an Iachimo in powder and patches, a +Lear in lace ruffles, and a Lady Macbeth in a large crinoline. I can +understand archæology being attacked on the ground of its excessive +realism, but to attack it as pedantic seems to be very much beside the +mark. However, to attack it for any reason is foolish; one might just as +well speak disrespectfully of the equator. For archæology, being a +science, is neither good nor bad, but a fact simply. Its value depends +entirely on how it is used, and only an artist can use it. We look to +the archæologist for the materials, to the artist for the method. + +In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the +first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. +This should be determined by the general spirit of the play, more than by +any actual historical references which may occur in it. Most _Hamlets_ I +have seen were placed far too early. _Hamlet_ is essentially a scholar +of the Revival of Learning; and if the allusion to the recent invasion of +England by the Danes puts it back to the ninth century, the use of foils +brings it down much later. Once, however, that the date has been fixed, +then the archæologist is to supply us with the facts which the artist is +to convert into effects. + +It has been said that the anachronisms in the plays themselves show us +that Shakespeare was indifferent to historical accuracy, and a great deal +of capital has been made out of Hector’s indiscreet quotation from +Aristotle. Upon the other hand, the anachronisms are really few in +number, and not very important, and, had Shakespeare’s attention been +drawn to them by a brother artist, he would probably have corrected them. +For, though they can hardly be called blemishes, they are certainly not +the great beauties of his work; or, at least, if they are, their +anachronistic charm cannot be emphasised unless the play is accurately +mounted according to its proper date. In looking at Shakespeare’s plays +as a whole, however, what is really remarkable is their extraordinary +fidelity as regards his personages and his plots. Many of his _dramatis +personæ_ are people who had actually existed, and some of them might have +been seen in real life by a portion of his audience. Indeed the most +violent attack that was made on Shakespeare in his time was for his +supposed caricature of Lord Cobham. As for his plots, Shakespeare +constantly draws them either from authentic history, or from the old +ballads and traditions which served as history to the Elizabethan public, +and which even now no scientific historian would dismiss as absolutely +untrue. And not merely did he select fact instead of fancy as the basis +of much of his imaginative work, but he always gives to each play the +general character, the social atmosphere in a word, of the age in +question. Stupidity he recognises as being one of the permanent +characteristics of all European civilisations; so he sees no difference +between a London mob of his own day and a Roman mob of pagan days, +between a silly watchman in Messina and a silly Justice of the Peace in +Windsor. But when he deals with higher characters, with those exceptions +of each age which are so fine that they become its types, he gives them +absolutely the stamp and seal of their time. Virgilia is one of those +Roman wives on whose tomb was written ‘Domi mansit, lanam fecit,’ as +surely as Juliet is the romantic girl of the Renaissance. He is even +true to the characteristics of race. Hamlet has all the imagination and +irresolution of the Northern nations, and the Princess Katharine is as +entirely French as the heroine of _Divorçons_. Harry the Fifth is a pure +Englishman, and Othello a true Moor. + +Again when Shakespeare treats of the history of England from the +fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, it is wonderful how careful he is +to have his facts perfectly right—indeed he follows Holinshed with +curious fidelity. The incessant wars between France and England are +described with extraordinary accuracy down to the names of the besieged +towns, the ports of landing and embarkation, the sites and dates of the +battles, the titles of the commanders on each side, and the lists of the +killed and wounded. And as regards the Civil Wars of the Roses we have +many elaborate genealogies of the seven sons of Edward the Third; the +claims of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster to the throne are +discussed at length; and if the English aristocracy will not read +Shakespeare as a poet, they should certainly read him as a sort of early +Peerage. There is hardly a single title in the Upper House, with the +exception of course of the uninteresting titles assumed by the law lords, +which does not appear in Shakespeare along with many details of family +history, creditable and discreditable. Indeed if it be really necessary +that the School Board children should know all about the Wars of the +Roses, they could learn their lessons just as well out of Shakespeare as +out of shilling primers, and learn them, I need not say, far more +pleasurably. Even in Shakespeare’s own day this use of his plays was +recognised. ‘The historical plays teach history to those who cannot read +it in the chronicles,’ says Heywood in a tract about the stage, and yet I +am sure that sixteenth-century chronicles were much more delightful +reading than nineteenth-century primers are. + +Of course the æsthetic value of Shakespeare’s plays does not, in the +slightest degree, depend on their facts, but on their Truth, and Truth is +independent of facts always, inventing or selecting them at pleasure. +But still Shakespeare’s use of facts is a most interesting part of his +method of work, and shows us his attitude towards the stage, and his +relations to the great art of illusion. Indeed he would have been very +much surprised at any one classing his plays with ‘fairy tales,’ as Lord +Lytton does; for one of his aims was to create for England a national +historical drama, which should deal with incidents with which the public +was well acquainted, and with heroes that lived in the memory of a +people. Patriotism, I need hardly say, is not a necessary quality of +art; but it means, for the artist, the substitution of a universal for an +individual feeling, and for the public the presentation of a work of art +in a most attractive and popular form. It is worth noticing that +Shakespeare’s first and last successes were both historical plays. + +It may be asked, what has this to do with Shakespeare’s attitude towards +costume? I answer that a dramatist who laid such stress on historical +accuracy of fact would have welcomed historical accuracy of costume as a +most important adjunct to his illusionist method. And I have no +hesitation in saying that he did so. The reference to helmets of the +period in the prologue to _Henry the Fifth_ may be considered fanciful, +though Shakespeare must have often seen + + The very casque + That did affright the air at Agincourt, + +where it still hangs in the dusky gloom of Westminster Abbey, along with +the saddle of that ‘imp of fame,’ and the dinted shield with its torn +blue velvet lining and its tarnished lilies of gold; but the use of +military tabards in _Henry the Sixth_ is a bit of pure archæology, as +they were not worn in the sixteenth century; and the King’s own tabard, I +may mention, was still suspended over his tomb in St. George’s Chapel, +Windsor, in Shakespeare’s day. For, up to the time of the unfortunate +triumph of the Philistines in 1645, the chapels and cathedrals of England +were the great national museums of archæology, and in them were kept the +armour and attire of the heroes of English history. A good deal was of +course preserved in the Tower, and even in Elizabeth’s day tourists were +brought there to see such curious relics of the past as Charles Brandon’s +huge lance, which is still, I believe, the admiration of our country +visitors; but the cathedrals and churches were, as a rule, selected as +the most suitable shrines for the reception of the historic antiquities. +Canterbury can still show us the helm of the Black Prince, Westminster +the robes of our kings, and in old St. Paul’s the very banner that had +waved on Bosworth field was hung up by Richmond himself. + +In fact, everywhere that Shakespeare turned in London, he saw the apparel +and appurtenances of past ages, and it is impossible to doubt that he +made use of his opportunities. The employment of lance and shield, for +instance, in actual warfare, which is so frequent in his plays, is drawn +from archæology, and not from the military accoutrements of his day; and +his general use of armour in battle was not a characteristic of his age, +a time when it was rapidly disappearing before firearms. Again, the +crest on Warwick’s helmet, of which such a point is made in _Henry the +Sixth_, is absolutely correct in a fifteenth-century play when crests +were generally worn, but would not have been so in a play of +Shakespeare’s own time, when feathers and plumes had taken their place—a +fashion which, as he tells us in _Henry the Eighth_, was borrowed from +France. For the historical plays, then, we may be sure that archæology +was employed, and as for the others I feel certain that it was the case +also. The appearance of Jupiter on his eagle, thunderbolt in hand, of +Juno with her peacocks, and of Iris with her many-coloured bow; the +Amazon masque and the masque of the Five Worthies, may all be regarded as +archæological; and the vision which Posthumus sees in prison of Sicilius +Leonatus—‘an old man, attired like a warrior, leading an ancient +matron’—is clearly so. Of the ‘Athenian dress’ by which Lysander is +distinguished from Oberon I have already spoken; but one of the most +marked instances is in the case of the dress of Coriolanus, for which +Shakespeare goes directly to Plutarch. That historian, in his Life of +the great Roman, tells us of the oak-wreath with which Caius Marcius was +crowned, and of the curious kind of dress in which, according to ancient +fashion, he had to canvass his electors; and on both of these points he +enters into long disquisitions, investigating the origin and meaning of +the old customs. Shakespeare, in the spirit of the true artist, accepts +the facts of the antiquarian and converts them into dramatic and +picturesque effects: indeed the gown of humility, the ‘woolvish gown,’ as +Shakespeare calls it, is the central note of the play. There are other +cases I might quote, but this one is quite sufficient for my purpose; and +it is evident from it at any rate that, in mounting a play in the +accurate costume of the time, according to the best authorities, we are +carrying out Shakespeare’s own wishes and method. + +Even if it were not so, there is no more reason that we should continue +any imperfections which may be supposed to have characterised +Shakespeare’s stage mounting than that we should have Juliet played by a +young man, or give up the advantage of changeable scenery. A great work +of dramatic art should not merely be made expressive of modern passion by +means of the actor, but should be presented to us in the form most +suitable to the modern spirit. Racine produced his Roman plays in Louis +Quatorze dress on a stage crowded with spectators; but we require +different conditions for the enjoyment of his art. Perfect accuracy of +detail, for the sake of perfect illusion, is necessary for us. What we +have to see is that the details are not allowed to usurp the principal +place. They must be subordinate always to the general motive of the +play. But subordination in art does not mean disregard of truth; it +means conversion of fact into effect, and assigning to each detail its +proper relative value + + ‘Les petits détails d’histoire et de vie domestique (says Hugo) + doivent être scrupuleusement étudiés et reproduits par le poète, mais + uniquement comme des moyens d’accroître la réalité de l’ensemble, et + de faire pénétrer jusque dans les coins les plus obscurs de l’œuvre + cette vie générale et puissante au milieu de laquelle les personnages + sont plus vrais, et les catastrophes, par conséqueut, plus + poignantes. Tout doit être subordonné à ce but. L’Homme sur le + premier plan, le reste au fond.’ + +This passage is interesting as coming from the first great French +dramatist who employed archæology on the stage, and whose plays, though +absolutely correct in detail, are known to all for their passion, not for +their pedantry—for their life, not for their learning. It is true that +he has made certain concessions in the case of the employment of curious +or strange expressions. Ruy Blas talks of M, de Priego as ‘sujet du roi’ +instead of ‘noble du roi,’ and Angelo Malipieri speaks of ‘la croix +rouge’ instead of ‘la croix de gueules.’ But they are concessions made +to the public, or rather to a section of it. ‘J’en offre ici toute mes +excuses aux spectateurs intelligents,’ he says in a note to one of the +plays; ‘espérons qu’un jour un seigneur vénitien pourra dire tout +bonnement sans péril son blason sur le théâtre. C’est un progrès qui +viendra.’ And, though the description of the crest is not couched in +accurate language, still the crest itself was accurately right. It may, +of course, be said that the public do not notice these things; upon the +other hand, it should be remembered that Art has no other aim but her own +perfection, and proceeds simply by her own laws, and that the play which +Hamlet describes as being caviare to the general is a play he highly +praises. Besides, in England, at any rate, the public have undergone a +transformation; there is far more appreciation of beauty now than there +was a few years ago; and though they may not be familiar with the +authorities and archæological data for what is shown to them, still they +enjoy whatever loveliness they look at. And this is the important thing. +Better to take pleasure in a rose than to put its root under a +microscope. Archæological accuracy is merely a condition of illusionist +stage effect; it is not its quality. And Lord Lytton’s proposal that the +dresses should merely be beautiful without being accurate is founded on a +misapprehension of the nature of costume, and of its value on the stage. +This value is twofold, picturesque and dramatic; the former depends on +the colour of the dress, the latter on its design and character. But so +interwoven are the two that, whenever in our own day historical accuracy +has been disregarded, and the various dresses in a play taken from +different ages, the result has been that the stage has been turned into +that chaos of costume, that caricature of the centuries, the Fancy Dress +Ball, to the entire ruin of all dramatic and picturesque effect. For the +dresses of one age do not artistically harmonise with the dresses of +another: and, as far as dramatic value goes, to confuse the costumes is +to confuse the play. Costume is a growth, an evolution, and a most +important, perhaps the most important, sign of the manners, customs and +mode of life of each century. The Puritan dislike of colour, adornment +and grace in apparel was part of the great revolt of the middle classes +against Beauty in the seventeenth century. A historian who disregarded +it would give us a most inaccurate picture of the time, and a dramatist +who did not avail himself of it would miss a most vital element in +producing an illusionist effect. The effeminacy of dress that +characterised the reign of Richard the Second was a constant theme of +contemporary authors. Shakespeare, writing two hundred years after, +makes the king’s fondness for gay apparel and foreign fashions a point in +the play, from John of Gaunt’s reproaches down to Richard’s own speech in +the third act on his deposition from the throne. And that Shakespeare +examined Richard’s tomb in Westminster Abbey seems to me certain from +York’s speech:— + + See, see, King Richard doth himself appear + As doth the blushing discontented sun + From out the fiery portal of the east, + When he perceives the envious clouds are bent + To dim his glory. + +For we can still discern on the King’s robe his favourite badge—the sun +issuing from a cloud. In fact, in every age the social conditions are so +exemplified in costume, that to produce a sixteenth-century play in +fourteenth-century attire, or _vice versa_, would make the performance +seem unreal because untrue. And, valuable as beauty of effect on the +stage is, the highest beauty is not merely comparable with absolute +accuracy of detail, but really dependent on it. To invent, an entirely +new costume is almost impossible except in burlesque or extravaganza, and +as for combining the dress of different centuries into one, the +experiment would be dangerous, and Shakespeare’s opinion of the artistic +value of such a medley may be gathered from his incessant satire of the +Elizabethan dandies for imagining that they were well dressed because +they got their doublets in Italy, their hats in Germany, and their hose +in France. And it should be noted that the most lovely scenes that have +been produced on our stage have been those that have been characterised +by perfect accuracy, such as Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft’s eighteenth-century +revivals at the Haymarket, Mr. Irying’s superb production of _Much Ado +About Nothing_, and Mr. Barrett’s _Claudian_. Besides, and this is +perhaps the most complete answer to Lord Lytton’s theory, it must be +remembered that neither in costume nor in dialogue is beauty the +dramatist’s primary aim at all. The true dramatist aims first at what is +characteristic, and no more desires that all his personages should be +beautifully attired than he desires that they should all have beautiful +natures or speak beautiful English. The true dramatist, in fact, shows +us life under the conditions of art, not art in the form of life. The +Greek dress was the loveliest dress the world has ever seen, and the +English dress of the last century one of the most monstrous; yet we +cannot costume a play by Sheridan as we would costume a play by +Sophokles. For, as Polonius says in his excellent lecture, a lecture to +which I am glad to have the opportunity of expressing my obligations, one +of the first qualities of apparel is its expressiveness. And the +affected style of dress in the last century was the natural +characteristic of a society of affected manners and affected +conversation—a characteristic which the realistic dramatist will highly +value down to the smallest detail of accuracy, and the materials for +which he can get only from archæology. + +But it is not enough that a dress should be accurate; it must be also +appropriate to the stature and appearance of the actor, and to his +supposed condition, as well as to his necessary action in the play. In +Mr. Hare’s production of _As You Like It_ at the St. James’s Theatre, for +instance, the whole point of Orlando’s complaint that he is brought up +like a peasant, and not like a gentleman, was spoiled by the gorgeousness +of his dress, and the splendid apparel worn by the banished Duke and his +friends was quite out of place. Mr. Lewis Wingfield’s explanation that +the sumptuary laws of the period necessitated their doing so, is, I am +afraid, hardly sufficient. Outlaws, lurking in a forest and living by +the chase, are not very likely to care much about ordinances of dress. +They were probably attired like Robin Hood’s men, to whom, indeed, they +are compared in the course of the play. And that their dress was not +that of wealthy noblemen may be seen by Orlando’s words when he breaks in +upon them. He mistakes them for robbers, and is amazed to find that they +answer him in courteous and gentle terms. Lady Archibald Campbell’s +production, under Mr. E. W. Godwin’s direction, of the same play in +Coombe Wood was, as regards mounting, far more artistic. At least it +seemed so to me. The Duke and his companions were dressed in serge +tunics, leathern jerkins, high boots and gauntlets, and wore bycocket +hats and hoods. And as they were playing in a real forest, they found, I +am sure, their dresses extremely convenient. To every character in the +play was given a perfectly appropriate attire, and the brown and green of +their costumes harmonised exquisitely with the ferns through which they +wandered, the trees beneath which they lay, and the lovely English +landscape that surrounded the Pastoral Players. The perfect naturalness +of the scene was due to the absolute accuracy and appropriateness of +everything that was worn. Nor could archæology have been put to a +severer test, or come out of it more triumphantly. The whole production +showed once for all that, unless a dress is archæologically correct, and +artistically appropriate, it always looks unreal, unnatural, and +theatrical in the sense of artificial. + +Nor, again, is it enough that there should be accurate and appropriate +costumes of beautiful colours; there must be also beauty of colour on the +stage as a whole, and as long as the background is painted by one artist, +and the foreground figures independently designed by another, there is +the danger of a want of harmony in the scene as a picture. For each +scene the colour-scheme should be settled as absolutely as for the +decoration of a room, and the textures which it is proposed to use should +be mixed and re-mixed in every possible combination, and what is +discordant removed. Then, as regards the particular kinds of colours, +the stage is often too glaring, partly through the excessive use of hot, +violent reds, and partly through the costumes looking too new. +Shabbiness, which in modern life is merely the tendency of the lower +orders towards tone, is not without its artistic value, and modern +colours are often much improved by being a little faded. Blue also is +too frequently used: it is not merely a dangerous colour to wear by +gaslight, but it is really difficult in England to get a thoroughly good +blue. The fine Chinese blue, which we all so much admire, takes two +years to dye, and the English public will not wait so long for a colour. +Peacock blue, of course, has been employed on the stage, notably at the +Lyceum, with great advantage; but all attempts at a good light blue, or +good dark blue, which I have seen have been failures. The value of black +is hardly appreciated; it was used effectively by Mr. Irving in _Hamlet_ +as the central note of a composition, but as a tone-giving neutral its +importance is not recognised. And this is curious, considering the +general colour of the dress of a century in which, as Baudelaire says, +‘Nous célébrons tous quelque enterrement.’ The archæologist of the +future will probably point to this age as the time when the beauty of +black was understood; but I hardly think that, as regards stage-mounting +or house decoration, it really is. Its decorative value is, of course, +the same as that of white or gold; it can separate and harmonise colours. +In modern plays the black frock-coat of the hero becomes important in +itself, and should be given a suitable background. But it rarely is. +Indeed the only good background for a play in modern dress which I have +ever seen was the dark grey and cream-white scene of the first act of the +_Princesse Georges_ in Mrs. Langtry’s production. As a rule, the hero is +smothered in _bric-à-brac_ and palm-trees, lost in the gilded abyss of +Louis Quatorze furniture, or reduced to a mere midge in the midst of +marqueterie; whereas the background should always be kept as a +background, and colour subordinated to effect. This, of course, can only +be done when there is one single mind directing the whole production. +The facts of art are diverse, but the essence of artistic effect is +unity. Monarchy, Anarchy, and Republicanism may contend for the +government of nations; but a theatre should be in the power of a cultured +despot. There may be division of labour, but there must be no division +of mind. Whoever understands the costume of an age understands of +necessity its architecture and its surroundings also, and it is easy to +see from the chairs of a century whether it was a century of crinolines +or not. In fact, in art there is no specialism, and a really artistic +production should bear the impress of one master, and one master only, +who not merely should design and arrange everything, but should have +complete control over the way in which each dress is to be worn. + +Mademoiselle Mars, in the first production of _Hernani_, absolutely +refused to call her lover ‘_Mon Lion_!’ unless she was allowed to wear a +little fashionable _toque_ then much in vogue on the Boulevards; and many +young ladies on our own stage insist to the present day on wearing stiff +starched petticoats under Greek dresses, to the entire ruin of all +delicacy of line and fold; but these wicked things should not be allowed. +And there should be far more dress rehearsals than there are now. Actors +such as Mr. Forbes-Robertson, Mr. Conway, Mr. George Alexander, and +others, not to mention older artists, can move with ease and elegance in +the attire of any century; but there are not a few who seem dreadfully +embarrassed about their hands if they have no side pockets, and who +always wear their dresses as if they were costumes. Costumes, of course, +they are to the designer; but dresses they should be to those that wear +them. And it is time that a stop should be put to the idea, very +prevalent on the stage, that the Greeks and Romans always went about +bareheaded in the open air—a mistake the Elizabethan managers did not +fall into, for they gave hoods as well as gowns to their Roman senators. + +More dress rehearsals would also be of value in explaining to the actors +that there is a form of gesture and movement that is not merely +appropriate to each style of dress, but really conditioned by it. The +extravagant use of the arms in the eighteenth century, for instance, was +the necessary result of the large hoop, and the solemn dignity of +Burleigh owed as much to his ruff as to his reason. Besides until an +actor is at home in his dress, he is not at home in his part. + +Of the value of beautiful costume in creating an artistic temperament in +the audience, and producing that joy in beauty for beauty’s sake without +which the great masterpieces of art can never be understood, I will not +here speak; though it is worth while to notice how Shakespeare +appreciated that side of the question in the production of his tragedies, +acting them always by artificial light, and in a theatre hung with black; +but what I have tried to point out is that archæology is not a pedantic +method, but a method of artistic illusion, and that costume is a means of +displaying character without description, and of producing dramatic +situations and dramatic effects. And I think it is a pity that so many +critics should have set themselves to attack one of the most important +movements on the modern stage before that movement has at all reached its +proper perfection. That it will do so, however, I feel as certain as +that we shall require from our dramatic critics in the future higher +qualification than that they can remember Macready or have seen Benjamin +Webster; we shall require of them, indeed, that they cultivate a sense of +beauty. _Pour être plus difficile_, _la tâche n’en est que plus +glorieuse_. And if they will not encourage, at least they must not +oppose, a movement of which Shakespeare of all dramatists would have most +approved, for it has the illusion of truth for its method, and the +illusion of beauty for its result. Not that I agree with everything that +I have said in this essay. There is much with which I entirely disagree. +The essay simply represents an artistic standpoint, and in æsthetic +criticism attitude is everything. For in art there is no such thing as a +universal truth. A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also +true. And just as it is only in art-criticism, and through it, that we +can apprehend the Platonic theory of ideas, so it is only in +art-criticism, and through it, that we can realise Hegel’s system of +contraries. 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