{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_40241/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_40241","id":"gutenberg_40241","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40241","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Criticism","Literature -- History and criticism"],"text":"Hieroglyphics\n\n\n\n\n  Hieroglyphics\n\n  By\n\n  Arthur Machen\n\n  Author of \"The Great God Pan,\" etc.\n\n  London\n  Grant Richards\n  1902\n\n\n\n\n    TABLE OF CONTENTS\n\n                    Page\n    NOTE              v\n    I                 1\n    II               42\n    III              68\n    IV               99\n    V               125\n    VI              150\n    APPENDIX        171\n\n\n\n\nNOTE\n\n\nIt was my privilege, many years ago, to make the acquaintance of the\nobscure literary hermit, whose talk I have tried to reproduce in the\npages that follow. Our first meeting was one of those chance affairs\nthat now and then mitigate the loneliness of the London streets, and a\nsecond hazard led to the discovery that we had many interests in common.\nI think that the Hermit (as I shall call him) had begun to find the\nperpetual solitude of his years a growing terror, and he was not sorry\nto have a listener; at first, indeed, he talked almost with the joy of a\nchild, or rather of a prisoner who has escaped from the house of\nsilence, but as he chose subjects which have always interested me\nintensely, he gave as much pleasure as he received, and I became an\nassiduous visitor of his cell.\n\nHe had found an odd retreat. He avoided personalities, and had a happy\nknack of forgetting any that I vouchsafed on my side, (he forgot my name\nthree times on the first evening that we spent together, and succeeded\nin repeating this feat over and over again since then), and I never\ngathered much of his past history. But I believe that \"something had\nhappened\" many years before, in the prehistoric age of the 'seventies.\nThere had been a break of some sort in the man's life when he was quite\nyoung; and so he had left the world and gone to Barnsbury, an almost\nmythical region lying between Pentonville and the Caledonian Road. Here,\nin the most retired street of that retired quarter, he occupied two\nrooms on the ground floor of a big, mouldy house, standing apart from\nthe street and sheltered by gaunt grown trees and ancient shrubs; and\njust beside the dim and dusty window of the sitting-room a laburnum had\ncast a green stain on the decaying wall. The laburnum had grown wild,\nlike all the trees and shrubs, and some of its black, straggling boughs\nbrushed the pane, and of dark, windy nights while we sat together and\ntalked of art and life we would be startled by the sudden violence with\nwhich those branches beat angrily upon the glass.\n\nThe room seemed always dark. I suppose that the house had been built in\nthe early eighteenth century, and had been altered and added to at\nvarious periods, with a final \"doing up\" for the comparative luxury of\nsomeone in the 'tens or 'twenties; there were, I think, twenty rooms in\nit, and my friend used to declare that when a new servant came she spent\nmany months in finding her way in the complicated maze of stairs and\npassages, and that the landlady even was now and then at fault. But the\nroom in which we sat was hung with flock paper, of a deep and heavy\ncrimson colour, and even on bright summer evenings the crimson looked\nalmost black, and seemed to cast a shadow into the room. Often we sat\nthere till the veritable darkness came, and each could scarcely see the\nwhite of the other's face, and then my friend would light two lonely\ncandles on the mantelpiece, or if he wished to read he set one on a\ntable beside him; and when the candles were lighted I thought that the\ngloom grew more intense, and looking through the uncurtained window one\ncould not see even the friendly twinkle of the gas-lamp in the street,\nbut only the vague growth of the laburnum, and the tangle of boughs\nbeyond.\n\nIt was a large room and gave me always a sense of empty space. Against\none wall stood a heavy bookcase, with glass doors, solid and of dark\nmahogany, but made in the intermediate period that came between\nChippendale and the modern school of machine-turned rubbish. In the\nduskiest corner of the room there was a secretaire of better\nworkmanship, and two small tables and three gaunt chairs made up the\nfurnishing. The Hermit would sometimes pace up and down in the void\ncentre of the room as he talked, and if I chanced to be sitting by the\nwindow, his shape would almost disappear as he neared the secretaire on\nhis march, and I heard the voice, and used to wonder for a moment\nwhether the man had not vanished for ever, having been resolved into the\nshadows about him.\n\nI have spent many evenings in that old mouldering room, where, when we\nwere silent for an instant, the inanimate matter about us found a voice,\nand the decaying beams murmured together, and a vague sound might come\nfrom the cellars underneath. And it always seemed to me as if the\ncrypt-like odour of the cellar rose also into the room, mingling with a\nfaint suggestion of incense, though I am sure that my friend never\nburned it. Here then, with such surroundings as I have indicated, we\nheld our sessions and talked freely and with enjoyment of many curious\nthings, which, as the Hermit would say, had the huge merit of\ninteresting no one but ourselves.\n\nHe would sometimes, whimsically, compare himself to Coleridge, and I\nthink that he often deliberately talked in S. T. C.'s manner with\ndelight in the joke. For, I need hardly say that the comparison was not\nin any way a serious one; he had a veneration for Coleridge's\nachievement, with a still greater veneration for that which Coleridge\nmight have achieved, which would have caused him to regard any such\ncomparison, seriously entertained, as unspeakably ludicrous. Still, he\nliked to regard himself as a very humble disciple in Coleridge's school,\nhe was fond, as I have said, of imitating his master's manner as well as\nhe could, and I think that he cherished, in the fashion of S. T. C., the\nnotion that he had a \"system,\" an esoteric philosophy of things; he\nsought for a key that would open, and a lamp that would enlighten all\nthe dark treasure-houses of the Universe, and sometimes he believed that\nhe held both the Key and the Lamp in his hands.\n\nIt is a confession of mysticism, but I incline to think that he was\nright in this belief. I recall the presence of that hollow, echoing\nroom, the atmosphere with its subtle suggestion of incense sweetening\nthe dank odours of the cellar, and the tone of the voice speaking to me,\nand I believe that once or twice we both saw visions, and some glimpse\nat least of certain eternal, ineffable Shapes. But these matters, the\nmore esoteric doctrines of \"the system\" have entered hardly or not at\nall into the very imperfect and fragmentary notes that I have made of\nhis conversations on literature.\n\nI should scarcely be justified in calling him a literary monomaniac. But\nit is true that Art in general, and the art of literature in particular\nhad for him a very high significance and interest; and he was always\nready to defend the thesis that, all the arts being glorious, the\nliterary art was the most glorious and wonderful of all. He reverenced\nmusic, but he was firm in maintaining that in perfect lyrical poetry\nthere is the subtlest and most beautiful melody in the world.\n\nI can scarcely say whether he wrote much himself. He would speak of\nstories on which he was engaged, but I have never seen his name on\npublishers' lists, and I do not think that he had adopted a pseudonym.\nOne evening, I remember, I came in a little before my accustomed time,\nand in the shadowy corner of the room, a drawer in the secretaire was\nopen, and I thought that it looked full of neat manuscripts. But I never\nspoke to him about his literary work; and I noticed that he did not much\ncare to talk of literature from the commercial standpoint.\n\nIt is perhaps needless to say that I consulted my friend before\npublishing these notes of his conversations. I had been forced to leave\nLondon for some months, and I wrote to him from the country, requesting\nhis permission to give to the world (if the world would have them) those\njudgments on books which I had listened to in Barnsbury. His reply\nallowed me to take my own way, \"with all my heart, so long as you make\nme sufficiently apocryphal. I am not going to compete with 'real'\ncritics whose names are printed in the papers; but if you can maintain\nthe _incognito_ and allow your readers (supposing their existence) to\nbelieve that I am a mere figment of your brain, you can print my _obiter\ndicta_ 'with ease of body and rest of reins.' Here is a suggestion for a\ntitle: what do you say to 'Boswell in Barnsbury'? But I really had no\nnotion that you were taking notes all the time. Remember: keep the\nsecret, _and the secrets_.\"\n\nI regarded this as a very liberal license, and I have tried to set in\nthe best order I could compass the \"system\" so far as it relates to\nletters. I do not pretend that I am a _verbatim_ reporter, for I had to\ntrust to my memory, and though I tried to arrange my notes at the time,\nI fear I have fallen here and there into confusion. Still, I think that\nthe six chapters which follow will seem fairly consecutive in their\nargument and arrangement, and the \"Appendix\"--a confession of\nfailure--is, in reality, the result of the \"cyclical mode of\ndiscoursing,\" in which the Hermit jocularly professed to follow\nColeridge.\n\nPerhaps indeed Coleridge was deceived, and my dear friend with him, in\nthe hope of real essential knowledge; but even so, these fragments which\nI propose are evidence that the latter earnestly desired the truth and\nsought it.\n\n        A. M.\n\n\n\n\nHIEROGLYPHICS\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nDo you know that just before you came in I found something highly\nsignificant in the evening paper? I am afraid from your expression that\nyou rather undervalue the influence of the press; indeed, I remember one\nday when we were out together you swore at an inoffensive boy who tried\nto allure us with news of all the winners. I think I pointed out at the\ntime that even horse-racing and an interest in \"events\" are preferable\nto stagnation, and that there is something august in the universal human\npassion for gambling. And, after all, the office-boy who \"puts on\"\nhalf-a-crown is really only an example of the love of man for the\nunknown; the half-crown is a venture into mystery, with that due flavour\nof commercialism which we in England add to most of our interests. But\nyou see, don't you? that gambling, even under its most sordid aspects,\nis not altogether sordid; it's the mystery, the uncertainty, the hours\nof \"strange surmise\" that the smallest bet gives to the bettor that\nmake the real delight of betting. When the office-boy wins and gets ten\nshillings for the risk of his two-and-six, his delight is not by any\nmeans pure love of gain, it is distinguished by a very marked line from\nthe constantly repeated joys of the grocer, who is always buying\ndelicious tea at ninepence and selling it at one-and-six. Here you have\ncommercialism in its simplest form; but our office-boy, though he likes\nthe money well enough, stands on a much higher plane. For the moment he\nis the man who has succeeded in solving the enigma of the Sphinx, in\ndiscovering the unknown continent, in reading the cypher, in guessing at\nthe song the Sirens sang, in unveiling the hidden treasure that the\nbuccaneers buried on the lonely shore; he has ventured successfully into\nthe dim region of surmises. And when he loses, there are always\nconsolations; the Indies have not been discovered on this voyage,\ncertainly, but there have been wonders on the way, he has enjoyed many\nhours of delicious expectation. The proof that he likes the sport, even\nwhen he loses, is that he invariably takes the first opportunity of\nventuring again in the same manner. And, by the way, perhaps I was a\nlittle severe just now on trade, and especially on the grocer's sugary\nand soapy enterprise. Perhaps if we were to look with a rather finer\nvision into the commercial spirit, we might find that it is not wholly\ncommercial, not altogether sordid. Of course if the grocer opens his\nshop with a certainty, mathematical or almost mathematical, that the\npublic will buy his wares, he is a wicked fellow; he is gambling with\nloaded dice, betting against a horse that he knows is to be made \"all\nright,\" playing cards with honours up his sleeve, and I am sure that if\nthis be his enterprise, it will always meet with our sternest\ndisapproval. Casanova died towards the close of the last century, and\nsince then cardsharping has become impossible to a man of taste. But\nseriously, I suspect that a good deal of the allurement that trade\npossesses for so many of us is the risk which it almost always implies,\nand risk means uncertainty, and uncertainty connotes the unknown. So you\nsee our despised grocer turns out, after all, to be of the kin of\nColumbus, of the treasure-seekers, and mystery-mongers, and delvers\nafter hidden things spiritual and material. I suppose we have here the\nreal explanation of the human trading passion, and the solution of a\nproblem that has often puzzled me. The problem I mean is this: how does\nit happen that the English are both the greatest poets and the greatest\ntradesmen of the modern world? Superficially, it seems that keeping\nshops and making poetry are incompatibles, and Wordsworth and Coleridge,\nKeats and Shelley, Tennyson and Poe, should have come from Provence or\nSicily, from the \"unpractical,\" uncommercial Latin races. But if we\ntrace back the trading instinct to that love of a risk--or in other\nwords to the desire for the unknown--the antinomy disappears, and it\nwill become perfectly natural that the race which has gone to the\nworld's end with its merchandise, has penetrated so gloriously into the\nfurther regions of poetry.\n\nBut that reminds me of what I was saying just after you had lit your\npipe. I think I remarked that I had seen something of very high\nsignificance in the evening paper, and the glare of disgust with which\nyou greeted my observation constituted an interruption, and an\ninterruption that had to be dealt with. Now again you seem to hint at\ndoubt with your eyebrows; you would say, perhaps, that I have not made\nout a very convincing case for journalism? But you must remember that\nmy mental process resembles that of Coleridge; you called on the Seer at\neleven o'clock in the morning, and (if young and imprudent) asked him a\nquestion. And at the waning of the light Coleridge was still diligently\nengaged in answering your question for you, having talked without\nintermission all the summer day. A \"cyclical mode of discoursing\" the\npious Henry Nelson Coleridge called it, and he deals faithfully with\ncertain persons who complained \"that they could get no answer to a\nquestion from Coleridge.\" And you will please to remember this when you\nthink that I am \"wandering\"--a vice of which Coleridge also was accused.\nTo-night, for example, on the evening paper being mentioned, your face\nexpressed disgust and contempt, which I diagnosed (and rightly, I\nbelieve?) as a tribute to the enormous interest taken by the editors of\nthese agreeable journals in the very latest sporting news; an interest\nwhich allows but little space for the discussion of pure literature.\nHence my remarks on the gambling-spirit; and now I hope you will at\nleast assume a thrill of interest when the boy bawls in your ear \"All\nthe winners and S. P.\" It is possible you may be thinking of Ulysses or\nof Keats at the moment, and the interruption may annoy you, but it will\ndo so no longer when you reflect that a burning anxiety as to the\nrunning of Bolter is for many thousands the symbol--and the only\npossible symbol--of the Doom of Troy and the wandering fields of foam,\nand the Isle of Calypso, and the \"strange surmise\" of Pizarro and all\nhis men.\n\nBut here is the evening-paper in question. Yes, the colour is, perhaps,\na little sickly. A kind of pinky-green, it seems, doesn't it? But it\nforced itself on my notice in the most extraordinary manner, and I\nexpect you will have to admit, when you have heard the story, that some\nPowers were at work. Well, I was walking up and down the room, just as\nit was getting dusk, and every now and then I stopped and looked out of\nthe window. Yes, I was making phrases as usual, and thinking of a new\nstory in the middle of the old one: hence the quarter-deck exercise. I\ndaresay you have remarked that I do not keep my window in a very\nbrilliant condition, and the air this evening, you will remember, was\nrather misty--October, I always think, wears a peculiar dim grace in\nBarnsbury--so I hope you will not find my impressions too incredible. I\nwas staring, then, out of the window, when to my vast astonishment, a\ngreat pale bird seemed suddenly to shoot up into the air from the road,\nand to flutter into the garden, where it became entangled in that\nsapless old laburnum that weeps green tears upon the wall. I saw, as I\nthought, the beating and fluttering of wings, and I ran out, imagining\nthat I was to secure a strange companion for my solitude. It was the\nevening paper, not a bird, and I saw at once that it would be impious to\nlet it flutter there unread, so I secured it and brought it in,\nmeditating the adventure, and wondering what strange message was thus\nborne to my eyes. So I went through its columns patiently, even to the\nleaderettes, and I will do myself the justice to say that I at once\nrecognised the communication that was addressed to me in this singular\nand even I may say Arabian fashion. It was a short comment upon some\nagitation that is now appealing rather strongly to Progressive leaders;\nbut the subject-matter is of no consequence, since the significance lies\nin the last sentence. Here it is: \"We are glad to hear that extensive\narrangements have been made for the dissemination of literature.\"\n\nYou don't see the immense importance of that? You surprise me. Let us go\ninto it, then. I told you I was not very precise as to the exact scope\nof the agitation alluded to--it may be a question of a heavy tax on\npersons who will say \"lady\" instead of \"lydy,\" it may be an affair of\nrestricting the franchise to citizens thoroughly ignorant of history; it\ndoesn't matter--but here are men who wish some political change to be\neffected, and these men are issuing printed matter, the purpose of which\nis to convince others of the righteousness of this particular \"program.\"\nAnd this printed matter is called \"literature.\" You know the sort of\nthing indicated. It may be a series of arguments, simple and fallacious,\nit may be in dialogue, it may be in story form, it may assume the guise\nof parody, it may be a brief history. And now what I want to know is\nthis: here we have a vast body of thought, clothed in words, ranging\nfrom the agreeable leaflets that we have been speaking of up to--let us\nsay--the Odyssey, and all this mass is known as literature: what is to\nbe our criterion, our means of distinguishing between the two extremes\nI have mentioned and all the innumerable links between them? Is the\nwhole mass literature in the true sense of the word? If not, with what\ninstrument, by what rule are we to divide the true from the false, to\njudge exactly in the case of any particular book whether it is\nliterature or not? Of course you may say that the question is rather\nverbal than real; that \"literature\" is a general term conveniently\napplied to anything in print, and that in practice everybody knows the\ndifference between a political pamphlet and the Odyssey. I very much\ndoubt whether people do understand precisely the distinction between the\ntwo, but for the avoidance of verbal confusion I suggest that when we\nmean literature in its highest sense we shall say (for the present at\nall events), \"fine literature\"; and the question will be, then: what is\nit that differentiates fine literature from a number of grammatical, or\npartly grammatical, sentences arranged in a more or less logical order?\nWhy is the Odyssey to come in, why is the \"literature\" of our evening\npaper to be kept out? And again, to put the question in a more subtle\nform: to which class do the works of Jane Austen belong? Is \"Pride and\nPrejudice\" to stand on the Odyssey shelf, or to lie in the pamphlet\ndrawer? Where is Pope's place? Is he to be set in the class of Keats? If\nnot, for what reason? What is the rank of Dickens, of Thackeray, of\nGeorge Eliot, of Hawthorne; and in a word, how are we to sort out, as it\nwere, this huge multitude of names, giving to each one his proper rank\nand station?\n\nI am glad it strikes you as a big question: to me it seems _the_\nquestion, the question which covers the final dogma of literary\ncriticism. Of course after we have answered this prerogative riddle,\nthere will be other questions, almost without end, classes, and\nsub-classes of infinite analysis. But this will be detail; while the\nquestion I have propounded is the question of first principles; it marks\nthe parting of two ways, and in a manner, it asks itself not only of\nliterature, but of life, but of philosophy, but of religion. What is the\nline, then; the mark of division which is to separate spoken, or\nwritten, or printed thought into two great genera?\n\nWell, as you may have guessed, I have my solution, and I like it none\nthe less, because the word of the enigma seems to me actually but a\nsingle word. Yes, for me the answer comes with the one word, _Ecstasy_.\nIf ecstasy be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be\nabsent, then, in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the\nworkmanship and observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I\nthink, we have a product (possibly a very interesting one), which is not\nfine literature.\n\nOf course you will allow me to contradict myself, or rather, to amplify\nmyself before we begin to discuss the matter fully. I said my answer was\nthe word, ecstasy; I still say so, but I may remark that I have chosen\nthis word as the representative of many. Substitute, if you like,\nrapture, beauty, adoration, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown,\ndesire for the unknown. All and each will convey what I mean; for some\nparticular case one term may be more appropriate than another, but in\nevery case there will be that withdrawal from the common life and the\ncommon consciousness which justifies my choice of \"ecstasy\" as the best\nsymbol of my meaning. I claim, then, that here we have the touchstone\nwhich will infallibly separate the higher from the lower in literature,\nwhich will range the innumerable multitude of books in two great\ndivisions, which can be applied with equal justice to a Greek drama, an\neighteenth century novelist, and a modern poet, to an epic in twelve\nbooks, and to a lyric in twelve lines. I will convince you of my belief\nin my own nostrum by a bold experiment: here is _Pickwick_ and here is\n_Vanity Fair_; the one regarded as a popular \"comic\" book, the other as\na serious masterpiece, showing vast insight into human character; and\napplying my test, I set _Pickwick_ beside the Odyssey, and _Vanity Fair_\non top of the political pamphlet.\n\nI will not argue the matter at the moment; I would merely caution you\nagainst supposing that I imply any equality of merit in the books that I\nhave thus summarily \"bracketed.\" You mustn't suppose that I think\nDickens's book as good as Homer's, or that I have any doubts as to the\nvast superiority of _Vanity Fair_ over all the pamphlets in the world.\n\"Here is a temple, here is a tub,\" we may suppose a child to say,\nlearning from a picture-alphabet; but the temple may be a miserably\ndesigned structure, in ruinous condition, and the tub is, perhaps, a\nmiracle of excellent workmanship. But one means worship and the other\nmeans washing, and that is _the_ distinction. Or, to take a better\nexample; the bottom boy in the sixth form may be a miserable dunce\ncompared with the top boy in the fifth; still the dunce is in the sixth\nform, and the genius is in the fifth. Or, to take a third instance (I\nwant you to understand what I'm driving at), the fact that an English\norator is fluent, brilliant, profound, convincing, while a Greek orator\nis stuttering, stupid, shallow, illogical does not hinder that the\nformer, though he may speak ever so well, still speaks English, while\nthe latter, however badly he may speak, speaks in Greek for all that.\nAnalogies, as you know, are never perfect, and must not be pressed too\nfar; they suggest rather than prove; but I hope you understand me though\nyou may not agree with me.\n\nBut before we argue the merits of my own literary solvent, we might very\nwell see what we can do with other tests. I daresay you can suggest a\ngood many. We won't go into the question of printed and not printed,\nwritten or not written, because it is obvious that the visible symbols\nby which literature is recorded have nothing to do with literature\nitself. In the beginning all literature was a matter of improvisation\nor recitation and memory, and hieroglyphics, writing, printing are mere\nconveniences. Indeed the point is only worth mentioning because there\nare, I believe, simple souls who think that the invention of printing\nhas some sort of mysterious connection with the birth of literature, and\nthat the abolition of the paper duty was its coming of age. But I don't\nthink we need trouble ourselves much about a view of literary art which\nregards the cheap press as its father and the school board as its\nnursing mother. Many people think, on the other hand, that literature is\nto be estimated by its effect on the emotions, by the shock which it\ngives to the system. You may say that a book which interests you so\nintensely that you cannot put it down, that affects you so acutely that\nyou weep, that amuses you so immensely that you roar with laughter must\nbe very good. I don't object to \"very good,\" but from my point of view,\n\"very good\" and \"fine literature\" are two different things. You see\nI believe that the difference between interesting, exciting,\ntear-compelling, laughter-moving reading matter and fine art is not\nspecific but generic: who would blaspheme against good bitter beer, who\nwould say that _because_ it is good, it is _therefore_ Burgundy?\n\nI am not quite sure that I am not muddling up two things which are in\nreality distinct. I mean I am in doubt whether the faculty of making the\nreader cry ought not to be distinguished from the faculty of interesting\nhim intensely. On the whole I think that it would be well to draw a line\nbetween the two, especially as \"interesting\" is somewhat ambiguous.\n\nAnd you think it a paradox, then, to maintain that the power of exciting\nthe emotions to a high degree is not a mark of fine literature? But just\nthink it over. Suppose that a few yards from this room--in the next\nhouse, in the next street--a woman is waiting for the return of her\nhusband and son. A ring comes at the bell, there's a reddish-brown\nenvelope, and inside it the message: \"Railway accident father killed.\"\nWell, you can imagine the effect that these four words will have on the\nwoman's emotions; she will either faint away, or burst into an agony of\ntears; she may even die of the shock, and you can't have a more striking\nemotional result than death, can you? Very well; but is the telegram\nfine art? Is it art? Is it even artifice? It isn't art because it is\ntrue! But if I invented such a telegram and sent it to a woman whose\nhusband and son were away, would it thereby become art? You must see\nperfectly well that it would be nothing of the kind; and I must ask you\nto explain how a book which is, virtually, a long succession of such\ntelegrams can rise higher than its origin and source? You must see, I\nthink, that the question of truth and falsity can make no real\ndifference to our (no doubt pompous) high \u00e6sthetic standpoint; and if\nyou admit that four words which produce an emotional result are not\nnecessarily art, then it follows that four hundred or four hundred\nthousand words woven together on the same principle are in no better\nposition. An increased quantity means no doubt an increased artifice,\nbut artifice and art are very different things. We may agree then that\nit is impossible to measure the artistic merit of a book by the\nemotional shock that it may give to its readers. I have never read the\n\"Sorrows of Werther\"; but if you have read it and it has made you\nsorrowful you are hereby warned against deducing from this effect any\nconclusion as to its \u00e6sthetic value.\n\nI confess all this seems A B C to me, though I see you are still\ninclined to think me a little paradoxical--not to say sophistical--but\nit grows more difficult when one gets to the question of the\n\"interesting\" or \"absorbing\" book. As I said \"interesting\" seems such an\nambiguous word. It may stand for that \u00e6sthetic emotion produced, say, by\nthe \u0152dipus; it may denote the wide-eyed attention of the butcher's wife\nlistening to the story of my landlady as to the love-affairs of the\ngrocer's daughter--and there are many books which are, virtually,\n\"Tales of My Landlady\" printed and bound. We must really then omit\n\"interesting\" in our account of the possible criteria of fine art; the\nword as it were cancels itself out, because it may mean on the one hand\nthe possession of the highest artistic value, or on the other it may\nserve as epithet for a book which gratifies the lowest curiosity. You\nknow there are books which the French have kindly named \"romans \u00e0 clef\";\nand I suppose there is no more miserable form of book-making. The\nreceipt is easy enough. The grocer's daughter, to whose amours I alluded\njust now, is really named Miss Buggins, and the gentleman is Mr Tibb.\nWell, suppose that my landlady, relating their lyric to the butcher's\nwife, should, with a knowing wink, profess to tell the story of Miss\nRuggins and Mr Ribb--she would simply be composing a _roman \u00e0 clef_\nwithout knowing it. You might say that it is hardly worth while to\nlabour the point, that such \"interest\" as this is wholly and lamentably\ninartistic--that it is the very contrary to all true art--but it is not\nlong since a person of some literary note, in criticising the\n\"Heptameron,\" stated that its chief value lay in the fact that one could\nidentify the persons who tell the stories and those also of whom they\nwere told!\n\nBut there is another interest of a much higher kind, and that is the\nsensational. We have done some excellent books of this sort in England,\nand perhaps you will understand the class I mean when I say that a novel\nof this description is hard to lay down, and harder still to take up\nagain when you have once found out the secret. This is not high art; you\nare always at liberty to put down \"Lycidas,\" but then you are compelled\nto take it up again and again, and the secret of \"Lycidas\" is always a\nsecret, and one never fails to experience the joy of an artistic\nsurprise. Still the books I mean sometimes show very high artifice, and\nin itself, perhaps, the quality that I am talking about, the power of\nexciting a vivid curiosity, an earnest desire to know what is to come\nnext is not, like the vulgar _roman \u00e0 clef_ curiosity, in actual\ndisaccord from the purpose of art. Indeed I imagine that this trick of\nstimulating the curiosity may be made subservient to purely \u00e6sthetic\nends, it may become a handmaid to lead one towards that desire of the\nunknown which I think was one of the synonyms I gave you for the master\nword--Ecstasy. Still, though the trick is a good one, it will not, by\nitself, make fine art. You may discover so much by reading the\n\"Moonstone,\" that monument of ingenuity and absurdity. On the face of it\nall detective stories come under this heading: formally, no doubt, they\nmust all be reckoned as tricks, and they may vary from the infinitely\ningenious to the infinitely imbecile, and so far as I remember, the\nfamous French tales of detection verge towards the lower rather than the\nhigher ground. But I am inclined, not very logically, perhaps, to make\nan exception in favour of Poe's Dupin, and to place him almost in the\nsphere of pure literature. Logically, he is a detective, but I almost\nthink that in his case the detective is a symbol of the mystagogue. As\nI say, I should be pressed hard if I were asked to make out my case in\nterms and syllogisms, but if you require me to do so, I would say first\nof all that the atmosphere of Dupin--and you must remember that in\nliterature everything counts; it is not alone the plot, or the style\nthat we have to consider--has to me hints of that presence which I have\ncalled ecstasy. Listen to this:\n\n\"It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?)\nto be enamoured of the Night for her own sake; and into this\n_bizarrerie_, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up\nto his wild whims with a perfect _abandon_. The sable divinity would not\nherself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her presence. At\nthe first dawn of the morning we closed all the massive shutters of our\nold building; lighting a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed,\nthrew out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these\nwe then buried our souls in dreams--reading, writing, or conversing,\nuntil warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we\nsallied forth into the streets, arm in arm, continuing the topics of\nthe day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking amid the\nwild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental\nexcitement which quiet observation can afford.\"\n\nAnd again; in the stories themselves, in the conduct of M. Dupin's\ndetective processes, I find a faint suggestion of the under-consciousness\nor other consciousness of man, a mere hint, not, I think, expressed in so\nmany words, rather latent than patent, that if you would thoroughly\nunderstand the rational man you must have sounded the irrational man, the\nmysterious companion that walks beside each one of us on the earthly\njourney. Of course the artifice in the Dupin stories is of the very\nhighest kind, but for the reasons I have given I am inclined to think that\nthere is more than artifice, and the shadow, at all events, of art itself.\n\nBut this exceptional case of Poe's detective tales only leads us back to\nthe main proposition--that the power of exciting a very high sensational\ninterest does not, in itself, mark out a book as being fine literature.\nI think I proved the proposition by my instance of the \"Moonstone,\" but\nif that does not convince you, we might demonstrate this theorem in the\nsame way as we demonstrated the other one about the \"literature\" that\nproduces its effect on the emotions. We have only to send out a series\nof telegrams, or we may even glance at the newspaper, and follow a case\nin the Central Criminal Court. Or we may affirm, more generally, that\nlife often offers many highly absorbing and highly interesting\nspectacles, but that life is not art, and therefore, that literature\nwhich fails to rise above the level of life, or rather, to penetrate\nbeneath the surface of life, is not fine literature in our sense of that\nterm. A gold nugget may be as pure and fine as you like, but it is not a\nsovereign; it lacks the stamp; and it is the business of art to give its\nstamp and imprint to the matter of life.\n\nI really think then that we have disposed of perhaps the most generally\nreceived of artistic fallacies--that books are to be judged by their\npower of reproducing in the reader those feelings of grief, interest,\ncuriosity, and so forth which he experiences or may experience in his\neveryday life, which he really does experience in greater or less degree\nevery time he talks to a friend, takes up a newspaper, or receives a\ntelegram. It comes to this again and again, doesn't it, that Art and\nLife are two different spheres, and that the Artist with a capital A is\nnot a clever photographer who understands selection in a greater or less\ndegree.\n\nBut before we go on with our work and see what can be done with other\nliterary \"solvents\" I want to make a digression. I should have made it\nbefore, if you had pulled me up at the proper cue, and that was when I\nspoke of \"interest\" as a highly ambiguous term, the fruitful parent of\n\"undistributed middles.\" You see how the unscrupulous sophist would bend\nthis word to his dark work, don't you? It would be, I suppose, something\nlike this:\n\n     A very high degree of interest [of the artistic kind] is the mark\n     of fine literature.\n\n     But, the \"Moonstone\" excites a very high degree of interest [of the\n     sensational kind].\n\n     _Therefore_, the \"Moonstone\" has the mark of fine literature.\n\nYou note the \"paltering\" with the word, its use now in one sense, and\nnow in another; and if that sort of thing were allowed we should have\nWilkie Collins placed among the Immortals before we knew where we were.\nBut hasn't it occurred to you that nearly all the terms we are using are\npatient of the same vile uses? You remember that we began with\n\"literature\" itself, as a monstrous example of ambiguity, sheltering as\nit did both the publications of the Anti-Everything Society and the Song\nof Ulysses' Wandering; even now we are trying to track the monster to\nhis den in spite of his manifold turnings and disguises. In the\nmeanwhile, for the sake of clearness, we agreed to prefix the epithet\n\"fine\" to the word when we meant the \"Odyssey\" class, though if we say\n\"fine\" so often I am afraid we run the risk of being thought superfine.\nHowever one must run all risks in the cause of making oneself\nunderstood; and so I say you ought to have pulled me up when I talked\nabout \"art\" and \"books that appealed to the emotions.\" My \"art\" may not\nbe the same as your \"art,\" and \"emotions\" are still more dangerous in\nthe same way.\n\nI think I made some attempt to deal with \"art\" as I was talking. I\ncontrasted it with \"artifice,\" and my phrase \"Artist with a big A\" was\nanother hint to you that the word must be handled cautiously. You know\nthat in ordinary conversation we say that bees have \"the art\" or \"an\nart\" of making hexagonal cells of wax, that wasps have an art of making\na sort of paper for their nests, that there is an art of logic, an art\nof cookery, an art in making a gravel path. Now in each of these\ninstances the word really speaks of the adaptation of means to ends. In\nthe case of the bees and wasps there is a slightly different _nuance_ of\nmeaning, because they make their cells and their paper just as a bird\nbuilds its nest, through the influence of forces which to us are occult,\nwhich we conveniently sum up under the word instinct. In the arts of\ncookery and pathmaking there is a conscious employment of certain means\ntowards the securing of certain ends; and it is at least possible that\nthe swallow, gathering its materials and shaping them, has at the moment\nnothing but a blind impulse, similar to that of hunger--we all know when\nwe are hungry and we all know what to do in such a case, but we do not\nall know the physiology of the stomach and the gastric juices, and\nperhaps not one of us knows the whole secret of inanition and\nnutrition. We simply eat because we want to eat, not because we wish to\nsupply ourselves with a certain quantity of peptones; and so perhaps the\nswallow gathers her nest and shapes it, without the consciousness of the\neggs and the little birds that are to follow. But I need not remind you\nthat there are plenty of well authenticated instances of animals who\nhave consciously used means to secure ends, and thus \"art\" in its common\nsignificance is not even an exclusively human faculty. When, for\nexample, the bees find themselves in danger of being left queenless,\nthey administer what has been called \"royal food\" to a common grub, and\nthat which would have been a worker becomes a queen; and in this case\nthe bees are as much \"artists\" as the cook who puts a particular\ningredient into a dish with the view of obtaining a particular flavour.\n\nNow, then, let us apply all this to our matter. I daresay you have often\nheard a book praised for its \"great art,\" and if you have read it you\nwill have discovered that its \"art\" is simply contrivance, the very\nadaptation of means to ends that we have been discussing. \"The art with\nwhich the mystery is carefully kept in the background,\" \"the art by\nwhich the two characters are contrasted throughout the volume,\" \"the\nhighly artistic manner in which Fernando and the heroine are brought\ntogether on the last page\"--these, you see clearly, are contrivances,\nartifices, in no way differing in degree from the contrivances of the\nman who makes the garden path, of the cook who \"dusts in\" just a\nsuspicion of lemon-rind, of the bee who administers the \"royal food.\"\nThis \"art\" then is a totally different thing from our Art with the\ncapital letter, with the epithet \"fine,\" or \"high\" before it; and in\nfuture when I mean \"adaptation of means to ends,\" I shall always say\n\"artifice\"; while \"art\" will be retained and set apart for higher uses.\n\nAnd now as to \"emotion.\" Here, I think, you ought to have been down on\nme. You might have said: \"You declare that the appeal to the emotions is\nnot a test of fine literature. But to what then does Homer appeal? What\nis the \"\u0152dipus\" but an appeal to the emotions? What is all exquisite\nlyric poetry but the cry of the emotions, set to music?\" I suppose that,\nas a matter of fact, you understood my real meaning by the instance I\ngave; the anguish of a wife at the loss of a husband; you saw that what\nI wanted to say was this: that fine literature does not content itself\nwith repeating, or mimicking, the emotions of private, personal,\neveryday life. Still, I should have gone into the matter more fully\nthen, and as I did not do so, we had better see what can be done now.\nAnd do you know that I believe that the best approach we can make to a\nrather subtle question will be a somewhat indirect one? Just now I was\ntalking about Poe's Dupin stories, and I tried, rather vaguely, to\njustify my tentative inclusion of them in the higher class of letters,\nby pointing out that Poe seemed to hint at the \"other-consciousness\" of\nman, and to suggest, at least, the presence of that shadowy, unknown, or\nhalf-known companion who walks beside each one of us all our days. I\ntried to realise the image of a man, followed or rather attended, by a\nspiritual fellow, treading a path parallel with but different from his\nown; and now I want you to carry out this image into the sphere of\nwords. Already you must have a hint of it. One might draw a figure;\nsomething like this:\n\n               +--------------------+-----------------+\n               |                    |                 |\n               | Fine Literature.   |   \"Literature.\" |\n               | Art.               |   Artifice.     |\n               | Emotion.           |   Feelings.     |\n               |                    |                 |\n               +--------------------+-----------------+\n\nAnd before I go into the special question, let me extend the list; it\nwill explain itself.\n\n    +------------------------+-----------------------------------------+\n    |                        |                                         |\n    | Romance, romantic.     |  A \"Romantic\" Affair in the West End.   |\n    | Tragedy, tragic.       |  \"Tragedy\" in Soho.                     |\n    | Drama, dramatic.       |  Le \"drame\" de la Rue Cochon:           |\n    |                        |       \"Dramatic\" Elopement in Peckham.  |\n    | Interest, interesting  |  An \"interesting\" number of \"Snippets.\" |\n    |      [of \"Hamlet\"].    |                                         |\n    | Lyric.                 |  The \"Lyric\" Theatre.                   |\n    | Inebriated.            |  In an \"inebriated\" condition.          |\n    |                        |                                         |\n    +------------------------+-----------------------------------------+\n\nThat almost gives my secret away, doesn't it? Of course you see the\nplace that the words in the right-hand column take in the scheme. The\n\"Romantic\" Affair in the West End really concerned the life of a\ndraper's assistant, who robbed his master's till, in order that he might\nmake presents to Miss Claire Tilbury, one of the \"Sisters Tilbury\" now\nperforming at the \"Lucifer.\" An unmentionable person cut his throat in\nsome alley off Greek Street; hence the \"Tragedy\" in Soho. Two\npeculiarly squalid servants, who beat out their master's brains, under\nsingularly uninteresting circumstances, acted the \"Drama\" of the Rue\nCochon, and it was a dissolute barmaid who eloped \"dramatically\" from\nPeckham in the dog-cart of her employer. The two varying uses of the\nword \"lyric\" need not be underlined for you, who know the Elizabethans\nand the Cavaliers; but perhaps I may say that he who tastes _calix meus\ninebrians_ will not be in an \"inebriated\" condition. It would be\npossible to extend these parallel columns almost to infinity; but I\nthink the list is long enough for our purpose, and \"Trench on Words\" is\na well-known handbook. But you see my right-hand column word, parallel\nwith \"Emotion\"? You see I have written \"Feelings,\" and I suggest that it\nwill be convenient to speak of feelings when we mean the things of life,\nof society, of personal and private relationship, while we may reserve\nemotion for the influence produced in man by fine art. Thus it will be\nwith emotion that we witness the fall of \u0152dipus, the madness of Lear,\nwhile we feel for our friends and ourselves in misfortune. That seems to\nmake it plain enough, doesn't it; you see now, clearly, what I mean by\nsaying that the power of producing an emotional shock cannot be a test\nof fine literature. Art must appeal to emotion, and sometimes, no doubt,\nwith a shock; but it must always be to the emotion of the left-hand\ncolumn, never to the \"feelings\" on the right hand. So you must never\ntell me that a book is fine art because it made you, or somebody else,\ncry; your tears are, emphatically, not evidence in the court of Fine\nLiterature.\n\nI daresay it may have struck you that the tests we have considered\nhitherto have been, in the main, popular tests. No doubt many persons\ncalling themselves critics have praised the art of a book because it has\ndrawn tears from eyes, or because it has not suffered itself to be put\ndown, or because it contains easily recognisable portraits of well-known\npeople, but such critics are to be spelt with a very small initial\nletter, and, as I said, I don't think we want to extend that list of\nparallels. There is another test that I had forgotten: I suppose there\nreally are people who believe that a book is fine \"because it will do\ngood,\" but I don't think we'll argue with them, though I once knew a\nliberally-educated man who said a certain book was fine because it\ntended \"to raise one's opinion of the clergy.\" So we will reckon our\n\"popular\" tests as done with, and proceed to the more technical solvents\nthat are proposed by professed men of letters.\n\nThree of these more literary criteria occur to me at the moment, and I\nbelieve we shall understand them and the position which they represent\nbetter if we take them, at first, at all events, in a mass. I can\nconceive, then, that many persons whose opinion one would respect would\nstate their position in literary criticism somewhat as follows:--\"If a\nbook (they would say) shows keenness of observation, insight into\ncharacter, with fidelity to life as the result of these capacities; if\nits art (we should say, artifice) in the design and 'laying out' of the\nplot, in the contrivance of incident is confessedly admirable, and\nfinally if it is written in a good style: then you have fine literature.\nFine art, in short, is a clear mirror, and the artist's skill consists\nin arranging and selecting such parts of life as he thinks best for his\npurpose of reflection.\"\n\nWell, now, as to the first point: fidelity to life, clearness of\nreflection, the selection being taken for granted, as no one out of an\nasylum would maintain that a book must mirror the whole of life, or even\nthe millionth part of one particular man's life. Come, let us apply the\ntest in question to one or two of the acknowledged excellencies--to the\n\"Odyssey\" for instance, to the \"Morte D'Arthur,\" to \"Don Quixote.\" Is\nthe story of Ulysses, in any accepted sense of the phrase \"faithful\" to\nlife as we know it? Is it \"faithful,\" that is to say, with the fidelity\nof Jane Austen, of Thackeray, of George Eliot, of Fielding? Is there\nanything in our experience answering to the episodes of the\nLotus-Eaters, Calypso's Isle, the Cyclops' Cavern, the descent of the\nGoddess? Is the \"reflection\" even a reflection of Homer's own\nexperience? Had he escaped from the cave under the belly of a ram? Had\nhe been in the world of one-eyed giants? Were his friends in the habit\nof talking in hexameter verse? We may go on, of course, but is it worth\nwhile? It is surely hardly necessary to demonstrate the fact that the\nauthor of the \"Morte D'Arthur\" had never seen the Graal, that such a\ncharacter as Don Quixote never existed in the natural order of things.\nWe might have gone more sharply to work with this \"fidelity\" test: we\nmight have said that poetry being, admittedly fine literature at its\nfinest, and (admittedly also) being unfaithful to life as we know it\nboth in matter and manner, that therefore the test breaks down at once.\nIf fine literature must be faithful to life, then \"Kubla Khan\" is not\nfine literature; which, I think we may say, is highly absurd.\n\nI daresay you think I have dealt rather crudely, in a somewhat\nmaterialistic spirit, with this criterion of \"fidelity to life.\" I admit\nthe charge, but you must remember that I am dealing with very bad\npeople, who understand nothing but materialism. And when these people\ntell you in so many words that it is the author's business clearly and\nintelligently to present the life--the common, social life around\nhim--then, believe me, the only thing to be done is to throw \"Odyssey\"\nand \"\u0152dipus,\" \"Morte D'Arthur,\" \"Kubla Khan\" and \"Don Quixote\" straight\nin their faces, and to demonstrate that these eternal books were not\nconstructed on the proposed receipt. Of course if I were treating with\nthe initiated, if I were commentating and not arguing, I should handle\nthe great masterpieces in a much more reverent manner. I mean that for\nthose who possess the secret it skills not to bring in the Cyclops (who\nfor us is not a giant but a symbol); we have only to bow down before the\ngreat music of such a poem as the Odyssey, recognising that by the very\nreason of its transcendent beauty, by the very fact that it trespasses\nfar beyond the world of our daily lives, beyond \"selection\" and\n\"reflection,\" it is also exalted above our understanding, that because\nits beauty is supreme, that therefore its beauty is largely beyond\ncriticism. For ourselves we do not need to prove its transcendence of\nlife by this or that extraordinary incident; it is the whole spirit and\nessence and sound and colour of the song that affect us; and we know\nthat the Odyssey surpassed the bounds of its own age and its own land\njust as much as it surpasses those of our time and our country. You look\nas if you thought I were fighting with the vanquished, but let me tell\nyou that great people have praised Homer because he depicted truthfully\nthe men and manners of his time.\n\nBut as I was saying, all this would be too subtle for the enemy, for the\npeople who maintain that fine literature is a faithful reflection of\nlife, and think that Jane Austen touched the point of literary\nsupremacy. With them, as I said, we must be rough; we must ask: Did\nSophocles describe the ordinary life of Athens in his day? No: very\nwell, then; since the works of Sophocles are fine literature, it follows\nthat some fine literature does not reflect ordinary life, and therefore\nthat fidelity to nature is not the differentia of the highest art.\n\nI wonder whether I ought to caution you again against the ambiguity of\nlanguage? We are dealing easily enough with such words as \"life\" and\n\"nature,\" and from what you know of my system you may perhaps have seen\nthat I have been using these words as the people use them, as those use\nthem who would say that \"Vanity Fair\" is a faithful presentation of\nlife. I thought you would understand this, but I may just mention in\npassing that words like \"nature,\" \"life\" and \"truth\" or \"fidelity\" have\nalso their esoteric values, that (by way of example) the truth of the\nscientist and the truth of the philosopher are two very different\nthings. So it may turn out by and bye that in the occult sense,\n\"fidelity to life\" _is_ the differentia of fine literature; that the\naim of art is truth; that the artist continually mirrors nature in its\neternal, essential forms; but for the present moment, it is understood,\nis it not, that these words have been used in their common, everyday\npopular significance? The \"Dunciad\" is a study of man, and Wordsworth's\n\"Ode on Intimations of Immortality\" is a study of man, and the literary\nstandpoint that we have been attacking is that of Pope and not that of\nWordsworth.\n\nIf I remember, the next test we have to analyse is that of artifice,\noften and improperly called art. But I think we have already demolished\nthis criterion. In distinguishing between art and artifice I pointed out\nthat the latter merely signifies the adaptation of means to an end, and\nhas no relation whatever with art properly so-called; it is simply the\nmental instrument with which man performs every task and every work of\nhis daily life; it consists in the rejection of that which is unfit for\nthe particular purpose in view, and in the acceptance and use of that\nwhich is fit for the desired end and likely to bring it about. It\nconcerns not creation but execution, and it is I need hardly say as\nindispensable to the author as are his pen and ink, and (I might almost\nsay) is as little concerned as these with the essence of his art. Of\ncourse in works of the very highest genius we may declare that, in a\nsense, art has become all in all, that the necessary artifice has been\ninterpenetrated with art, so that we can hardly distinguish in our minds\nbetween the idea and the realisation of it. In such cases, artifice has\nbeen lifted up and exalted into the heaven of art, and it remains\nartifice no longer; but in the view that we are considering it is merely\nthe adaptation of means to an end, a clever choice of incident, the\nknack of putting in and leaving out. The faculty may, as I said, be\nglorified and transfigured by genius, but every newspaper reporter must\nhave more or less of it, and it is clear enough I think (perhaps I may\nmention Wilkie Collins once more) that in itself it cannot establish the\nclaim of any book to be fine literature.\n\nAnd lastly we have to deal with style; and here again I must have\nrecourse to my distinctions. What _is_ a good style? If you mean by a\n\"good\" style, one that delivers the author's meaning in the clearest\npossible manner, if its purpose and effect are obviously utilitarian, if\nit be designed solely with the view of imparting knowledge--the\nknowledge of what the author intends--then I must point out that \"style\"\nin this sense is or should be amongst the accomplishments of every\ncommercial clerk--indeed, it will be merely a synonym for plain speaking\nand plain writing--and in this sense it is evidently not one of the\nmarks of art, since the object of art is not information, but a peculiar\nkind of \u00e6sthetic delight. But if on the other hand style is to mean such\na use and choice of words and phrases and cadences that the ear and the\nsoul through the ear receive an impression of subtle but most beautiful\nmusic, if the sense and sound and colour of the words affect us with an\nalmost inexplicable delight, then I say that while Idea is the soul,\nstyle is the glorified body of the very highest literary art. Style, in\nshort, is the last perfection of the very best in literature, it is the\noutward sign of the burning grace within. But we must keep the\nsystematic consideration of style for some other night; it's not a\nsubject to be dealt with by the way, and I have only said so much\nbecause it was necessary to draw the line between language as a means of\nimparting facts (good style in the sense of our opponents) and language\nas an \u00e6sthetic instrument, which is a good, or rather a beautiful style\nin our sense. In the latter sense it is the form of fine literature, in\nthe former sense it is the medium of all else that is expressed in\nwords, from a bill of exchange upwards.\n\nIt seems to me, then, that we have considered one by one the alternative\ntests of fine literature which have been or may be proposed, and we have\ncome to the conclusion that each and all are impossible. It is no longer\npermissible, I imagine, for you or for me to say: \"This book is fine\nliterature because it makes me cry, because it was so interesting that I\ncouldn't put it down, because it is so natural and faithful to life,\nbecause it is so well (plainly and neatly) written.\" We have picked\nthese reasons to pieces one by one, and the result is that we are driven\nback on my \"word of the enigma\"--Ecstasy; the infallible instrument, as\nI think, by which fine literature may be discerned from reading-matter,\nby which art may be known from artifice, and style from intelligent\nexpression. At any rate we have got our hypothesis, and you remember\nwhat stress Coleridge laid on the necessity of forming some hypothesis\nbefore entering on any investigation.\n\nI believe we began to-night with the evening paper, and the strange\nglimpse it gives us, through a pinky-green veil, through a cloud of\nlaborious nonsense about odds and winners and tips and all such foolery,\ninto that ancient eternal desire of man for the unknown. And that, you\nremember, was one of the synonyms that I offered you for ecstasy; and so\nin a sense I expect that we shall have the evening paper close beside us\nall the way of our long voyage in quest of the lost Atlantis.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nI think it is a horrible thing to have such a good memory as that. I\nrecollect, now that you remind me, that I did lay down \"Pickwick\" _v._\n\"Vanity Fair\" as a sort of test case of my theory of literature; but you\nsurely do not expect me to work out the arguments in detail? Of course\nif I were giving a series of lectures I should \"set a paper\" after each\none; but I expect you to content yourself with the suggestion, with the\nskeleton map, as it were. Besides, if we take that special case of two\neminent Victorian novels as a concrete instance of the abstract\nargument, don't you see that we are answering the particular question\nall the while that we are investigating the general proposition? Surely\nif you recollect all that we said about fine literature in general, you\nwon't have much difficulty in adjudicating on the claims of Thackeray.\nDon't you see that he never withdraws himself from the common life and\nthe common consciousness, that he is all the while nothing but a\nphotographer; a showman with a set of pictures. A consummately clever\nphotographer, certainly, a showman with a gift of amusing, interesting\n\"patter\" that is quite extraordinary, an artificer of very high merit.\nBut where will you find Ecstasy in Thackeray? Where is his adoration?\nYou may search, I think, from one end of his books to the other, without\nfinding any evidence that he realised the mystery of things; he was\nnever for a moment aware of that shadowy double, that strange companion\nof man, who walks, as I said, foot to foot with each one of us, and yet\nhis paces are in an unknown world. And (unless you have got any fresh\narguments) I think we decided last week that the book which lacks the\nsense of all this is not fine literature.\n\nI hope you don't think I am abusing Thackeray. I am always reading him,\nand I chose his \"Vanity Fair\" because it strikes me as such a supremely\nclever example of its class. I suppose there is nothing more amusing\nthan the society of a brilliant, observant man of the world. Well,\nThackeray was brilliant and observant _in excelsis_, and besides that,\nhe understood the artifice of story-telling, and he could write a terse,\nclean-cut English which was always sufficient for his purpose. He\ncontrives the corporal overthrow of the Marquis of Steyne, he shows you\nthat bald old nobleman sprawling on the floor, and the words that he\nuses are his brisk, willing, and capable servants. He has observation,\nand artifice, and \"style\" in that secondary sense which we distinguished\nfrom the real style; from those \"melodies unheard\" which I called (I\nthink rather picturesquely) the glorified body of the highest literary\nart. But these qualities, we found out, are not, separately or\nconjointly, the differentia of fine literature as we understand the\nterm; and consequently, with all our admiration and all our interest we\nare compelled to place Thackeray in the lower form, simply because he is\nclearly and decisively lacking in that one essential quality of ecstasy,\nbecause he never leaves the street and the highroad to wander on the\neternal hills, because he does not seem to be aware that such hills\nexist.\n\nOf course I have only taken Thackeray as the representative of his\nclass, and I chose him, as I remarked, because, for me, he is the most\nfavourable representative of it. I am thinking, really, of the \"plain\nman\" whom we have engaged in so many forms, and of his \"plain\" argument\nwhich comes to this--\"for me a great book is a book that amuses me\ngreatly and that I enjoy reading.\" And I say that Thackeray amuses me\ngreatly and that I enjoy reading his books immensely, but that, with due\nrespect to \"common sense,\" such an argument fails to prove that \"Vanity\nFair\" is fine literature. Other people would, no doubt, have chosen\nother books; many would have selected Miss Austen, and I daresay they\nwould have a good deal to say for their choice. Undoubtedly there is a\nseverity, a self-restraint, a fineness of observation, a delicacy of\nirony in \"Pride and Prejudice\" which are unmatched of their kind (the\nThackeray of the caricatures, of those queer woodblocks, comes out now\nand then in the books, and digression occasionally goes beyond due\nbounds); but I named \"Vanity Fair\" because, personally, I find it more\namusing than \"Pride and Prejudice.\" In neither of these books is there\nart in our high sense of the word, and in preferring the one over the\nother I am simply saying that I prefer the company of a brilliant and\nwitty cosmopolitan to that of a very keen and delicate, but very limited\nmaiden lady, who lives in a remote country town and understands\nthoroughly the reason why the vicar bowed so low when a certain\ncarriage rolled up the high street, and why that pretty, prim girl\ncrossed over the way when the handsome gentleman from the Hall came out\nof the chymist's. Yes, the cosmopolitan at the club window certainly\nfails a little in his manners now and then, and the country\ngentlewoman's breeding is perfect of its kind, but the circles in which\nPendennis moved are (to me) so infinitely the more entertaining of the\ntwo.\n\nYou see, I think that the question of liking a book or not liking it has\nnothing whatever to do with the consideration of fine art. Art is\n_there_, if I may say so, just as the Tenth Commandment is there; and if\nwe don't like them, so much the worse for us. I may find Homer very dull\nreading, I may covet your ox and your ass and everything that is yours,\nbut my limited and somewhat commonplace brains, and my envy of your\nprosperity won't alter the fact that the \"Odyssey\" is fine literature\nand that covetousness is wicked. But when we once leave the utterances\nof the eternal, universal human ecstasy, which we have agreed to call\nart, and descend to these lower levels that we are talking of now, it\nseems to me that the question of liking or not liking counts for a good\ndeal. Not for everything, of course. We must still distinguish: between\nplots stupid or ingenious, between observation that is close and keen\nand observation that is vague and inaccurate, between artifice and the\nwant of it, between sentences that are neatly constructed and mere\nslipshod. All these things naturally reckon in the account, but when\nthey have been estimated and allowed their value, you will usually find\nthat you are influenced still more by your mere liking or disliking of\nthe subject-matter, and it seems to me quite legitimately. For, if you\nlook closely into the whole question, you will find that you are judging\nthese secondary books as you judge of life, as you choose the scene of\nyour holiday, as you read the newspaper. One man may say that he prefers\nto talk to artists, another, quite legitimately, may love the society of\nbrewers; you may think Norway perfection, I am going to Constantinople;\nA. turns at once to the quotation for Turpentine at Savannah, B. folds\ndown the sheet at the Police News. It is not a question of art, but of\ntaste, that is of individual humour and constitution; you frequent the\ncompany that suits you, you go to the place you like, you read the news\nthat happens to be most interesting from your special standpoint. And in\nthe same way, if I find the conversation of Miss Becky Sharpe, as\nreported by Mr W. M. Thackeray, more amusing than the conversation of\nMiss Elizabeth Bennett as reported by Miss Jane Austen; it seems to me\nthat there is no more to be said. Elizabeth's remarks are more skilfully\nreported? Very likely, but, granting that, I had rather listen to the\nrecord, imperfect, if you please, of the other lady's conversation. Here\nis a speech on Bimetallism, given at great length, and (let us presume)\nwith great accuracy; here is a short summary of Professor L.'s \"Lecture\non the Eleusinian Mysteries,\" very badly \"sub-edited.\" But, you see, I\nhappen not to care twopence about Bimetallism, so I turn away from the\ncareful report, growling; while I cut out that wretched summary of the\nLecture with the purpose of pasting it in my scrap-book, since every\nword about the Eleusinian Mysteries has a vivid interest for me.\n\nIt often amuses me to hear people quarrelling about the rival \"artistic\nmerit\" of books which have, in most cases, no artistic merits at all. A.\nwrites a book about greengrocers, and you, who find something\nsingularly piquant and entertaining in the manners, speech, and habits\nof the class in question, pronounce A. to be a \"great artist\" who has\nwritten a masterpiece. I love dukes, and B's. novel of the peerage\nstrikes me as a marvel of artistic accomplishment, while I pronounce the\nwork that has charmed you to be as stupid and tiresome as the class it\nrepresents. Each of us is talking nonsense; there is no art in the\nquestion, which is purely a matter of individual taste. The Stock\nExchange column interests one man, while the latest football news\nabsorbs the other. That is all.\n\nOf course, as I said, artifice counts for something: there is a pleasure\nin seeing the thing neatly done, and I suppose it is this pleasure that\nhas secured Miss Austen her fervent admirers. It is a little difficult\nto treat this form of pleasure quite fairly; a musician perhaps would\nfind it difficult to answer the question whether he would rather hear\nPalestrina badly rendered or Zingarelli executed to perfection. In the\nlatter case there would certainly be the charm of exquisite voices in\nperfect order and accord, though the music were nothing or worse than\nnothing; still, our musician might say, on the other hand, that\nPalestrina martyred was better than Zingarelli triumphant. I am afraid\nI can imagine myself saying: \"Limited country-people, as seen by Jane\nAusten, are so 'slow' that they rather bore me, though the author has\nportrayed them with wonderful skill,\" but I can hardly fancy myself\naffirming that Becky Sharpe is such an interesting personage that she\nwould still delight me, even if the author of \"Ten Thousand a Year\" had\nwritten her history. On the other hand I believe that the plot of\n\"Jekyll and Hyde\" would still have had some fascination, though it had\nbeen treated by the veriest dolt in letters. But that is not a good\nexample, since \"Jekyll and Hyde\" is certainly in its conception, though\nnot in its execution, a work of fine art. Let us take the \"Moonstone\"\nagain as an example; I believe then, that if the events related in it\nhad caught our eyes in a brief newspaper paragraph they would still have\ninterested.\n\nIt seems to me that, after all, this question of artifice, of \"how the\nthing is done,\" comes under the same category as liking and disliking. I\nmean it is largely a matter of the personal equation, about which no\nvery strict laws can be laid down. You might say, for example, that\nBecky would entertain you in any hands, however indifferent, provided\nthat her \"facts\" were preserved, and I don't see that I could argue the\npoint with you. It reminds me again of the way in which men choose their\nfriends; one lays stress on pleasant manners, another on sterling\ngoodness of character, a third on wit, a fourth on distinction of some\nkind; and argument is really voiceless. \"Here is a book-case,\" you may\nsay, \"look how exquisitely it is made.\" Yes, but I don't want a\nbook-case; whereas that table, ricketty as it is, will be really useful.\nBut if you were to say: \"Look at Westminster Abbey,\" you can hardly\nimagine my answering: \"Bother Westminster Abbey; I want a pig-sty.\" You\nsee how, here again, we come to the generic difference between fine\nliterature and interesting reading matter. We read the \"Odyssey\" because\nwe are supernatural, because we hear in it the echoes of the eternal\nsong, because it symbolises for us certain amazing and beautiful things,\nbecause it is music; we read Miss Austen and Thackeray because we like\nto recognise the faces of our friends aptly reproduced, to see the\nexternal face of humanity so deftly mimicked, because we are natural.\nThe question of our preference for one over the other, is, making due\nallowance for analogy, the question of our preference for a table over a\nbookcase or _vice vers\u00e2_, and the workmanship in each case is largely a\nmatter of detail. And the great poem may be equated with the great\nchurch: each is made for beauty, the one is ecstasy in words, the other\necstasy in stone. But the church and the pig-sty, on the other hand, are\nnot to be compared together: incidentally, no doubt, the former is\nrainproof or in ill repair, has good or bad acoustic properties, while\nthe latter may be either an \u00e6sthetic pest in the back-yard, or an\nagreeable looking little shed enough. Still, the essence of the church\nis beauty, ecstasy; of the sty utility, the safe keeping of pigs. It\nwould be absurd, you see, to say: \"I prefer an abbey to a pig-sty,\" and\nit would be equally absurd to say: \"I prefer the '\u0152dipus' to 'Pride and\nPrejudice'\" or \"I prefer the Venus of the Louvre to the wax-figures in\nthe exhibition.\" Of course these are only analogies, and you mustn't\npress them, but they may help to make my meaning clearer, to enforce the\nvast distinction between art and artifice. Please don't think that I\nwish to establish a proportion: as a pig-sty is to an abbey, so is Jane\nAusten to Sophocles. In her case you would have to substitute a neat\nGeorgian house for \"pig-sty\" and then I think you would have a very fair\nproportion. But all that I wanted to do was to draw the line between\nthings made for use, to occupy some definite place in relation to our\ncommon daily life; and things made by ecstasy and for ecstasy, things\nthat are symbols, proclaiming the presence of the unknown world.\n\nAnd I chose \"Pickwick\" as the antithesis to \"Vanity Fair\" deliberately.\nThackeray (in my private judgment) is the chief of those who have\nprovided interesting reading-matter; Dickens is by no means in the first\nrank of literary artists. I think he is golden, but he is very largely\nalloyed with baser stuff, with indifferent metal, which was the product\nof his age, of his circumstances in life, of his own uncertain taste.\nJust contrast the atmosphere which surrounded the young Sophocles, with\nthat in which the young Dickens flourished. Both were men of genius, but\none grew up in the City of the Violet Crown, the other in Camden Town\nand worse places, one was accustomed to breathe that \"most pellucid\nair,\" the other inhaled the \"London particular.\" The wonder is, not\nthat there are faults in Dickens, but that there is genius of any kind.\nI am not going to analyze \"Pickwick\" any more than I analyzed \"Vanity\nFair,\" but of course you see that, in its conception, it is essentially\none with the \"Odyssey.\" It is a book of wandering; you start from your\nown doorstep and you stray into the unknown; every turn of the road\nfills you with surmise, every little village is a discovery, a something\nnew, a creation. You know not what may happen next; you are journeying\nthrough another world. I need not remind you how glorious all this is in\nthe Odyssey, which of course is so much more beautiful than \"Pickwick,\"\nas that glowing Mediterranean Sea, whose bounds on every side were\nmystery, is more beautiful than the muddy, foggy Thames, as those\nrolling hexameters are more beautiful than Dickens's prose; and yet in\neach case the symbol is, in reality, the same; both the heroic song of\nthe old Ionian world and the comic cockney romance of 1837 communicate\nthat enthralling impression of the unknown, which is, at once, a whole\nphilosophy of life, and the most exquisite of emotions. In varying\ndegrees of intensity you will trace it all through fine literature in\nevery age and in every nation; you will find it in Celtic voyages, in\nthe Eastern Tale, where a door in a dull street suddenly opens into\ndreamland, in the medi\u00e6val stories of the wandering knights, in \"Don\nQuixote,\" and at last in our \"Pickwick\" where Ulysses has become a\nretired city man, whimsically journeying up and down the England of\nsixty years ago. You talk of the \"grotesquerie\" of \"Pickwick,\" but don't\nyou see that this element is present in all the masterpieces of the\nkind? Remember the Cyclops, remember the grotesque shapes that decorate\nthe \"Arabian Nights,\" remember the bizarre element, the almost wanton\ngrotesquerie of many of the \"Arthur\" romances. In all these cases as in\n\"Pickwick\" the same result is obtained; an overpowering impression of\n\"strangeness,\" of remoteness, of withdrawal from the common ways of\nlife. \"Pickwick,\" is, in no sense, or in no valuable sense, a portrayal,\na copy, an imitation of life in the ordinary sense of \"imitation,\" and\n\"life\"; Pickwick, and Sam, and Jingle, and the rest of them are not\nclever reproductions of actual people, (is there any more foolish\npursuit than that of disputing about the \"original\" of Mr Pickwick?);\nthe book is rather the suggestion of another life, beneath our own or\nbeside our own, and the characters, those queer grotesque people, are\nqueer for the same reason that the Cyclops is queer and the dwarfs and\ndragons of medi\u00e6val romance are queer. We are withdrawn from the common\nways of life; and in that withdrawal is the beginning of ecstasy. There\nare sentences in \"Pickwick\" that give me an almost extravagant delight.\nYou remember the lines about the Lotus-Eaters.\n\n    \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b4' \u1f45\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03c2 \u03bb\u03c9\u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03bf \u03c6\u03ac\u03b3\u03bf\u03b9 \u03bc\u03b5\u03bb\u03b9\u03b7\u03b4\u03ad\u03b1 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c1\u03c0\u1f78\u03bd,\n    \u03bf\u1f50\u03ba\u03ad\u03c4' \u1f00\u03c0\u03b1\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bb\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c0\u03ac\u03bb\u03b9\u03bd \u1f24\u03b8\u03b5\u03bb\u03b5\u03bd \u03bf\u1f50\u03b4\u1f72 \u03bd\u03ad\u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9\n    \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb' \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b2\u03bf\u03cd\u03bb\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4' \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03ac\u03c3\u03b9 \u039b\u03c9\u03c4\u03bf\u03c6\u03ac\u03b3\u03bf\u03b9\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd\n    \u03bb\u03c9\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u1f10\u03c1\u03b5\u03c0\u03c4\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9 \u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03ad\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd \u03bd\u03cc\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c4\u03b5 \u03bb\u03b1\u03b8\u03ad\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9.\n\nWell, do you know there is a brief dialogue in \"Pickwick\" that seems\nalmost as enchanted, to me. The scene is the manor-farm kitchen, on\nChristmas eve.\n\n\"'How it snows,' said one of the men, in a low voice.\n\n\"'Snows, does it?' said Wardle.\n\n\"'Rough, cold night, sir,' replied the man, 'and there's a wind got up\nthat drifts it across the fields, in a thick white cloud.'\n\n\"'What does Jem say?' inquired the old lady. 'There ain't anything the\nmatter, is there?'\n\n\"'No, no, mother,' replied Wardle; 'he says there's a snow-drift, and a\nwind that's piercing cold.'\"\n\nYou know this is the introduction to the Tale of Gabriel Grub, an\nadmirable legend which Dickens \"farsed\" with an obtrusive moral. But I\nconfess that the atmosphere (which to me seems all the wild weather and\nthe wild legend of the north) suggested by those phrases \"a thick white\ncloud,\" and \"a wind that's piercing cold\" is in my judgment wholly\nmarvellous. But Dickens, of course, is full of impressions which never\nbecome expressions. You remember that chapter about the lawyer's clerks\nin the \"Magpie and Stump\"? It is always quite pathetic to me to note how\nDickens _felt_ the strangeness, the mystery, the haunting that are like\na mist about the old Inns of Court, and how utterly unable he was to\nexpress his emotion--to find a fit symbol for his meaning. He takes\nrefuge, as it were, behind Jack Bamber, who tells two very insignificant\nlegends as to the mystery of the Inns. Dickens feels that these legends\nare insignificant, and throws in one that is pure burlesque, and then\nchanges the subject in despair; the vague impression has refused to be\nput into words; probably, indeed, it had stopped short of becoming\nthought. But I am afraid that if I once begin to talk about the defects\nand faults of Dickens I shall run on for ever, and I think you will be\nable to find out his laches quite well for yourself. What I want to\ninsist on is his sense of mystery, his withdrawal from common life, and,\nfinally, his ecstasy. I have not proved my case up to the hilt by a\nthorough-going analysis of \"Pickwick,\" but I think I have suggested the\n\"heads\" of such an analysis. There is ecstasy in the main idea, in the\nthought of the man who wanders away from his familiar streets into\nunknown tracks and lanes and villages, there is ecstasy in the\nconception of all those queer, grotesque characters, reminders each one\nof the strangeness of life, there is ecstasy in the thought of the wild\nChristmas Eve, of the fields and woods scourged by \"a wind that's\npiercing cold,\" hidden by the thick cloud of snow, there is ecstasy in\nthat vague impression of the old, dark, Inns, of the \"rotten\" chambers\nthat had been shut up for years and years. In a word: \"Pickwick\" is fine\nliterature.\n\nWell, you've got what you wanted; some sort of analysis of my case:\n\"'Pickwick' _v._ 'Vanity Fair'\"; but it must be clearly understood that\nI'm not going to \"work out\" every example. However, I am not sorry that\nI have been led to go into this particular case rather fully, because it\nis a typical one, and we shall not be obliged to go over the same ground\nagain. I mean, that having witnessed the dissection of Thackeray, you\nwill have no need to come to me for my judgment of George Eliot, or of\nAnthony Trollope, or--to make a very long list a very short one--of\nabout ninety-nine per cent of our modern novels. Yes, you have mentioned\na great name, and I, like you, take off my cap to the man who has gone\non his way, without caring for the \"public,\" or the \"reviewers,\" or\nanything else, except his own judgment of what is right. But, frankly,\nif you pass from the man and come to his work, my plain opinion is this:\nthat he has written about ordinary life, regarded from an ordinary\nstandpoint, in a style which is extraordinary certainly, but very far\nfrom beautiful. It is not a beautiful style, since a fine style, though\nit may carry suggestion beyond the bourne of thought, though it may be\nthe veil and visible body of concealed mysteries, is always plain on the\nsurface. It may be like an ingeniously devised cryptogram, which may\nhave an occult sense conveyed to initiated eyes in every dot and line\nand flourish, but is outwardly as simple and straightforward as a\nbusiness letter. But in the works of the writer whom we are discussing\nobscurities, dubieties of all kinds are far from uncommon; and in many\nof his books there are passages which hardly seem to be English at all.\nThe words are familiar--most of them--the grammatical construction often\noffers no very considerable difficulties--it is rarely, I mean, that one\nhas to search very long for the nominative of the sentence--but when one\nhas read the words and parsed them, one feels inclined to think that\nafter all the passage is not in English but in some other language with\na superficial resemblance to English. Style is not everything? Certainly\nnot; a book may fail in style, and yet be fine, though not the finest\nliterature. You have only to open Sir Walter Scott to have highly\nconclusive evidence on that point. But the writer we are considering not\nonly fails in the body of art but even more conspicuously in the soul of\nit. Just think for a moment of his story of the very earnest Jew who\nfell in love with the baroness who was not very earnest. There was a\nfalse female friend, you remember, and social complications perturbed\nthe hearts of the curiously assorted lovers, and finally the Jew was\nshot in a duel by another, less \"detrimental,\" courtier. Can you\nconceive anything more trivial than this? Don't you see that from such a\nbook as that the _idea_, the soul of fine literature, is completely\nlacking? Great books may always be summed up in a phrase, often in a\nsingle word, and that phrase or that word will always signify some\nprimary and palmary idea. To me the only \"idea\" suggested by the plot I\nhave outlined is unimportance; and, as in the case of Thackeray, ecstasy\nis entirely absent both from this and from all other of the author's\nbooks. You say that, after all, the plot in question is a plot of the\nlove of a man for a woman, and that _that_ is an idea in the highest\nsense of the word, and an idea which is the most of all fit for the\npurpose and the making of the finest literature. I agree with you in the\nlatter clause of your sentence, but I must point out that the book is\n_not_ the story of the love of a man for a woman, it is the story of the\nflirtation of a baroness with a German Jew Socialist--a very different\nmatter. In a word, it is a tale of the accidental, of the particular,\nof the inessential; it is completely the play of Hamlet with the part of\nHamlet omitted, and the greatest stress laid on the minor characters.\n\nIt is quite true that when an author writes a romance containing a hero\nand a heroine he must tell you who they are, he must give, briefly and\nsuccinctly, the necessary details--names, ages, conditions and so\nforth--but if he is a great author he will do this incidentally and make\nus feel that such details are incidental. In short, he must poise his\nfeet on earth, but his way is to the stars. Think of the \"Scarlet\nLetter,\" open it again and see how admirably Hawthorne has omitted a\nworld of unessential details that a lesser man would have put in. He has\nleft out a whole encyclop\u00e6dia of useless and tedious information; there\nis the dim, necessary background of time and place, but in reality the\nscene is Eternity, and the drama is the Mystery of Love and Vengeance\nand Hell-fire. Of course fine literature must have its gross and carnal\nbody, we must know \"who's who,\" for I don't think an old-fashioned\nreceipt that I remember was ever very successful. Oh, you must have read\nsome of the tales I mean; they used to flourish in the old \"Keepsakes,\"\nand the hero was boldly labelled \"Fernando\" for all distinction and\ndescription. One might surmise that Fernando was domiciled on the\ncontinent of Europe, but that was all. It was not successful, this\nwell-meaning school of fiction, and I repeat that the finest literature\nmust have its accidents--it cannot exist as shining substance alone. It\nis just the same with the art of sculpture, with the art of painting.\nYou cannot look at a Greek Apollo without looking at that part of the\nbody which conceals the bowels, but I imagine you don't want to treasure\nthis thought or to insist on it? And I suppose a geologist, looking at a\npicture, could tell you whether those wild and terrible rocks were\nvolcanic or carboniferous; but really one doesn't want to know. Bowels,\ngeological formation, in sculpture and painting, the social position of\nthe characters and all other such details in fine literature are\ninessential; and the great artist will, as I said, make us feel that\nthey are inessential. If you want an instance of what I mean read a book\nwhich is very comparable with the German-Jew-Baroness tale that we were\ntalking about. I mean \"Two on a Tower\" by Mr Hardy. In that you have\nthe contrast of social ranks: the \"two\" are the Lady of the Manor and an\neducated peasant, but how utterly all thought of \"society\" (in any sense\nof the word) disappears from those wonderful pages, as you advance and\nfind that the theme is really Love. Why even the accidents are glorified\nand are made of the essence of the book. The old tower standing in the\nmidst of lonely, red ploughlands far from the highway, is at first only\nthe convenient place where the young peasant studies astronomy; but as\nyou read you feel the change coming, the tower is transmuted, glorified;\nevery stone of it is aglow with mystic light; it is made the abode of\nthe Lover and the Beloved, it is seen to be a symbol of Love, of an\necstasy, remote, and passionate, and eternal, dwelling far from the ways\nof men. Compare these two books, I say again, and you will know the\nchief distinction between fine literature and reading matter. To me, I\nconfess, the \"Jew-book\" has not even interest of the lower sort, not by\nany means the interest of Thackeray, or Jane Austen or even of poor,\ndreary, draggle-tailed George Eliot; but if you are amused by it, I have\nno objection to make. You may be amused by the plates of the \"Spring\nand Summer Novelties\" in the lady's paper, if you please; but for\nheaven's sake don't come here and tell me that on the whole you prefer\nBotticelli's Primavera! Nay, but the fashion-plates are sometimes very\nnicely done, and they put in backgrounds, and they are trying to give\nthe faces some character. Do get it into your head--firmly and\nfixedly--that the camera and the soul of man are two entirely different\nthings.\n\nYou think the \"photographic\" comparison unfair, in this and other\ninstances, because of the mechanical element in photography, because of\nthat camera I have just mentioned? Well, I suppose that it _is_ a little\nmisleading. The sun and the camera between them certainly do your\npicture for you, and as you urge, there is more of artifice in the\nmerest Sunday-school tale than in the best of photographs. Still, you\nmust remember that photography too has its artifice, its choice of the\nright and the wrong way, and its exercise of judgment; there is a great\ndeal in it that is not mechanical; and in its essence it is of the same\nclass as the books I have been alluding to. The means employed are\ndifferent, and a higher and finer artifice is required for making books\nthan for taking photographs, but the end of each is the same, and that\nend is to portray the surface of life, to make a picture of the outside\nof things. It is on this ground that I defend my use of the analogy, and\nyou must understand me to speak only of the object which is common to\neach, when I compare the secondary writer to a photographer. The\nwriters, to be sure, have invention in a greater or less degree, but you\nwill remark that the artists in literature have the power of creation, a\ntotally different process. Invention is the finding of a thing in its\nmore or less obscure hiding-place; creation is the making of a new\nthing, the invocation of Something from Nothingness. Don Quixote is a\ncreation; the clergyman in \"Pride and Prejudice\" is an invention,\nColonel Newcome is, in all probability, a composite portrait, while the\nJew-Socialist who fell in love with the Baroness is simply a portrait of\nFerdinand Lassalle.\n\nYou must remember that while the two classes--fine literature and\nreading matter--differ the one from the other generically, the\nindividuals of each class differ from each other only specifically. Thus\nthe difference in merit between the \"Odyssey\" and \"Pickwick\" is\nenormous, but it is a specific difference. In the same way it is hard to\nmeasure with the imagination the difference between \"Madame Bovary\" and\nthat famous Sunday-school story \"Jackie's Holiday\": the former is\nimmensely clever, the latter is immensely silly; but the two are,\nemphatically, of the same genus. In each case the effort of the author\nis to \"describe life,\" the aim of Flaubert is absolutely identical with\nthe aim of Miss Flopkins, and their results differ only as the Frenchman\ndiffers from the Englishwoman, the one being a serious and patient\nartificer while the other is a bungling idiot, who obtrudes her very\nempty personality and her very trashy ethics instead of studiously\nconcealing them. Still: a photograph taken in the most famous studio in\nLondon is still a photograph equally with the spotted and misty effort\nof the amateur, and no amount of \"touching-up\" or \"finishing,\" however\npatient it may be, will turn a photograph into a work of art. And, in\nlike manner, no labour, no care, no polishing of the phrase, no patience\nin investigation, no artifice in plot or in construction will ever make\n\"reading-matter\" into fine literature.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nI see that I shall be obliged to keep on reiterating the difference\nbetween fine literature and \"literature,\" or in other words between art\nand observation expressed with artifice. I am afraid, that in your heart\nof hearts, you still believe that the \"Odyssey\" is fine literature, and\nthat \"Pride and Prejudice\" is fine literature, though the \"Odyssey\" is\n\"better\" than \"Pride and Prejudice.\" It is that \"better\" that I want to\nget out of your head, that monstrous fallacy of comparing Westminster\nAbbey with the charming old houses in Queen Square. You would see the\nabsurdity of imagining that there can be any degree of comparison\nbetween two things entirely different, if I substituted for \"Pride and\nPrejudice\" some ordinary circulating-library novel of our own times. At\nleast I hope you would see, though, as I told you a few weeks ago, I\ndoubt very much whether many people realise the distinction between the\n\"Odyssey\" and a political pamphlet. The general opinion, I expect, is\nthat both belong to the same class, though the Greek poem is much more\n\"important\" than the pamphlet. I think we succeeded in demonstrating the\nfalsity of this idea, in showing clearly and decisively that fine\nliterature means the expression of the eternal human ecstasy in the\nmedium of words, and that it means nothing else whatsoever. Words, it is\ntrue, are used for other ends than this: they are used in sending\ntelegrams to stockbrokers, for example, but why should this double\noffice create any confusion? A tub and a tabernacle may each be made of\nwood, but you don't mix the two things up on that account? The other day\nyou gave me a most amusing account of your landlady's quarrels with her\nservant girls. I remember that I laughed consumedly, and at the moment,\nthat solemn preconisation of the servant Mabel to the effect that her\nmistress, Mrs Stickings, was not a \"lydy,\" was more to my taste than the\nrecitation of the \"Ode on a Grecian Urn.\" But you surely didn't think\nthat you were making literature all the while? Or that the history of\nMrs Stickings and Mabel would have mysteriously become literature if you\nhad written it down and got somebody to print it? Or that it would have\nbeen literature if some of the details had been a little exaggerated (I\nthought you had embroidered here and there); or if you had made the\nwhole story up out of your own head? Exactly, you were, as you say,\namusing me by the relation of facts a little altered, compressed, and\nembellished, and I am glad that you see that no process of writing or\nprinting, no variation in the proportion of truth and invention, even to\nthe total lack of all truth, could have changed an amusing presentation\nof the Stickings _m\u00e9nage_ into fine literature. But, surely, it is so\nvery obvious. Did any cook ever think that he could change a turkey into\na bird of paradise by careful attention to the _farse_ and the sauce?\nThe farmer might as well expect to breed early ph\u0153nixes for Leadenhall\nMarket by the simple process of lighting a bonfire in the farmyard. The\nyoung ducks would jump into the blaze, and the transformation would be\nthe work of a second! There is no more madness in _that_ notion than in\nthe other one--that one has only to print an amusing, interesting,\nlife-like, or pathetic tale to make it into fine literature.\n\nYes; but what I am afraid is still lurking somewhere in your skull is\nthis: that if only the stuffing is extremely well made, if only the\nsauce is an exquisite concoction, the turkey _is_, somehow or other,\nchanged into a bird of paradise. That is, to translate the analogy, if\nonly the plot is very ingenious, if only the construction is well\ncarried out, if the characters are extremely life-like, if the English\nis admirably neat and sufficient, then reading-matter becomes fine\nliterature. Make the bonfire high enough and your young ducks will be\nburned into ph\u0153nixes fast enough; let the artifice be sufficiently\nartificial and it will be art. Indeed you might as well maintain that a\nwooden statue, if it be really well carved, is thereby made into a gold\nstatue.\n\nWell, I remember saying one night that you were here that ecstasy is at\nonce the most exquisite of emotions and a whole philosophy of life. And\nit is to the philosophy of life that we are brought, in the last resort.\nYou know that there are, speaking very generally, two solutions of\nexistence; one is the materialistic or rationalistic, the other, the\nspiritual or mystic. If the former were true, then Keats would be a\nqueer kind of madman, and the \"Morte d'Arthur\" would be an elaborate\nsymptom of insanity; if the latter is true, then \"Pride and Prejudice\"\nis not fine literature, and the works of George Eliot are the works of\na superior insect--and nothing more. You must make your choice: is the\nstory of the Graal lunacy, or not? You think it is not: then do not talk\nany more of turning glass into diamonds by careful polishing and\ncutting. Do not say: Mr A. spends five years over a book, and therefore\nwhat he writes is fine literature; Miss B. polishes off five novels in a\nyear, and therefore she does not write fine literature. Do not say, Mr\nShorthouse has got the name of a man who kept a private school in the\ntime of Charles I. quite right; therefore \"John Inglesant\" is fine\nliterature, while the arch\u00e6ological details in \"Ivanhoe\" are all wrong,\ntherefore it is not fine literature. Good Lord! You might as well say:\nbut my landlady's name is Mrs Stickings, and the girl (who left last\nmonth) was really called Mabel; _therefore_ that story of mine was fine\nliterature. What's that about sustained effort? Can you turn a deal\nladder into a golden staircase by making it of a thousand rungs? What I\nsay three times is right, eh? and if I tell the tale of Mrs Stickings so\nthat it extends to \"our minimum length for three volume novels,\" it\nbecomes fine literature.\n\nWell, I really hope that we have at last settled the matter; that fine\nliterature is simply the expression of the eternal things that are in\nman, that it is beauty clothed in words, that it is always ecstasy, that\nit always draws itself away, and goes apart into lonely places, far from\nthe common course of life. Realise this, and you will never be misled\ninto pronouncing mere reading-matter, however interesting, to be fine\nliterature; and now that we clearly understand the difference between\nthe two, I propose that we drop the \"fine\" and speak simply of\nliterature.\n\nBut I assure you that, even after having established the grand\ndistinction, it is by no means plain sailing. Everything terrestrial is\nso composite (except, perhaps, pure music) that one is confronted by an\nalmost endless task of distinguishing matter from form, and body from\nspirit. Literature, we say, is ecstasy, but a book must be written about\nsomething and about somebody; it must be expressed in words, it must\nhave arrangement and artifice, it must have accident as well as essence.\nConsider \"Don Quixote\" as an example; it is, I suppose, the finest prose\nromance in existence. Essentially, it expresses the eternal quest of the\nunknown, that longing, peculiar to man, which makes him reach out\ntowards infinity; and he lifts up his eyes, and he strains his eyes,\nlooking across the ocean, for certain fabled, happy islands, for Avalon\nthat is beyond the setting of the sun. And he comes into life from the\nunknown world, from glorious places, and all his days he journeys\nthrough the world, spying about him, going on and ever on, expecting\nbeyond every hill to find the holy city, seeing signs, and omens, and\ntokens by the way, reminded every hour of his everlasting citizenship.\n\"From the great deep to the great deep he goes\": it is true of King\nArthur and of each one of us; and this, I take it, is the essence of\n\"Don Quixote,\" and of all his forerunners and successors. Then, in the\nsecond place, you get the eternal moral of the book, and you will\nunderstand that I am not using \"moral\" in the vulgar sense. The eternal\nmoral, then, of \"Don Quixote\" is the strife between temporal and\neternal, between the soul and the body, between things spiritual and\nthings corporal, between ecstasy and the common life. You read the book\nand you see that there is a perpetual jar, you are continually\nconfronted by the great antinomy of life. It seems a mere comic\nincident when the knight dreaming of enchantment is knocked about, and\nmade ridiculous; but I tell you it is the perpetual tragedy of life\nitself, symbolised. I say that it is, under a figure, the picture of\nhumanity in the world, that you will find the truth it represents\nrepeated again and again throughout all history. You know that if one\ngoes back resolutely to the first principles of things, one finds\noneself, as it were, in a place where all lines that seemed parallel and\neternally divided meet, and so it is with this tragedy symbolised by the\nDon Quixote. It is, you may say, the tragedy of the Unknown and the\nKnown, of the Soul and Body, of the Idea and the Fact, of Ecstasy and\nCommon Life; at last, I suppose, of Good and Evil. The source of it lies\nfar beyond our understanding, but its symbol is shown again and again in\nCervantes's page.\n\nThen, there is a third element in the book. The author intended to write\na burlesque on the current romances of chivalry; and he wrote, I\nsuppose, the best burlesque that has ever been written, or ever will be\nwritten. If you unhappily so choose, you can shut your eyes to\neverything serious and everything beautiful, and read merely of Amadis\nand Arthur \"taken off,\" of the highest ideals turned into nonsense, of\nthe best motives shown to be, in effect, mischievous. You will read how\nthe knight, in the approved manner of knights, helped the oppressed and\nthe wretched, and how he usually worsened their condition tenfold. You\nmay lend your ear to Sancho, grumbling and quoting \"common-sense\"\nproverbs all the road, as he rides on his ass, and if it were not for\nthe wit and the comedy, you might fancy yourself in a suburban train\nbound for the city. Why, if you so please, \"Don Quixote\" is the\nInstitute of cynicism, the reduction of every generous impulse to\nabsurdity.\n\nFinally, the knight is the mouthpiece of Cervantes himself, especially\ntowards the end of the second part, where the armour and the fantasy\ndrop off, piece by piece, and shred by shred, on that mournful, homeward\njourney. At last, I say, Don Quixote is almost simply Cervantes,\ncommenting on men and affairs in Spain, and I think that in those final\nchapters the art has vanished together with the armour and the ecstasy.\nYes, I always dread the ending of \"Don Quixote.\" A star drops a line of\nstreaming fire, down the vault of the sky, and perhaps you may have\nseen the ugly, shapeless thing that sinks into the earth.\n\nBut this very brief and imperfect analysis of a great masterpiece of\nliterary art may give you some idea of the extraordinary complexity of\nall literature. As it is I have omitted one most important item in the\naccount; I have said nothing of the style, because, I am sorry to say\nthat I have no Spanish, and Cervantes speaks to me through an\ninterpreter named Charles Jarvis. But, omitting style, you see that we\nhave, in this particular case, five books in one; we have the utterance\nof pure ecstasy, the strife between ecstasy and the common life, the\nburlesque of chivalry, the institutes of cynicism, and the comments on\naffairs. Each of these different themes is managed with consummate\nability, and (always excepting the last chapters of the book), each\nkeeps its due place, so that it really rests with the reader, in a\nmanner, to choose which book he is to read.\n\nAnd then, there are other elements which must be accounted for if one is\nto judge a book as a whole, fairly and thoroughly. I may be so charmed\nwith the writer's rapture, with the wonder and beauty of his idea, that\nI may forget the fact that the artist must also be the artificer; that\nwhile the soul conceives, the understanding must formulate the\nconception, that while ecstasy must suggest the conduct of the story,\ncommon-sense must help to range each circumstance in order, that while\nan inward, mysterious delight must dictate the burning phrases and sound\nin the music and melody of the words, cool judgment must go through\nevery line, reminding the author that, if literature be the language of\nthe Shadowy Companion it must yet be translated out of the unknown\nspeech into the vulgar tongue. Here then we have the elements of a book.\nFirstly the Idea or Conception, the thing of exquisite beauty which\ndwells in the author's soul, not yet clothed in words, nor even in\nthought, but a pure emotion. Secondly, when this emotion has taken\ndefinite form, is made incarnate as it were, in the shape of a story,\nwhich can be roughly jotted down on paper, we may speak of the Plot.\nThirdly, the plot has to be systematised, to be drawn to scale, to be\ncarried out to its legitimate conclusions, to be displayed by means of\nIncident; and here we have Construction. Fourthly, the story is to be\nwritten down, and Style is the invention of beautiful words which shall\naffect the reader by their meaning, by their sound, by their mysterious\nsuggestion.\n\nThis, then, is the fourfold work of literature, and if you want to be\nperfect you must be perfect in each part. Art must inspire and shape\neach and all, but only the first, the Idea, is pure art; with Plot, and\nConstruction, and Style there is an alloy of artifice. If then any given\nbook can be shown to proceed from an Idea, it is to be placed in the\nclass of literature, in the shelf of the \"Odyssey\" as I think I once\nexpressed it. It may be placed very high in the class; the more it have\nof rapture in its every part, the higher it will be: or, it may be\nplaced very low, because, for example, having once admired the\nConception, the dream that came to the author from the other world, we\nare forced to admit that the Story or Plot was feebly imagined, that the\nConstruction was clumsily carried out, that the Style is, \u00e6sthetically,\nnon-existent. You will notice that I am never afraid of blaming my\nfavourites, of finding fault with the books which I most adore. I can do\nso freely and without fear of consequences, since having once applied my\ntest, and having found that \"Pickwick,\" for example, is literature, I\nam not in the least afraid that I shall be compelled to eat my words if\nflaws in plot and style and construction are afterwards made apparent.\nThe statue is gold; we have settled that much, and we need not fear that\nit will turn into lead, if we find that the graving and carving is poor\nenough. Once be sure that your temple _is_ a temple, and I will warrant\nyou against it being suddenly transmuted into a tub, through the\ndiscovery of scamped workmanship.\n\nWell, suppose we begin to apply our analysis. Let us take the strange\ncase of Mr R. L. Stevenson, and especially his \"Jekyll and Hyde,\" which,\nin some ways, is his most characteristic and most effective book. Now I\nsuppose that instructed opinion (granting its existence) was about\nequally divided as to the class in which this most skilful and striking\nstory was to be placed. Many, I have no doubt, gave it a very high place\nin the ranks of imaginative literature, or (as we should now say) in the\nranks of literature; while many other judges set it down as an extremely\nclever piece of sensationalism, and nothing more. Well, I think both\nthese opinions are wrong; and I should be inclined to say that \"Jekyll\nand Hyde\" just scrapes by the skin of its teeth, as it were, into the\nshelves of literature, and no more. On the surface it would seem to be\nmerely sensationalism; I expect that when you read it, you did so with\nbreathless absorption, hurrying over the pages in your eagerness to find\nout the secret, and this secret once discovered, I imagine that \"Jekyll\nand Hyde\" retired to your shelf--and stays there, rather dusty. You have\nnever opened it again? Exactly. I _have_ read it for a second time, and\nI was astonished to find how it had, if I may say so, evaporated. At the\nfirst reading one was enthralled by mere curiosity, but when once this\ncuriosity had been satisfied what remained? If I may speak from my own\nexperience, simply a rather languid admiration of the ingenuity of the\nplot with its construction, combined with a slight feeling of\nimpatience, such as one might experience if one were asked to solve a\npuzzle for the second time. You see that the secret once disclosed, all\nthe steps which lead to the disclosure become, _ipso facto_,\ninsignificant, or rather they become nothing at all, since their only\nsignificance and their only existence lay in the secret, and when the\nsecret has ceased to be a secret, the signs and cyphers of it fall also\ninto the world of nonentity. You may be amazed, and perplexed, and\nentranced by a cryptogram, while you are solving it, but the solution\nonce attained, your cryptogram is either nothing or perilously near to\nnothingness.\n\nWell, all this points, doesn't it, towards mere sensationalism, very\ncleverly done? But, as I said, I think \"Jekyll and Hyde\" just scrapes\nover the border-line and takes its place, very low down, among books\nthat are literature. And I base my verdict solely on the Idea, on the\nConception that lies, buried rather deeply, beneath the Plot. The\nplot, in itself, strikes me as mechanical--this actual physical\ntransformation, produced by a drug, linked certainly with a theory of\nethical change, but not linked at all with the really mysterious, the\nreally psychical--all this affects me, I say, as ingenious mechanism and\nnothing more; while I have shown how the construction is ingenious\nartifice, and the style is affected by the same plague of laboured\ningenuity. Throughout it is a thoroughly conscious style, and in\nliterature all the highest things are unconsciously, or at least,\nsubconsciously produced. It has music, but it has no under-music, and\nthere are no phrases in it that seem veils of dreams, echoes of the\n\"inexpressive song.\" It is on the conception, then, alone, that I\njustify my inclusion of \"Jekyll\" amongst works of art; for it seems to\nme that, lurking behind the plot, we divine the presence of an Idea, of\nan inspiration. \"Man is not truly one, but truly two,\" or, perhaps, a\npolity with many inhabitants, Dr Jekyll writes in his confession, and I\nthink that I see here a trace that Mr Stevenson had received a vision of\nthe mystery of human nature, compounded of the dust and of the stars, of\na dim vast city, splendid and ruinous as drowned Atlantis deep beneath\nthe waves, of a haunted quire where a flickering light burns before the\nVeil. This, I believe, was the vision that came to the artist, but the\nadmirable artificer seized hold of it at once and made it all his own,\nomitting what he did not understand, translating roughly from the\nunknown tongue, materialising, coarsening, hardening. Don't you see how\nthoroughly _physical_ the actual plot is, and if one escapes for a\nmoment from the atmosphere of the laboratory it is only to be confronted\nby the most obvious vein of moral allegory; and from this latter light,\n\"Jekyll and Hyde\" seems almost the vivid metaphor of a clever preacher.\nYou mustn't imagine, you know, that I condemn the powder business as bad\nin itself, for (let us revert for a moment to philosophy) man is a\nsacrament, soul manifested under the form of body, and art has to deal\nwith each and both and to show their interaction and interdependence.\nThe most perfect form of literature is, no doubt, lyrical poetry which\nis, one might say, almost pure Idea, art with scarcely an alloy of\nartifice, expressed in magic words, in the voice of music. In a word, a\nperfect lyric, such as Keats's \"Belle Dame Sans Mercy\" is _almost_ pure\nsoul, a spirit with the luminous body of melody. But (in our age, at all\nevents) a prose romance must put on a grosser and more material envelope\nthan this, it must have incident, corporeity, relation to material\nthings, and all these will occupy a considerable part of the whole. To a\ncertain extent, then, the Idea must be materialised, but still it must\nalways shine through the fleshly vestment; the body must never be mere\nbody but always the body of the spirit, existing to conceal and yet to\nmanifest the spirit; and here it seems to me that Mr Stevenson's story\nbreaks down. The transformation of Jekyll into Hyde is solely material,\nas you read it, without artistic significance; it is simply an\nastounding incident, and not an outward sign of an inward mystery. As\nfor the possible allegory I have too much respect for Mr Stevenson as an\nartificer to think that he would regard this element as anything but a\nvery grave defect. Allegory, as Poe so well observed, is always a\nliterary vice, and we are only able to enjoy the \"Pilgrim's Progress\" by\nforgetting that the allegory exists. Yes, that seems to me the _vitium_\nof \"Jekyll and Hyde\": the conception has been badly realised, and by\nbadly I do not mean clumsily, because from the logical, literal\nstandpoint, the plot and the construction are marvels of cleverness; but\nI mean inartistically: ecstasy, which as we have settled is the synonym\nof art, gave birth to the idea, but immediately abandoned it to\nartifice, and to artifice only, instead of presiding over and inspiring\nevery further step in plot, in construction, and in style. All this may\nseem to you very fine-drawn and over-subtle, but I am convinced that it\nis the true account of the matter, and perhaps you may realise my theory\nbetter if I draw out that analogy of \"translation\" which I suggested, I\nthink, a few minutes ago. I was passing along New Oxford Street the\nother day, and I happened to look into a shop which displays Bibles in\nall languages, and I glanced at the French version, open at the seventh\nchapter of the Book of Proverbs. I saw the words \"un jeune homme\nd\u00e9pourvu de bon sens,\" and then, lower down, \"comme un b\u0153uf \u00e0 la\nboucherie,\" and it was some considerable time before I realised that\nthese phrases \"translated,\" \"a young man void of understanding,\" and \"as\nan ox goeth to the slaughter.\" Now you notice that these are in every\nway commonplace examples; there is nothing extraordinarily poetical in\neither phrase as it stands in the Authorised Version. I might have made\nthe contrast much more violent by choosing a passage from the Song of\nSongs or Ecclesiastes; and I wonder how \"Therefore with Angels and\nArchangels\" would go into French. But isn't the gulf astounding between\n\"void of understanding\" and \"d\u00e9pourvu de bon sens\"? Yet the meaning of\nthe French is really the same as the meaning of the English; logically,\nI should think, the two phrases are exactly equivalent. And yet ...\nwell, we know perfectly well that \"d\u00e9pourvu de bon sens\" in no way\nrenders that noble and austere simplicity that we reverence in the\nEnglish text.\n\nNow, I think, you ought to see what I have been trying to express about\nthe gulf that may open always between the conception and the plot, or\nstory, that does divide the conception from the plot of \"Jekyll and\nHyde.\" Of course the analogy is not perfect, because the _magnum chaos_\nthat yawns between the unformulated Idea and the formulated plot,\nbetween pure ecstasy and ecstasy _plus_ artifice, is much vaster than\nthe distinction between English and French, indeed between the two\nformer there is almost or altogether the difference of the infinite and\nthe finite, of soul and body; still, you see how a book is a rendering,\na translation of an Idea, and how a very fine idea may be embodied in a\nvery mechanical plot.\n\nYou remember the \"Socialist and Baroness\" novel that we were talking\nabout the other night. We placed it outside of literature firstly and\nchiefly because it was not based on ecstasy, on an idea of any kind, and\nsecondly, and by way of consequence, because in its execution and detail\nit was so thoroughly insignificant, because it played Hamlet with the\npart of the Prince omitted. Now I think that it is strong evidence of\nthe soundness of my literary theory that we are enabled by it to take\ntwo books so utterly dissimilar in manner and method, in story and\ntreatment, and to judge them both by the same scale. For this is what it\nreally comes to: we say that the \"Tragic Comedians\" is not literature\nbecause it simply tells of facts without their significance, because it\ndeals with the outward show and not with the inward spirit, because it\nis accidental and not essential. And in just the same way we say that\n\"Jekyll and Hyde\" (its conception apart) is not literature inasmuch as\nit too has the body of a story without the soul of a story, the\nincident, the fact, without the inward thing of which the fact is a\nsymbol. For if you will consider the matter you will see that a fact\n_qua_ fact has no existence in art at all. It is not the painter's\nbusiness to make us a likeness of a tree or a rock; it is his business\nto communicate to us an emotion--an ecstasy, if you please--and that he\nmay do so he uses a tree or a rock as a symbol, a word in his language\nof colour and form. It is not the business of the sculptor to chisel\nlikenesses of men in marble; the human form is to him also a symbol\nwhich stands for an idea. In the same manner it is not the business of\nthe literary artist to describe facts--real or imaginary--in words: he\nis possessed with an idea which he symbolises by incident, by a story of\nmen and women and things. He is possessed, let us say, by the idea of\nLove: then he must write a story of lovers, but he must never forget\nthat A. and B., his actual lovers in the tale, with their social\npositions, their whims and fancies, their sayings and doings are only of\nconsequence in the degree that they symbolise the universal human\npassion, which in its turn is a copy of certain eternal and ineffable\nthings. If A. and B. do _not_ do this then they are nothing, and worse\nthan nothing, so far as art is concerned. \"But my tree is like a tree,\"\nsays the dull painter, and \"my anatomy is faultless,\" says the bad\nsculptor, and \"my characters are life-like,\" says the novelist.\n\nAnd one can apply exactly the same reasoning to Mr Stevenson's ingenious\nstory. I do not know whether there is, or has been, or will be a salt in\nexistence which can turn a man into another person; that is of not the\nslightest consequence to the argument. The result of the powder, as it\nis described in the book, is an incident, and it makes no difference to\nthe critical judgment whether the incident is true or false, probable or\nimprobable. The only point, absolutely the only point is this: is the\nincident significant or insignificant, is it related for its own sake,\nor is it posited because it is a sign, a symbol, a word which veils and\nreveals the artist's ecstasy and inspiration? The socialist fell in love\nwith the baroness: it is true, you say, it really happened so in Germany\nsome twenty-five years ago. But in the book it is insignificant. The\ndoctor took the powder and became another man; it is probably untrue.\nBut it is also insignificant; and to the critic of art in literature the\none incident stands precisely on the same footing as the other.\n\nAnd, do you know, I am glad I have made this comparison between \"Jekyll\nand Hyde\" and the \"Tragic Comedians,\" because it has struck me that what\nI have been saying about the essential element of all literature might\nbe open to very grave misunderstanding. I have been insisting, with\nreiteration that must have tired you, that there is only one test by\nwhich literature may be distinguished from mere reading matter, and that\nthat test is summed up in the word, ecstasy. And then we admitted a\nwhole string of synonyms--desire of the unknown, sense of the unknown,\nrapture, adoration, mystery, wonder, withdrawal from the common\nlife--and I daresay I have used many other phrases in the same sense\nwithout giving you any special warning that it was our old friend again\nin a new guise. But it has just occurred to me that with all this wealth\nof synonyms, I may not have made my meaning perfectly clear. For\nexample, while I was laying down the law about Dr Jekyll's powder and\nits effects, you might have interrupted me with the remark: \"But I\nthought you said the sense of wonder was characteristic of literature;\nand surely the change from Jekyll into Hyde is extremely wonderful.\" Or\nagain, when I was belauding the \"Odyssey,\" dwelling on the voyage of\nUlysses amongst strange peoples, you might have put in some modern tale\nof strange adventure, and requested me to distinguish between the two,\nto justify my praise of the old, and rejection of the new. And we have\nmentioned Sunday-school books, always, I think, with a certain _nuance_\nof contempt; but Sunday-school books usually deal with religion, and\nreligion and adoration are almost synonymous. And so one could go on\nwith the list, making out, on our premises, with our own test, a\nplausible case for books which we know very well are neither literature\nnor anything remotely approaching it. And that would look rather like\nthe collapse of our literary case, wouldn't it?\n\nWell, the solution of the difficulty seems to me to be sought for in the\nremarks I was making just now about \"facts\" in art. I said, you\nremember, that in art, facts as facts have no existence at all. Facts,\nincidents, plots, simply form the artistic speech--its mode of\nexpression, or medium--and if there is no idea behind the facts, then\nyou have no longer language but gibberish. Just as language is made up\nof the letters of the alphabet, arranged in significant words and\nsentences; so is the artistic language made up of plots, incidents,\nsentences which are informed with significance. If I heap up letters of\nthe alphabet, and arrange them in an arbitrary collocation, without\nmeaning, I am forming gibberish, and not a language; and so if I pepper\nmy pages with extraordinary incidents, without attaching to them any\nsignificance, I am writing, it may be, an exciting, absorbing,\ninteresting book, but I am not making literature. Indeed, some of the\nbooks that might be mentioned in this connection remind me of a man\nswearing: he uses the holiest names but he does so in such a manner that\nhe excites not reverence and awe but disgust and repulsion. Tell the\nbare \"plot\" of the Odyssey to one of these writers, and hint that it\nmight be made into a \"successful Christmas book for boys,\" and he will\nproduce you a book which will contain the Lotus-Eaters, and Calypso and\nthe Cyclops, but which will have just the same relation to literature as\nblasphemy bears to the Liturgy. That seems to me the explanation; one\nmust say again that mere incident is nothing, that it only becomes\nsomething when it is a symbol of an interior meaning. And, turning this\nmaxim inside out, as it were, we shall sometimes find that a book which\nseems on the surface to be \"reading matter\" is really literature, and\nincidents, apparently insignificant, may turn out, on a closer\nexamination, to be significant and symbolic in a very high degree. So I\ndon't think our literary criterion is in any way invalidated by the\noccurrence of surprising incidents in very worthless books. Look at \"Mr\nIsaacs\" for example. In a sense it is a \"wonderful\" book, inasmuch as\nit contains incidents which are far removed from common experience; but\nyou have only to read it to discover that the author had not been\nvisited by any inspiration of the unseen. One may trace some\nacquaintance with theosophical \"literature,\" but not even the dimmest\nvision of \"the other things.\" The \"other things\"? Ah, that is another\nsynonym, but who can furnish a precise definition of the indefinable?\nThey are sometimes in the song of a bird, sometimes in the scent of a\nflower, sometimes in the whirl of a London street, sometimes hidden\nunder a great lonely hill. Some of us seek them with most hope and the\nfullest assurance in the sacring of the Mass, others receive tidings\nthrough the sound of music, in the colour of a picture, in the shining\nform of a statue, in the meditation of eternal truth. Do you know that I\ncan never hear a jangling piano-organ, contending with the roar of\ntraffic without the tears--not of feeling but of emotion--coming to my\neyes?\n\nAnd that instance--it is grotesque enough--reminds me that I think I\nhave an explanation of another puzzle that has often perplexed me, and I\ndaresay has perplexed you. Do you remember the books that you read when\nyou were a boy? I can think of stories that I read long ago (I have\nforgotten the very names of them) that filled me with emotions that I\nrecognised, afterwards, as purely artistic. The sorriest pirate, the\nmost wretchedly concealed treasure, poor Captain Mayne Reid at his\nboldest gave me then the sensations that I now search for in the\n\"Odyssey\" or in the thought of it; and I looked into some of these\nshabby old tales years afterwards, and wondered how on earth I had\nmanaged to penetrate into \"fa\u00ebry lands forlorn\" through such miserable\nstucco portals. And you, you say, extracted somehow or other, from\nHarrison Ainsworth's \"Lancashire Witches,\" that essence of the unknown\nthat you now find in Poe, and I expect that everybody who loves\nliterature could gather similar recollections.\n\nWell, it would be easy enough to solve the problem by saying that the\nemotions of children are of no consequence and don't count, but then I\ndon't think that proposition is true. I think, on the contrary, that\nchildren, especially young children before they have been defiled by the\nhorrors of \"education,\" possess the artistic emotion in remarkable\npurity, that they reproduce, in a measure, the primitive man before he\nwas defiled, artistically, by the horrors of civilisation. The ecstasy\nof the artist is but a recollection, a remnant from the childish vision,\nand the child undoubtedly looks at the world through \"magic casements.\"\nBut you see all this is unconscious, or subconscious (to a less degree\nit is so in later life, and artists are rare simply because it is their\nalmost impossible task to translate the emotion of the sub-consciousness\ninto the speech of consciousness), and as you may sometimes see children\nuttering their conceptions in words that are nonsense, or next door to\nit, so nonsense or at any rate very poor stuff suffices with them to\nsummon up the vision from the depths of the soul. Suppose we could catch\na genius at the age of nine or ten and request him to utter what he\nfelt; the boy would speak or write rubbish, and in the same way you\nwould find that he read rubbish, and that it excited in him an ineffable\njoy and ecstasy. Coleridge was a Bluecoat boy when he read the \"poems\"\nof William Lisle Bowles, and admired them to enthusiasm, and I am quite\nsure that at some early period Poe had been enraptured by Mrs Radcliffe,\nand we know how Burns founded himself on Fergusson. When men are young,\nthe inward ecstasy, the \"red powder of projection\" is of such efficacy\nand virtue that the grossest and vilest matter is transmuted for them\ninto pure gold, glistering and glorious as the sun. The child (and with\nhim you may link all primitive and childlike people) approaches books\nand pictures just as he approaches nature itself and life; and a\nwonderful vision appears where many of us can only see the common and\ninsignificant.\n\nBut all this has been a digression; it has come by the way in a talk\nabout worthless and insignificant books. But I think that we should by\nthis time have brought our testing apparatus into working order; we\nshould be able to criticise any given book on some ground or principle,\nnot on the rule of thumb of \"it sent me to sleep,\" or \"it kept me\nawake.\" And I think that what I have already remarked about the\nsubconscious element in literature should have answered that question\nabout \"books with a purpose.\" As a matter of fact I believe that they\nare mostly trash, but it is not a case for _\u00e0 priori_ reasoning; you\nmust test each book by itself. Mr Stevenson was, I believe, an artist at\nheart, but we have seen how the artificer overcame the artist in \"Jekyll\nand Hyde,\" and in like manner there have been cases of people who were\nartificers, and even preachers, at heart, who were forced to succumb to\nthe concealed, subconscious artist, when pen touched paper. For example;\nfirst logically analyze \"Lycidas\"; you will be disgusted just as Dr\nJohnson, who had no analysis but the logical, was disgusted. Forget your\nlogic, your common-sense, and read it again as poetry; you will\nacknowledge the presence of an amazing masterpiece. An unimportant\nlament over an unimportant personage, constructed on an affected\npseudo-pastoral plan, full of acrid, Puritanical declamation and abuse,\nwantonly absurd with its mixture of the nymphs and St Peter; it is not\nonly wretched in plan but clumsy in construction, the artifice is\natrocious. And it is also perfect beauty! It is the very soul set to\nmusic; its austere and exquisite rapture thrills one so that I could\nalmost say: he who understands the mystery and the beauty of \"Lycidas\"\nunderstands also the final and eternal secret of art and life and man.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nDo you know that when we last talked _belles lettres_ the whole evening\nwent by (or at least I think so) without my saying anything about\n\"Pickwick\"? I hope you noted the omission in your diary, if you keep\none, because I find it difficult to talk much about literature, without\ndrawing some illustration from that very notable, and curious, and\nunappreciated book. Yes, I maintain the justice of the last epithet in\nspite of circulation, in spite of popularity, and in spite of \"Pickwick\n'literature.'\" You may like a book very much and read it three times a\nyear without appreciating it, and if a great book is really popular it\nis sure to owe its popularity to entirely wrong reasons. There are\npeople, you know, who study Homer every day, because he throws so much\nlight on the manners and customs of the ancients, and if a book of our\nown time is both great and popular, you may be sure that it is loved for\nits most peccant parts, just as nine people out of ten will recall the\n\"Raven\" and the \"Bells\" if the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe is mentioned.\n\nAfter all, I needn't have excused myself for my constant references to\nDickens's masterpiece, since I have already informed you that, like\nColeridge, I love a \"cyclical\" mode of discoursing; and I honestly think\nthat if you want to understand something about the Mysteries or the Fine\nArts (which are the expression of the mysteries) it is the only way. A\nproposition in Euclid is demonstrated and done with, since nothing can\nbe added to a mathematical proof; but literature is different. It is\nmany-sided and many-coloured, and variable always; you can consider it\nin half-a-dozen ways, from half-a-dozen standpoints, and from\nhalf-a-dozen judgments, each of which will be true and perfect in\nitself, and yet each will supplement the other. Two or three weeks ago I\nthink I tried to show you what a complex organism any given book\nreveals, if one examines it with a little attention, and if one specimen\nbe so curiously and intricately fashioned, you may imagine the\ncomplexity of the whole subject.\n\nBut I have a more particular reason for turning once more to the\n\"Posthumous Papers.\" We have noted that that which at first sight seems\nsignificant, may turn out to be insignificant, and I think that in\npassing I hinted that the reverse was sometimes the case. Very good; and\nthe especial instance that is in my mind is the enormous capacity for\nstrong drink exhibited by Mr Pickwick and all his friends and\nassociates. Of course you've noticed it; perhaps you have thought it a\nnuisance and a blemish from the artistic standpoint, just as many \"good\npeople\" have found it a nuisance and a blemish from the temperance or\nteetotal standpoint. You may have felt quite certain that a set of men\nwho were always drinking brandy and water, and strong ale, and\nmilk-punch, and madeira, who constantly drank a great deal too much of\neach and all of these things, would be extremely unpleasant companions\nin private life; I daresay you have been thankful that you never knew Mr\nPickwick or any of his followers. You know, I expect, by personal\nexperience, that a man whose daily life is a pilgrimage from one whiskey\nbar to another is, in most cases, an extremely tedious and unprofitable\ncompanion; and it is undeniable that the \"Pickwickians\" rather made\nopportunities for brandy and water than avoided them. And in an\nindirect manner, you feel that all this makes you like the book less.\n\nBut (I can no more miss an opportunity of digression than Mr Pickwick\ncould keep on the coach if there were a chance of drinking his favourite\nbeverage) do you know that there are really people who make their liking\nor disliking of the characters the criterion of literature--of romances,\nI mean? We touched on this some time ago, and I remember saying that in\nthe case of such secondary books as Jane Austen's and Thackeray's, it\nwas permissible enough to go where one was best amused, that one had a\nright to say, \"Yes, the artifice may be the better here, but the\ncharacters are much more amusing there, and I had rather talk to the\ncosmopolitan whose manners are now and then a little to seek, than to\nthe maiden lady in the village, whose decorum is so unexceptionable.\"\nBut I confess that at the time it had not dawned upon me that there are\npeople who try to judge fine art--the true literature--on the same\ngrounds. I believe, however, that such is the case; I believe, indeed,\nthat the egregious M. Voltaire was dimly moved by some such feeling when\nhe wrote his famous \"criticism\" of the prophet Habakkuk. What (he must\nhave said to himself) would they think in the _salons_ of a man who\ntalked like this:--\n\n    And the everlasting mountains were scattered,\n    The perpetual hills did bow:\n    His ways are everlasting?\n\nEvidently Habakkuk could never hope for a second invitation; and\n_therefore_ he wrote rubbish. And I believe, as I said, that there are\nmany people who more or less unconsciously judge literature by this\nmeasure, by asking, \"Would these people be pleasant to meet? would one\nlike to hear this kind of thing in one's drawing-room?\" And this is well\nenough with secondary books, since they contain nothing but\n\"characters,\" and \"incidents,\" and \"scenes,\" and \"facts\"; but it is by\nno means well in literature, in which, as we found out, all these things\nare symbols, words of a language, used, not for themselves, but because\nthey are significant. Remember our old definition--ecstasy, the\nwithdrawal, the standing apart from common life--and you will see that\nwe may almost reverse this popular method of judgment, and turn it into\nanother test, or rather another way of putting the test, of art. For, if\nliterature be a kind of withdrawal from the common atmosphere of life,\nwe shall naturally expect to find its utterance, both in matter and\nmanner, wholly unsuitable for the drawing-room or the street, and its\n\"characters\" persons whom we cannot imagine ourselves associating with\non pleasant or comfortable terms. Neither you nor I would be very happy\non Ulysses's boat, we should soon become irritated with Don Quixote, we\nshould hardly feel at home with Sir Galahad. It is true that all the\ngood there is in men is this--that at rare intervals, in certain lonely\nmoments of exaltation they do feel for the time a faint stirring of the\nbeautiful within them, and _then_ they would adventure on the Quest of\nthe Graal; but as you know few of us are saints, fewer, perhaps, are men\nof genius; we are sunk for the most part of our days in the common life,\nand our care is for the body and for the things of the body, for the\nstreet and the drawing-room, and not for the perpetual, solitary hills.\nSo you see that if you read a book and can say of the characters in it:\n\"I wish I knew them,\" there is very strong reason to suspect that the\nbook in question is not literature, though it may well be a pleasant\npicture of pleasant people.\n\nYes, I was expecting that question. I should have been sorry if your\nsense of humour had _not_ prompted you to ask whether the drinking of\ntoo much milk-punch constituted a withdrawal from the common life, a\nprofound and lonely ecstasy. But don't you remember that when we were\ndiscussing \"Pickwick\" before, and comparing it with the \"Odyssey,\" I\nsuddenly deserted Homer, and brought in Sophocles? I think I contrasted,\nvery briefly, the education of the dramatist with the education of the\nromance writer, the London of the 'twenties and 'thirties with the city\nof the Violet Crown, the fate of him,\n\n    \u1f00\u03b5\u1f76 \u03b4\u03b9\u1f70 \u03bb\u03b1\u03bc\u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c4\u03ac\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5\n    \u03b2\u03b1\u03af\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f01\u03b2\u03c1\u1ff6\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f30\u03b8\u03ad\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2\n\nwith that of the other who tried to find the way through the evil and\nhideous London fog.\n\nWell, you might have been inclined to ask, why Sophocles? But do you\nremember for whose festivals, in whose honour the Greek wrote his dramas\nand his choral songs? It was the god of wine who was worshipped and\ninvoked at the Dionysiaca, in the praise of Dionysus the chorus sang and\ndanced about the altar, and all the drama arose from the celebration of\nthe Bacchic mysteries. So you get, I think, a pretty fair proportion: as\nthe Athens of Sophocles is to the Cockneydom of Dickens, so is the cult\nof Dionysus to the cult of cold punch and brandy and water. The interior\nmeaning is in each case the same; the artistic expression has lamentably\ndeteriorated, in the degree that the artistic atmosphere on the banks of\nFleet Ditch, the \"mother of dead dogs,\" was inferior to the artistic\natmosphere on the banks of the Ilissus.\n\nI expect you have gathered from all this talk the point I want to make:\nthat the brandy and water and punch business in \"Pickwick,\" which at\nfirst sight seems trivial and insignificant and even disgusting, is, in\nfact, full of the highest significance. Don't you notice the insistence\nwith which the writer dwells on drinking, the unction and enthusiasm\nwith which he describes it? We have admitted the poverty of the\n\"materials\" with which Dickens works, and of course it would be as idle\nto expect him to write a choral song in honour of Dionysus as it would\nbe to expect him to write in Greek. He expressed himself as best he\ncould, in the \"language\" (that is with the incidents and in the\natmosphere) that he knew, but there can be no possible doubt as to his\nmeaning. In a word, I absolutely identify the \"brandy and water scenes\"\nwith the Bacchic cultus and all that it implies.\n\nThis is \"a little too much for you\" is it? Well, let us take another\nwell-known book, the \"Gargantua\" and \"Pantagruel.\" You know it well, and\nI have only to remind you of the name to remind you that as \"Pickwick\"\nhas been said to \"reek with brandy and water,\" so does Rabelais\nassuredly reek of wine. The history begins:--\n\n     \"Grandgousier estoit bon raillard en son temps, aimant \u00e0 boire\n     net,\"\n\nit ends with the Oracle of the Holy Bottle, with the word\n\n     \"_Trinch_ ... un mot panomph\u00e9e, celebr\u00e9 et entendu de toutes\n     nations, et nous signifie, _beuvez_;\"\n\nand I refer you to the allocution of Bacbuc, the priestess of the\nBottle, at large. \"By wine,\" she says, \"is man made divine,\" and I may\nsay that if you have not got the key to these Rabelaisian riddles much\nof the value--the highest value--of the book is lost to you. You know\nhow they drink, those strange figures, the giants and their followers,\nyou know the aroma of the vintage, the odour of the wine vat that fills\nall those marvellous and enigmatic pages, and I tell you that here again\nI recognise the same signs as in \"Pickwick,\" the same music as that of\nthe dithyrambic choruses in honour of Dionysus, which were eventually\namplified into that magnificent literary product, the Greek drama. And\nif we wish to penetrate the secret we must not forget the Hebrew\npsalmist, with his _calix meus inebrians quam pr\u00e6clarus est_. And\nremember, too, if you feel inclined to shudder at the milk-punch, that\nthe words which I have just quoted might be rendered, \"how splendid is\nthis cup of wine that makes me drunk!\" and we may say that, in a manner,\npoor Dickens did so render them, since, as I have reminded you he\nbelonged, after the flesh, to the Camden Town of the 'twenties, and was\nforced to use its unbeautiful dialect because he knew no other.\n\nAnd after all, then, what does this Bacchic cultus mean? We have seen\nthat under various disguises the one spirit appeared in Greece, in the\nFrance of the Renaissance, and in Victorian England, and that in each\ninstance there is an apparent glorification of drunkenness. The Greeks,\nindeed, a sober people by necessity, as all Southerners are,\nimpersonated the genius of intoxication, and made excessive drinking, as\nit would seem, an elaborate religion, with rites and festivals and\nmysteries. The Tourainian, whose personal habit was that not of a\ndrunkard, but of a learned physician and restorer of ancient letters,\nwho probably drank very much in the manner of the good cur\u00e9 I once knew\n(\"My God!\" he said to me, after the third small glass of small white\nwine, \"'tis a veritable debauch!\"), has, on the face of it, dedicated\nall his enormous book to the same cause, so that to read Pantagruel is\nlike walking through a French village in the vintage season, when the\nwhole world, as Zola unpleasantly and nastily expresses it \"pue le\nraisin.\" Thirdly, Dickens, who loved to talk of concocting gin-punch,\nand left it, when concocted, to be drunk by his guests, shows us Mr\nPickwick \"dead drunk\" in the wheel-barrow. And, for a final touch of\napparent absurdity, you remember that the Dionysus myth represents wine\nas a civilising influence! You may well think of the public-house at\nthe corner, and ask yourself how strong drink can contribute to\ncivilisation.\n\nWell, that is, in very brief outline, the problem and the puzzle; and I\nmay say at once that to the literalist, the rationalist, the materialist\ncritic, the problem is quite insoluble. But to you and me, who do not\nend in any kind of _ist_, the enigma will not be quite so hopeless. Let\nus get back to our maxim that, in literature, facts and incidents are\nnot present for their own sake but as symbols, as words of the language\nof art; it will follow, then, that the incidents of the Dionysus myth,\nthe incidents of \"Pantagruel\" and \"Pickwick\" are not to be taken\nliterally, but symbolically. We are not to conclude that the Greeks were\na race of drunkards, or that Rabelais and Dickens preached habitual\nexcess in drink as the highest virtue; we are to conclude that both the\nancient people and the modern writers recognised Ecstasy as the supreme\ngift and state of man, and that they chose the Vine and the juice of the\nVine as the most beautiful and significant symbol of that Power which\nwithdraws a man from the common life and the common consciousness, and\ntaking him from the dust of the earth, sets him in high places, in the\neternal world of ideas. And, after all, I cannot do better than quote at\nlength the sermon of Bacbuc, priestess of the Dive Bouteille.\n\n     \"Et icy maintenons que non rire, ains boire, est le propre de\n     l'homme: je ne dis boire simplement et absolument, car aussi bien\n     boivent les bestes: je dis boire vin bon et frais. Notez, amis, que\n     de vin, divin on devient: et n'y a argument tant seur, ni art de\n     divination moins fallace. Vos academiques l'afferment, rendans\n     l'etymologie de vin lequel ils disent en Grec \u039f\u0399\u039d\u039f\u03a3, estre comme\n     _vis_, force, puissance. Car pouvoir il a d'emplir l'ame de toute\n     verit\u00e9, tout savoir et philosophie. Si avez not\u00e9 ce qui est en\n     lettres Ioniques escrit dessus la porte du temple, vous avez peu\n     entendre qu'en vin est verit\u00e9 cach\u00e9e.\"\n\nYou see how that passage lights up the whole book, and you see what\nRabelais meant in the Prologue to the first book by that reference to\n\"certain little boxes such as we see nowadays in apothecaries' shops,\nthe which boxes are painted on the outside with joyous and fantastic\nfigures ... but within they hold rare drugs, as balm, ambergris, amomum,\nmusk, civet, certain stones of high virtue, and all manner of precious\nthings.\" I do not know whether you have read any of our English\ncommentators on Rabelais, if not, I would not advise you to do so,\nunless you take pleasure in futility. For instance they take the passage\nfrom the prologue, and seeing the hint that something is concealed, try\nby some complicated chain of argument to show that Rabelais veiled his\nattacks on the Church under a mask of \"wild buffoonery.\" Of course the\nattacks on the Church (the \"secondary\" and comparatively unimportant\nelement in the book, fairly answering to the attacks on books of\nChivalry in the Don Quixote) are as open as any attack can well be, and\nanyone who finds a veil drawn between Rabelais' dislike for the clergy\nand his expression of it must have a very singular notion of what\nconstitutes concealment, and a still more singular misapprehension of\nthe motive-forces which make and shape great books. Art, you may feel\nquite assured, proceeds always from love and rapture, never from hatred\nand disdain, and satire of every kind _qua_ satire is eternally\ncondemned to that Gehenna where the pamphlets, the \"literature of the\nsubject,\" and the \"life-like\" books lie all together. In \"Don Quixote\"\none perceives that Cervantes loved the romances he condemns, and the\nsatire is therefore good-humoured, and, one may say, does his book\nlittle harm or none at all; but Rabelais had been harshly treated by the\nfriars, and his consequent ill-humour, his very violent abuse _are_ in\ndisaccord with the eternal melodies which may be discerned in\n\"Pantagruel,\" noted there under strange symbols. Yes, the satire in\nRabelais is an \"accident,\" which one has to accept and to make the best\nof; some of it is amusing enough, \"joyous and fantastic,\" like the \"apes\nand owls and antiques\" that adorn the little boxes of the apothecaries,\nsome of it is a little acrid, as I said; but let us never forget that\nthe essence of the book is its splendid celebration of ecstasy, under\nthe figure of the vine.\n\nYou know I have not opened the door; I have only put the key into your\nhands, in this as in other instances. There are things, which, strange\nto say, are better left unsaid, and this, no doubt, Rabelais perceived\nwhen he devised his symbolism and set many traps in the paths of the\nshallow commentator. It was not from dread of the consequences of\nattacking the clergy that he devised curious veils and concealments,\nsince, as I have noted, his hatred of the church is quite open and\nunconcealed. He chose the method of symbolism, firstly because he was\nan artist, and symbolism is the speech of art; and secondly because the\nhigh truth that he prophesied was not, and is not, fit for vulgar ears.\nThe secret places of the human nature are not heedlessly to be exposed\nto the uninitiated, who would merely profane this occult knowledge if\nthey had it. By consequence the \"Complete Works of Rabelais\" are\nobtainable in Holywell Street, and many, seeking the libidinous, have\nfound merely the tiresome, and have cursed their bargain.\n\nNo, I will positively say no more. The key is in your hands, and with it\nyou may open what chambers you can. There is only this to be mentioned:\nthat, if I were you, I would not be \"afraid with any amazement\" should\nMr Pickwick's overdose of milk punch prove, ultimately, a clue to the\nlabyrinth of mystic theology.\n\nThere are, however, one or two minor points in Rabelais that may be\nworth notice. I might, you know, analyze it as I attempted to analyze\n\"Don Quixote.\" There is in \"Gargantua\" and \"Pantagruel\" that same\ncomplexity of thought and construction: you may note, first of all, the\ngreat essence which is common to these masterpieces as to all\nliterature--ecstasy, expressed in the one case under the similitude of\nknight-errantry, in the other by the symbol of the vine. Then, in\nRabelais you have another symbolism of ecstasy--the shape of\n_gauloiserie_, of gross, exuberant gaiety, expressing itself by\noutrageous tales, outrageous words, by a very cataract of obscenity, if\nyou please, if only you will notice how the obscenity of Rabelais\ntranscends the obscenity of common life; how grossness is poured out in\na sort of mad torrent, in a frenzy, a very passion of the unspeakable.\nThen, thirdly, there is the impression one collects from the book: a\ntransfigured picture of that wonderful age: there is the note of the\nvast, interminable argument of the schools, and for a respond, the\nclear, enchanted voice of Plato; there is the vision, there is the\nmystery of the vast, far-lifted Gothic quire; and those fair, ornate,\nand smiling _ch\u00e2teaux_ rise smiling from the rich banks of the Loire and\nthe Vienne. The old tales told in farmhouse kitchens in the Chinonnais,\nthe exultation of the new learning, of lost beauty recovered, the joy of\nthe vintage, the old legends, the ancient turns of speech, the new style\nand manner of speaking: so to the old world answers the new. Then one\nhas the satire of clergy and lawyers--the criticism of life--analogous,\nas I said with much that is in Cervantes, and so from divers elements\nyou see how a literary masterpiece is made into a whole.\n\nBut now, do you know, I am going to make a confession. You have heard me\nsay more than once that in art, in literature properly so called, liking\nand disliking count for nothing. We have understood, I think, that when\nonce amusing reading matter has been put out of court, the question of\nhow often, with what absorption one reads a work of art, matters\nnothing. Well, I want to contradict, or rather to modify that axiom; we\nhave been speaking of three great books, each of which I believe firmly\nto be true literature--\"Pickwick,\" \"Don Quixote,\" and \"Pantagruel.\" Here\nis my confession. I read \"Pickwick,\" say, once a year, \"Don Quixote,\"\nonce every three years, while I read Rabelais in fragments perhaps once\nin six years. You might suppose that I have indicated the order of\nmerit? Well, I have, but you must reverse the order, since I firmly\nbelieve that \"Pantagruel\" is the finest of the three. We will leave\nDickens out of account, since we are agreed that though the message was\nthat of angels, the accent and the speech were of Camden town; he, that\nis to say, approaches most nearly to the common life, to the common\npassages in which we live, and hence he, naturally, pleases us the most\nin our ordinary and common humours. But, of the other two, I confess\nthat Cervantes pleases me much the more; the vulgarity of Dickens is\nabsent or rather it is concentrated in Sancho, in a much milder form\nthan that of \"Pickwick,\" for a Spanish peasant of the sixteenth century,\nwith all his \"common-sense,\" and practical reason, is less remote from\nbeauty than the retired \"business man\" of the early nineteenth century;\njust as poor Mr Pickwick, an honest, kindly creature, is vastly superior\nto the blatant, pretentious, diamond-bedecked swindlers who represent\nthe city in our day. But Cervantes, who lacks, as I say, the\n\"commonness\" of Dickens, has something of the urbanity, the\ncosmopolitanism of Thackeray, he is, to a certain degree, a Colonel\nNewcome of his time, but he has seen the world more sagaciously than\nColonel Newcome ever could. So while Rabelais appals me with his\nextravagance, his torrents of obscene words, I am charmed with the good\nhumoured and observant companionship of Cervantes.\n\nAnd hence I conclude that \"Pantagruel\" is the finer book. It may sound\nparadoxical to say so, but don't you see that the very _grotesquerie_ of\nRabelais shows a further remove from the daily round, a purer metal,\nless tinged with the personal, material, interest than \"Don Quixote.\"\nMind you, I find greater deftness, a finer artifice in Cervantes, who I\nthink expressed his conception the more perfectly, but I think that the\nconception of Rabelais the higher, precisely because it is the more\nremote. Look at the \"Pantagruel\"; consider those \"lists,\" that more than\nfrankness, that ebullition of grossness, plainly intentional, designed:\nit is either the merest lunacy, or else it is sublime. Don't you\nremember the trite saying \"extremes meet,\" don't you perceive that when\na certain depth has been passed you begin to ascend into the heights?\nThe Persian poet expresses the most transcendental secrets of the Divine\nLove by the grossest phrases of the carnal love; so Rabelais soars above\nthe common life, above the streets and the gutter by going far lower\nthan the streets and the gutter: he brings before you the highest by\npositing that which is lower than the lowest, and if you have the\nprepared, initiated mind, a Rabelaisian \"list\" is the best preface to\nthe angelic song. All this may strike you as extreme paradox, but it has\nthe disadvantage of being true, and perhaps you may assure yourself of\nits truth by recollecting the converse proposition--that it is when one\nis absorbed in the highest emotions that the most degrading images will\nintrude themselves. No; you are right: this is not the psychology of the\n\"scientific\" persons who write hand-books on the subject, it is not the\npsychology of the \"serious\" novelists, of those who write the annals of\nthe \"engaged\"; but it happens to be the psychology of man.\n\nI don't know that very much can be made of the signification of the\ncharacters in \"Pantagruel,\" as I hardly think that Rabelais was anxious\nto be systematic or consistent in delineating them. I believe that there\nare two reasons for the gigantic stature of Pantagruel, or perhaps\nthree. The form of the whole story came from popular legends about a\ngiant named Gargantua, and that is the first and least important reason.\nSecondly the \"giant\" conception does something to remove the book from\ncommon experience; it is a sign-post, warning you _not_ to expect a\nfaithful picture of life, but rather a withdrawal from life and from\ncommon experience, and you are in a position to appreciate the value of\nthat motive, since I have never ceased from telling you that it is the\nprincipal motive of all literature. And, thirdly, I hesitate and doubt,\nbut nothing more, whether the giant Pantagruel, he who is \"all thirst\"\nand ever athirst, may not be a hint of the stature of the perfect man,\nof the ideal man, freed from the bonds of the common life, and common\nappetites, having only the eternal thirst for the eternal vine.\nCandidly, I am inclined to favour this view, but only as a private\ninterpretation; it may be all nonsense, and I shall not be offended or\nsurprised if you can prove to me that it is nonsense. But have you\nnoticed how Pantagruel is at once the most important and the least\nimportant figure in the book? He is the most important personage; he is\nthe hero, the leader, the son of the king, the giant, wiser than any or\nall of his followers: formally, he is to Rabelais that which Don Quixote\nis to Cervantes. And yet, actually, he is little more than a vague,\ntremendous shadow; the living, speaking, impressive personages are\nFr\u00e8re Jean and Panurge, who occupy the stage and capture our attention.\nDoesn't this rather suggest to you the part played by the \"real\" man in\nlife itself; a subordinate, unobtrusive part usually, hidden very often\nby an exterior, which bears little resemblance to the true man within.\nYou know Coleridge says that:--\n\n\"Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the Understanding--the pollarded man,\nthe man with every faculty except the reason. I scarcely know an example\nmore illustrative of the distinction between the two. Rabelais had no\nmode of speaking the truth in those days but in such form as this; as it\nwas, he was indebted to the king's protection for his life.\"\n\nI must cavil at the last sentence, in which Coleridge seems to hint that\nRabelais was in danger because he had hinted the distinction between the\nReason and the Understanding. With all respect to Coleridge, Rabelais\nmight have gone to the limits of psychology and metaphysics without\nincurring any danger; he was threatened on account of his very open\nsatire of the church and the clergy, which, as I have pointed out, is as\nplain spoken as satire well can be. Still, I think that Coleridge,\nusing the technical language of German philosophy, had a glimpse of the\ntruth, and Mr Besant's remark that Panurge is a careful portrait of a\nman without a soul is virtually the same definition in another\nterminology. As I have already said, I don't think that Rabelais kept\nhis characters within the strict limits of consistence--they are only\nsignificant, perhaps, now and then--and I want to say, again, that I\nspeak under correction in this matter, not feeling at all sure of my\nground. But I am inclined to think that Pantagruel, Panurge, and the\nMonk are not so much three different characters, as the representative\nof man in his three persons. Fr\u00e8re Jean is, perhaps, the natural man,\nthe \"healthy animal,\" Panurge is the rational man, and Pantagruel, as I\nsaid, is the spiritual, or perfect man, who looms, gigantic, in the\nbackground, almost invisible, and yet all important, and the three are,\nin reality, One. If I may apply the case to our own subject, I may say\nthat while Pantagruel conceives the idea, Panurge writes the book, and\nBrother John has the courage to take it to the publishers. The first is\nthe artist, the second the artificer, and the third the social being,\nready to battle for his place in the material world. The giant is\nalways calm, since his head is high above earth--_vidit nubes et\nsidera_--but the other two have to face the compromises of life, and\nsuffer its defeats. All this may be purely fantastical; and at any rate\nI am sure that anyone who knows his Rabelais could pick many holes in my\ninterpretation. For example, I said that the monk was the \"healthy\nanimal,\" and Panurge the rational man; but there are occasions when\nPanurge assumes the character of the unhealthy beast, the hairy-legged,\nhybrid, creature of the Greek myth, who uses the superior human artifice\nfor ends that are wholly bestial or worse than bestial. Still; is this a\nvalid objection? Are there not such men in life itself? Is it not,\nperhaps, the peculiar and terrible privilege of humanity that it may, if\nit pleases, prostitute its most holy and most blessed gifts to the worst\nand most horrible uses? And does not each one of us feel that,\npotentially, at all events, there is such a being within him, not\nyielded to, perhaps, for a moment, yet always present, always ready to\nassume the command. The greatest saints, we are told, have suffered the\nmost fiery temptations; in other words--Pantagruel is always attended by\n_Panurge diabolicus_. I have talked once or twice of the Shadowy\nCompanion, but one must not forget that there is the Muddy Companion\nalso; a being often of exquisite wit and deep understanding, but given\nto evil ways if one do not hold him in check.\n\nBut, in any case, I think I have shown that the Pantagruel is one of the\nmost extraordinary efforts of the human mind, full of \"Pantagruelism\";\nand that word stands for many concealed and wonderful mysteries.\n\nIt is not in the least a \"pleasant,\" or a \"life-like,\" or even an\n\"interesting\" book; I think that when one knows of the key--or rather of\nthe keys--one opens the pages almost with a sensation of dread. So it is\na book that one consults at long intervals, because it is only at rare\nmoments that a man can bear the spectacle of his own naked soul, and a\nvision that is splendid, certainly, but awful also, in its constant\napposition of the eternal heights and the eternal depths.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nI have been waiting for that question for a very long time, and I only\nwonder that you have been able to restrain yourself so well--through\nsuch a series of what I know you believe to be paradoxes, though I have\nassured you that I deal merely in the plainest truth. But, after all,\nyour question is quite a legitimate one, and I remember when I first\nbegan to think of these things I went astray--simply because I did not\nrecognise the existence of the difficulty that has been bothering you,\never since that talk of ours about the _haulte sagesse Pantagrueline--et\nPickwickienne_, and perhaps before it.\n\nYes, I will put the question in its plainest, crudest form, and I will\nmake you ask, if you please, whether Charles Dickens had any\nconsciousness of the interior significance of the milk-punch, strong\nale, and brandy and water which he caused Mr Pickwick and his friends to\nconsume in such outrageous quantities. It sounds plain enough and simple\nenough, doesn't it, and yet I must tell you that to answer that\nquestion fairly you must first analyze human nature, and I needn't\nremind you that _that_ is a task very far from simple. \"Man\" sounds a\nvery simple predicate, as you utter it; you imagine that you understand\nits significance perfectly well, but when you begin to refine a little,\nand to bring in distinctions, and to carry propositions to their\nlegitimate bounds, you find that you have undertaken the definition of\nthat which is essentially indefinite and probably indefinable. And,\nafter all, we need not pitch on this term or on that, there is no need\nto select \"man\" as offering any especial difficulty, for, I take it,\nthat the truth is that all human knowledge is subject to the same\ndisadvantage, the same doubts and reservations. _Omnia exeunt in\nmysterium_ was an old scholastic maxim; and the only people who have\nalways a plain answer for a plain question are the pseudo-scientists,\nthe people who think that one can solve the enigma of the universe with\na box of chemicals.\n\nBut all this is a caution--necessary I suppose--that you need not expect\nme to give you a plain, cut and dried answer to your question whether\nliterature is a conscious production--or, in more particular form--was\nDickens aware that by milk-punch he meant ecstasy? I shall \"ask you\nanother\" in the approved Scotch manner. You were telling me that as you\ncame along this evening you had to stop for five minutes at the corner\nof the Caledonian Road to watch the exquisite grace of two slum-girls of\nfourteen or fifteen, dancing to the rattling tune of a piano-organ. You\nspoke of the charm of their movements--_motus Ionici_, some of them, I\nfear--of the purely \u00e6sthetic delight there was in the sight of young\ngirls, disguised as horrible little slatterns, leaping and dancing as\nyoung girls have always leapt and danced, I suppose, from the time of\nthe cave-dwellers onwards. Well, but do you suppose that this charm you\nhave remarked was conscious? Do you think that Harriet and Emily\nrealised that they were of the kin of the ecstatic dancers of all time,\nthat they were beautiful because they were naturally expressing by a\nsymbol that is universal, the universal and eternal ecstasy of life?\nLook back in your memory for illustrations; I, as you know, am rather\nthe enemy of facts, and it is rarely that I am able to support a theory\nby a systematic _catena_ of instances and authorities. But, if one had\nthe industry and energy, one might make a most curious history of the\ndance. Remember the Hebrew dances of religious joy, of ecstasy in its\nhighest form, remember that strange survival of the choristers' dance\nbefore the high altar in Spain on certain solemn feasts, a survival\nwhich has persisted in spite of the strong Roman influences which make\nfor rigid uniformity. Think of the Greek Menads and Bacchantes, of the\nDionysiac chorus in the theatre, of our old English peasants \"treading\nthe mazes,\" and dancing round the maypole, of dances at Breton\n_Pardons_, of the fairies, supposed to dance in the forest glade beneath\nthe moon. Why, dancing is as much an expression of the human secret as\nliterature itself, and I expect it is even more ancient; and Harriet and\nEmily, leaping on the pavement, to that jingling, clattering tune, were\nmerely showing that though they were the children of the slum, and the\nstep-children of the School Board, they were yet human, and partakers of\nthe universal sacrament.\n\nBut if you ask, were they conscious of all this, it will be very\ndifficult to give a direct answer. I need hardly say that they could not\nhave put their very real emotion into the terms I have used--nor perhaps\ninto any terms at all--and yet they know the delight of what they do,\nas much as if they had been initiated in all the mysteries. If someone\nwith the genius of Socrates for propounding searching questions could\n\"corner\" Harriet and Emily, and face and overcome that preliminary,\ninevitable \"garn,\" it is possible that he might find that they were\nfully conscious of the reasons why they danced and delighted in dancing;\njust as Socrates demonstrated to the slave that he was perfectly\nacquainted with geometry; but failing a Socrates, and using words in\ntheir usual senses, I suppose we must say that they are not conscious.\nThey dance and leap without calculation, as they eat and drink, and as\nbirds sing in springtime; and very much the same answer must be given to\nthe similar question as to literature.\n\nI said that to answer the riddle fully and completely, one would have to\nmake an analysis of human nature; and, in truth, the problem is simply a\nproblem of the consciousness and subconsciousness, and of the action and\ninteraction between the two. I will not be too dogmatic. We are in\nmisty, uncertain and unexplored regions, and it is impossible to chart\nall the cities and mountains and streams, and fix with the nicety of\nthe ordnance survey their several places on the map--but I am strangely\ninclined to think that all the quintessence of art is distilled from the\nsubconscious and not from the conscious self; or, in other words, that\nthe artificer seldom or never understands the ends and designs and\nspirit of the artist. Our literary architects have all, I think, builded\nbetter than they knew, and very often, I expect, the draughtsman who\nsees the triumph and enjoys it in his manner, takes all the credit to\nhimself, and ludicrously imagines that it is his careful drawing and\namplification of the sketch, and following the scale, that have created\nthe high and holy house of God. There is a queer instance of what I mean\nin Dickens's preface to the later editions of \"Pickwick\"--I put the book\nup on a high shelf the other day, and I can't be bothered getting it\ndown and verifying the quotation--but I believe the author, after\ntelling us that the original design was to give opportunities to the\netcher Seymour, goes on to recapitulate, as it were, the achievements of\nthe book, and his list of triumphs is much more amusing than any list in\nRabelais. The law of imprisonment for debt has been altered! Fleet\nPrison has been pulled down! The School-Board is coming! Lawyers'\nclerks have nicer manners! Parliamentary elections are a little better,\nbut they might be better still! and one wonders that he does not\nannounce that, in consequence of the publication of \"Pickwick,\" medical\nstudents have given up brandy for barley-water. It is evident, you see,\nthat Dickens thought (or thought that he thought, for it is very\ndifficult to be exact) that his masterpiece of the _picaresque_, his\nepitome of Pantagruelism, was written to correct abuses, and looking\nback, many years after its publication, he congratulates himself that\nmost of these abuses have been corrected, and (one can almost hear him\nsay) _ergo_, it is a very fine book. He was impelled to write this\nnonsense of the preface because he was, by comparison, \"educated\";\nHarriet, the dancer, would probably tell you, if you succeeded in\npenetrating beyond \"garn,\" that she danced because she liked it; but,\ngranting that the poisoning process had been carried out more\nsuccessfully in the case of Emily, she might, conceivably, reply that\nshe danced \"becos it's 'elthy, and Teacher says as 'ow it cirkilates the\nblood.\" Emily, you see, obtained the prize for Physiology, as well as\nfor French and the Piano-Forte; she is thus enabled to give \"reasons,\"\nand they are quite as valuable as the \"reasons\" of Dickens, explaining\nthe merits of \"Pickwick.\" You know that pompous old fool Forster, who\ntook in Dickens at times, sniffed a little at \"Pickwick,\" and thought\nthe later books, with their ingenious plots, and floods of maudlin\ntears, and portentous \"character-drawing,\" immense advances, and I\nsuppose the master felt obliged to justify himself for that first\nenterprise--to show that he had not really been inspired, but had\nwritten a useful tract! You remember he \"explains\" Stiggins; he warns\nyou not to be under any misconceptions, not to suppose that Stiggins\nsatirises a, b, or c, since he is only aimed at x, y, and z. Can you\nconceive that a medi\u00e6val artist in gurgoyles, having perfected for our\neternal joy, a splendid grinning creature, lurking on the parapet, and\nhaving endowed him, greatly to our oblectation, with the tail of a\ndragon, the body of a dog, the feet of an eagle, the head of a bull in\nhysterics, with a Franciscan cowl, by way of finish, should afterwards\nexplain that no offence was intended to Father Ambrose, the prior over\nthe way?\n\nSo it seems fairly plain, doesn't it, that in the case of Dickens, at\nall events, there was no very clear consciousness of what had been\nachieved, and I believe that you would find the rule hold good with\nother artists in a greater or less degree. With Dickens it holds in a\nvery high degree, just because there was that tremendous gulf I have so\noften spoken about between his inward and his outward self; because,\nwith the soul of rare genius, his intelligence lived in those dreary,\ndusty London streets, because the artificer, even while he carried out\nthe artist's commands, understood very little what he was doing. But one\ncan trace the same working in other cases. Take the case of Mr Hardy,\nfor instance. You remember what I said about his \"Two on a Tower\"; I\npraised it for its ecstatic passion, for that revelation of a great\nrapture, for its symbolism, showing how one must withdraw from the\ncommon ways, from the dusty highroad and the swarming street, and go\napart into high, lonely places, if one would perceive the high, eternal\nmysteries. I did not say so in so many words, but you no doubt saw that\nI was indicating that which is, in my opinion, valuable in Mr Hardy's\nwork, that which makes his books literature. And I am sure he would most\ndecidedly and entirely disagree with me, and if you want to know why I\nam sure, I refer you to his later books, to his \"Tess\" and \"Jude.\" You\nknow how the \"Tess\" was talked about, how it remade the author from the\ncommercial standpoint, simply because it contained, with many beautiful\nthings, many absurd \"preachments,\" much pseudo-philosophy of a kind\nsuited to the intelligence of persons who think that \"Robert Elsmere\" is\nliterature. If Mr Hardy had been a conscious artist, if he had\nunderstood, I mean, what makes the charm and the wonder of \"Two on a\nTower,\" he could never have adulterated the tale of \"Tess\" with a\nfree-thinking tract, he would never have turned \"Jude\" into a long\npamphlet on secondary education for farm labourers, with agnostic notes.\nIt is pathetic in the latter book amidst much weary and futile writing\nto come across a passage here and there that shows the artist striving\nfor utterance, longing to sing us his incantations, in spite of the\npreacher, who howls him down. Think of that distant vision of Oxford\nfrom the lonely field, of all those clustering roofs and spires, wet\nwith rain, suddenly kindling into glancing, and scintillant fire, at the\nsunset; and then remember, with what sorrow, that this is but an oasis\nin a barren land of blundering argument. It is almost as if literature\nhad become \"literature\"--the \"literature of the subject\"--and one must\nonly rejoice that the artist still lives even if the enemy has shut him\nup in prison. You can trace the struggle all through the book: \"Sue\" was\nan artistic conception, a very curious but a very beautiful revelation\nof some strange elements in the nature and in the love of women; but how\ndifficult it is to detect this--the real Sue--underneath the surface,\nwhich makes Sue seem the prophetess of the \"Woman Question,\" or whatever\nthe contemporary twaddle on the subject was called. Conceive the\n\"Odyssey\" so handled that it seems like a volume in a \"technical series\"\ndealing with \"Seamanship and Navigation,\" think what might have happened\nif the Rabelais who had been put in the dark cell of Fontenay-le-Comte\nhad completely gained the upper hand, and had silenced that other\nRabelais--that solitary and rapturous soul who had seen as in a glass\nthe marvellous face of man. Well, the five books of the \"Pantagruel\"\nwould have conveyed to us, no doubt with some eloquence and vigour, the\nhighly unimportant fact that Fran\u00e7ois Rabelais, runaway Franciscan\nfriar, did not like Franciscan friars; and now that the centuries have\ngone by we see how (comparatively) worthless such a book as that would\nhave been. Fortunately Pantagruel was too strong for the forces of\nPanurge and Fr\u00e8re Jean combined, and so they have been able to do little\nharm to the book.\n\nAnd how one wishes that it might be so with Mr Hardy! It is not as if he\nhad no \"body\" for his conceptions; his studies of peasant folk do very\nwell as backgrounds for his dramas, though, of course, his work in this\nway, good as it is, is not his element of real value. But it is\ninoffensive always, sometimes amusing, and it might well suffice him in\nhis more material moments, when he feels the necessity of descending\nfrom the solitary heights into the pleasant, populous valleys and\nvillages of common life. But his true work is--as it is the work of all\nartists--the shaping for us of ecstasy by means of symbols; and for him\nthe symbol which he understands is, no doubt, the passion of love, and\nwith it the symbol of red, lonely ploughlands, of deep overshadowed\nlanes that climb the hills and wander into lands that we know not, of\ndark woods that hide a secret, of strange, immemorial barrows where one\nmay have communion with the souls of the dead. The passion of love, the\npassion of the hills--no artist could desire more exquisite or\nsignificant symbols than these, nor need he seek for more beautiful\nforms for the expression of the perfect beauty. And Mr Hardy has chosen\nto be a pamphleteer, to voice for us our poor, ignorant contemporary\nchatter: it is as if an angel's pen were to be occupied in inditing\n\"Society Small Talk!\"\n\nBut it proves the unconsciousness of Mr Hardy's art; and here, by the\nway, I am moved to revert to the case of Rabelais. How far, you may ask,\nwas he conscious of what he was saying, and I see you remember that\npassage I quoted from the last book--the splendid declaration of the\nPriestess Bacbuc that \"by wine is man made divine.\" That passage, and\nindeed many other passages in the final chapters, would seem to show\nthat the author had worked consciously, and I certainly think the point\nworth our consideration. You will remember that I stated my rule without\nbigotry; I rather proposed it as a pious opinion--to the effect that in\nliterature the finest things are not designed. And I confess, that at\nfirst sight, this matter of Bacbuc and her allocution looks rather like\nan exception to the rule, a proof that Rabelais, at all events,\nunderstood clearly what he was doing.\n\nWell; it may have been so; for Rabelais was, as I think I have shown, a\nvery exceptional man, whom it would be difficult to place in any class.\nBut I hardly think this _is_ an instance of the proverbial (and\nfallacious) exception that proves the rule. In the first place I believe\nthat some French editors have grave doubts whether Rabelais wrote the\nfifth book at all; but I am not inclined to press this point. _My_ point\nis that the allocution of Bacbuc and all those chapters which describe\nthe Oracle of the Holy Bottle are the last in the book--the last words\nof the author; and I am in no way concerned to defend the position that\nan author must always remain unconscious of the work that he has done.\nAs a matter of fact I think that always, or almost always, he is\nunconscious while he is writing; but I see no reason why the revelation\nmay not come to him afterwards, especially in such a case as the\n\"Pantagruel,\" which was the affair of many years--of a lifetime, indeed.\nIn the beginning of production, in the youth, the springtime of artistic\nwork, the creative influence prevails, and this, it seems to me, always\nor almost always operates secretly; but in later years the critical\nspirit is apt to assert itself, and this will lead, very naturally,\nto the artist's understanding more plainly the nature of his\naccomplishment. Rabelais had a long, wonderful career; his life was full\nof incident, of violent breaks, and his books were produced at\nintervals, and it seems to me very possible that, towards the end, he\nmay have reflected on what he had done, and have understood in part, at\nall events, the sense of the amazing message that he had delivered.\nThis, I think, is the explanation of the \"Holy Bottle\" chapters, and you\nwill note that, admirable as criticism, they are inferior as art to\nthose astounding early pages where there is no hint of conscious\nworkmanship, but rather evidence of a man for whom the world has been\ntransformed, who has been visited by an astounding vision. He takes an\nold, popular story about a giant, he takes the vine that flourishes in\nhis native Chinonnais, he takes the New Learning that seems to him like\nthe New Wine, he takes the gross tale of the farmhouse and the tavern,\nthe rank speech of the people, and with these elements, with these\n\"facts,\" he symbolises the revelation that he has received. He writes,\nhe writes on, he writes madly, and every line is written in a fury of\ndelight; but, I think I may say, there is at the moment of writing, no\nconscious apperception of all that that torrent of words conveys and\nimplies. _That_ may well come later; one may well begin with legend:\n\"Grandgousier was a good drinker,\" and end with the interpretation: \"All\ntruth and every philosophy is contained in wine\"; but I believe that if\nRabelais had perceived this at the beginning he would have been not an\nartist but a philosopher.\n\nWell; if you are content with this comment on Bacbuc, I should like to\ngive you a very curious instance of our own day, in which the\nunconscious artist has been subdued by the conscious preacher. You\nremember those very notable books: \"Keynotes\" and \"Discords\"? I have not\nseen them for some time, so I am afraid my criticism will be very loose\nand general, but I think that the two volumes mark very well the fatal\ndescent from the higher to the lower ground. In the first, it seems to\nme, there is a somewhat slight, but very genuine, note of ecstasy;\nI mean that you can collect a certain distinct image of real\nwomanhood--not the laboured, foolish, inane psychology of Mr Meredith\nand those who work with him--not the analysis of the surface, of the\n\"society\" woman, belonging to a particular grade, and a particular\nperiod, but of the very woman who remains really the same in all social\ngrades and in all ages. I remember thinking when I read \"Keynotes\" that\nit was a \"lonely\" book; it hinted, I think, a soul apart, and afar from\nthe secondary, tertiary problems of an organised civilisation, and\nthough there was an undertone of \"preaching\" and arguing, the total\nimpression was curiously and beautifully artistic. I found, if I\nremember rightly, that subordination of the accidental to the essential\nthat I praised in \"Two in a Tower,\" and I am the more convinced that\nthis is so by my own recollections. I have forgotten all about social\nconditions, if any such things are indicated; I only think of women and\nof men, of the true, inalterable human nature; and here, it seems to me,\nyou have a very high achievement. But the next volume \"Discords\" took\ndistinctly lower ground. The artifice was better, the stories, as\nstories, were told with more skill and more deftness than anything in\n\"Keynotes\"; but there was no more literature; there was only the\n\"literature of the subject.\" The incidents were no longer symbols of an\nemotion; they had become the basis of an agitation, concerning which my\ncuriosity never led me to inquire further: and there you see another\nproof of the unconsciousness of art. If the author of \"Keynotes\" had\nunderstood her achievement \"Discords\" would never have been written. One\nmight continue the _catena_ almost _ad infinitum_: would not Wordsworth,\nsupposing him to have been a conscious artist, have rather cut off his\nright hand than have suffered such a _magisterium_ as the \"Ode on\nIntimations of Immortality\" to have the companionship of the enormous\nmass of futility and stupidity which constitutes the greater part of the\n\"Complete Works\"?\n\nWell, there is the evidence that must guide us in answering the question\nyou propounded, and it shows, conclusively enough, I think, that art is\nnot, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a conscious product.\nPerhaps it would be a perilous dogmatism, on the other hand, to\ndefinitely pronounce it to be unconscious; and I expect we had better\ntake refuge in the subconscious, that convenient name for the\ntranscendental element in human nature. For myself, I like best my old\nfigure of the Shadowy Companion, the invisible attendant who walks all\nthe way beside us, though his feet are in the Other World; and I think\nthat it is he who whispers to us his ineffable secrets, which we\nclumsily endeavour to set down in mortal language. I think that while\nthe artist works he is conscious of joy and of nothing more; he works\nbeautifully but he could give no _rationale_ of the process, and when he\nendeavours to explain himself, we are often perplexed by this strange\nspectacle of a man wholly ignorant of his own creation. Consider again\nthe grotesqueness of that preface to \"Pickwick\"; it is really as if a\ngreat sculptor, congratulated on his achievement, should answer that his\nVenus was indeed beautiful--because it tended to improve the marble\nindustry and the general knowledge of anatomy.\n\nAnd after all the conclusion does return to us from other than literary\nsources. You cannot conceive a builder of the fourteenth century\nhesitating as to the respective merits of Romanesque, Norman, First and\nSecond Pointed; to him there was only one possible method, and he built,\nas he spoke, without calculation and without conscious effort, only\nknowing the joy of his work. So indeed we all speak and live when we are\nnot bound by convention and acquired usages and manners, and you see\nthat art, properly so called, takes its place in the great scheme of\nthings; it is no studied contortion, no strange trick acquired by the\nlate ingenuity of man, but as \"natural\" (and as supernatural) as the\nblossoming of a flower, and the singing of the nightingale. Art, indeed,\nis wholly natural, artifice is more or less acquired, the creature of\nreason, of experiment, of systematised intelligence. It is doubtful, I\nsuppose, whether the natural, untaught man has of himself, by endowment,\nany artifice at all; doubtful, perhaps, whether, in the beginning, his\nartifice was not the product of his art; whether he did not learn to\nspeak with artifice because he had received from nature the art of\nsinging; certainly the child, entering the world, has not the inborn\nartifice of the swallow and the bee. This artifice, it seems, man has\nbeen forced to acquire by slow and painful degrees, and perhaps it only\ndiffers from the artifice of animals in that it has been aided and\nreinforced by imagination, that is by art, that is by the power the\nhuman soul possesses of projecting itself into the unknown, and\nadventuring in the realm of nothingness. Man, I mean, could never have\ninvented the telephone, had he not first created it, had he not\nconceived the possibility of its existence, when as yet, it was\nnon-existent, and so his artifice will always be progressive, and\ndistinguished from the artifice of animals.\n\nBut art is born with man, and is of the essence, the very differentia of\nman. It is of his very inmost being, and therefore, I suppose, is\nremoved from his consciousness simply because it is within and not from\nwithout. You may say that I have been vague, that I have not solved the\nproblem I propounded, that I have not clearly explained whether the\nGreeks knew what they did when they worshipped Dionysus, whether\nRabelais was conscious of an inner meaning in his praise of wine,\nwhether Dickens understood the value of his punch and brandy. But if I\nhave been vague it is because man, in the last analysis, is a tremendous\nmystery, because he is a complex being, because he is at once\nPantagruel, and Panurge, and Fr\u00e8re Jean, because he is both Don Quixote\nand Sancho Panza. In some cases Pantagruel and Panurge seem to speak a\ncommon language, to be able to communicate the one with the other: if\nRabelais wrote the \"Dive Bouteille\" chapters, he certainly understood\nmuch of that which he had expressed in symbols. Sometimes the two seem\nlike foreigners in one home, Pantagruel dictates, and Panurge the scribe\nwrites down his words, hardly or not at all comprehending the magic\nsymbols that he expresses. So Dickens ludicrously misinterprets his own\n\"Pickwick.\" And, doubtless, this understanding of the artificer of the\nartist varies in an almost infinite chain of _nuances_: there have been\nartists, perhaps, who have worked like men under the influence of\nhaschish, who have opened their mouths and prophesied, and then\nrecovering from the possession, have sat up and stared, and asked where\nthey were, and what they had been doing. Indeed, it may be that this was\nthe condition of the working of art in the very dawn of human life, for\nthis, no doubt, is the explanation of that old equation in which bards,\nmagicians, seers, prophets, and madmen ranked all together as men who\nspoke and worked miracles, things unintelligible to the \"common sense,\"\nto the understanding which regulates and arranges the affairs of the\ncommon life. All these were alike men of the mountains, men who withdrew\nfrom the camp, and went apart into high solitary places, into the lonely\nwilderness, into the forest, and in such retirements and cells they\nuttered the voices that came to them, speaking words that were\nunintelligible to themselves.\n\nOn the other hand there may have been artists in whom the two persons\nhave been happily reconciled, who have not only the \"gift of tongues\"\nbut also the gift of the interpretation of tongues. Even these, I think,\nare always \"possessed,\" ecstatic, rapt from their common nature at the\nmoment of inspiration, but afterwards, when the magic song is done, they\nawake and return and remember, and understand, in a measure at least,\nthe meaning of their prophecies. They never wholly understand, they are\nnever able to express in rational terms the _whole_ force of the\nmessage, for the good reason that the language of the soul infinitely\ntranscends the language of the understanding; because art is, indeed,\nthe sole channel by which the highest and purest truth can reach us. You\nmay, perhaps, succeed in giving a Boer \"some notion\" of a Greek chorus\nthrough the medium of the \"Taal,\" but it would be vain to dream of\ntranslating almost perfect beauty into that poor medium, framed for the\ntemporary and corporal necessities of rough and illiterate farmers. And\nso, however well an artist or those who appreciate his work may\n\"understand\" his meaning, they do but \"understand\" a little; since the\ntongue of art has many words which have no rendering in the speech of\nthe understanding.\n\nHere, then, is another form of our text which enables us to separate art\nfrom artifice, literature from reading matter. Artifice is explicable;\nyou remember that someone has said Thackeray was simply the ordinary\nclubman _plus_ genius and a style. We must correct his phrases: but if\nyou substitute an \"immense talent of observation\" for genius, and a\n\"great gift of expression\" for style, I think the definition admirable.\nThackeray, in short, is the clubman of heightened faculties; he differs\nnot in quiddity but in quality and quantity from his neighbour at the\nwindow; he looks more closely than Tom Eaves, and he can give you the\nresult of his inspection in better phrases and with a better system, but\nhe looks at the same things from the same standpoint, and you and I can\nadmire his work and be amused and delighted by it, but we have no sense\nof miracle, of transcendent vision and achievement. We simply see a man\nwho does the things that we do, but does them with a far greater\ndexterity: you may watch an acrobat with an immense admiration, but you\nrecognise that you, too, are potentially an acrobat, that with a little\ntraining you, too, could hang by the heels, though not with such grace,\nnor for so long a time.\n\nBut art is always miraculous. In its origin, in its working, in its\nresults it is beyond and above explanation, and the artist's\nunconsciousness is only one phase of its infinite mysteries.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nI am afraid that at our last conversation I rather spoke to you \"as if\nyou were a public meeting.\" Not precisely in that manner, perhaps, since\nno public meeting that I can imagine would have stood me for a moment,\nbut I fear that I was what is called \"high-flown.\" And yet how can one\navoid that reproach? Look here: let us suppose an examination paper, and\nthe following questions set.\n\n1. Explain, in rational terms, the \"Quest of the Holy Graal.\" State\nwhether in your opinion such a vessel ever existed, and if you think it\ndid not, justify your pleasure in reading the account of the search for\nit.\n\n2. Explain, logically, your delight in colour. State, in terms that\nVoltaire would have understood, the meaning of the phrase, \"the beauty\nof line.\"\n\n3. What do you mean by the word \"music\"? Give the rational explanation\nof Bach's Fugues, showing them to be as (1) true as Biology and (2)\nuseful as Applied Mechanics.\n\n4. Estimate the value of Westminster Abbey in the Avoirdupois measure.\n\n5. \"The light that never was on land or sea.\" What light?\n\n6. \"Faery lands forlorn.\" Draw a map of the district in question,\nputting in principal towns, and naming exports.\n\n7. Show that, \"heaven lies about us in our infancy\" must mean \"wholesome\nmaternal influences surround us in our childhood.\"\n\nYou say that is all nonsense? that one cannot express art of any kind in\nthe terms of rationalism? Well, I agree with you that it _is_ nonsense;\nthat the tables of weights and measures give no \u00e6sthetic guide to the\nvalue of Westminster Abbey; but if we agree on this I am afraid that we\nmust be content to be called high-flown. Having once for all settled\nthat \"common sense\" has nothing to do with literary art, we must be, I\nsuppose, uncommon, and (apparently) nonsensical if we want to talk about\nit to any profit. That is what it comes to, after all. If literature be\na kind of dignified reporting, in which the reporter is at liberty to\ninvent some incidents and leave out others, and to arrange all in the\norder that pleases him best; then, let us have as much \"common sense\"\nand \"rationalism\" as you please, and the more the better; but if\nliterature is a mysterious ecstasy, the withdrawal from all common and\nordinary conditions--well, I suppose, we had better be mystics when we\ndiscuss the subject, and frankly confess that with its first principles\nlogic has nothing to do. I suppose that there are only two parties in\nthe world: the Rationalists and the Mystics, and one's vote on\nliterature goes with one's party. One might leave the matter there, and\namiably agree to differ with the other side, but I, personally, have the\nferocity to insist, that my side, the mystical, is wholly right, and the\nother, the rationalist, wholly wrong, and moreover I shall be so\nindecent as to prove the truth of my position. But, I have done so, and\nwith that \"Examination Paper\" I just read out to you. For if rationalism\nbe the truth, then all literature, all that both sides agree in thinking\nthe finest literature is simple lunacy, and all the world of the arts\nmust go into the region of mania. Take the lowest, the simplest\ninstance. Here is a knife with a wooden handle, and the handle has\ncertain curious carved designs on it, which do _not_ enable it to be\nheld better. Why is this knife better, more to be valued, than that\nother knife, which is not decorated at all? It does not cut better; it\ndoes not justify its existence and purpose as a knife more than the\nother; where is its superiority? Because I find pleasure in seeing those\ndesigns? But _why_ do I find any pleasure in ornament? What is the\nrationalistic justification for that pleasure? By logical definition a\nknife is an instrument for cutting, and nothing else; the plain cuts as\nwell as the ornate; _why_ then are you sorry if you lose the one, while\nyou don't care twopence for the loss of the other? You have at last to\nanswer that you have a joy which you cannot in any way define in the\npurely decorative pattern; and with that answer the whole system of\nrationalism topples over. Rationalism may say to you: Either give a\ndefinite reason for going to Mass, or leave off going. You have only to\nanswer: Your command is based on the premiss that one should do nothing\nwithout being able to give a definite reason for it. But I can give no\ndefinite reason for liking--the Odyssey or a curiously carved knife--and\nyet you confess that I am right in liking these things. Then I have\nproved the contradictory of your premiss, as you have admitted that\nthere are things that one may do without being able to give a definite\nreason for doing them: _ergo_, I shall not neglect the \"parson's bell.\"\n\nOf course, all this is altogether outside of my business; but I confess\nI am fond of carrying things to their limits. You remember how poor S.\nT. C. used to talk, humbly and yet proudly, of \"my system,\" though I am\nafraid \"my system,\" never emerged from the state of fragments and\n_disjecta membra_. And I too, though I have only broken morsels and\nruinous stones to show for the splendid outlines and indicated arches of\nColeridge, still like to follow up an argument whithersoever it will\nlead me, regardless of consequences; and this, I am sure, should count\nfor righteousness with our friends the rationalists. I love to start a\n_sorites_, something as follows: I admire that odd but beautiful little\ndecorative scheme on the seventeenth century chest, and therefore, I\nthink poetry, as poetry, finer than prose, as prose. Hence I approve of\n\"Ritualism\" in the service of the church, and from the same premiss I\ndraw the conclusion that Keats was a poet and that Pope was not. Pope\nnot being a poet, it follows that to \"intone\" is in every way better\nthan to \"read\" the Liturgy and the Offices, and \"reading\" the service\nbeing wrong, you will easily infer that I dislike Mr Frith's pictures.\nAnd after learning that I do not care for the \"Derby Day,\" you will\nscarcely require my opinion as to the (theoretical) righteousness of the\nfirst Reform Bill, and from my attitude towards Lord John Russell's\nmeasure, you can, of course, guess my opinion on the respective merits\nof the French and English languages as literary instruments. And French\nbeing vastly inferior to English, it necessarily follows that the\nEnglish Reformation was a great (though perhaps unavoidable) misfortune.\nHence, you see, admiring certain lines cut in an old oaken box, I am led\nby the strictest logic to dislike the religious policy of Edward VI.,\nwith all the other consequences in order; and on the other hand if I saw\nno sense in that rude ornament I should be an Atheist, or at the\nmildest, an attendant at Pleasant Sunday Afternoons, with George Eliot\nfor my favourite reading.\n\nYes, I like my theories to \"work through,\" and I confess that my belief\nin the truth of \"my system\" is very much strengthened by the fact that\nit does \"work through,\" that it seems to me justified by the facts of\nlife. I mean that the premiss which enables me to declare Keats to be a\npoet and Pope not to be a poet does really enable me to pronounce\ndemocracy to be a bad system in theory; and the premiss baldly stated is\nsimply this: that logic does not cover life, or in other words, that\nlife cannot be judged by the rules of logic, of common sense.\n\nBut yet I am using logic all the time, you say? Certainly, but I am\nusing it in its right place, to do the work for which it is competent.\nIf I say that a scythe is not exactly the instrument for performing a\nsurgical operation, I am not therefore bound to have my meadow mown with\na bistoury? A microscope is good and a telescope is good, but it is the\nmicroscope that one uses in bacteriology. You know, don't you, that ever\nsince that unhappy Reformation of ours people have been talking nonsense\nabout the Aristotelian logic, and fumbling, in the most grotesque\nmanner, for some \"new\" logic. Our great false prophet Bacon (a wretch\ninfinitely more guilty than Hobbes) began it in England with his \"Novum\nOrganum\"; and if you wish to really estimate \"educated\" folly, to touch\nthe bottom of the incredible depths to which a man of information may\nsink, read Macaulay's comparison of the \"old\" philosophy and the \"new\"\nphilosophy. The essayist says that the \"old\" philosophy was no good,\nbecause it never led up to the steam-engine and the telegraph post.\nIsn't it almost humiliating to think that we have to acknowledge\nourselves of the same genus as that \"brilliant\" Macaulay? But if I told\nyou that the Greek Alphabet was no good because it has never grilled a\nsingle steak you would probably get uneasy and make for the door, and if\nyou were charitable you would tell the landlady that I ought to be\n\"taken care of.\" But such a remark as that is no whit more lunatic than\nMacaulay's \"comparison\" between philosophy, properly so called, and\nphysical science applied to utilitarian purposes. Well, all the\nportentous stuff that has been written about logic is nonsense of\nexactly the same kind. The scholastic logic, people said, won't discover\nthe truth. That is perfectly true, but then the scholastic logic was not\nintended to discover truth. It will draw conclusions from truths already\ndiscovered, from premisses granted, but it wont make premisses any more\nthan a scythe will make grass. And, it is, curiously enough, the very\nclass of people who despise the formal logic, who insist on your giving\nlogical reasons for actions and emotions which are altogether outside\nthe jurisdiction of logic. With one breath they say: Aristotle is\nuseless, because the \"Organon\" could never have led men to discover the\nstomach-pump; and with the next breath they ask you what you mean by\nadmiring the \"Ode on a Grecian Urn\" if you can't give any logical reason\nfor your admiration. Your religion doesn't rest on a logical foundation,\nthey say. But does anything of any consequence rest on a logical\nfoundation? Can you reduce the \"Morte d'Arthur\" into valid syllogisms in\n_Barbara_, can you \"disprove\" Salisbury Cathedral by the aid of\n_Celarent_. What is the \"rational\" explanation of our wonder and joy at\nthe vision of the hills? Are a great symphony, the swell and triumph of\nthe organ, the voices of the choristers, to be tested by the process of\nthe understanding? But perhaps I am misjudging the people who ask these\nquestions. When they say that logic does not discover truth, they\ndoubtless mean by logic that formal analysis of the ratiocinative\nprocess that is rightly so called; but I am inclined to think that when\nthey condemn religious or artistic emotions because they are\n\"illogical,\" they mean by \"illogical\" that which does not conduce to the\nease and comfort of the digestive apparatus or the money-making faculty.\nThey are terrible fellows, you know, some of these persons. For example,\nI asked, with a tone of undue triumph, I am afraid, for the \"reason why\"\nwe experience awe and delight in the presence of the hills. But in\ncertain quarters my problem would be very quickly solved. I should be\ntold, more in sorrow than in anger, that my emotion at the sight of\ncertain shapes of earth was due to the fact that hill air was highly\nozonised, and that the human race had acquired an instinctive pleasure\nin breathing it, greatly to its digestive profit. And if I tried to turn\nthe tables by declaring that I experienced an equal, though a different\ndelight in the spectacle of a desolate, smoking marsh, where a red sun\nsinks from a world of shivering reeds, I suppose I should hear that some\nremote ancestor of mine had found in some such place \"pterodactyls\nplentiful and strong on the wing.\" And if I like the woods, it was\nbecause a monkey sat at the root of my family tree, and if I love an\nancient garden it is because I am \"second cousin to the worm.\"\n\nThere: I confess it is difficult to keep one's temper with these people,\nbut one must try to do so. Do you remember how Trunnion's marriage was\ndelayed? The bridegroom set out bravely with his retinue for the\nparish-church, where the bride waited a whole half hour--in vain. A\nmessenger was sent who saw:\n\n\"The whole troop disposed in a long field, crossing the road obliquely,\nand headed by the bridegroom and his friend Hatchway, who finding\nhimself hindered by a hedge from proceeding farther in the same\ndirection, fired a pistol and stood over to the other side, making an\nobtuse angle with the line of his former course; and the rest of the\nsquadron followed his example, keeping always in the rear of each other\nlike a flight of wild geese.\n\n\"Surprised at this strange method of journeying, the messenger came up\n... and desired he would proceed with more expedition. To this message\nMr Trunnion replied, 'Hark ye, brother, don't you see we make all\npossible speed? Go back, and tell those who sent you, that the wind has\nshifted since we weighed anchor, and that we are obliged to make short\ntrips in tacking, by reason of the narrowness of the channel; and that,\nas we lie within six points of the wind, they must make some allowance\nfor variation and leeway.' 'Lord, sir!' said the valet, 'what occasion\nhave you to go zig-zag in that manner? Do but clap spurs to your horses,\nand ride straight forward, and I'll engage you shall be at the church\nporch in less than a quarter of an hour.' 'What! right in the wind's\neye?' answered the commander. 'Ahey! brother, where did you learn your\nnavigation?'\"\n\nYou see Commodore Trunnion's \"logic\" was perfect, only it was the logic\nof seamanship and not of riding to church on horseback. There are a good\nmany people at the present day who are quite unable to get to church in\ntime, for \"reasons\" as valid as Trunnion's; and when I hear of \"the\nscientific basis of literature\" I am always a little reminded of those\nscarecrows straggling in short tacks from one side of the lane to the\nother on their way to the wedding. The moral is, you know, that they\ndidn't get there.\n\nI tackled a materialist once on very similar lines. He began by saying\nthat time and thought devoted to religion (they never see that art and\nreligion stand or fall together, religion being the foundation of the fine\narts) were an utter waste of time as they only diverted us from\nconsideration of the present world, which we ought to study to the utmost;\nand he went on to praise some saying of Confucius on the folly of\ntroubling about the future things. Then I went for him. He had to admit\nthat agriculture is good, and I pointed out to him that England was\nchanged from a savage wilderness into a pleasant garden by the monastic\nhouses. He agreed that to found and endow hospitals and alms-houses was\nnot precisely a waste of time, and I showed him that such institutions\nwere begun by the religion of the past and carried on by the religion of\nthe present. Then he allowed, in response to my Socratic question, that\npainting was something, and I demonstrated that all painting arose from\nthe religious impulse, that the greatest paintings in the world were meant\nto adorn churches. Then he admitted the value of architecture, and he got\nthe Parthenon, all the medi\u00e6val cathedrals, and the wonderful mound\ntemples of Ceylon right at his head. He granted me that travel civilised,\nand I rubbed in the pilgrimage; he confessed that he liked to read the\nLatin and Greek classics--sometimes--and he received from me information\nas to the monastic scriptorium, and its part in the preservation of the\nold literature. As for the blessedness of forming one's character on the\nteaching of Confucius; there happened to be an article in the morning's\npaper on the Mandarin class! Well, my rationalist hadn't anything to say\nto it at all, with the exception of some vague remark that the Romans made\nroads, which, considering the state of England in the sixth century, was\nabout as helpful as the somewhat similar remark of Mr F's. Aunt--that\nthere are milestones on the Dover Road. I told him that the only Roman\ncivilisation which contributed to the making of our country was that\nbrought over by St Austin; and he had to allow that his statement that\nreligion was a waste of time, an elaborate form of idleness, was, to put\nit mildly, not proven. Then he said kindly but firmly that religion wasn't\nrational, and I used up most of the arguments that I have used to-night; I\nmean, I showed him that it is good to paint pictures, to write poems, to\ndevise romances, and to compose symphonies, and that it is also good to\nmeditate and enjoy all these things. Hence, he was forced to admit, that\nhis suppressed premiss had been disproved, and that he must no longer\nsay: \"that which is not rational is absurd.\"\n\nAnd then, I think, the fun really began. I carried the war into the very\ncamp of the enemy; that is, into actual, observable life, into the every\nday world of fact and experience. You talk about \"reason,\" I said, and I\npresume you won't mind if I substitute, occasionally, \"common sense\" for\nreason, as I think that in your phraseology the two terms are very\nfairly equated. Very well, then, don't you think that there is a good\ndeal of common sense in many of the actions of animals? Take the case of\nthe small birds who mob an owl all day, in order that their enemy may be\nkept awake, and so unable to hoot at night. Take the case of the ants,\nwho milk the aphides, and go slave-hunting. Take the bees, who rise to\nan emergency, and remedy, with singular contrivance, the threatened lack\nof a queen. Take the dog, who brought a wounded fellow to the hospital\nwhere he had been cured. All these are instances of common sense, aren't\nthey, as rational as the telegram \"Sell Cobras at once\"? Very good;\nanimals, then, have a plentiful supply of reason, and not of a mere\nmechanical reason, but of reason that can rise to the height of\nunforeseen cases, and remedy unexpected evils. When the experimenter\ntilted the bees' house to one side, so that the equilibrium was in\ndanger, a sufficient number of bees climbed up, and placed themselves on\nthe other side so that they constituted a balance; here there was no\nmechanism, but a calculated and rational contrivance. Animals, then,\nhave reason and its effect artifice; the adaptation of means to secure\nends. But, then, how about instinct? By what motion does the swallow\nmake her nest in spring? Can the bee demonstrate the advantages of the\nhexagon cell? Does the fly, laying its eggs, here and there, in this or\nin that according to its kind, in meat or in dung, or in the crevices of\na wall, rationally foresee that it is providing for the future grub its\nonly possible food? No; but then animals, even, perform \"irrational\"\nactions; though they have common sense they do things which must be\ntroublesome to them, at some instance, which is not common sense. But if\na bluebottle lays her eggs in my beef, and knows not why, perhaps I, a\nman, may sing the _Sanctus_, and pray that I may be joined _cum angelis\net archangelis, cum thronis et dominationbus, Cumque omni militi\u00e2\nc\u00e6lestis exercitus_.\n\nAnd consider our own human life; the great _coups_ of war, commerce,\ndiplomacy, of all the conduct of life, are often, or usually, the result\nof \"intuitions,\" that is of irrational and inexplicable mental\nprocesses, which elude all analysis. If the knowledge, the successful\nand triumphant knowledge of men and affairs and strategy were a\n\"rational\" product; then, indeed, Carlyle's dictum were true, and each\none of us were, at choice, a man of genius in diplomacy, or business, or\nbattle. We know that it is not so, and that no man by taking thought can\nmake himself, say, a Stonewall Jackson. And we have all heard of the\n\"woman's reason\"--\"I don't know why I am sure that x = a, but I am\nsure\"--and this extremely irrational process often corresponds with the\ntruth. So, I finished up, your \"reason\" far from being the despot of the\nworld, turns out to be a humble, though useful, deputy-assistant\ncouncillor-general, and is by no means a prerogative force, even in\naffairs of common, everyday existence. Why, \"reason,\" alone and\nunassisted, won't enable you to make a decent living by selling ribbons\nand laces, and you have been trying to make me accept its dictation in\nthe highest affairs of the soul. You have been appealing from the\nKing's Majesty in Council to the Magistrates of Little Pedlington in\nPetty Sessions assembled!\n\nThen my rationalist made a point. You know, he said, that some men seem\nto have an almost miraculous skill in solving mathematical problems:\nwould you, therefore, give up teaching the ordinary arithmetic? I was\nnot alarmed; I pointed out that the analogy was not quite perfect. The\ncase, I said, was this. A certain number of \"problems\" were,\nconfessedly, beyond the jurisdiction of the \"ordinary arithmetic\"\naltogether, but offered no difficulties to the \"lightning calculator,\"\nwho obtained results that were demonstratively correct, and I therefore\nthought it well to trust to him in all problems of a similar character,\neven though the \"ordinary arithmetic,\" confessedly incompetent, assured\nme that his answers were wholly unreliable--a case of a schoolboy, well\non in Colenso, scouting the Binomial Theorem because one couldn't prove\nit by Practice or the Rule of Three. I left then, unanswered, and I\nsuppose my friend passed the rest of the evening in showing that\nSalisbury Cathedral was \"opposed\" to the facts of Biology, and that\nSisters of Charity are to be classed with criminal lunatics.\n\nBut, you know, I was the real lunatic. You would not have \"argued\" with\nme if I _had_ disparaged the Greek alphabet, because it never grilled a\nsingle steak; I hinted the course you would probably have pursued if I\nhad chanced to make such an alarming remark. And why should I argue with\nthe sect of Macaulay, with the tribe which utters such stuff as this:\n\n\"Assuredly if the tree which Socrates planted and Plato watered is to be\njudged of by its flowers and leaves, it is the noblest of trees. But if\nwe take the homely test of Bacon--if we judge the tree by its\n_fruits_--our opinion of it may be less favourable. When we sum up the\nuseful truths which we owe to that philosophy, to what do they\namount.... But when we look for something more--for something which adds\nto the comfort or alleviates the calamities of the human race--we are\nforced to own ourselves disappointed.\"\n\nNo; there is, really, nothing to be said. If the Learned Pig found voice\nand articulate speech and expressed his scorn of the poet's art, since\nit added nothing to the pleasures of the wash-tub, we might wonder but\nwe should not argue; and it were idle to contend with a Laughing\nJackass, contemptuously amused by the chanting of the cathedral choir.\n\nAnd, perhaps, you are wondering what all this talk of mine has to do\nwith our main subject--literature? But don't you see that all the while\nI have merely been reiterating our old conclusions in a new phraseology?\nI may have appeared to you to be the last of the Cavaliers, gallantly\ncontending for the rights of Holy Church, but, in reality, I have been\nshowing, at every step, that Jane Austen's works are not literature.\nYes, but it is so. If the science of life, if philosophy, consisted of a\nseries of mathematical propositions, capable of rational demonstration,\nthen, \"Pride and Prejudice\" would be the highest pinnacle of the\nliterary art; but if not, but oh! if we, being wondrous, journey through\na wonderful world, if all our joys are from above, from the other world\nwhere the Shadowy Companion walks, then no mere making of the likeness\nof the external shape will be our art, no veracious document will be our\ntruth; but to us, initiated, the Symbol will be offered, and we shall\ntake the Sign and adore, beneath the outward and perhaps unlovely\naccidents, the very Presence and eternal indwelling of God.\n\nWe have tracked Ecstasy by many strange paths, in divers strange\ndisguises, but I think that now, and only now, we have discovered its\nfull and perfect definition. For Artifice is of Time, but Art is of\nEternity.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX\n\n\nPoe was not altogether right in saying that the object of poetry was\nBeauty as distinguished from Truth. I don't for a moment suppose that\nhis meaning was amiss, but I hardly like his expression of it. I should\ncontend, on the other hand, that poetry \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4' \u1f10\u03be\u03bf\u03c7\u03ae\u03bd, and literature,\ngenerally, are the sole media by which the very highest truth can be\nconveyed. Poe, no doubt, meant to state a proposition which is true and\nself-evident--that poetry has nothing to do with scientific truth, or\nfacts, or information of any kind, and I say that that proposition is\nself-evident, because we have already seen that in literature, facts as\nfacts, have no existence at all. They are only \"words\" in the language\nof literary art, and are used as symbols of something else. That A. is\nin love with B. is a \"scientific truth,\" a fact; but if it be not also a\nsymbol, it has no literary existence whatever; and this of course is\nwhat Poe wished to say--literature is not a matter of information.\n\nBut I doubt, after all, whether Poe had quite grasped the theory of\nliterature, of all the arts. You remember that he says that he yields to\nno man in his love of the truth; and unless he meant the highest truth\nthe statement is almost nonsensical. No one, I should imagine, surely\nnot Poe, would express his enthusiasm for facts as facts, would adore\ncorrect information in the abstract. You remember what Rossetti\nsaid--that he neither knew nor cared whether the sun went round the\nearth or the earth round the sun--and so far as art is concerned this\nis, no doubt, the expression of the true faith, which, from what we know\nof Poe, would be his faith also. We should therefore conclude that by\ntruth he meant philosophical truth, the highest truth, the essential\ntruth as distinguished from the accidental, the universal as\ndistinguished from the particular. Yet in the next breath he contrasts\nthis Truth with Beauty, being clearly under the impression that they\nwere two different things. Of course he was completely mistaken. In the\nlast analysis it is entirely true that \"Beauty is Truth and Truth\nBeauty\": they are one and the same entity seen from different points of\nview. You will see how this fits in with all we have been saying about\nliterature lately: how we can if we please put our test of literature\ninto yet another phraseology. For instance: \"Vanity Fair\" is\ninformation, while \"Pickwick\" is Truth; the one tells you a number of\nfacts about Becky Sharpe and other people, while the other symbolises\ncertain eternal and essential elements in human nature by means of\nincidents. And, as I said, it is doubtful whether truth in this, its\nhighest and its real significance, can be adequately expressed in any\nother way. All the profound verities which have been revealed to man\nhave come to him under the guise of myths and symbols--such as the myth\nof Dionysus--and truth in the form of a mathematical demonstration or a\n\"rational\" statement is a contradiction in terms. Yet note the profound\nvice of language; we are obliged to use the same word to imply things\nwhich are separated by an immeasurable gulf. It is \"true\" that Mrs\nStickings sent away Ethelberta to-night (you imparted that interesting\nfact, and I rely on your testimony), and the \"Don Quixote\" is \"true\":\nthat is, it conveys to us by means of symbols the verities of our own\nnature.\n\nBut Poe had not grasped the essential distinction between literature\nand \"literature.\" He thought that poetry alone should be beautiful, or\nas we should say, ecstatic; he did not see that the qualities which make\npoetry to be what it is must also be present in prose if it is to be\nsomething more than \"reading-matter.\" Poetry of course is literature in\nits purest state; it is, as I think I once said, _almost_ the soul\nwithout the body; at its highest it is _almost_ pure art unmixed with\nthe alloy of artifice. And to carry on the analysis, the finest form of\npoetry is necessarily the lyrical. Where you get the element of\nnarrative, you are apt also to get the element of prose; there have to\nbe passages linking the raptures together, and these will, probably or\nindeed necessarily, run on lower levels.\n\nOf course primitive man had moods in which rapture seemed to embrace\neverything, to invest every detail of existence with its own singular\nand inexplicable glory. A meal by the seashore, the dry wood flaming and\ncrackling on the sand, the roasting goat's flesh, the honey-sweet wine,\ndark and almost as glorious as the sea itself--a mere dinner of\nhalf-savages, one might think it, but it too seems to have its solemnity\nand its inner meaning. I believe this element in the early poetry has\noften been noticed; people have wondered at the _na\u00efve_ delight with\nwhich the writers describe the work of man's hands, and they are, I\nthink, inclined to account for it on the ground that then everything was\nnew. This might pass, perhaps, since as you, no doubt, perceive,\n\"everything new\" means \"everything unknown\" (that which is known is no\nlonger new), but I hardly think that the explanation can stand in its\npresent form. I am not at all up in the theories which assign this or\nthat age to the appearance of man on the earth, but I presume that on\nthe gentlest and most antiquated computation man must have long known\nthe world before Homer wrote; so one scarcely sees that human skill and\nart, the knack of making things and the gift of adorning them, could\nhave been novelties, or in any sense, \"things unknown.\" I repeat I know\nnothing or next to nothing about these dates in anthropology, but one\nhas heard something about the neolithic age, and the pal\u00e6olithic age,\nabout the very early man who scratched the rude likeness of a reindeer\non the brute's own bone, and so there hardly seems room for this theory\nof novelty. And besides, as we have seen, the rapture is universal or\nall but universal; it colours the whole of life, including the meal by\nthe seashore; and there, we see, there was no possibility of invention\nor sense of newness. No; the theory is tempting, and it would fall in\nperfectly, as I daresay you see, with all that we have concluded about\nliterature, but I really think that it must be definitely abandoned. No;\nit seems to me that primitive man, Homeric man, medi\u00e6val man, man,\nindeed, almost to our own day when the School Board (and other things)\nhave got hold of him, had such an unconscious but all-pervading,\nall-influencing conviction that he was a wonderful being, descended of a\nwonderful ancestry, and surrounded by mysteries of all kinds, that even\nthe smallest details of his life partook of the ruling ecstasy; he was\nso sure that he was miraculous that it seemed that no part of his life\ncould escape from the miracle, so that to him every meal became a\nsacrament.\n\nIt is the attitude of the primitive man, of the real man, of the child,\nalways and everywhere; it may be briefly summed up in the phrase: things\nare because they are wonderful. This, of course, is the atmosphere in\nwhich poets ought to live, and in which poetry should be produced.\nFormerly it was natural to all men or almost all; now, perhaps, it has\nto be regained by a conscious effort; and the difficulty of the effort,\nthe impossibility of sustaining it for long, explain the supremacy of\nlyrical poetry. If you lived in a world that could regard a common meal\nas a sacrament, you could be supreme in narrative poetry; but, that\natmosphere wanting, we have to be content for the most part with the\nlyric, with the simple incantation, without any description of the\ncircumstance or occasion.\n\nYet prose, though it yields in much to the world, must still keep the\nsame ideal before it as poetry. I say, distinctly, that the only\nessential, defining difference between the two is to be sought in the\n\"numbering\" of poetry, in the fact that art, in its intensest raptures,\nin its most truly \"natural\" moment, desires and obtains the strictest\nand most formal laws. It is, I suppose, immaterial what these laws are,\nrhyme, assonance, accents, feet, alliteration, all testify to the\nimportant and essential rule that freedom is chiefly free when it is\nmost bound and bounded by restrictions which _we_ should call\nartificial, which are, in truth, in the highest sense, natural. And\nthis, I am sure, is the only possible distinction that can be\nestablished between such a book as the \"Odyssey\" and such a book as the\n\"Morte d'Arthur.\" Neither is \"prosaic\" in the common sense of the word;\neach is \"poetical\"; but the Greek book is poetry because it is numbered,\nand the English is prose because it lacks number. Of course there are\ndifficult cases; hybrids, as there always are, whatever laws one may lay\ndown.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThat word \"natural\" is another of the many traps that language sets us.\nI think that its real meaning has become almost reversed. Take the\naverage man to church, and ask him his opinion of the \"intoning,\" and in\nnine cases out of ten he will say that it may be pretty, but that it is\nvery unnatural. He means, of course, that speaking is natural, and that\nsinging--\"numerosity\" of tone--is not natural, is, in a word,\nartificial. He is utterly wrong. It is artificial to speak in the\nordinary manner, while the priests' chant, and every chant are purely\nnatural. For the proof of this you have only to read a little--a very\nlittle--about primitive, or \"natural\" peoples, or, more simply, to\nlisten to children at play. You will always find that where convention\nhas not cast out nature, some kind of \"sing-song,\" some sort of chant is\nthe entirely natural utterance of man in his most fervent, that is, his\nmost natural moments. Listen to half-a-dozen children (children, you\nmust remember, are all \"primitives\" and therefore natural) playing some\ngame, learning their lesson at school. Their voices are pretty sure to\nfall into a very rude, but a distinctly measured, chant. The Greek drama\nwas intoned, the Koran is intoned, the Welsh preacher of to-day at the\nimpassioned height of eloquence begins to chant, the Persian\npassion-plays are recited in a sing-song. Nay, but listen only to our\ngreat tragic actor. Quite unconsciously, I am sure, he has elaborated\nfor himself a distinctly musical and measured utterance, so that a\nskilful musician, provided with scored paper, could note Irving's\ndelivery of many passages, as if it were music. The Chinese language, I\nam told, depends largely on the tonal variations which distinguish the\nmeaning of one word from that of another; you will find the same thing\nin the Norwegian; and the Jewish \"cantillation,\" which is \"sing-song\" in\na very simple form, bears witness to the truth--that \"speaking\" is\nacquired, conventional, and artificial, while \"singing\" is natural. All\nthis would be perfectly clear in itself, would require no demonstration\nof any kind, if it were not for the fact that we have, somehow or other,\ngot into the way of making the very impudent assumption that man is only\nnatural when he is doing business on the Stock-Exchange or reading\nleading-articles. It seems almost too nonsensical an assumption to put\ninto words, but I really do believe that \"at the back of our heads\"\nthere is a sort of vague, floating idea that there never were any real\nmen at all till the period of the first Reform Bill, and I suppose that\nbefore very long Lord John Russell will be pushed back into the region\nof myth, and the foundation of the School Board will be the era of true\nhumanity. I say, this sounds too ridiculous, but examine yourself and\nsee whether you don't dimly believe that before the advent of trousers\nthe whole world was really \"play-acting,\" that existence in the days of\nlaced coats was, in a way, a kind of phantasmagoria, and that a man who\nwore chain-mail was hardly a man. I believe it really is so, and you\nwill find the same nonsense influencing religious opinion. Take your\naverage Protestant, and I am much mistaken if you do not discover that\nhe believes some grotesque preacher, in his greasy black suit, mouthing\nplatitudes at his conventicle to be somehow more \"natural\" than the\npriest, clad in the mystical robes of his office, chanting Mass at the\naltar. But in literature--why this perversion of the word influences the\nwhole of criticism. Jane Austen, we say, is natural, and Edgar Allan Poe\nis unnatural, or as it is sometimes expressed, inhuman. Of course, if\nyou wish for the truth, the proposition must be reversed, unless you are\nwilling to believe that a Company Prospectus is, somehow, more natural\nand more human than, say, Tennyson's \"Fatima.\" If you think that the\nreal man is the stomach, there is, of course, an end of the discussion;\nbut then we should have to admit that all the greatest artists of the\nworld were maniacs. But you see clearly, don't you, that all these\nquestions as to what we shall get for dinner, and whom shall we meet at\ndinner, and in what order shall we go into dinner, and how shall we\nbehave at dinner, are in no sense natural, since they are all so purely\ntemporary, since they will be answered by one age in a manner that will\nseem wholly \"unnatural\" to the next. That, I think, is truly natural\nwhich is unchanging, which belongs to men always, at all times, and in\nall ages. In this sense, ecstasy is natural to man, and it finds\nexpression in the arts, in poetry, in romance, in singing, in melody, in\ndancing, in painting, in architecture. Many animals have sufficient\nartifice to shelter themselves from the weather, no animal has\narchitecture, or the art of beauty in building; many animals, or all\nanimals, have the faculty of communicating with one another by means of\nsigns, but man alone has the art of language.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHas it ever struck you while I have been talking of ecstasy in books,\nthat it is nearly always a question of degree, of more or less? I think\nI indicated as much while I was talking about \"Pickwick\"; I showed how\nthe ecstatic conception had been alloyed with much baser matter, in\nother words that there was much in \"Pickwick\" that was by no means\nliterature. And, I daresay, though I am not sure, that if you were to go\nthrough your Meredith you might succeed in finding some passages and\nsentences which are literature, and for all I know there may be hints\nof rapture between the lines of \"Pride and Prejudice.\" Still, we do not\ncall a man poet on the strength of a single line.\n\nBut sometimes one is confronted with books which are really very\ndifficult to judge, and this sometimes happens because the ecstasy, the\ntrue literary feeling, supposing it to be present, is present not here\nor there, not in a phrase or in a particular passage, but throughout, in\na very weak solution, if one may borrow the phraseology of physical\nscience. We read such books, and are puzzled, feeling that, somehow,\nthey are literature, only we can't say why, since on the face of it they\nseem only to be entertaining reading. Do you know that I can conceive\nmany people who would find something of this difficulty in Mark Twain's\n\"Huckleberry Finn\"? Here you have a tale of the rude America of forty or\nfifty years ago, of a Mississippi village, full of the most ordinary\npeople, of a boy and a negro who \"run away.\" I don't think anyone with\nthe slightest perception of literature could read it without\nexperiencing extraordinary delight, but I can imagine many people would\nbe a good deal puzzled to justify the pleasure they had received. The\n\"stuff\" of the book is so very common and commonplace, isn't it, it\nseems so frankly a rough bit of recollection drawn up from the author's\nboyish days with jottings added from the time when he was a pilot on one\nof the river-boats--it is all so apparently devoid of \"literary\" feeling\nthat I am sure many a reader must have felt greatly ashamed of his huge\nenjoyment. To me \"Huckleberry Finn\" is not a very difficult case. That\nflight by night down the great unknown, rolling river, between the dim\nmarshy lands and the high \"bluffs\" of the other shore comes in my mind\nwell under the great \"Odyssey\" class; it has, indeed, the old,\nunquenchable joy of wandering into the unknown in a more acute degree\nthan \"Pickwick,\" which, as we have seen, is to be reckoned under the\nsame heading. In a word it is pure romance, and you will note that the\nstory is told by a boy, and that by this method a larger element of\nwonder is secured, for even in this absurd age children are allowed to\nbe amazed at the spectacle of the world. In the mouth of a man the tale\nwould necessarily have lost somewhat of its \"strangeness,\" since partly\nfrom affectation, partly from vicious training, partly from the\nabsorption of the \"getting-on\" process, grown-up people have largely\nsucceeded in quenching the sense of mystery which should be their\nprincipal delight. You have only to read the average book of travels to\nsee how this affectation (or perversion of the soul) has deprived the\nseeing being of his sight. Dip into a book--say a book on China--and you\nwill probably find that Pekin streets are dusty in summer and muddy in\nwinter, and that the author caught cold through imprudent bathing. So it\nis well for us that Mark Twain put his story in the mouth of an\n\"infant,\" who is frankly at liberty to express his sense of the marvels\nof the world. Later, there is an introduction of the \"literary\" feeling;\nthose chapters about Jim's \"Evasion\" are very Cervantic in their\nartifice and method, but, to my thinking, they have lost the spirit,\nthough they preserve the body. They are most amusing reading, but they\nare burlesque and nothing more than burlesque; and from them one can\nalmost imagine what \"Don Quixote\" would have been if it had been written\nby a very clever man, by an artificer who was not an artist. But the\nearlier chapters are wonderfully fine, and I think that it would be\ndifficult to find a more successful rendering of the old \"wandering\"\ntheme with modern language.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut there is another writer who is much more difficult to account for--I\nmean Miss Wilkins. I confess I find her tales delightful, and I often\nread them, but as you know I am not content to rest on my own pleasure\nin literary criticism. We are no longer talking of the great\nmasterpieces, of the gigantic achievements of such men as Homer,\nSophocles, Rabelais, Cervantes; we agreed that when we spoke of these\ngreat, enduring miracles of art, it was best to lay aside all question\nof liking or not liking, of reading often or reading seldom. But when\none comes to modern days, to books which have yet to prove their merit\nby the test of their endurance, it is pardonable if one is sometimes a\nlittle confused, if one fails to discriminate at once between the merely\ninteresting and the really artistic. I may be so delighted with a book\nfor reasons that have nothing to do with art, that, by an unconscious\ntrick of the mind, I persuade myself that I am reading literature while\nthere is only reading-matter. And at one time I was inclined to think\nthat I had \"confused\" Miss Wilkins in this manner. For, on the surface,\nyou have in her books merely village tales of New Englanders, tales\noften sentimental, often trivial enough, and sometimes, it would seem,\nof hardly more than local interest. Hardly can one conceive the\npossibility of any ecstasy in these pleasant stories; for they deal,\nostentatiously, with the surface of things, with a breed of Englishmen\nwhose chief pride it was to hide away and smother all those passions and\nemotions which are the peculiar mark of man as man.\n\nYet, I believe that I can justify my love of Miss Wilkins's work on a\nhigher ground than that of mere liking. In the first place I agree with\nMr T. P. O'Connor, who pointed out very well that the passion does come\nthrough the reserve, and occasionally in the most volcanic manner. He\nselects a scene from \"Pembroke,\" in which the young people play at some\ndancing game called \"Copenhagen,\" and Mr O'Connor shows that though the\nboys and girls of Pembroke knew nothing of it, they were really animated\nby the spirit of the Bacchanals, that the fire and glow of passion, of\nthe youthful ecstasy, burst through all the hard crusts of Calvinism\nand New England reserve. And we have agreed that if a writer can make\npassion for us, if he can create the image of the eternal human ecstasy,\nwe have agreed that in such a case the writer is an artist.\n\nBut I think that there are other things, more subtle, more delicately\nhinted things in Miss Wilkins's tales; or rather I should say that they\nare all pervaded and filled with an emotion, which I can hardly think\nthat the writer has realised. Well, I find it difficult to express\nexactly what I mean, but I think that the whole impression which one\nreceives from these tales is one of loneliness, of isolation. Compare\nMiss Wilkins with Jane Austen, the New England stories with \"Pride and\nPrejudice.\" You might imagine, at first, that in one case as in the\nother there is a sense of retirement, of separation from the world, that\nMiss Austen's heroines are as remote from the great streams and\nwhirlpools of life as any \"Jane Field\" or Charlotte of Massachusetts.\nBut in reality this is not so. The people in the English novels are in\nno sense remote; they are merely dull; they cannot be remote, indeed,\nsince they are not human beings at all but merely the representatives of\ncertain superficial manners and tricks of manner which were common in\nthe rural England of ninety years ago. \"Remoteness\" is an affection of\nthe soul, and wicker-figures, dressed up in the clothes of a period,\ncannot have any such affections predicated of them; and consequently\nthough Emma or Elizabeth may appear very quaint to us from the contrast\nbetween the manners of the 'tens and the 'nineties, they cannot be\nremote. But that does seem to me the quality of those books of Miss\nWilkins's; the people appear to be very far off from the world, to live\nin an isolated sphere, and each one lives his own life, and dwells apart\nwith his own soul, and in spite of all the trivial chatter and\ncircumstance of the village one feels that each is a human being moved\nby eminently human affections.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt seems to me that one of the most important functions of literature is\nto seize the really fine flavours of life and to preserve them, as it\nwere, in permanent form. When we were talking about \"Huckleberry Finn,\"\nfor example, I remember that I spoke of it as the story of a boy who \"runs\naway.\" But what a curious magic there is in these words \"runs away.\"\nDoesn't it, when you come to examine the phrase, exhale the very essence\nand spirit of romance? Some time ago I reminded you that the essential\nthing is concealed under all manner of grotesque and unseemly forms, that\none can detect a veritable human passion under the cry of the news-boy,\nshouting, \"All the winners!\" So I think that phrase, \"run away,\" carries\nto us its meaning and significance. For, after all, what did all the\nheroes of romance do but \"run away\"? They left the region of the known,\nthe familiar fields or the familiar shores, and adventured out in the\ngreat waste of the unexplored, into the forest or upon the sea. Here,\nperhaps, you have the true interpretation of the phrase \"divine\ndiscontent,\" for surely only that is divine which revolts from the\ncommonness of the common life, which is conscious of things beyond, of\nbetter things, of a world which transcends all daily experience. I said\nonce, I think, that the English passion for trading goes very well with\nthe supremacy of English poetry, since poetry and shop-keeping are but\ndifferent expressions of the one idea; and here again you find\nconfirmation of the theory in that very marked English characteristic--the\ndesire of wandering, of \"going on and on\" in the manner of a knight\nerrant or a fairy tale hero. Of course, in practice, this really divine\nimpulse is corrupted by all kinds of earthly, secondary motions; and just\nas the love of a venture which is at the root of trade often or always\nends in a very vulgar wish to make money and more money and to set up a\nbrougham and confound the Smiths, so the great joy of exploration, of\nrunning away from the mapped and charted land has for its issues the\n\"development of markets,\" the \"progress of civilisation,\" the profitable\nsale of poison, and all manner of base and blackguardly man\u0153uvres. But, of\ncourse, one expects all this; it is the inevitable mixture of the lower\nwith the higher which characterises all our human ways. Still the higher\nmotive dwells within us--I suspect, indeed, that if it were not for the\nhigher the lower could hardly flourish--and so when you hear that a boy\nhas run away to sea or elsewhere I wish you to think kindly of him as a\nsurvival of the most primitive and important human passions. Yes, I think\nI am right in saying that the lower things of humanity only flourish in\nconsequence of the existence of the higher. Take the French nation, for\nexample. It is infinitely more bent on gain for the mere sake of gain\nthan the English; it is ready to work harder, to give more time, to live\nmore unpleasantly, to eat less and to drink less than the English; and all\nin the pursuit of money. Rationally, in short, the French should be\ninfinitely better men of business than the English; and yet we know that\nthis is not so, that the English is, _par excellence_, the business\nnation. Seriously, I believe, that this is so because the French are\nmoney-grubbers and nothing more, because they hate a \"risk\" of any kind,\nbecause they abhor any kind of mercantile venturing into the unknown. In\nother words, they engage in money-making simply for the sake of making\nmoney: they have no joy of the hazard, they will never deserve the title\nof \"merchant adventurers,\" and, _therefore_, they remain in truth a nation\nof shopkeepers and of second-rate shopkeepers. Sir, a man of acute\nintelligence would, in the seventeenth century, have deduced the future\nstate of French and English commerce, of French and English colonization\nfrom a comparison between Shakespeare and Racine. I have no doubt that the\nPh\u0153nicians were shopkeepers of the French kind, and hence their\nextinction, their shadowy survival merely in the history of their\nconquerors.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYou think the Roman Empire a formidable objection to my theory, because\nRoman literature and Roman art show, in general, so little of the\nimaginative, adventurous faculty? I think the objection _is_ formidable,\nbut I believe that it can be redargued, as Dominie Sampson used to say.\nThe Roman Empire was such a purely military settlement, wasn't it? it\nwas, if one may say so, a garrisoning of the world, not in any way a\nreal colonizing in the Greek and the English sense. And in the second\nplace, do you know that I have grave doubts whether we know very much of\nthe Roman spirit from the Roman literature. How far into the English\ncharacter would the works of the excellent Dr. Johnson carry us? One\nhardly finds Chaucer, the Elizabethans, the Cavalier poets, Keats or\nWordsworth in \"Rasselas\" and \"The Rambler,\" and I have always suspected\nthat Latin literature was in a great measure \"Johnsonized,\" periwigged,\nhidden and perverted by the irresistible flood of Greek culture. It may\nbe a paradox, but I have a very strong conviction that the Missal and\nthe Breviary tell us more about the true Latin character than Cicero and\nHorace. But we must be thankful that in the sixteenth and early\nseventeenth centuries England stood aloof from the continent of Europe,\nand that when it did borrow it transformed and transmuted so that the\noriginal entirely lost its foreign character. I always think that change\nof Madame de Querouaille into Madam Carewell such a wonderful instance\nof our nationalism--our transforming force! If it had been otherwise, if\nwe had grovelled before the literature of France or Spain or Italy, as\nRome grovelled before the literature of Greece--well, perhaps, English\nliterature would have meant \"Chevy Chace\" and a few old ballads, and the\neighteenth century! I hate the Reformation, but perhaps it saved our\nliterature, simply by isolating the nation.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI claimed, I think, literary merit for Miss Wilkins because her books\ngive out an impression of loneliness. I think that is so, but I should\nlike to point out that \"loneliness\" is merely another synonym for that\none property which makes the difference between real literature and\nreading-matter. If you look into the French literature of the last two\nhundred years and complain of its elegant nothingness, of its wholly\nsecondary character, I would point out that it is second-rate because it\nis the expression, not of the lonely human soul, like a star, dwelling\napart, but of society, of the _ruelles_, of the _salon_, of polite\ncompany, of the _caf\u00e9_ and the _boulevard_. I am not making an\naccusation, I am adopting the terms of the eminent M. de Bruneti\u00e8re, who\ntells us, I think, that French literature is beautiful because it is\nfirstly sociable, and secondly because it is a kind of a long \"talk to\nladies.\" I hardly think that I need go into the merits of the question;\nyou and I, I take it, are convinced of the vast immeasurable inferiority\nof Racine to Shakespeare (with these two names one sums up the whole\ndebate), but I am quite sure that M. de Bruneti\u00e8re has given the true\nreason of the French literature being on the distinctly low level. It is\nalways Thackeray, it is always Pope, it is always Jane Austen; it is, in\nour sense of the word, not literature at all, though, to be sure, its\nartifice is often of the most exquisite description. Of course I do not\nspeak of the ultimate reason--that is to be sought, I presume, in the\nmental constitution of the nation--but when one reads M. de Bruneti\u00e8re's\naccount of the formation of modern French letters, and notes his\ninsistance on the social element as the chief factor, one may be pretty\nsure that this social factor is responsible for the pleasant nullities\nwhich we all know. You may feel pretty certain, I think, that real\nliterature has always been produced by men who have preserved a certain\nloneliness of soul, if not of body; the masterpieces are not generated\nby that pleasant and witty traffic of the drawing-rooms, but by the\nsilence of the eternal hills. Remember; we have settled that literature\nis the expression of the \"standing out,\" of the withdrawal of the soul,\nit is the endeavour of every age to return to the first age, to an age,\nif you like, of savages, when a man crept away to the rocks or to the\nforests that he might utter, all alone, the secrets of his own soul.\n\nSo this is my plea for Miss Wilkins. I think that she has indicated this\ncondition of \"ecstasis\"; she has painted a society, indeed, but a\nsociety in which each man stands apart, responsible only for himself and\nto himself, conscious only of himself and his God. You will note this,\nif you read her carefully, you will see how this doctrine of awful,\nindividual loneliness prevails so far that it is carried into the\nnecessary and ordinary transactions of social life, often with results\nthat are very absurd. Many of the people in her stories are so\nabsolutely convinced of their \"loneliness,\" so certain that there are\nonly two persons in the whole universe--each man and his God--that they\ndo not shrink from transgressing and flouting all the social orders and\nregulations, in spite of their very strong and social instinct drawing\nthem in the opposite direction. You remember the man who vowed that\nunder certain circumstances he would sit on the meeting-house steps\nevery Sunday? He kept his vow--for ten years I think--and he kept it in\nspite of his profound horror of ridicule, of doing what other people\ndidn't do, in spite of his own happiness; but he kept it because he\nrealised his \"loneliness,\" because he saw quite clearly that he must\nstand or fall by his own word and his own promise, and that the opinions\nof others could be of no possible importance to him. The instance is\nludicrous, even to the verge of farce, and yet I call it a witness to\nthe everlasting truth that, at last, each man must stand or fall alone,\nand that if he would stand, he must, to a certain extent, live alone\nwith his own soul. It is from this mood of lonely reverie and ecstasy\nthat literature proceeds, and I think that the sense of all this is\ndiffused throughout Miss Wilkins's New England stories.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYou ask me for a new test--or rather for a new expression of the one\ntest--that separates literature from the mass of stuff which is not\nliterature. I will give you a test that will startle you; literature is\nthe expression, through the \u00e6sthetic medium of words, of the dogmas of the\nCatholic Church, and that which in any way is out of harmony with these\ndogmas is not literature. Yes, it is really so; but not exactly in the\nsense which you suppose. No literal compliance with Christianity is\nneeded, no, nor even an acquaintance with the doctrines of Christianity.\nThe Greeks, celebrating the festivals of Dionysus, Cervantes recounting\nthe fooleries of Don Quixote, Dickens measuring Mr Pickwick's glasses of\ncold punch, Rabelais with his thirsty Pantagruel were all sufficiently\nCatholic from our point of view, and the cultus of Aphrodite is merely a\nsymbol misunderstood and possibly corrupted, and if you can describe an\ninitiatory dance of savages in the proper manner, I shall call you a good\nCatholic. You say that \"Robert Elsmere\" is not literature, and you are\nperfectly right, but I hope you don't condemn it because it contains\narguments directed against the Catholic Faith? These, from our own\nstandpoint, are simply nothing at all, not reckoning either way. We pass\nthem over, just as we should pass over a passage on quadratic equations\npleasantly interpolated by an author into the body of his romance. The\nconscious opinions of a writer are simply not worth twopence in the court\nof literature; who cares to enquire into the theology of Keats? But when\nwe find not only the consciousness but also the subconsciousness permeated\nby the impression that man is a logical, \"rationalistic\" creature and\nnothing more, when the total impression of the human being gathered from\nthe book is of a simply demonstrating and demonstrable animal; then, we\nmay be perfectly assured that we have not to deal with literature. It is\nthe subconsciousness, remember, alone that matters; and (to put it again\ntheologically) you will find that books which are not literature proceed\nfrom ignorance of the Sacramental System. Thackeray was an unconscious\nheretic, while George Eliot was a conscious one, but each was ignorant of\nthe meaning of Sacramentalism, and so, making allowance for the fact that\nthe one was a clever man, while the other was a dull, industrious woman,\nyou have from each a view of life that is substantially the same, and\nentirely false. Each was profoundly convinced that there _are_ milestones\non the Dover Road, and each, in his several way, was so intent on the\ntruth of this proposition (and it _is_ a perfectly true one) that the\nsecret of the scenery and the secret of Canterbury Cathedral are\naltogether to seek in their books. Certainly the gentleman is a delightful\ncompanion, and the milestones seem few indeed while we are on the way,\nwhile with the other guide we feel like a girls' school, compelled to\nlisten to the \"now, young ladies\" and the \"lessons\" which every object on\nthe road suggests. Still, the total view is much the same, the same in\ngenus if not in species, and you may add Flaubert to your companions on\nthe road and you will be in the same case. But read a chapter of \"Don\nQuixote\"; you will not be aware of the existence of the milestones, since\nyour gaze is fixed on the mystery of the woods, and you are a pilgrim to\nthe blissful shrine beyond. Don't imagine that you can improve your\nliterary chances by subscribing the Catechism or the Decrees of the\nCouncil of Trent. No; I can give you no such short and easy plan for\nexcelling; but I tell you that unless you have assimilated the final\ndogmas--the eternal truths--upon which those things rest, consciously if\nyou please, but subconsciously of necessity, you can never write\nliterature, however clever and amusing you may be. Think of it, and you\nwill see that from the literary standpoint, Catholic dogma is merely the\nwitness, under a special symbolism, of the enduring facts of human nature\nand the universe; it is merely the voice which tells us distinctly that\nman is _not_ the creature of the drawing-room and the Stock Exchange, but\na lonely awful soul confronted by the Source of all Souls, and you will\nrealise that to make literature it is necessary to be, at all events,\nsubconsciously Catholic.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHave you noticed how many of the greatest writers, so far from desiring\nthat compliment of \"fidelity to life\" do their best to get away from\nlife, to make their books, in ordinary phraseology, \"unreal?\" I do not\nknow whether anybody has compared the facts before or made the only\npossible inference from them; but you remember how Rabelais professes to\nderive his book from a little mouldy manuscript, found in a tomb, how\nCervantes, beginning in _propria persona authoris_, breaks off and\ndiscovers the true history of \"Don Quixote\" in the Arabic Manuscript of\nCid Hamet Benengeli, how Hawthorne prologises with the custom-house at\nSalem, and lights, in an old lumber-room, on the documents telling him\nthe history of the \"Scarlet Letter.\" \"Pickwick\" was a transcript of the\n\"Transactions\" or \"Papers\" of the Pickwick Club, and Tennyson's \"Morte\nD'Arthur\" shelters itself, in the same way, behind the personality of an\nimaginary writer. There is a very profound significance in all this, and\nyou find a trace of the same instinct in the Greek Tragedies where the\nfinal scene, the peripeteia, is not shown on the stage, but described by\na \"messenger.\" The fact is that the true artist, so far from being the\nimitator of life, endures some of his severest struggles in endeavouring\nto get away from life, and until he can do this he knows that his labour\nis all in vain. It would be amusing to trace all the various devices\nwhich have been used to secure this effect of separation, of withdrawal\nfrom the common track of common things. I have just pointed out one, the\nhiding of the author, as it were, behind a mask, and in the Greek Play\nthe analogous talking of what has happened in place of visibly showing\nit, but there must be many more. From this instinct I imagine arises the\nhistorical novel in all its forms, you make your story remote by placing\nit far back in time, by the exhibition of strange dresses and unfamiliar\nmanners. Or again you may get virtually the same effect by using the\nremoteness of space, by playing on the theme \"far, far away\" which\nreally calls up a very similar emotion to that produced by the other\ntheme of \"long, long ago,\" or \"once on a time,\" as the fairy tale has\nit. Briefly we may say that all \"strangeness\" of incident, or plot, or\nstyle makes for this one end; and of course you see that all this is\nonly the repetition of our old text in another form. It is, perhaps,\nhardly necessary to give the caution that, on the principle of\n_corruptio optimi_, there is nothing more melancholy than the book which\nhas the body of fine literature without the soul, which uses literary\nmethods without understanding. You needn't ask for proofs of that\nproposition; our memories are aghast with recollections of futile\n\"historical novels,\" of the terrific school of the \"two horsemen,\" and\nevery Christmas brings its huge budget of those dreadful \"boys' books,\"\nwhich carry commonplace to the very ends of the earth, and occasionally\npenetrate to the stars. And in style, too, what can be more depressing\nthan the style which is meant to be \"strange\" and is only flatulent? In\nmany cases of course such books as I have alluded to are mere survivals\nof tradition, conventions of bookmaking which bear witness to the fact\nthat pirates and treasure-hoards were once symbols of wonder, and the\nextravagancies of style are probably to be accounted for in the same\nway. At some remote period it may, possibly, have been effective to call\nthe sun, \"the glorious orb,\" and even now some minds may be made to\nrealise the strangeness of great flights of birds by the phrase \"the\nfeathered Zingari of the air\"; but if one is a little sophisticated one\nfeels the pathos and the futility of such efforts. The writer has felt\nand experienced the wonder of things--the beauty of the sun and the\nhieroglyphic mystery of the figures that the birds make in the air--and\nhe feels, quite rightly, that to describe wonders one must suggest\nwonder by words. Unfortunately, he breaks down at this point, and falls\nback on unhappy phrases that give the very opposite impression to that\nwhich he wishes to excite. Here you have the whole history of \"poetic\ndiction.\" The instinct is in itself an entirely right one, and I need\nhardly say that the masters--those who have the secret--can use archaic\nforms, obsolete constructions, conventional phrases even, with\nmiraculous effect. But the beginner would do well to be wary of these\nthings, and to turn his face resolutely away from \"flowery meads\" and\nall the family of inversions. How is one to know when such phrases may\nbe used? If I could give you the answer to that question I should be\nalso giving you the secret of making literature, and from all our talks\nI expect you have gathered this much at all events--that the art of\nliterature, with all the arts, is quite incommunicable. Many kinds of\nartifice, even, are unteachable--I could not write or be taught to write\none of those George Eliot novels that I have been abusing with such\nhearty good will--but art is by its very definition quite without the\njurisdiction of the schools, and the realm of the reasoning process,\nsince art is a miracle, superior to the laws.\n\n  PRINTED BY\n  TURNBULL AND SPEARS,\n  EDINBURGH\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER'S NOTES\n\nThe variant spellings \"bookcase\" and \"book-case\", \"bookmaking\" and\n\"book-making\", \"milk punch\" and \"milk-punch\", \"subconsciousness\" and\n\"sub-consciousness\", \"Morte D'Arthur\" and \"Morte d'Arthur\" are all used in\nthis text.\n\nThere is no consistency in the use of italics, single quotes or double\nquotes. For example _Vanity Fair_, \"Vanity Fair\" and 'Vanity Fair' all\nappear.\n\nThe spellings \"gurgoyles\" (p. 132), \"insistance\" (p. 196), \"ecstasis\"\n(p. 196) and \"extravagancies\" (p. 204) have been left unchanged.\n\nThe following amendments have been made:\n\n1)Full stop (period) added after \"Sophocles\" on p. 53, after \"runs away\"\non p. 189 and after \"Dr\" in \"Dr Johnson\" on p. 193.\n\n2) Full stop replaced by question mark after \"unreal\" on p. 214.\n\n3) The accents on two Greek words on p. 56 have been amended: accent on\n\u1f00\u03c0\u03b1\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u03b9\u03bb\u03b1\u03b9 (where there was a circumflex over the \u03b5 in defiance of all\nlaws) amended to \u1f00\u03c0\u03b1\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bb\u03b1\u03b9 and \u03c0\u1f70\u03bb\u03b9\u03bd amended to \u03c0\u03ac\u03bb\u03b9\u03bd.\n\n4) The breathing on \u1f00\u03b9\u03b8\u03ad\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 on p. 105 has been corrected to \u03b1\u1f30\u03b8\u03ad\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2.\n\nA Table of Contents has been added.","title":"Hieroglyphics","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":44707}