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l
*
T H E W I S D OM
OF
OSC A R W I LD E


NOTE
The Editor takes this opportunity to
thank Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons,
the publishers of “De Profundis,” for
their kindness in according permission
for the reprinting of the extracts
made from that work.


2 3 4-4-2, 22, Ll
*
0 CO
& Aw Ҽ
MAR 24, 1924
lieflaw
ſº. -
Jºe, ove”/-
Copyright 1906
By Brentano's
T---->
PRESERVATION.MASTER &
ATHARVARD * -
I Nº N
º


INTRODUCTION


|


SCAR WILDE, the man, is dead.
No man dare adventure in rebellion
against the Society of his fellow-men un-
less he aim high. And even then he may
often meet death, and should expect it. But
Oscar Wilde's revolt was not of this order.
It sent him biting the dust and chewing
the bitter cud of salutary repentance. It
was a mere laugh of silly derision, a mere
skipping of a satyr's hoofs, a paltry Snap-
ping of the fingers in the face of decency,
the ridiculous antics of a spoilt and pam-
pered youth. We waste our time in giving
it even the consideration of a reference,
except to note that that part of Oscar
Wilde is dead and will soon have become
the dust from which it came. If haply,
it feed some rose to bloom redder, that is
as much as need concern us.
But the writings of Oscar Wilde, those
emanations of the real being that gave
life to the artist and constituted what we
call his “soul”, if these have anything in
them that is for us, not only should we not
reject it, but it is for our necessity and
*:
11.
tio
*
W


Jiuc-
our salvation that we accept it. The dust
of Imperial Caesar may “patch a wall
t’expel the winter's flaw,” but his soul
must go on through the ages, because it
is of that fire which consumes those who
attempt to extinguish it.
To speak thus by way of comparison is
hardly an exaggeration. The author of
“Intentions ° and “The Soul of Man
Under Socialism ‘’ enunciated a new
theory of art and a new dogma of life.
He revalued our values with the insight
of genius; and if he sometimes indulged
himself in persiflage it was by way of aside
and due to the humorous play of the Irish-
man in him. He was a creator of no
mean order as his Poems amply testify.
There is no more directly appealing ballad
in the English language than that of
“Reading Gaol.” His power of dramatic
composition is extraordinary in his plays,
and the lovely allegories and tales of the
“Happy Prince” and “The House of
Pomegranates’ are among the master-
pieces of that class of literature.
º
vi





Suffering
mock you with the ruins of a beauty, the
secret of whose creation you have lost.
That very absence of tradition which Rus-
kin thought would rob your rivers of their
laughter and your flowers of their light
may be rather the source of your freedom
and strength. To speak in literature with
the perfect rectitude of the movement of
animals, and the unimpeachableness of
the sentiments of tree, and grass by the
roadside, has been defined by one of your
poets as the flawless triumph of art; it is
a triumph which you above all other na-
tions may be destined to achieve. For the
voices that have their dwelling in sea and
mountain are not the chosen music of lib-
erty only. Other messages are there, if
you will but listen to them—may yield
you the splendour of some new imagina-
tion, and the marvel of some new liberty.
Lecture on the English Renaissance.
++
SUFFERING is really a revelation.
One discerns things one never dis-
4


cerned before. One approaches the whole
of history from a different standpoint.
What one had felt dimly, through instinct,
about art, is intellectually and emotionally
realised with perfect clearness of vision
and absolute intensity of apprehension.
De Profundis.
“Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the midnight hours
Weeping and waiting for the morrow,L
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.”
++
I NOW see that sorrow, being the su-
preme emotion of which man is ca-
pable, is at once the type and test of all
great art. What the artist is always look-
ing for is the mode of existence in which
soul and body are one and indivisible: in
which the outward is expressive of the in-
ward: in which form reveals. De Pro-
fundis.
++
BRHIND joy and laughter there may
be a temperament, coarse, hard, and
callous. But behind sorrow there is al-
ways sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears
The aim
of the
artist is
best real-
ised
through
sorrow
Sorrow
the ulti-
mate type
in life and
in art
5


Truth in
Art
The Com-
plete Man
The Per-
fect Per-
sonality
The man
who exer-
cises au:
thority is
the man
who re-
sists au-
thority
no mask. Truth in art is not any cor-
respondence between the essential idea
and the accidental existence. . . .
Truth in art is the unity of a thing with
itself: the outward rendered expressive
of the inward: the soul made incarnate:
the body instinct with spirit. For this
reason there is no truth comparable to sor-
row . . . out of sorrow have the
worlds been built, and at the birth of a
child or a star there is pain. De Profundis.
++
IT is a question whether we have ever
seen the full expression of a personality,
except on the imaginative plane of art.
In action we never have. Caesar, says
Mommsen, was the complete and perfect
man. But how tragically insecure was
Caesar! Wherever there is a man who
exercises authority, there is a man who
resists authority. Caesar was very per-
fect, but his perfection travelled by too
dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius was
the perfect man, says Renan. Yes; the
6


!.
great emperor was a perfect man. But
how intolerable were the endless claims
upon him! He staggered under the bur-
den of the empire. He was conscious how
inadequate one man was to bear the
weight of that Titan and too vast orb.
What I mean by a perfect man is one
who develops under perfect conditions;
one who is not wounded, or worried, or
maimed, or in danger. Most personal-
ities have been obliged to be rebels. Half
their strength has been wasted in fric-
tion . . . It will be a marvellous thing
—the true personality of man—when we
see it. It will grow naturally and simply,
flower-like, or as a tree grows. It
will not be at discord. It will never
argue or dispute. It will not prove things.
It will know everything. And yet
it will not busy itself about knowl-
edge. It will have wisdom. Its value will
not be measured by material things. It
will have nothing. And yet it will have
everything, and whatever one takes from
it, it will still have, so rich will it be.
7


It will not be always meddling with others,
or asking them to be like itself. It will
love them because they will be different.
And yet, while it will not meddle with
others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing
helps us by being what it is. The person-
ality of man will be very wonderful. It
will be as wonderful as the personality of
a child. The Soul of Man under Social-
1,57%.
++
* THE true perfection of man lies, not
Perfection in what man has, but in what man
1S Nothing should be able to
harm a man except himself. Nothing
should be able to rob a man at all. What
a man really has, is what is in him. What
is outside of him should be a matter of
no importance. The Soul of Man Under
Socialism.
The Evil. OW and then, in the course of the
Altruism century, a great man of science, like
Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine
8


critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme
artist, like Flaubert, has been able to iso-
late himself, to keep himself out of reach
of the clamorous claims of others, to stand
“under the shelter of the wall,” as Plato
puts it, and so to realise the perfection of
what was in him, to his own incomparable
gain, and to the incomparable and lasting
gain of the whole world. These, how-
ever, are exceptions. The majority of
people spoil their lives by an unhealthy
and exaggerated altruism—are forced, in-
deed, so to spoil them. They find them-
selves surrounded by hideous poverty, by
hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation.
It is inevitable that they should be
strongly moved by all this. The emotions
of man are stirred more quickly than
man's intelligence; and, . . . it is much
more easy to have sympathy with suffer-
ing than it is to have sympathy with
thought. Accordingly, with admirable,
though misdirected intentions, they very
seriously and very sentimentally set them-
selves to the task of remedying the evils
9


OUR very dress makes us grotesque.
We are the zanies of sorrow. We
are clowns whose hearts are broken .
To those who are in prison tears are
a part of every day's experience. A day
in prison on which one does not weep is
a day on which one's heart is hard, not a
day on which one's heart is happy. De
Profundis.
++
THE Philistine element in life is not
the failure to understand art. . .
He is the Philistine who upholds and aids
the heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical
forces of society, and who does not recog-
nise dynamic force when he meets it either
in a man or a movement. De Profundis.
++
MAN whose desire is to be some-
thing separate from himself, to be a
member of Parliament, or a successful
grocer, or a prominent lawyer or a judge,
or something equally tedious, invariably
succeeds in being what he wants to be.
Dress of
Inmates
of Pris-
ons
The Phil-
listine
Relation
of the Ar-
tistic Life
to Con-
duct
11


The Soul
of a Man
is Un-
knowable
That is his punishment. Those who want
a mask have to wear it.
But with the dynamic forces of life, and
those in whom those dynamic forces be-
come incarnate, it is different. People
whose desire is solely for self-realisation
never know where they are going. They
can't know. . . The final mystery is
oneself. When one has weighed the sun
in the balance, and measured the steps of
the moon, and mapped out the seven
heavens star by star, there still remains
oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of
one’s own soul? When the son went out
to look for his father's asses, he did not
know that a man of God was waiting for
him with the very chrism of coronation,
and that his own soul was already the
soul of a King. De Profundis.
++
F a friend of mine . . . gave a feast,
and did not invite me to it, I should
not mind a bit . . . But if . . . a
Friend-
ship the
Right to
Share An-
other's Sor.
row
friend of mine had a sorrow and refused
12


to allow me to share it, I should feel it
most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the
house of mourning against me, I would
move back again and again and beg to be
admitted, so that I might share in what
I was entitled to share. If he thought
me unworthy, winfit to weep with him, I
should feel it as the most poignant humil-
iation, as the most terrible mode for which
disgrace could be inflicted on me . . .
he who can look on the loveliness of the
world and share its sorrow, and realise
something of the wonder of both, is in im-
mediate contact with divine things, and
has got as near to God's secret as any
one can get. De Profundis.
++
THOSE who see any difference be-
tween soul and body, have neither.
Phrases and Philosophies for the use of
the Young.
++
THE well-bred contradict other peo-
ple. The wise contradict themselves.
Soul and
Body—
One
Contra-
diction
13


_2
/
Style
Essential
Industry
The Three
Ages
Reading
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of
the Young.
++
N all unimportant matters, style, not
sincerity, is the essential. In all im-
portant matters, style, not sincerity, is the
essential. In matters of grave importance,
style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of
the Young.
++
I NDUSTRY is the root of all ugliness.
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use
of the Young.
++
T HE old believe everything; the mid-
dle-aged suspect everything; the
young know everything. Phrases and
Philosophies for the Use of the Young.
++
T is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule
about what one should read and what
one shouldn't. More than half of modern
14


Artistic
Expres-
sion in
Painting
pulse, and in painting is to be sought for,
from the subject never, but from the pic-
torial charm only . . . L’Envoi to
“Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf.”
++
RELECTS all literary reminiscence and
all metaphysical idea, is in itself en-
tirely satisfying to the aesthetic sense—
is, as the Greeks would say, an end in
itself . . . the art whose subject
cannot be separated from the method of
its expression; the art which most com-
pletely realises for us the artistic ideal
the rule of art is not the rule of
morals. In an ethical system, indeed, of
any gentle mercy good intentions will, one
is fain to fancy, have their recognition;
but of those that would enter the serene
House of Beauty the question that we ask
is not what they had ever meant to do, but
what they had done. Their pathetic inten-
tions are of no value to us, but their
realised creations only. L’Envoi to “Rose
Leaf and Apple Leaf.”
16


OR, in looking at a work of art,
should we be dreaming of what it
symbolises but rather loving it for what it
is. Indeed, the transcendental spirit is
alien to the spirit of Art. The metaphysi-
cal mind of Asia may create for itself the
monstrous and many-breasted idol, but to
the Greek, pure artist, that work is most
instinct with spiritual life which conforms
most closely to the perfect facts of physical
life also. Nor, in its primary aspect, has
a painting, for instance, any more spiritual
message or meaning for us than a blue tile
from the wall of Damascus, or a Hitzen
vase. It is a beautifully coloured surface,
nothing more, and affects us by no sugges-
tion stolen from philosophy, no pathos
pilfered from literature, no feeling filched
from a poet, but by its own incommuni-
cable artistic essence—by that selection of
truth which we call style, and that relation
of values which is the draughtsmanship of
painting, by the whole quality of the work-
manship, the arabesque of the design, the
splendour of the colour; for these things
What is
Art? And
How Shall
We Look
at Art?
17


Sincerity
and Con-
stancy in
Art. Con-
stancy in
Belief
are enough to stir the most divine and re-
mote of the chords which make music in
our soul; and colour, indeed, is of itself a
mystical presence in things, and tone a
kind of sentiment. L’Envoi to “Rose Leaf
and Apple Leaf.” -
++
SINGERITY and constancy will the
artist indeed, have always; but sincerity
in art is merely that plastic perfection of
execution without which a poem or a
painting, however noble its sentiment or
human its origin, is but wasted and unreal
work, and the constancy of the artist can-
not be to any definite rules or system of
living, but to that principle of beauty
through which the inconstant shadows
of his life are, in their most fleeting mo-
ment, arrested and made permanent. He
will not, for instance, in intellectual mat-
ters, acquiesce in that facile orthodoxy of
our day which is so reasonable and so
artistically uninteresting; nor yet will he
desire that fiery faith of the antique time
18


which, while it intensified, yet limited the
vision; still less will he allow the calm of
his culture to be marred by the discordant
despair of doubt or the sadness of a
sterile skepticism; for the Valley Peril-
ous, where ignorant armies clash by night,
is no resting place meet for her to whom
the gods have assigned the clear upland,
the serene height, and the sunlit air.
Rather will he be always curiously testing
new forms of belief, tingeing his nature
with the sentiment that still lingers about
some beautiful creeds, and, searching for
experience itself, and not for the fruits of
experience, when he has got its secret, he
will leave without regret, much that was
once very precious to him. L’Envoi to
“Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf.”
++
WE are often told that the poor are
grateful for charity. Some of them
are, no doubt, but the best amongst the
poor are never grateful. They are un-
grateful, discontented, disobedient, and re-
Charity
19


Discon-
tent in the
oor a
ealthy
sign
Disobe-
a dience
man's orig-
inal virtue
Thrift to
the poor
is asking a
starving
man to eat
less
bellious. They are quite right to be so.
Charity they feel to be a ridiculously in-
adequate mode of partial restitution, or a
sentimental dole, usually accompanied by
some impertinent attempt on the part of
the sentimentalists to tyrannise over their
private lives. Why should they be grate-
ful for the crumbs that fall from the rich
man's table? They should be seated at the
board, and are beginning to know it. As
for being discontented, a man who would
not be discontented with such surround-
ings, and such a low mode of life would
be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the
eyes of any one who has read history, is
man's original virtue. It is through dis-
obedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebel-
lion. Sometimes the poor are praised for
being thrifty. But to recommend thrift
to the poor is both grotesque and insulting.
It is like advising a man who is starving to
eat less. For a town or country labourer
to practice thrift would be absolutely im-
moral. Man should not be ready to show
20


that he can live like a badly-fed animal.
He should decline to live like that.
No: a poor man who is ungrateful, un-
thrifty, discontented, and rebellious is
probably a real personality, and has much
in him. He is, at any rate, a healthy
protest. The Soul of Man under Social-
7S7%.
++
MUST confess that I like all mem-
oirs. 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
Autobiog-
raphies
21


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 su-
preme scoundrel of the Renaissance re-
lates 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 New-
man represented—if that can be called a
mode of thought which seeks to solve in-
tellectual problems by a denial of the su-
premacy of 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
22


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 forever with the Benign Mother of
his days—a prophecy that Faith, in her
wisdom or her folly, suffered not to be ful-
filled. 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 harslet,” and the “pleas-
ant 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,
28


Art is the
Product
of Delib-
erate Self-
Conscious-
ness
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 weari-
some, as easily as one can shut up a book
of which one has grown wearied, they
would be perfect absolutely. Intentions.
The Critic as Artist.
++
ALL fine imaginative work is self-con-
scious 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 worked, had a kind of
poetical quality of its own, and almost
24


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-con-
scious effort. Intentions. The Critic as
Artist.
++
I KNOW not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
The Influ-
ence of
Prison
and Pris-
on Life on
Society
25


But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the cha
With a most evil fan. -
This too I know—and wise it were
If each could know the same—
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should
See
How men their brothers maim.
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun :
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor Son of Man
Ever should look upon'
>k k >k >k k >k
The vilest deeds like poison words
Bloom well in prison-air:
26


It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.
For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the
fool,
And gibe the old and gray,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.
The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
27


Sympathy
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.
>k >k >k >k -k sk
And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.
Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win:
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
++ {
SYMPATHY with pain is not the high-
est form of sympathy. . . Anyone
can sympathise with the sufferings of a
friend, but it requires a very fine nature
to sympathise with a friend's
28


success. . . Sympathy with joy inten-
sifies the sum of joy in the world. -
Sympathy with pain does not really dimin-
ish the amount of pain. The Soul of Man
under Socialism.
++
I T is always a silly thing to give advice,
but to give good advice is absolutely
fatal. The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
++
T O drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all
winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dis-
SO11a11Ce
Good
Advice
Oscar
Wilde
29


Individ-
ualism—
What It
Asks and
What It
Promises
It is the |
Law of
Life
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of
God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance—
And must I lose a soul's inheritance? 2.
Poems.
++
NDIVIDUALISM does not come to
man with any sickly cant about duty,
which merely means doing what other
people want because they want it; or any
hideous cant about self-sacrifice, which is
merely a survival of savage meditation.
In fact, it does not come to man with any
claims upon him at all. It comes naturally
and inevitably out of man. It is the point
to which all development tends. It is the
differentiation to which all organisms
grow. It is the perfection that is inherent
in every mode of life, and towards which
every mode of life quickens. And so In-
dividualism exercises no compulsion over
man. On the contrary, it says to man that
he should suffer no compulsion to be exer-
30


cised over him. It does not try to force
people to be good. It knows that people
are good when they are left alone. Man
will develop Individualism out of himself.
Man is now so developing Individualism.
To ask whether Individualism is practical
is like asking whether Evolution is prac-
tical. Evolution is the law of life, and
there is no Evolution except towards In-
dividualism. Where this tendency is not
expressed, it is a case of artificially-ar-
rested growth, or of disease, or of death.
The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
++
SEllisiºs: is not living as one
wishes to live; it is asking others to live
as one wishes to live. And unselfishness
is letting other people's lives alone, not in-
terfering with them. Selfishness always
aims at creating around it an absolute uni-
formity of type. Unselfishness recognises
infinite variety of type as a delightful
thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys
it. The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
Selfish-
ness and
Unselfish-
ness
81


George
Meredith
HERE are better artists in France
but France has no one whose view of
life is so large, so varied, so imaginatively
true. There are tellers of stories in Rus-
sia who have a more vivid sense of what
pain in fiction may be. But to him belongs
philosophy in fiction. His people not
merely live, but they live in thought. One
can see them from myriad points of view.
They are suggestive. There is soul in
them and around them. They are inter-
pretative and symbolic. And he who made
them, those wonderful quickly-moving
figures, made them for his own pleasure,
and has never asked the public what they
wanted, has never cared to know what
they wanted, has never allowed the public
to dictate to him or influence him in any
way, but has gone on intensifying his own
personality, and producing his own indi-
vidual work. The Soul of Man Under
Socialism.
++
32


THERE is the despot who tyrannises
over the body. There is the despot
who tyrannises over the soul. There is
the despot who tyrannises over soul and
body alike. The first is called the Prince.
The second is called the Pope. The third
is called the People. The Prince may be
cultivated. Many Princes have been. Yet
in the Prince there is danger. One thinks
of Dante at the bitter feast in Verona, of
Tasso in Ferrara's madman's cell. It is
better for the artist not to live with
Princes. The Pope may be cultivated.
Many Popes have been; the bad Popes
have been. The bad Popes loved Beauty,
almost as passionately, nay, with as much
passion as the good Popes hated Thought.
To the wickedness of the Papacy humanity
owes much. The goodness of the Papacy
owes a terrible debt to humanity. Yet,
though the Vatican has kept the rhetoric
of its thunders and lost the rod of its light-
ning, it is better for the artist not to live
with Popes. . . There is danger in
Popes. And as for the People, what of
The Three
Despots
The
Prince,
The Pope,
People
—º
33


them and their authority? . . . Their
authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous,
grotesque, tragic, amazing, serious and
obscene. It is impossible for the artist to
live with the People. All despots bribe.
The People bribe and brutalise. Who told
them to exercise authority? They were
made to live, to listen, and to love. Some-
one has done them a great wrong. They
have marred themselves by imitation of
their inferiors. They have taken the
sceptre of the Prince. How should they
use it? They have taken the triple tiara
of the Pope. How should they carry its
burden? They are as a clown whose heart
is broken. They are as a priest whose
soul is not yet born. Let all who love
Beauty pity them. Though they them-
selves love not Beauty, yet let them pity
themselves. Who taught them the trick
of tyranny ? The Soul of Man Under So-
cialism.
++
34


T HE past is of no importance. The
present is of no importance. It is
with the future that we have to deal. For
the past is what man should not have been.
The present is what man ought not to be.
The future is what artists are. The Soul
of Man Under Socialism.
++
FOR what is a practical scheme? A
practical scheme is either a scheme
that is already in existence, or a scheme
that could be carried out under existing
conditions. But it is exactly the existing
conditions that one objects to; and any
scheme that could accept these conditions
is wrong and foolish. The conditions will
be done away with, and human nature will
change. The only thing that one really
knows about human nature is that it
changes. Change is the one quality we
can predicate of it. The systems that fail
are those that rely on the permanency of
human nature, and not on its growth and
development. The error of Louis XIV
The Past,
The Pres-
ent,
The Fu-
ture
Individ-
ualism De-
sirable
just be: .
cause it is
Unprac-
tical
.
35


The
Drama as
Art
The Work
of Art is
to Domi-
nate the
Spectator:
The Spec-
tator is
not to
Dominate
the Work
of Art
was that he thought human nature would
always be the same. The result of his
error was the French Revolution. It was
an admirable result. All the results of the
mistakes of governments are quite admir-
able. The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
++
A. educated person's ideas of Art are
drawn naturally from what Art has
been, whereas the new work of Art is
beautiful by being what Art has never
been; and to measure it by the standard
of the past is to measure it by a standard
on the rejection of which its real perfec-
tion depends. A temperament capable of
receiving, through an imaginative me-
dium, and under imaginative conditions,
new and beautiful impressions is the only
temperament that can appreciate a work
of Art. And true as this is in the case
of the appreciation of sculpture and paint-
ing, it is still more true of the appreciation
of such arts as the drama. For a picture
and a statue are not at war with Time.
36


Beauty in
the Eyes
of the
Public
The
Popular
Novel
The Press
A FRESH mode of Beauty is absolute-
ly distasteful to the public, and when-
ever it appears they get so angry and be-
wildered that they always use two stupid
expressions—one is that the work of art
is grossly unintelligible; the other that the
work of art is grossly immoral. The Soul
of Man Under Socialism.
++
T HE popular novel that the public calls
healthy is always a thoroughly un-
healthy production, and what the public
calls an unhealthy novel is always a beau-
tiful and healthy work of art. The Soul of
Man Under Socialism.
++
N the old days men had the rack. Now
they have the press. That is an im-
provement certainly. But still it is very
bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Some-
body—was it Burke?—called journalism
the fourth estate. That was true at the
time, no doubt. But at the present mo-


ment it really is the only estate. It has
eaten up the other three. . . we are
dominated by Journalism. In America the
President reigns for four years, and Jour-
nalism governs for ever and ever. Fortu-
nately, in America, Journalism has carried
its authority to the grossest and most
brutal extreme. As a natural consequence
it has begun to create a spirit of revolt
it is no longer the real force it
was. It is not seriously treated.
In centuries before ours the public nailed
the ears of journalists to the pump. That
was quite hideous. In this century jour-
nalists have nailed their own ears to the
key hole. . . The journalists who are
most to blame are not the amusing jour-
nalists who write for what are called so-
ciety papers. The harm is done by the
serious, thoughtful, earnest journalists,
who solemnly . . . drag before the
eyes of the public . . . the private
life of man. The Soul of Man Under So-
cialism.
The Only,
not the
Fourth
Estate
The Out-
come of
the Pub-
lic's In-
satiable
Curiosity
to Know
Every-
thing, Ex-
cept what
is Worth
Knowing
39


Art and
Artists
WORK of art is the unique result of a
unique temperament. Its beauty
comes from the fact that the author is
what he is. It has nothing to do with the
fact that other people want what they
want. Indeed, the moment that an artist
takes notice of what other people want,
and tries to supply the demand, he ceases
to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an
amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishon-
est tradesman. He has no further claim
to be considered as an artist. Art is the
most intense mode of individualism that
the world has known. I am inclined to
say that it is the only real mode of indi-
vidualism that the world has known.
Crime, which, under certain conditions,
may seem to have created individualism,
must take cognisance of other people and
interfere with them. But alone, without
any reference to his neighbour, without
any interference, the artist can fashion a
beautiful thing; and if he does not do it
Solely for his own pleasure, he is not an
40


artist at all. The Soul of Man Under So-
cialism.
++
ART should never try to be popular.
The public should try to make itself
artistic . . . In England, the arts
that have escaped best are the arts in
which the public takes no interest -
We have been able to have fine poetry in
England because the public do not read it,
and consequently do not influence it
The public dislike novelty because they are
afraid of it. It represents to them a mode
of Individualism, an assertion on the part
of the artist that he selects his own subject,
and treats it as he chooses. The public
are quite right in their attitude. Art is
Individualism, and Individualism is a dis-
turbing and disintegrating force. Therein
lies its immense value. For what it seeks
to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of
custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduc-
tion of man to the level of a machine. In
Art, the public accept what has been, be-
The Pub-
lic and
Art
41


The Pub-
lic Swal-
lows its
Classics
Whole
and Never
Tastes
Them
Govern-
ment De-
grading
cause they cannot alter it, not because they
appreciate it. They swallow their classics
whole, and never taste them. They endure
them as the inevitable, and, as they can-
not mar them, they mouth about them.
- The public make use of the clas-
sics of a country as a means of checking
the progress of art. They degrade the
classics into authorities. They use them
as bludgeons for preventing the free ex-
pression of Beauty in new towns. The
Soul of Man Under Socialism.
++
AH!. modes of government are failures.
Despotism is unjust to everybody, in-
cluding the despot, who was probably
made for better things. Oligarchies are
unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are
unjust to the few. High hopes were once
formed of democracy; but democracy
means simply the bludgeoning of the
people by the people for the people. It has
been found out. I must say that it was
high time, for all authority is quite de-
42


grading. It degrades those who exercise
it, and degrades those over whom it is
exercised. The Soul of Man Under So-
cialism.
++
COMMUNITY is infinitely more
brutalised by the habitual employ-
ment of punishment than it is by the oc-
casional occurrence of crime -
the more punishment is inflicted the more
crime is produced . . . The less pun-
ishment the less crime. Where there is
no punishment at all, crime will either
cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be
treated by physicians as a very distressing
form of dementia, to be cured by care and
kindness. For what are called criminals
nowadays are not criminals at all. Starva-
tion, and not sin, is the parent of modern
crime. That indeed is the reason why
our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely
uninteresting from any psychological point
of view. They are not marvellous Mac-
beths and terrible Vautrins. They are
Punish-
ment and
Crime
43


to wear ragged, unwholesome clothes, to
sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings,
and a disadvantage for a man to live under
healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions.
What Jesus meant, was this. He
said to man, “You have a wonderful per-
sonality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don't
imagine that your perfection lies in ac-
cumulating or possessing external things.
Your perfection is inside of you. If only
you could realise that you would not want
to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen
from a man. Real riches cannot. In the
treasury-house of your soul there are in-
finitely precious things, that may not be
taken from you. And so, try to so shape
your life that external things will not
harm you. And try also to get rid of per-
sonal property. It involves sordid preoccu-
pation, endless industry, continual wrong.
Personal property hinders Individualism
at every step.
++
46


THERE is only one class in the com-
* munity that thinks more about money
than the rich, and that is the poor. The
poor can think of nothing else. That is
the misery of being poor. What Jesus
does say is that man reaches his perfection,
not through what he has, not even through
what he does, but entirely through what
he is. The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
++
AY, let us walk from fire unto fire
From passionate pain to deadlier
delight,
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this sum-
mer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no
reply was told.
For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse of passion—youth's first fiery
glow,
Christ
d
an
Riches
Knowl-
edge
Versus
Feeling
47


Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and
one with what we kill.
From lower cells of waking life we pass
To full perfection; thus the world
grows old:
We who are godlike now were once a man
Of quivering purple flecked with bars
of gold,
Unsentient or of joy or misery,
And tossed in terrible tangles of some
wild and wind-swept sea.
This hot hard flame with which our
bodies burn
Will make some meadow blaze with
daffodil
Ay! and those august breasts of thine will
turn
To water-lilies; the brown fields men till
Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,
Nothing is lost in nature, all things live
in Death's despite.
>k >k k >k :: *k
49


So when men bury us beneath the yew
Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will
be,
And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed
with dew,
And when the white narcissus wanton-
ly
Kisses the wind its playmate some faint
Joy
Will thrill our dust, and we will be again
fond maid and boy.
× -k >k >k >k k
And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall
be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all aeons mix and mingle
with the Kosmic Soul!
We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the
rhythmic spheres,
50


And all the live World's throbbing heart
shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creep-
1ng years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not
die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immor-
tality.
Panthea. Poems.
++
- - . But we, burnt out and cold,
See Honour smitten on the cheek, and
gyves
Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty
Creeps through our sunless lanes and with
sharp knives
Cuts the warm throats of children
stealthily,
And no word said:—O we are wretched
Innen
Unworthy of our great inheritance! where
is the pen
The Evils
of Modern
Society
51


Of austere Milton? where the mighty
sword
Which slew its master righteously? the
years
Have lost their ancient leader, and no
word
Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our
ears :
While as a ruined mother in some spasm
Bears a base child and loathes it, so our
best enthusiasm
Genders unlawful children, Anarchy
Freedom's own Judas, the vile prodigal
License who steals the gold of Liberty
And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real
One Fratricide since Cain, Envy the asp
That stings itself to Anguish, Avarice
whose palsied grasp
Is in its extent stiffened, monied Greed
For whose dull appetite men waste away
Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed
Of things which slay their sower, these
each day
52


Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet
Of beauty tread no more the stones of each
unlovely street.
Humanitad. Poems.
++
M Y 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 crudi-
ties, her extraordinary monotony, her ab-
solute unfinished condition. Nature has
good intentions, of course, but as Aris-
totle once said, she cannot carry them out.
- It is fortunate for us, however,
that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise
we should have had 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 Na-
ture herself. It resides in the imagination,
or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the
man who looks at her. Intentions. The
Decay of Lying.
Art and
Nature
53


Consist-
ency
Henry
James
Hall
Caine
HO wants to be consistent? The
dullard and the doctrinaire, the te-
dious 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.” Intentions.
The Decay of Lying.
++
R. 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 phases, his swift and caustic
satire. Intentions. The Decay of Lying.
++
M. 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 hear what he says. Intentions.
The Decay of Lying.
++
54


NGLAND is the home of lost ideas.
As for that great and daily increasing
school of novelists for whom the sun al-
ways rises in the East End, the only thing
that can be said about them is that they
find life crude, and leave it raw. Inten-
tions. The Decay of Lying.
++
M. ZOLA, true to the lofty principle
that he lays down in one of his pro-
nunciamentos 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. In-
deed 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 truth-
ful, and describes things exactly as they
happen. What more can any moralist de-
English
Novelists
Emile
Zola
55


People—
Real and
Ideal
sire? 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 fa-
vour of the author of L’Assommoir, Nana,
and Pot-Bouille? Nothing. Mr. Rus-
kin 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 ab-
solutely 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. Inten-
tions. The Decay of Lying.
++
THE only real people are the people
who never existed. . . The justi-
fication of a character in a novel is not
*
56


that other persons are what they are, but
that the author is what he is. . . In
point of fact what is interesting about
people in good society . . is the mask
that each one of them wears, not the real-
ity that lies behind the mask. Intentions.
The Decay of Lying.
++
H! 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, ex-
cept 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 a 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 delib-
George
Meredith
57


Balzac
erate choice he has made himself a roman-
ticist. 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 as-
sertions 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.
Intentions. The Decay of Lying.
++
A S for Balzac, he was a most remark-
able combination of the artistic tem-
perament with the scientific spirit. The
latter he bequeathed to his disciples: the
former was entirely his own. The differ-
ence between such a book as M. Zola's
L'Assommoir and Balzac's Illusions
Perdues is the difference between unim-
aginate 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
58


The In-
fluence of
Art on
Life
Nature
and Life
The
Stages of
Art's De-
velopment
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 our 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.
Art begins with abstract decora-
tion, with purely imaginative and pleasur-
able work dealing with what is unreal and
non-existent. This is the first stage. Then
life becomes fascinated with this new won-
der, and asks to be admitted into the
charmed circle. Art takes life as part of
her rough material, recreates it, and re-
fashions 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 where Life gets the
upper hand, and drives Art out into the
60


wilderness. This is the true decadence,
and it is from this that we are now suffer-
ing . . . 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. Intentions. The Decay of
Lying.
++
HE characters in these plays talk
exactly as they would talk off it; they
have neither aspirations nor aspirates;
they are taken directly from life and re-
produce its vulgarity down to the smallest
detail; they present the gait, manner, cos-
tume, and accent of real people; they
would pass unnoticed in a third-class rail-
way-carriage. And yet how wearisome
the plays are! They do succeed in produc-
ing even that impression of reality at
The
Modern
Melo-
Drama
61


The
Coming
Liar
which they aim, and which is their only
reason for existing. As a method, realism
is a complete failure.
Intentions. The Decay of Lying.
++
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 re-
turn 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 sun-
set how he had dragged the Megatherium
from the purple darkness of its jasper case,
or slain the Mammoth in single combat
and brought back its gilded tusks, we can-
not tell, and not one of our modern an-
62


thropologists, 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 pleas-
ure. He is the very basis of civilised so-
ciety, and without him a dinner party,
even at the mansions of the great, is as
dull as a lecture at the Royal Society
- . Nor will he be welcomed by so-
ciety 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 ab-
solutely a matter of style; while life—poor
probable, uninteresting human life . . .
will follow meekly after him, and try to
reproduce, in her own simple and untu-
tored way, some of the marvels of which
he talks. Intentions. The Decay of Lying.
++
Truth—
Entirely
and Ab-
solutely
a Matter
of Style
63


The
Power
of Art
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 pos-
sesses. 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 unfin-
ished 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 the
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
64


has hawk-faced gods that worship her,
and the centaurs gallop at her side.
Intentions. The Decay of Lying.
++
ART never expresses anything but it-
self . . . 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, al-
ways 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 perfec-
tion, 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,
Art not
the ex-
pression
of any
age, but
of its own
Perfec-
tion
simply
65


Contem-
plation—
the doing
nothing
is the
most diffi-
cult thing
to do
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. Intentions. The Decay
of Lying.
++
OCIETY often forgives the criminal;
it never forgives the dreamer . . .
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 mediaeval days
. . . It is to do nothing that the elect exist.
Action is limited and relative. Unlimited
and absolute is the vision of him who
66


sits at ease and watches, who walks in
loneliness and dreams . . . the con-
templative life, the life that has for its aim
not doing but being, and not being mere-
ly, but becoming—that is what the critical
spirit can give us. Intentions. The Critic
as Artist. -
++
WITH us, Thought is degraded by its
constant association with practice.
Who that moves in the stress and tumult
of actual existence, noisy politician, or
crawling social reformer, or poor narrow-
minded priest blinded by the sufferings of
that omnipotent section of the community
among whom he has cast his lot, can se-
riously claim to be able to form a disin-
terested 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 over-worked, and the
under-educated; the age in which people
are so industrious that they become ab-
The Prac-
tical Life
the way of
ignorance
Ours is
the age
of over-
work and
under.
education
67


The great
want of
modern
times is
unpracti-
cal people
Form is
the In-
spirer of
all Great
Art
solutely stupid . . . The sure way of
knowing nothing about life is to try to
make oneself useful. Intentions. The
Critic as Artist.
++
WHAT we want are unpractical people
who are beyond the moment, and
think beyond the day. Those who try to
lcad the people can only do so by follow-
ing the mob. It is through the voice of
one crying in the wilderness that the ways
of the gods must be prepared.
Intentions. The Critic as Artist.
++
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 made us admire
and know the man. He was right,
68


though he may not have known how ter-
ribly right he was. The Creeds are be-
lieved, 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 be-
come 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 concolation, 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
aesthetic instinct, that unerring instinct
that reveals to one all things under their
conditions of beauty. Start with the wor-
ship of form, and there is no secret in
The
Poet's
Real Pas-
sion Ruins
his Art.
For him
to be
Natural is
to be ob-
vious, and
to be ob-
vious is
to be in-
artistic
69


Reforma-
tion of the
People
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 ap-
peal, that the schools of art should be his-
torically grouped.
Intentions. The Critic as Artist.
++
I T is always with the best intentions
that the worst work is done . . .
when a man reaches the age of forty, or
becomes a Royal Academician, or is elect-
ed a member of the Athenaeum Club, or
is recognized as a popular novelist, whose
books are in great demand at Suburban
railway stations, one may have the amuse-
ment 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 punish-
ment, is indeed punishment in its most ag-
gravated and moral form—a fact which
70


What
Criticism
Does
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 as-
pirates. From the point of view cf 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 serious-
ness. He is our first authority on the
second-rate, and has seen marvellous
things through key-holes, and his back-
grounds are real works of art.
Intentions. The Critic as Artist.
++
IT is Criticism, as Arnold points out,
that creates the intellectual atmosphere
of the age. It is Criticism . . . that
makes the mind a fine instrument
72


It is Criticism, again, that, by concentra-
tion, makes culture possible. It takes the
cumbersome mass of creative work, and
distils it into a finer essence . . . The
thread that is to guide us across the weari-
some labyrinth is in the hands of Criti-
cism. Nay more, where there is no
record, and history is either lost or was
never written, Criticism can recreate the
past for us from the very smallest frag-
ment 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, recreate for us the winged dragon
or the 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 archaeological
critic. It is to him that the origins of
things are revealed. The self-conscious
deposits of an age are nearly always mis-
leading . . . It is Criticism that
makes us cosmopolitan . . . It is
73


Injustice
and .
Justice
War
only by the cultivation of the habit of in-
tellectual criticism that we shall be able
to rise superior to race prejudices
Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices,
by insisting upon the unity of the human
mind in the variety of its forms -
It is Criticism that, recognising no posi-
tion 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.
Intentions. The Critic as Artist.
++
T HERE 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.
Intentions. The Critic as Artist.
++
I F we are tempted to make war upon
another nation, we shall remember
that we are seeking to destroy an element
74


The
World is
Made by
the Singer
for the
Dreamer
what of those who write about these
things? What of those who gave them
reality, and made them live forever? 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 underworld Menippus saw the bleach-
ing skull of Helen, and marvelled that it
was for so grim a favour that all those
honoured ships were launched, those beau-
tiful mailed men laid low, those towered
cities brought to dust. Yet every day the
swan-like daughter of Leda comes out on
the battlements, and looks down at the tide
of war. The graybeards 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
78


Andromache are around his neck. He sets
his helmet on the ground, lest their babe
should be frightened. Behind the em-
broidered 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 bare-
footed 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's son, Euphorbus,
whose lovelocks were looped with gold,
and the Priamid, the lion-hearted, Patrok-
lus, the comrade of comrades, must meet
his doom. Phantoms, are they? Heroes
79


Litera-
ture the
highest
and
greatest of
the visible
arts
of mist and mountain? Shadows in a
song? No: they are real. Action | What
is action? It dies at the moment of the
energy. It is a bare concession to fact.
The world is made by the singer for the
dreamer - -
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 goat herd with their flocks,
and where, on the wine-surfaced, oily sea,
oivod, ſtovtos, as Homer calls it, copper-
pressed and streaked with vermilion, the
great galleys of the Danaoi came in their
gleaming crescent, the lonely tunney-fisher
sits in his little boat and watches the bob-
bing 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 crescent burns in the hall. Those who
80


fine itself—let us at least suppose so for
the moment—to discovering the real in-
tention 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 ac-
quired 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 -
Beauty has as many meanings as a man
has moods. Beauty is the symbol of sym-
bols. Beauty reveals everything, because
it expresses nothing. When it shows us
itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured
world.
Intentions. The Critic as Artist.
++
84


ROM his childhood he had been as
one filled with the perfect knowledge
of God, and even while he was but yet as
a lad, many of the saints as well as certain
holy women who dwelt in the free city of
his birth, had been stirred to much won-
der by the grave wisdom of his answers.
And when his parents had given him the
robe and the ring of manhood he kissed
them, and left them and went out into
the world, that he might speak to the
world about God. For there were at that
time many in the world who either knew
not God at all, or had but an incomplete
knowledge of Him, or worshipped the
false gods who dwell in groves and have
no care of their worshippers.
And he set his face to the sun and jour-
neyed, walking without sandals, as he had
seen the saints walk, and carrying at his
girdle a leathern wallet and a little water
bottle of burnt clay.
And as he walked along the highway he
was full of the joy that comes from the
perfect knowledge of God and he sang
The
Highest
Wisdom
is the
Love of
God, not
the knowl-
edge of
God
85


the fulness of that perfect knowledge of
God which God had himself given to him.
And one evening he passed out of the
eleventh city, which was a city of Ar-
menia, and his disciples and a great crowd
of people followed after him; and he went
up on to a mountain and sat down on a
rock that was on the mountain, and his
disciples stood round him, and the multi-
tude knelt in the valley.
And he bowed his head in his hands and
wept, and said to his Soul, “Why is it
that I am full of sorrow and fear, and
that each of my disciples is as an enemy
that walks in the noonday?”
And his Soul answered him and said,
“God filled thee with the perfect knowl-
edge of Himself, and thou hast given this
knowledge away to others. The pearl of
great price thou hast divided, and the ves-
ture without seam thou has parted asun-
der. He who giveth away wisdom rob-
beth himself. He is as one who giveth
his treasure to a robber. Is not God wiser
than thou art? Who art thou to give
87


stamped his foot upon the sand, and said
to the Hermit: “Why do you look at me
in this manner ever as I pass by ? What
is it that I see in your eyes? For no man
has looked at me before in this manner.
And the thing is a thorn and a trouble to
me.”
And the Hermit answered him and said,
“What you see in my eyes is pity. Pity
is what looks out at you from my eyes.”
And the young man laughed with scorn,
and cried to the Hermit in a bitter voice,
and said to him, “I have purple and pearls
in my hands, and you have but a mat of
reeds on which to lie. What pity should
you have for me? And for what reason
have you this pity?”
“I have pity for you,” said the Hermit,
“because you have no knowledge of God.”
“Is this knowledge of God a precious
thing?” asked the young man, and he
came close to the mouth of the cavern.
“It is more precious than all the purple
and pearls in the world,” answered the
Hermit.
91


“And have you got it?” said the young
Robber, and he came closer still.
“Once, indeed,” answered the Hermit,
“I possessed the perfect knowledge of
God. But in my foolishness I parted
with it, and divided it amongst others.
Yet even now is such knowledge as re-
mains to me more precious than purple or
pearls.”
And when the young Robber heard this
he threw away the purple and the pearls
that he was bearing in his hands, and
drawing a sharp sword of curved steel he
said to the Hermit, “Give me, forthwith,
this knowledge of God that you possess,
or I will surely slay you. Wherefore
should I not slay him who has a treasure
greater than my treasure?”
And the Hermit spread out his arms and
said, “Were it not better for me to go
unto the outermost courts of God and
praise Him, than to live in the world and
have no knowledge of Him? Slay me if
that be your desire. But I will not give
away my knowledge of God.”
92


And the young Robber knelt down and
besought him, but the Hermit would not
talk to him about God, nor give him his
treasure, and the young Robber rose up
and said to the Hermit, “Be it as you
will. As for me I will go to the City of
the Seven Sins, that is but three days'
journey from this place, and for my pur-
ple they will give me pleasure, and for my
pearls they will sell me joy.” And he
took up the purple and the pearls and
went swiftly away.
And the Hermit cried out and followed
him and besought him. For the space of
three days he followed the young Robber
on the road and entreated him to return,
nor to enter into the City of the Seven
Sins.
And ever and anon the young Robber
looked back at the Hermit and called to
him, and said, “Will you give me this
knowledge of God which is more precious
than purple and pearls? If you will give
me that I will not enter the city.”
And ever did the Hermit answer, “All
93


things that I have I will give thee, save
that one thing only. For that thing it is
not lawful for me to give away.”
And in the twilight of the third day they
came nigh to the great Scarlet gates of the
City of the Seven Sins. And from the
city there came the noise of much laugh-
ter.
And the young Robber laughed in an-
swer, and sought to knock at the gate.
And as he did so the Hermit ran forward
and caught him by the skirts of his rai-
ment, and said to him, “Stretch forth
your hands, and set your arms around my
neck, and put your ear close to my lips,
and I will give you what remains to me of
the knowledge of God.” And the young
Robber stopped.
And when the Hermit had given away
his knowledge of God, he fell upon the
ground and wept, and a great darkness
hid from him the city and the young Rob-
ber, so that he saw them no more.
And as he lay there weeping he was
aware of One who was standing beside
94


him; and he who was standing beside him
had feet of brass and hair like fine wool.
And He raised the Hermit up, and said to
him: “Before this time thou had'st the
perfect knowledge of God. Now thou
shalt have the perfect love of God. Where-
fore art thou weeping?” And He kissed
him. Poems in Prose.
++
W HEN Narcissus died the pool of his
pleasure changed from a cup of
sweet waters into a cup of Salt tears, and
the Oreads came weeping through the
woodland that they might sing to the pool
and give it comfort.
And when they saw that the pool had
changed from a cup of sweet waters into
a cup of salt tears, they loosened the
green tresses of their hair and cried to
the pool and said, “We do not wonder
that you should mourn in this manner for
Narcissus, so beautiful was he.”
“But was Narcissus beautiful?” said the
pool. " -
We love
those who
agree
with us
and who
show us
our own
beauties
The mas-
ter flat-
terer is
always
acceptable
95


OT to be mained, marred, and incom-
plete . . . to absorb into my
nature all that has been done to me, to
make it part of me, to accept it without
complaint, fear, or reluctance. The su-
preme vice is shallowness. Whatever is
realised is right . . . To regret one's
own experiences is to arrest one's own de-
velopment. To deny one's own expe-
riences is to put a lie into the lips of one's
own life. It is no less than a denial of the
soul. For just as the body absorbs things
of all kinds, things common and unclean
no less than those that the priest or a
vision has cleansed, and converts them
into swiftness or strength, into the play
of beautiful muscles and the moulding of
fair flesh, into the curves and colours of
the hair, the lips, the eyes; so the soul in
its turn has the nutritive functions also,
and can transform into noble records of
thought and passions of high import what
in itself is base, cruel, and degrading;
nay, more, may find in these its most
august modes of assertion, and can often
The im-
portant
thing to
do in life
99


And at thy pleasure weave that web of
pain
Whose brightest threads are each a
wasted day?
Is it thy will—Love that I love so well—
That my Soul's House shall be a tor-
tured spot
Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell
The quenchless flame, the worm that
dieth not?
Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
And sell ambition at the common mart,
And let dull fortune be my vestiture,
And Sorrow dig its grave within my
heart.
Perchance it may be better so—at least
I have not made my heart a heart of
Stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly
feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing
unknown.
It is bet-
ter to
have
known
Love
than to
realise
all one’s
ambitions
Better to
have seen
Beauty
face to
face and
failed in
life than
be the
most
success-
ful of
men
101


To have walked hand in hand with Love,
and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy
smile.
Ah! though the gorged asp of passion
feed
On my boy's heart, yet have I burst the
bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known
indeed
The Love which moves the sun and all
the stars!
Poems.
++
A'. beautiful things belong to the same
age.
Intentions. Pen, Pencil, and Poison.
Beauty
can never
grow old
*
108





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