TH E /'.^ O WISDOM OSGAR WILDE c*7 OF-I * 11 LIBRARY , ;'SI7Y OF ^lll'^J THE WI SDOM OF OSCAR WILDE 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. THE WISDOM OF OSCAR WILDE SELECTED WITH INTRODUCTION AND INDEX BY TEMPLE SCOTT NEW YORK BRENTANO'S. Inc. PUBLISHERS Copyright igod By Breutano's PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA /^SCAR WILDE, the man, is dead. ^^ No inan 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 Introduc- tion Introduc- tion 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 j\Ian 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 w^as 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. But I do not wish now to attempt a de- tailed appreciation of the works of Oscar Wilde. I wish simply to ask the reader to judge for himself and see if he can not find in what is here presented to him a justification for their preservation. "Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer ; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rock where I may hide, and sweet valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt ; she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitterness make me whole." These words should not appeal to us in vain. Let us take the part Nature takes and receive him with passionless courtesy. Let us not play with the fire of this soul. We owe it a temple. If, by chance, some render of this little book shall find it rntroduc- tion Introduc- tion worthy, he may rest assured that he is do- ing justice to himself as well as to the writer; he is but paying homage to a thinker and an artist. Let him rather give thanks that he has that in him which is not only able to be just but also free to accept that which is true. Nothing so finely touches us to fine issues as a fine spirit — and the spirit of Oscar Wilde is fine in- deed. Temple Scott. TT is a curious thing about the game of marriage — a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion — the wives hold all the honours and invariably lose the odd trick. Lady irimicnucrc's Fan. ++ \T7'Oi\IEX are pictures; men are prob- ^^ lems : if you want to know what a woman really means, look at her, don't listen to her. A Woman of Xo Inipor- taiicc. Marriage Women A LL women become like their mothers -^^ — that is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. TJic Iniporfaucc of Be- ing Earnest. npIIERE is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future in- variablv her husband. Aii Ideal Husband. A MERICA is a Paradise for women — that is whv, like Eve, the American The Poet — the Ar- tistic Spirit in the Choice of Subject — the Spectator of all Time and all Exist- ence women are extremly anxious to get out of it. A IVoniaii of No Importance. IVyTEN always want to be a woman's ^^^ first love — women like to be a man's last romance. A IVuiiiaji of No Impor- tance. /^XE should never trust a woman who ^^ tells her own age. A woman who would tell that would tell anything. A Woman of No Importance. \X7'0MEN have a much better time than ^ ^ men in this world ; there are far more things forbidden them. A Woman of No Importance. ++ T IKE the philosopher of the platonic "*-^ vision, the poet is the spectator of all time and all existence. For him no form is obsolete, no subject out of date; rather, whatever of life and passion the world has known in the desert of Judea or in Ar- cadian valley, by the ruins of Troy or Damascus, in the crowded and hideous streets of the modern city, or by the pleas- ant ways of Camelot, all lies before him like an open scroll, all is still instinct with beautiful life. He will take of it what is salutary for his owi spirit, choosing some facts and rejecting others, with a calm artistic control of one who is in possession of the secret of beauty . . . Art is very life itself and knows nothing of death. And so it comes that he who seems to stand most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best, because he has stripped life of that mist of familiarity which, as Shelley used to say, makes life obscure to us. Lecture on tJic English Renaissance. ++ L^^ OR there is something Hellenic in your air and world, something that has a quicker breath of the joy and power of Elizabeth's England about it than our ancient civilisation can give us. For you, at least, are young; no hungry generations weigh you down, and the past does not America, I'erhaps to be tlic Perfcctcr ' of the I Movement ' oi the Knglish Renais- sance in Art 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. ++ C UFFERING is really a revelation. ^ One discerns things one never dis- 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. Dc Profundis. "Who never ate his bread in sorrow. Who never spent the midnight hours Weeping and v.aitinj^ for the morrow, — He knows you not, ye heavenly powers." + + T XOW 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. Dc Pro- fundis. ++ T>EHIXD 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 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 Profimdis. ++ TT 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! \Mierever 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 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 Ijear 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 jnan — when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, as a tree grows. It discord. It will never It will not prove things, everything. And yet , not busy itself about knowl- 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. flower-like, or will not be at argue or dispute It" wi it wi edge. ill know Man's Real Perfection The Evils of Altruism 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 w^hat it is. The person- ality of man will be very w^onderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child. The Soul of Man under Social- ism. ++ 'T^HE true perfection of man lies, not ^ in what man has, but- in what man is . . . 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. ++ 'VrOW and then, in the course of the -^^ century, a great man of science, like Darwin ; a great poet, like Keats ; a fine criiical ;.[)irit, like M. Rcnaii ; a supreme artist, like Fkuiljert, has been able to iso- late himself, to keep himself out of reaeh 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 cr gain, and to the incomparable and lastm^, ain of the whole world. These, how- to 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 that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease : they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of pov- erty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution : it is an aggrava- tion of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really pre- vented the carrying out of this aim . . . The people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good . . . charity degrades and demoralizes . . . charity creates a multitude of sins . . . It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private prop- erty. It is both immoral and unfair. TJie Soul of Man Under Socialisiii. ++ 10 (^ {j\\ very dress makes its grotesc|ue. ^^ W'c are the zanies of sorrow. \\'e are clow ns 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 (kiy on which one's heart is happy. Dc Profundis. ++ 'T^HK Phihstine 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 rec(\^- nise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a movement. Dc Profundis. A MAX whose desire is to be some- -^^ thino;- separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent lawyer or a judge, or something ecjually tedious, invariably succeeds in beincr what he wants to be. Dress of Inmates of Pris- ons The Phil- listine Relation of the .Ar- tistic I.ifc to Con- duct 11 The Soul of a Man is Un- knowable Friend- ship the Right to Share An- other's Sor- row I That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it. But with the dynamic forces of hfe, 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 Proftindis. L. ++ TF a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit . . . But if ... a 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, 1 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, unfit 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 . ho 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. Do Profimdis. ++ 'T^HOSE who see any difference be- '*' tween soul and body, have neither. Phrases and riiilosopJiics for the use of the Yoiiiig ++ TIR well-bred contradict other peo-' pie. The wise contradict themselves. Soul and I?od>— One Contra- diction 13 Style Essential Industry The Three Ages Reading Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Yoiuig. ++ TN 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. ++ TXDUSTRY is the root of all ugliness. ■■• Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young. ++ 'TpHE old believe everything: the mid- '*' die-aged suspect everything; the young know everything. Phrases and PJiilosophies for the Use of the Young. ++ T 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 culture depends on what one shouldn't read. Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young. ++ \X7'0MEN have a wonderful instinct ^^ about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. In the case of a very fascinating woman, sex is a challenge, not a defence. Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young. ++ 'T^HE most joyous poet is not he who ''* sows the desolate highways of this world with the barren seed of laughter, but he who makes his sorrow most musi- cal, this indeed being the meaning of joy in art — that incommunicable element of artistic delight which, in poetry for in- stance, comes from what Keats called, the " sensuous life of verse," the element of song in the singing, made so pleasurable to us by that wonder of motion which often has its origin in mere musical im- 15 Women The Poet of Joy 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." ++ 13 EJECTS 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, ore is fain to fancy, have their recognition : but of those that would enter the serene House of Beauty the cjuestion 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 '^rOR, ill looking at a work of art, ^^ shoukl we be dreaming of what it synil)olises but rather k)ving it for what it is. Indeeck 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 ])ainting, by the whole (|uality of the work- manship, the arabes([ue of the design, the splendour of the colour; iov these things What is Art? And How Sh.-ill 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'Ejiz'oi to "Rose Leaf ajid Apple Leaf." ++ CIXCERITY 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 liuman 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 \ ision ; 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 \'alley 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 sunht 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 (^nce very precious to him. L'Enz'oi to "Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf." ++ ^X7E 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 Discon- tent in the poor a healthy sign I Disobe- ' dience man s orig- inal virtue Thrift to the poor is asking a starving I 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. W^hy 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 readv to show 20 llial lie can live like a badly-fed animal. He shunld decline to live like that. N(j : a puor man who is unii^rateful, un- thrifty, discontented, and rebellious is ])rubably a real personality, and has much in him. He is, at any rate, a healthy protest. The Soul of Man luulcr Social- is Jii. ++ I ]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 Sevigne. 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, lliat in the open Loggia at Florence shows the nioun 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 Alontaigne, 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 Xew- 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 w^eary 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," w^ill always be dear 22 to it, and wlienevcr men sec 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. Toor, 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 ^\ ith 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 Ilaudct on a Sunday, and his playing of the viol on week days, 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 Critie as Artist. ++ A LL 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 u without clianging could pass into song. Tlic 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 l)oetry 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- sci(nis effort. Lifoitions. The Critic as .-Artist. ++ T KNOW not whether Laws be right, -^ Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Ls that the wall is strong ; And that each day is like a year, A vear whose days are long. The Influ- ence of Prison and Pris- on Life on Society But this I know, that every Law That men ha\"e made for Man, Since first Man took his brother's hfe, And the sad world began, But straw^s the wheat and saves the chaff 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 w^th 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! 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 : J 'ale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair. For they starve the httle 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 Plumanity'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 And Sleep will not lie down, bnt walks Wild-eved, and cries to Time. 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 \Mth 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 ^lay Lord Christ enter in? TJic Ballad of Reading Gaol. ++ Sympathy OYMPATHY witli 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 success. . . Sympathy with joy inten- sifies the sum uf joy in the world. Sympathy with pain does not really dimin- ish the amount of pain. The Soul of Man under Soeialisui. ++ TT is always a silly thing to give advice, ^ hut to give good advice is ahsolutely fatal. The Portrait of Mr. II '. H. ++ npO 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 hoyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, \\'hich 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- sonance Good Advice 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 Uttle rod I did but touch the honey of romance — And must I lose a soul's inheritance ? Pocuis. ++. T XDIVIDUALIS:\I 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 ciscd ()\cr him. It docs 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. Alan 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 cx])ressed, it is a case of artificially-ar- rested growth, or of disease, or of death. TJic Soul of Man Under SocialisDi. ++ CELFISHNESS 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. TJic Sou! of Mail U infer Social isiii. Selfish- ness and Unselfish- ness 31 ; George I Meredith 'T^HERE are better artists in France -*- but France bas no one whose view of Hfe is so large, so varied, so imaginatively true. Tbere 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 npHERE 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 Watican 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 l\)pes. And as for the People, what of The Three Despots The Prince, The Pope, The People !! them and their authority ? . . . Their authority is a thing Wind, deaf, hideous, g-rotesque, tragic, amazing, serious and obscene. It is impossible for the artist to Uve 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. \Mio taught them the trick of tyranny ? The Soul of Man Under So- cialism. ++ 84 nplIE 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 Mail Under Social ism . ++ I^OR what is a practical scheme? A -*■ practical scheme is cither 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 c|uality 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 The Drama as Art The Work of Art is to Domi- Tiate the I Spectator: I 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 Mail Under Socialisjii. ++ A X 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 Tlicy lake no count of its succession. In one ni<»nient this unity may he apprehend- ed. Jn the case of hterature it is chfferent. This must he traversed hefore the unity of effect is reahzed. And so, in the drama, there may occur in the first act of the play something whose real artistic value may not he evident to the spectator till the third or fourth act is reached. Is the silly fellow to get angry and call out, and dis- turh the play, and annoy the artists ? No. The honest man is to sit quietly, and know the delightful emotions of wonder, curiosity, and suspense. He is not to go to the play to lose a vulgar temper. He is to go to the play to realise an artistic tem- perament. He is to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament. He is one who is admitted to contemplate the work of art, and, if the work be fine, to forget in its contemplation all the egotism that mars him — the egotism of his ignorance, or the egotism of his information. The Soul of Mcvi Under Socialism. 37 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 Soeialisin. ++ '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. TJie Soul of Man Under Soeialis]n. ++ T X the old days men had the rack. Xow 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- ss niciit it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. . . we are dominated by JournaHsni. In Anieriea the President reigns for four years, and Jour- nahsm 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 rndcr So- cialism . The Only, not the Fourth Kstate The Out- come of the Pub- lic's In- satiable Curiosity to Know ICvery- thing. Ex- cept what is Worth Knowing 39 Art and Artists A 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 a I rial is II I. Tlic S(^itl of Man I 'iidcr So- + + A RT 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 .\rt, the i)ublic accei)t what has been, be- The Pub- lic and Art The Pub- lic Swal- lows its Classics Whole and Nevei 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. TJie Soul of Mail Under SociaI{s}}i. ++ A LL 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- 43 grading. It degrades llmsc \vlile, com- monplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat. When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it. The Soul of Man Under Social is]iL ++ npHE state is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful ... It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure. . . All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things and involves unpleas- ant conditions, must be done by machinery. . . At present machinery competes against man. Under proper con- ditions machinery will serve man . . just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying culti- vated leisure — which, and not labour, is the aim of man — or making beautiful 44 things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with ad- miration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The Soul of Mail Under Socialism. + + a l^XOW Thyself" was written over -*-^ the portal of the antic^ue world. Over the portal of the new world, ''Be Thyself" shall be written. And the mes- sage of Christ to man was simply ''Be Thyself." That is the secret of Christ. ++ XXT'HEN Jesus talks about the poor he ^^ simply me^ns personalities, just as when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not developed personalities. Jesus moved in a commun- ity that allowed the accumulation of pri- vate property just as ours does, and the gospel that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, 45 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. . . . Wliat 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 nplIERE is only one class in the com- ' ^^^J''^ niunity that thinks more about money Riches 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. N ++ 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,— Man's Kinship with Na- ture: His Immortal- ity Are worth llie hoarded proverbs of the sage : \>x not thy soul with dead philosophy. Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see ! Panthca. Poems. ++ V\/'E are resolved into the supreme air, \\t are made one with what we touch and see, With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair, With our young lives each spring im- passioned tree Flames into P:reen, the wildest beasts that The moor our kinsman are, all life is one, and all is change. With beat of systole and diastole Our grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part 48 Of every njck aiul bird and beast and bill, One witb tbc tilings tbat prey on us, and une witb wbat we kill. b'runi lower cells of waking' life we pass To full perfection ; tbus tbe world grows old : We wbo are godlike now were once a man Of quivering purple decked witb bars of gold, Gnsentient or of joy or misery, And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea. Tbis bot bard llame witb wbicb our bodies burn Will make some meadow blaze witb daffodil Ay ! and tbose august breasts of tbine will turn Tn water-lilies ; tbe l)rown fields men till Will be more fruitful for our kne to-nigbt, Xotbing is lost in nature, all tbings Hve in Deatb's despite. 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 w^hen the white narcissus wanton- 'y . . Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and bov. 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 ?eons 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- ing years Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die. The Universe itself shall be our Immor- tality. Paiifhca. Poems. ++ But we, burnt out and cold, See Honour smitten on the cheek, and gyves Bind the sweet feet of ]\lercy : 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 men Unworthy of our great inheritance ! where is the pen The Evils ' of Modern ; Society Of austere Milton? \vhere the mighty sword \Miich 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 w^aste away Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed Of things which slay their sower, these each dav 52 Sees rife in luigland, and the gentle feet Of beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street. JIuiiiaiiitail. Pooiis. ++ • "\/TY 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 ]mre 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. Iiifriilions. The Decay of Lying. Art and Nature Consist- ency Henry James Hall Caine XXZHO 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 redncfio ad absurd 11 111 of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word ''Whim." Intentions. The Decay of Lying. ++ IV^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. ++ TVyf R. 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 r^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. "\y4' ZOLA, true to the lofty principle '*' that he lays down in one of his pro- nunciamentos on literature, 'L'homme de genie 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- People- Real and Ideal sire? \\> have no sympathy at all with the moral indignation of our time against M. Zola. It is simply the indignation of TartufTe on being exposed. But from the standpoint of art, what can be said in fa- vour of the author of L'Assomuioir, 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 Isl. 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. \\'ho cares what happens to them? In literature we require distinction, charm, beauty, and imaginative power. W^ don't want to be harrowed and disgusted with an account of the doings of the lower orders. Inten- tions. The Decay of Lying. ++ 'T^HE only real people are the people ho never existed. The justi- fication of a character in a novel is not 56 that other persons are what thc\- are, but that the auth(jr is wliat 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, hitcntions. The Decay of Lyuig. ++ Alii Meredith I Who can define him ? ^^ His style is chaos illumined by dashes 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. Hy 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 line 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 ^1. Zola's U Assommoir and Balzac's Illusions Per dues is the difference between unim- aginate realism and imaginative reality, "AH 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 is a weapon loaded to the iiinzzle with will. The very scullions have f^enius." A steady course of Balzac reduces our livinj;- friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades. His characters have a kind of fervent fiery-colored exist- ence. They dominate us, and defy scepti- cism. One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de Rubempre. It is a grief from which I have never been able to completely rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remem- ber 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, conse- quently, there is no book of his that, as an artistic masterpiece, can rank with Salani- bo or Esmond, or The Cloister and The Hearth, or the Vieomte de Brageh^nne. Intentions. The Decay of Lying. ++ The In- fluence of Art on Life Nature and Life The Stages of Art's De- velopment 'T^ HE 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 su tier- 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 L\'ing. ++ npHE 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 dow'n 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- impression of reality at ing even that 61 The Coming Liar which they aim, and which is their only reason for existing. As a method, reaHsm is a complete failure. Intentions. The Decay of Lying. ++ TJ ORED 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 ^legatherium 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 Deeay of Lying. ++ Truth — Entirely and Ab- solutely a Matter of Style 63 'I'he Power of Art A RT 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 bv, and the brown fauns smile stran^elv at her when she comes near them. She 64 has liawk-faced gods that worship her, and the centaurs gallop at her side. Intentions. The Decay of Lying. ++ A RT 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- wa}s 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. lUu it is not so. 11ie 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 I most diffi- I cult thing j 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 Lyijig. ++ COCIETY 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 sits at case and watches, who walks in lonehncss and dreams . . . the con- templative life, the life that has for its aim not doing but being, and not being mere- ly, but beeoming — that is what the critical spirit can give us. Intentions. The Critic as Artist. ++ \X^1TH 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 thev become ab- The Prac- tical Life I the way of i ignorance | Ours is the age j of over- work and i under- i education 67 solutely stupid . . . The sure way of knowing nothing about hfe is to try to make oneself useful. Intentions. The Critic as Artist. The great want of modern times is unpracti- cal people Form is the In- spirer of all Great Art ++ XXT'HAT we want are unpractical people ^ ^ who are beyond the moment, and think beyond the day. Those who try to lead the people can only do so by follow- ing the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the Avays of the gods must be prepared. Intentions. The Critic as Artist. ++ TT 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 ha\c known how ter- ribly right he was. 'J'hc 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 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 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 I'oet's Heal I'as. sii»n Ruins his Art. For him to be Natural is to be ob- vious, and to be ob- vious is to be in- artistic 00 Reforma- tion of the People art that will not he revealed to you, and rememher 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. ++ TT 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 Athen?eum 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 accounts for our entire failure as a com- munity to reclaim that interesting^ phe- nomenon who is called the conhrmed criminal. Iiitoitiojis. The Critic as Artist. ++ TT is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it . . . Creation limits, while con- templation widens, the vision . . . That very concentration of vision that makes a man an artist ; limits by sheer intensity his faculty of fine appreciation . The gods are hidden from each other ... A great artist cannot recognise the beauty of a work different from his own . . . The aesthetic critic and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and modes. Intent ions. The Critic as Artist. ++ A S one turns over the pages of his '^ Plain Talcs from the Tlills, one feels as if one were seated under a palm-tree Creators cannot be Good Appre- ciators Rudyard Kipling 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 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 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. What Criticism Does + + TT is Criticism, as Arnold points out, -*■ that creates the intellectual atmosphere of the age. It is Criticism . . . that makes the mind a fine instrument . It is Criticism, again, that, l)y concentra- tion, makes culture possible. It lakes the cumbersome mass of creative work, and ehstils it into a finer essence . . . The thread that is to guide us across the weari- some labyrinth is in the hands of Criti- cism. Xay 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 BeheuKjth 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 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. Lit cut ions. The Critic as Artist. ++ 'HP HERE is only one thing worse than -"- Injustice, and that is Justice without her sword in her hand. \Mien Right is not jMight, it is Evil. Intentions. The Critic as Artist. ++ TF we are tempted to make war upon -■• another nation, we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element 74 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 vulvar, it will cease to be popular. Ijifciitioiis. The Critic as Artist. ++ ZpSTHETICS are higher than Ethics. J.±^ 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. ^Esthetics, in fact, are to Ethics, in the sphere of con- scious civilization, what, in the sphere of the external world, sexual is to natural selection. Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. ^Esthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and won- derful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety, and change. I lit cut ions. The Critic as Artist. + + ^^sthetics versus Ethics 75 It is not the mo- ment that makes the man, but the man who creates the age The Critic as Creator A N age that has no criticism is either '^^ an age in which art is immobile, hier- atic, 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 ordi- nary 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 re- peat 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. Intentions. The Critic as Artist. I ++ T is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it . Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it . . . The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it . . . It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way . . . 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 llion to send the notched arrow from the painted bow, or to hurl against the shield of hide and tlame-like 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 bride- groom, 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 tumb. But 77 The Writ- ing of His- tory Acting and De- scribing The World IS Made by the Singer for the Dreamer what of those who write about these things? What of those who gave them reaUty, 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 Ijright 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. Tlie white arms of 78 Andrumaclie 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 _ 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, obocp 7:(>vr