,hieroglyphics ,hieroglyphics ,by ,arthur ,machen ,author of ,the ,great ,god ,pan1 etc4 ,london ,grant ,richards #aijb ,,table ,,of ,,contents ,page ,,note v ,i #a ,,ii #db ,,iii #fh ,,iv #ii ,v #abe ,,vi #aej ,,appendix #aga ,,note ,it was my privilege1 many years ago1 to make the acquaintance of the obscure literary hermit1 whose talk ,i have tried to reproduce in the pages that follow4 ,our first meeting was one of those chance affairs that now and then mitigate the loneliness of the ,london streets1 and a second hazard led to the discovery that we had many interests in common4 ,i think that the ,hermit 7as ,i shall call him7 had begun to find the perpetual solitude of his years a growing terror1 and he was not sorry to have a listener2 at first1 indeed1 he talked almost with the joy of a child1 or rather of a prisoner who has escaped from the house of silence1 but as he chose subjects which have always interested me intensely1 he gave as much pleasure as he received1 and ,i became an assiduous visitor of his cell4 ,he had found an odd retreat4 ,he avoided personalities1 and had a happy knack of forgetting any that ,i vouchsafed on my side1 7he forgot my name three times on the first evening that we spent together1 and succeeded in repeating this feat over and over again since then71 and ,i never gathered much of his past history4 ,but ,i believe that something had happened many years before1 in the prehistoric age of the 'seventies4 ,there had been a break of some sort in the man's life when he was quite young2 and so he had left the world and gone to ,barnsbury1 an almost mythical region lying between ,pentonville and the ,caledonian ,road4 ,here1 in the most retired street of that retired quarter1 he occupied two rooms on the ground floor of a big1 mouldy house1 standing apart from the street and sheltered by gaunt grown trees and ancient shrubs2 and just beside the dim and dusty window of the sitting-room a laburnum had cast a green stain on the decaying wall4 ,the laburnum had grown wild1 like all the trees and shrubs1 and some of its black1 straggling boughs brushed the pane1 and of dark1 windy nights while we sat together and talked of art and life we would be startled by the sudden violence with which those branches beat angrily upon the glass4 ,the room seemed always dark4 ,i suppose that the house had been built in the early eighteenth century1 and had been altered and added to at various periods1 with a final doing up for the comparative luxury of someone in the 'tens or 'twenties2 there were1 ,i think1 twenty rooms in it1 and my friend used to declare that when a new servant came she spent many months in finding her way in the complicated maze of stairs and passages1 and that the landlady even was now and then at fault4 ,but the room in which we sat was hung with flock paper1 of a deep and heavy crimson colour1 and even on bright summer evenings the crimson looked almost black1 and seemed to cast a shadow into the room4 ,often we sat there till the veritable darkness came1 and each could scarcely see the white of the other's face1 and then my friend would light two lonely candles on the mantelpiece1 or if he wished to read he set one on a table beside him2 and when the candles were lighted ,i thought that the gloom grew more intense1 and looking through the uncurtained window one could not see even the friendly twinkle of the gas-lamp in the street1 but only the vague growth of the laburnum1 and the tangle of boughs beyond4 ,it was a large room and gave me always a sense of empty space4 ,against one wall stood a heavy bookcase1 with glass doors1 solid and of dark mahogany1 but made in the intermediate period that came between ,chippendale and the modern school of machine-turned rubbish4 ,in the duskiest corner of the room there was a secretaire of better workmanship1 and two small tables and three gaunt chairs made up the furnishing4 ,the ,hermit would sometimes pace up and down in the void centre of the room as he talked1 and if ,i chanced to be sitting by the window1 his shape would almost disappear as he neared the secretaire on his march1 and ,i heard the voice1 and used to wonder for a moment whether the man had not vanished for ever1 having been resolved into the shadows about him4 ,i have spent many evenings in that old mouldering room1 where1 when we were silent for an instant1 the inanimate matter about us found a voice1 and the decaying beams murmured together1 and a vague sound might come from the cellars underneath4 ,and it always seemed to me as if the crypt-like odour of the cellar rose also into the room1 mingling with a faint suggestion of incense1 though ,i am sure that my friend never burned it4 ,here then1 with such surroundings as ,i have indicated1 we held our sessions and talked freely and with enjoyment of many curious things1 which1 as the ,hermit would say1 had the huge merit of interesting no one but ourselves4 ,he would sometimes1 whimsically1 compare himself to ,coleridge1 and ,i think that he often deliberately talked in ,s4 ,t4 ,c4's manner with delight in the joke4 ,for1 ,i need hardly say that the comparison was not in any way a serious one2 he had a veneration for ,coleridge's achievement1 with a still greater veneration for that which ,coleridge might have achieved1 which would have caused him to regard any such comparison1 seriously entertained1 as unspeakably ludicrous4 ,still1 he liked to regard himself as a very humble disciple in ,coleridge's school1 he was fond1 as ,i have said1 of imitating his master's manner as well as he could1 and ,i think that he cherished1 in the fashion of ,s4 ,t4 ,c41 the notion that he had a system1 an esoteric philosophy of things2 he sought for a key that would open1 and a lamp that would enlighten all the dark treasure-houses of the ,universe1 and sometimes he believed that he held both the ,key and the ,lamp in his hands4 ,it is a confession of mysticism1 but ,i incline to think that he was right in this belief4 ,i recall the presence of that hollow1 echoing room1 the atmosphere with its subtle suggestion of incense sweetening the dank odours of the cellar1 and the tone of the voice speaking to me1 and ,i believe that once or twice we both saw visions1 and some glimpse at least of certain eternal1 ineffable ,shapes4 ,but these matters1 the more esoteric doctrines of the system have entered hardly or not at all into the very imperfect and fragmentary notes that ,i have made of his conversations on literature4 ,i should scarcely be justified in calling him a literary monomaniac4 ,but it is true that ,art in general1 and the art of literature in particular had for him a very high significance and interest2 and he was always ready to defend the thesis that1 all the arts being glorious1 the literary art was the most glorious and wonderful of all4 ,he reverenced music1 but he was firm in maintaining that in perfect lyrical poetry there is the subtlest and most beautiful melody in the world4 ,i can scarcely say whether he wrote much himself4 ,he would speak of stories on which he was engaged1 but ,i have never seen his name on publishers' lists1 and ,i do not think that he had adopted a pseudonym4 ,one evening1 ,i remember1 ,i came in a little before my accustomed time1 and in the shadowy corner of the room1 a drawer in the secretaire was open1 and ,i thought that it looked full of neat manuscripts4 ,but ,i never spoke to him about his literary work2 and ,i noticed that he did not much care to talk of literature from the commercial standpoint4 ,it is perhaps needless to say that ,i consulted my friend before publishing these notes of his conversations4 ,i had been forced to leave ,london for some months1 and ,i wrote to him from the country1 requesting his permission to give to the world 7if the world would have them7 those judgments on books which ,i had listened to in ,barnsbury4 ,his reply allowed me to take my own way1 with all my heart1 so long as you make me sufficiently apocryphal4 ,i am not going to compete with 'real' critics whose names are printed in the papers2 but if you can maintain the incognito and allow your readers 7supposing their existence7 to believe that ,i am a mere figment of your brain1 you can print my obiter dicta 'with ease of body and rest of reins4' ,here is a suggestion for a title3 what do you say to ',boswell in ,barnsbury'8 ,but ,i really had no notion that you were taking notes all the time4 ,remember3 keep the secret1 and the secrets4 ,i regarded this as a very liberal license1 and ,i have tried to set in the best order ,i could compass the system so far as it relates to letters4 ,i do not pretend that ,i am a verbatim reporter1 for ,i had to trust to my memory1 and though ,i tried to arrange my notes at the time1 ,i fear ,i have fallen here and there into confusion4 ,still1 ,i think that the six chapters which follow will seem fairly consecutive in their argument and arrangement1 and the ,appendix--a confession of failure--is1 in reality1 the result of the cyclical mode of discoursing1 in which the ,hermit jocularly professed to follow ,coleridge4 ,perhaps indeed ,coleridge was deceived1 and my dear friend with him1 in the hope of real essential knowledge2 but even so1 these fragments which ,i propose are evidence that the latter earnestly desired the truth and sought it4 ,a4 ,m4 ,,hieroglyphics ,i ,do you know that just before you came in ,i found something highly significant in the evening paper8 ,i am afraid from your expression that you rather undervalue the influence of the press2 indeed1 ,i remember one day when we were out together you swore at an inoffensive boy who tried to allure us with news of all the winners4 ,i think ,i pointed out at the time that even horse-racing and an interest in events are preferable to stagnation1 and that there is something august in the universal human passion for gambling4 ,and1 after all1 the office-boy who puts on half-a-crown is really only an example of the love of man for the unknown2 the half-crown is a venture into mystery1 with that due flavour of commercialism which we in ,england add to most of our interests4 ,but you see1 don't you8 that gambling1 even under its most sordid aspects1 is not altogether sordid2 it's the mystery1 the uncertainty1 the hours of strange surmise that the smallest bet gives to the bettor that make the real delight of betting4 ,when the office-boy wins and gets ten shillings for the risk of his two-and-six1 his delight is not by any means pure love of gain1 it is distinguished by a very marked line from the constantly repeated joys of the grocer1 who is always buying delicious tea at ninepence and selling it at one-and-six4 ,here you have commercialism in its simplest form2 but our office-boy1 though he likes the money well enough1 stands on a much higher plane4 ,for the moment he is the man who has succeeded in solving the enigma of the ,sphinx1 in discovering the unknown continent1 in reading the cypher1 in guessing at the song the ,sirens sang1 in unveiling the hidden treasure that the buccaneers buried on the lonely shore2 he has ventured successfully into the dim region of surmises4 ,and when he loses1 there are always consolations2 the ,indies have not been discovered on this voyage1 certainly1 but there have been wonders on the way1 he has enjoyed many hours of delicious expectation4 ,the proof that he likes the sport1 even when he loses1 is that he invariably takes the first opportunity of venturing again in the same manner4 ,and1 by the way1 perhaps ,i was a little severe just now on trade1 and especially on the grocer's sugary and soapy enterprise4 ,perhaps if we were to look with a rather finer vision into the commercial spirit1 we might find that it is not wholly commercial1 not altogether sordid4 ,of course if the grocer opens his shop with a certainty1 mathematical or almost mathematical1 that the public will buy his wares1 he is a wicked fellow2 he is gambling with loaded dice1 betting against a horse that he knows is to be made all right1 playing cards with honours up his sleeve1 and ,i am sure that if this be his enterprise1 it will always meet with our sternest disapproval4 ,casanova died towards the close of the last century1 and since then cardsharping has become impossible to a man of taste4 ,but seriously1 ,i suspect that a good deal of the allurement that trade possesses for so many of us is the risk which it almost always implies1 and risk means uncertainty1 and uncertainty connotes the unknown4 ,so you see our despised grocer turns out1 after all1 to be of the kin of ,columbus1 of the treasure-seekers1 and mystery-mongers1 and delvers after hidden things spiritual and material4 ,i suppose we have here the real explanation of the human trading passion1 and the solution of a problem that has often puzzled me4 ,the problem ,i mean is this3 how does it happen that the ,english are both the greatest poets and the greatest tradesmen of the modern world8 ,superficially1 it seems that keeping shops and making poetry are incompatibles1 and ,wordsworth and ,coleridge1 ,keats and ,shelley1 ,tennyson and ,poe1 should have come from ,provence or ,sicily1 from the unpractical1 uncommercial ,latin races4 ,but if we trace back the trading instinct to that love of a risk--or in other words to the desire for the unknown--the antinomy disappears1 and it will become perfectly natural that the race which has gone to the world's end with its merchandise1 has penetrated so gloriously into the further regions of poetry4 ,but that reminds me of what ,i was saying just after you had lit your pipe4 ,i think ,i remarked that ,i had seen something of very high significance in the evening paper1 and the glare of disgust with which you greeted my observation constituted an interruption1 and an interruption that had to be dealt with4 ,now again you seem to hint at doubt with your eyebrows2 you would say1 perhaps1 that ,i have not made out a very convincing case for journalism8 ,but you must remember that my mental process resembles that of ,coleridge2 you called on the ,seer at eleven o'clock in the morning1 and 7if young and imprudent7 asked him a question4 ,and at the waning of the light ,coleridge was still diligently engaged in answering your question for you1 having talked without intermission all the summer day4 ,a cyclical mode of discoursing the pious ,henry ,nelson ,coleridge called it1 and he deals faithfully with certain persons who complained that they could get no answer to a question from ,coleridge4 ,and you will please to remember this when you think that ,i am wandering--a vice of which ,coleridge also was accused4 ,to-night1 for example1 on the evening paper being mentioned1 your face expressed disgust and contempt1 which ,i diagnosed 7and rightly1 ,i believe87 as a tribute to the enormous interest taken by the editors of these agreeable journals in the very latest sporting news2 an interest which allows but little space for the discussion of pure literature4 ,hence my remarks on the gambling-spirit2 and now ,i hope you will at least assume a thrill of interest when the boy bawls in your ear ,all the winners and ,s4 ,p4 ,it is possible you may be thinking of ,ulysses or of ,keats at the moment1 and the interruption may annoy you1 but it will do so no longer when you reflect that a burning anxiety as to the running of ,bolter is for many thousands the symbol--and the only possible symbol--of the ,doom of ,troy and the wandering fields of foam1 and the ,isle of ,calypso1 and the strange surmise of ,pizarro and all his men4 ,but here is the evening-paper in question4 ,yes1 the colour is1 perhaps1 a little sickly4 ,a kind of pinky-green1 it seems1 doesn't it8 ,but it forced itself on my notice in the most extraordinary manner1 and ,i expect you will have to admit1 when you have heard the story1 that some ,powers were at work4 ,well1 ,i was walking up and down the room1 just as it was getting dusk1 and every now and then ,i stopped and looked out of the window4 ,yes1 ,i was making phrases as usual1 and thinking of a new story in the middle of the old one3 hence the quarter-deck exercise4 ,i daresay you have remarked that ,i do not keep my window in a very brilliant condition1 and the air this evening1 you will remember1 was rather misty--,october1 ,i always think1 wears a peculiar dim grace in ,barnsbury--so ,i hope you will not find my impressions too incredible4 ,i was staring1 then1 out of the window1 when to my vast astonishment1 a great pale bird seemed suddenly to shoot up into the air from the road1 and to flutter into the garden1 where it became entangled in that sapless old laburnum that weeps green tears upon the wall4 ,i saw1 as ,i thought1 the beating and fluttering of wings1 and ,i ran out1 imagining that ,i was to secure a strange companion for my solitude4 ,it was the evening paper1 not a bird1 and ,i saw at once that it would be impious to let it flutter there unread1 so ,i secured it and brought it in1 meditating the adventure1 and wondering what strange message was thus borne to my eyes4 ,so ,i went through its columns patiently1 even to the leaderettes1 and ,i will do myself the justice to say that ,i at once recognised the communication that was addressed to me in this singular and even ,i may say ,arabian fashion4 ,it was a short comment upon some agitation that is now appealing rather strongly to ,progressive leaders2 but the subject-matter is of no consequence1 since the significance lies in the last sentence4 ,here it is3 ,we are glad to hear that extensive arrangements have been made for the dissemination of literature4 ,you don't see the immense importance of that8 ,you surprise me4 ,let us go into it1 then4 ,i told you ,i was not very precise as to the exact scope of the agitation alluded to--it may be a question of a heavy tax on persons who will say lady instead of lydy1 it may be an affair of restricting the franchise to citizens thoroughly ignorant of history2 it doesn't matter--but here are men who wish some political change to be effected1 and these men are issuing printed matter1 the purpose of which is to convince others of the righteousness of this particular program4 ,and this printed matter is called literature4 ,you know the sort of thing indicated4 ,it may be a series of arguments1 simple and fallacious1 it may be in dialogue1 it may be in story form1 it may assume the guise of parody1 it may be a brief history4 ,and now what ,i want to know is this3 here we have a vast body of thought1 clothed in words1 ranging from the agreeable leaflets that we have been speaking of up to--let us say--the ,odyssey1 and all this mass is known as literature3 what is to be our criterion1 our means of distinguishing between the two extremes ,i have mentioned and all the innumerable links between them8 ,is the whole mass literature in the true sense of the word8 ,if not1 with what instrument1 by what rule are we to divide the true from the false1 to judge exactly in the case of any particular book whether it is literature or not8 ,of course you may say that the question is rather verbal than real2 that literature is a general term conveniently applied to anything in print1 and that in practice everybody knows the difference between a political pamphlet and the ,odyssey4 ,i very much doubt whether people do understand precisely the distinction between the two1 but for the avoidance of verbal confusion ,i suggest that when we mean literature in its highest sense we shall say 7for the present at all events71 fine literature2 and the question will be1 then3 what is it that differentiates fine literature from a number of grammatical1 or partly grammatical1 sentences arranged in a more or less logical order8 ,why is the ,odyssey to come in1 why is the literature of our evening paper to be kept out8 ,and again1 to put the question in a more subtle form3 to which class do the works of ,jane ,austen belong8 ,is ,pride and ,prejudice to stand on the ,odyssey shelf1 or to lie in the pamphlet drawer8 ,where is ,pope's place8 ,is he to be set in the class of ,keats8 ,if not1 for what reason8 ,what is the rank of ,dickens1 of ,thackeray1 of ,george ,eliot1 of ,hawthorne2 and in a word1 how are we to sort out1 as it were1 this huge multitude of names1 giving to each one his proper rank and station8 ,i am glad it strikes you as a big question3 to me it seems the question1 the question which covers the final dogma of literary criticism4 ,of course after we have answered this prerogative riddle1 there will be other questions1 almost without end1 classes1 and sub-classes of infinite analysis4 ,but this will be detail2 while the question ,i have propounded is the question of first principles2 it marks the parting of two ways1 and in a manner1 it asks itself not only of literature1 but of life1 but of philosophy1 but of religion4 ,what is the line1 then2 the mark of division which is to separate spoken1 or written1 or printed thought into two great genera8 ,well1 as you may have guessed1 ,i have my solution1 and ,i like it none the less1 because the word of the enigma seems to me actually but a single word4 ,yes1 for me the answer comes with the one word1 ,ecstasy4 ,if ecstasy be present1 then ,i say there is fine literature1 if it be absent1 then1 in spite of all the cleverness1 all the talents1 all the workmanship and observation and dexterity you may show me1 then1 ,i think1 we have a product 7possibly a very interesting one71 which is not fine literature4 ,of course you will allow me to contradict myself1 or rather1 to amplify myself before we begin to discuss the matter fully4 ,i said my answer was the word1 ecstasy2 ,i still say so1 but ,i may remark that ,i have chosen this word as the representative of many4 ,substitute1 if you like1 rapture1 beauty1 adoration1 wonder1 awe1 mystery1 sense of the unknown1 desire for the unknown4 ,all and each will convey what ,i mean2 for some particular case one term may be more appropriate than another1 but in every case there will be that withdrawal from the common life and the common consciousness which justifies my choice of ecstasy as the best symbol of my meaning4 ,i claim1 then1 that here we have the touchstone which will infallibly separate the higher from the lower in literature1 which will range the innumerable multitude of books in two great divisions1 which can be applied with equal justice to a ,greek drama1 an eighteenth century novelist1 and a modern poet1 to an epic in twelve books1 and to a lyric in twelve lines4 ,i will convince you of my belief in my own nostrum by a bold experiment3 here is ,pickwick and here is ,vanity ,fair2 the one regarded as a popular comic book1 the other as a serious masterpiece1 showing vast insight into human character2 and applying my test1 ,i set ,pickwick beside the ,odyssey1 and ,vanity ,fair on top of the political pamphlet4 ,i will not argue the matter at the moment2 ,i would merely caution you against supposing that ,i imply any equality of merit in the books that ,i have thus summarily bracketed4 ,you mustn't suppose that ,i think ,dickens's book as good as ,homer's1 or that ,i have any doubts as to the vast superiority of ,vanity ,fair over all the pamphlets in the world4 ,here is a temple1 here is a tub1 we may suppose a child to say1 learning from a picture-alphabet2 but the temple may be a miserably designed structure1 in ruinous condition1 and the tub is1 perhaps1 a miracle of excellent workmanship4 ,but one means worship and the other means washing1 and that is the distinction4 ,or1 to take a better example2 the bottom boy in the sixth form may be a miserable dunce compared with the top boy in the fifth2 still the dunce is in the sixth form1 and the genius is in the fifth4 ,or1 to take a third instance 7,i want you to understand what ,i'm driving at71 the fact that an ,english orator is fluent1 brilliant1 profound1 convincing1 while a ,greek orator is stuttering1 stupid1 shallow1 illogical does not hinder that the former1 though he may speak ever so well1 still speaks ,english1 while the latter1 however badly he may speak1 speaks in ,greek for all that4 ,analogies1 as you know1 are never perfect1 and must not be pressed too far2 they suggest rather than prove2 but ,i hope you understand me though you may not agree with me4 ,but before we argue the merits of my own literary solvent1 we might very well see what we can do with other tests4 ,i daresay you can suggest a good many4 ,we won't go into the question of printed and not printed1 written or not written1 because it is obvious that the visible symbols by which literature is recorded have nothing to do with literature itself4 ,in the beginning all literature was a matter of improvisation or recitation and memory1 and hieroglyphics1 writing1 printing are mere conveniences4 ,indeed the point is only worth mentioning because there are1 ,i believe1 simple souls who think that the invention of printing has some sort of mysterious connection with the birth of literature1 and that the abolition of the paper duty was its coming of age4 ,but ,i don't think we need trouble ourselves much about a view of literary art which regards the cheap press as its father and the school board as its nursing mother4 ,many people think1 on the other hand1 that literature is to be estimated by its effect on the emotions1 by the shock which it gives to the system4 ,you may say that a book which interests you so intensely that you cannot put it down1 that affects you so acutely that you weep1 that amuses you so immensely that you roar with laughter must be very good4 ,i don't object to very good1 but from my point of view1 very good and fine literature are two different things4 ,you see ,i believe that the difference between interesting1 exciting1 tear-compelling1 laughter-moving reading matter and fine art is not specific but generic3 who would blaspheme against good bitter beer1 who would say that because it is good1 it is therefore ,burgundy8 ,i am not quite sure that ,i am not muddling up two things which are in reality distinct4 ,i mean ,i am in doubt whether the faculty of making the reader cry ought not to be distinguished from the faculty of interesting him intensely4 ,on the whole ,i think that it would be well to draw a line between the two1 especially as interesting is somewhat ambiguous4 ,and you think it a paradox1 then1 to maintain that the power of exciting the emotions to a high degree is not a mark of fine literature8 ,but just think it over4 ,suppose that a few yards from this room--in the next house1 in the next street--a woman is waiting for the return of her husband and son4 ,a ring comes at the bell1 there's a reddish-brown envelope1 and inside it the message3 ,railway accident father killed4 ,well1 you can imagine the effect that these four words will have on the woman's emotions2 she will either faint away1 or burst into an agony of tears2 she may even die of the shock1 and you can't have a more striking emotional result than death1 can you8 ,very well2 but is the telegram fine art8 ,is it art8 ,is it even artifice8 ,it isn't art because it is true6 ,but if ,i invented such a telegram and sent it to a woman whose husband and son were away1 would it thereby become art8 ,you must see perfectly well that it would be nothing of the kind2 and ,i must ask you to explain how a book which is1 virtually1 a long succession of such telegrams can rise higher than its origin and source8 ,you must see1 ,i think1 that the question of truth and falsity can make no real difference to our 7no doubt pompous7 high sthetic standpoint2 and if you admit that four words which produce an emotional result are not necessarily art1 then it follows that four hundred or four hundred thousand words woven together on the same principle are in no better position4 ,an increased quantity means no doubt an increased artifice1 but artifice and art are very different things4 ,we may agree then that it is impossible to measure the artistic merit of a book by the emotional shock that it may give to its readers4 ,i have never read the ,sorrows of ,werther2 but if you have read it and it has made you sorrowful you are hereby warned against deducing from this effect any conclusion as to its sthetic value4 ,i confess all this seems ,a ,b ,c to me1 though ,i see you are still inclined to think me a little paradoxical--not to say sophistical--but it grows more difficult when one gets to the question of the interesting or absorbing book4 ,as ,i said interesting seems such an ambiguous word4 ,it may stand for that sthetic emotion produced1 say1 by the dipus2 it may denote the wide-eyed attention of the butcher's wife listening to the story of my landlady as to the love-affairs of the grocer's daughter--and there are many books which are1 virtually1 ,tales of ,my ,landlady printed and bound4 ,we must really then omit interesting in our account of the possible criteria of fine art2 the word as it were cancels itself out1 because it may mean on the one hand the possession of the highest artistic value1 or on the other it may serve as epithet for a book which gratifies the lowest curiosity4 ,you know there are books which the ,french have kindly named romans clef2 and ,i suppose there is no more miserable form of book-making4 ,the receipt is easy enough4 ,the grocer's daughter1 to whose amours ,i alluded just now1 is really named ,miss ,buggins1 and the gentleman is ,mr ,tibb4 ,well1 suppose that my landlady1 relating their lyric to the butcher's wife1 should1 with a knowing wink1 profess to tell the story of ,miss ,ruggins and ,mr ,ribb--she would simply be composing a roman clef without knowing it4 ,you might say that it is hardly worth while to labour the point1 that such interest as this is wholly and lamentably inartistic--that it is the very contrary to all true art--but it is not long since a person of some literary note1 in criticising the ,heptameron1 stated that its chief value lay in the fact that one could identify the persons who tell the stories and those also of whom they were told6 ,but there is another interest of a much higher kind1 and that is the sensational4 ,we have done some excellent books of this sort in ,england1 and perhaps you will understand the class ,i mean when ,i say that a novel of this description is hard to lay down1 and harder still to take up again when you have once found out the secret4 ,this is not high art2 you are always at liberty to put down ,lycidas1 but then you are compelled to take it up again and again1 and the secret of ,lycidas is always a secret1 and one never fails to experience the joy of an artistic surprise4 ,still the books ,i mean sometimes show very high artifice1 and in itself1 perhaps1 the quality that ,i am talking about1 the power of exciting a vivid curiosity1 an earnest desire to know what is to come next is not1 like the vulgar roman clef curiosity1 in actual disaccord from the purpose of art4 ,indeed ,i imagine that this trick of stimulating the curiosity may be made subservient to purely sthetic ends1 it may become a handmaid to lead one towards that desire of the unknown which ,i think was one of the synonyms ,i gave you for the master word--,ecstasy4 ,still1 though the trick is a good one1 it will not1 by itself1 make fine art4 ,you may discover so much by reading the ,moonstone1 that monument of ingenuity and absurdity4 ,on the face of it all detective stories come under this heading3 formally1 no doubt1 they must all be reckoned as tricks1 and they may vary from the infinitely ingenious to the infinitely imbecile1 and so far as ,i remember1 the famous ,french tales of detection verge towards the lower rather than the higher ground4 ,but ,i am inclined1 not very logically1 perhaps1 to make an exception in favour of ,poe's ,dupin1 and to place him almost in the sphere of pure literature4 ,logically1 he is a detective1 but ,i almost think that in his case the detective is a symbol of the mystagogue4 ,as ,i say1 ,i should be pressed hard if ,i were asked to make out my case in terms and syllogisms1 but if you require me to do so1 ,i would say first of all that the atmosphere of ,dupin--and you must remember that in literature everything counts2 it is not alone the plot1 or the style that we have to consider--has to me hints of that presence which ,i have called ecstasy4 ,listen to this3 ,it was a freak of fancy in my friend 7for what else shall ,i call it87 to be enamoured of the ,night for her own sake2 and into this bizarrerie1 as into all his others1 ,i quietly fell2 giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon4 ,the sable divinity would not herself dwell with us always2 but we could counterfeit her presence4 ,at the first dawn of the morning we closed all the massive shutters of our old building2 lighting a couple of tapers which1 strongly perfumed1 threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays4 ,by the aid of these we then buried our souls in dreams--reading1 writing1 or conversing1 until warned by the clock of the advent of the true ,darkness4 ,then we sallied forth into the streets1 arm in arm1 continuing the topics of the day1 or roaming far and wide until a late hour1 seeking amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city1 that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford4 ,and again2 in the stories themselves1 in the conduct of ,m4 ,dupin's detective processes1 ,i find a faint suggestion of the under-consciousness or other consciousness of man1 a mere hint1 not1 ,i think1 expressed in so many words1 rather latent than patent1 that if you would thoroughly understand the rational man you must have sounded the irrational man1 the mysterious companion that walks beside each one of us on the earthly journey4 ,of course the artifice in the ,dupin stories is of the very highest kind1 but for the reasons ,i have given ,i am inclined to think that there is more than artifice1 and the shadow1 at all events1 of art itself4 ,but this exceptional case of ,poe's detective tales only leads us back to the main proposition--that the power of exciting a very high sensational interest does not1 in itself1 mark out a book as being fine literature4 ,i think ,i proved the proposition by my instance of the ,moonstone1 but if that does not convince you1 we might demonstrate this theorem in the same way as we demonstrated the other one about the literature that produces its effect on the emotions4 ,we have only to send out a series of telegrams1 or we may even glance at the newspaper1 and follow a case in the ,central ,criminal ,court4 ,or we may affirm1 more generally1 that life often offers many highly absorbing and highly interesting spectacles1 but that life is not art1 and therefore1 that literature which fails to rise above the level of life1 or rather1 to penetrate beneath the surface of life1 is not fine literature in our sense of that term4 ,a gold nugget may be as pure and fine as you like1 but it is not a sovereign2 it lacks the stamp2 and it is the business of art to give its stamp and imprint to the matter of life4 ,i really think then that we have disposed of perhaps the most generally received of artistic fallacies--that books are to be judged by their power of reproducing in the reader those feelings of grief1 interest1 curiosity1 and so forth which he experiences or may experience in his everyday life1 which he really does experience in greater or less degree every time he talks to a friend1 takes up a newspaper1 or receives a telegram4 ,it comes to this again and again1 doesn't it1 that ,art and ,life are two different spheres1 and that the ,artist with a capital ,a is not a clever photographer who understands selection in a greater or less degree4 ,but before we go on with our work and see what can be done with other literary solvents ,i want to make a digression4 ,i should have made it before1 if you had pulled me up at the proper cue1 and that was when ,i spoke of interest as a highly ambiguous term1 the fruitful parent of undistributed middles4 ,you see how the unscrupulous sophist would bend this word to his dark work1 don't you8 ,it would be1 ,i suppose1 something like this3 ,a very high degree of interest of the artistic kind is the mark of fine literature4 ,but1 the ,moonstone excites a very high degree of interest of the sensational kind4 ,therefore1 the ,moonstone has the mark of fine literature4 ,you note the paltering with the word1 its use now in one sense1 and now in another2 and if that sort of thing were allowed we should have ,wilkie ,collins placed among the ,immortals before we knew where we were4 ,but hasn't it occurred to you that nearly all the terms we are using are patient of the same vile uses8 ,you remember that we began with literature itself1 as a monstrous example of ambiguity1 sheltering as it did both the publications of the ,anti-,everything ,society and the ,song of ,ulysses' ,wandering2 even now we are trying to track the monster to his den in spite of his manifold turnings and disguises4 ,in the meanwhile1 for the sake of clearness1 we agreed to prefix the epithet fine to the word when we meant the ,odyssey class1 though if we say fine so often ,i am afraid we run the risk of being thought superfine4 ,however one must run all risks in the cause of making oneself understood2 and so ,i say you ought to have pulled me up when ,i talked about art and books that appealed to the emotions4 ,my art may not be the same as your art1 and emotions are still more dangerous in the same way4 ,i think ,i made some attempt to deal with art as ,i was talking4 ,i contrasted it with artifice1 and my phrase ,artist with a big ,a was another hint to you that the word must be handled cautiously4 ,you know that in ordinary conversation we say that bees have the art or an art of making hexagonal cells of wax1 that wasps have an art of making a sort of paper for their nests1 that there is an art of logic1 an art of cookery1 an art in making a gravel path4 ,now in each of these instances the word really speaks of the adaptation of means to ends4 ,in the case of the bees and wasps there is a slightly different nuance of meaning1 because they make their cells and their paper just as a bird builds its nest1 through the influence of forces which to us are occult1 which we conveniently sum up under the word instinct4 ,in the arts of cookery and pathmaking there is a conscious employment of certain means towards the securing of certain ends2 and it is at least possible that the swallow1 gathering its materials and shaping them1 has at the moment nothing but a blind impulse1 similar to that of hunger--we all know when we are hungry and we all know what to do in such a case1 but we do not all know the physiology of the stomach and the gastric juices1 and perhaps not one of us knows the whole secret of inanition and nutrition4 ,we simply eat because we want to eat1 not because we wish to supply ourselves with a certain quantity of peptones2 and so perhaps the swallow gathers her nest and shapes it1 without the consciousness of the eggs and the little birds that are to follow4 ,but ,i need not remind you that there are plenty of well authenticated instances of animals who have consciously used means to secure ends1 and thus art in its common significance is not even an exclusively human faculty4 ,when1 for example1 the bees find themselves in danger of being left queenless1 they administer what has been called royal food to a common grub1 and that which would have been a worker becomes a queen2 and in this case the bees are as much artists as the cook who puts a particular ingredient into a dish with the view of obtaining a particular flavour4 ,now1 then1 let us apply all this to our matter4 ,i daresay you have often heard a book praised for its great art1 and if you have read it you will have discovered that its art is simply contrivance1 the very adaptation of means to ends that we have been discussing4 ,the art with which the mystery is carefully kept in the background1 the art by which the two characters are contrasted throughout the volume1 the highly artistic manner in which ,fernando and the heroine are brought together on the last page--these1 you see clearly1 are contrivances1 artifices1 in no way differing in degree from the contrivances of the man who makes the garden path1 of the cook who dusts in just a suspicion of lemon-rind1 of the bee who administers the royal food4 ,this art then is a totally different thing from our ,art with the capital letter1 with the epithet fine1 or high before it2 and in future when ,i mean adaptation of means to ends1 ,i shall always say artifice2 while art will be retained and set apart for higher uses4 ,and now as to emotion4 ,here1 ,i think1 you ought to have been down on me4 ,you might have said3 ,you declare that the appeal to the emotions is not a test of fine literature4 ,but to what then does ,homer appeal8 ,what is the dipus but an appeal to the emotions8 ,what is all exquisite lyric poetry but the cry of the emotions1 set to music8 ,i suppose that1 as a matter of fact1 you understood my real meaning by the instance ,i gave2 the anguish of a wife at the loss of a husband2 you saw that what ,i wanted to say was this3 that fine literature does not content itself with repeating1 or mimicking1 the emotions of private1 personal1 everyday life4 ,still1 ,i should have gone into the matter more fully then1 and as ,i did not do so1 we had better see what can be done now4 ,and do you know that ,i believe that the best approach we can make to a rather subtle question will be a somewhat indirect one8 ,just now ,i was talking about ,poe's ,dupin stories1 and ,i tried1 rather vaguely1 to justify my tentative inclusion of them in the higher class of letters1 by pointing out that ,poe seemed to hint at the other-consciousness of man1 and to suggest1 at least1 the presence of that shadowy1 unknown1 or half-known companion who walks beside each one of us all our days4 ,i tried to realise the image of a man1 followed or rather attended1 by a spiritual fellow1 treading a path parallel with but different from his own2 and now ,i want you to carry out this image into the sphere of words4 ,already you must have a hint of it4 ,one might draw a figure2 something like this3 ------------------------------------- ,fine ,literature4 ,literature4 ,art4 ,artifice4 ,emotion4 ,feelings4 ------------------------------------- ,and before ,i go into the special question1 let me extend the list2 it will explain itself4 ---------------------------------------- ------------------------- ,romance1 romantic4 ,a ,romantic ,affair in the ,west ,end4 ,tragedy1 tragic4 ,tragedy in ,soho4 ,drama1 dramatic4 ,le drame de la ,rue ,cochon3 ,dramatic ,elopement in ,peckham4 ,interest1 interesting ,an interesting number of ,snippets4 of ,hamlet4 ,lyric4 ,the ,lyric ,theatre4 ,inebriated4 ,in an inebriated condition4 ---------------------------------------- ------------------------- ,that almost gives my secret away1 doesn't it8 ,of course you see the place that the words in the right-hand column take in the scheme4 ,the ,romantic ,affair in the ,west ,end really concerned the life of a draper's assistant1 who robbed his master's till1 in order that he might make presents to ,miss ,claire ,tilbury1 one of the ,sisters ,tilbury now performing at the ,lucifer4 ,an unmentionable person cut his throat in some alley off ,greek ,street2 hence the ,tragedy in ,soho4 ,two peculiarly squalid servants1 who beat out their master's brains1 under singularly uninteresting circumstances1 acted the ,drama of the ,rue ,cochon1 and it was a dissolute barmaid who eloped dramatically from ,peckham in the dog-cart of her employer4 ,the two varying uses of the word lyric need not be underlined for you1 who know the ,elizabethans and the ,cavaliers2 but perhaps ,i may say that he who tastes calix meus inebrians will not be in an inebriated condition4 ,it would be possible to extend these parallel columns almost to infinity2 but ,i think the list is long enough for our purpose1 and ,trench on ,words is a well-known handbook4 ,but you see my right-hand column word1 parallel with ,emotion8 ,you see ,i have written ,feelings1 and ,i suggest that it will be convenient to speak of feelings when we mean the things of life1 of society1 of personal and private relationship1 while we may reserve emotion for the influence produced in man by fine art4 ,thus it will be with emotion that we witness the fall of dipus1 the madness of ,lear1 while we feel for our friends and ourselves in misfortune4 ,that seems to make it plain enough1 doesn't it2 you see now1 clearly1 what ,i mean by saying that the power of producing an emotional shock cannot be a test of fine literature4 ,art must appeal to emotion1 and sometimes1 no doubt1 with a shock2 but it must always be to the emotion of the left-hand column1 never to the feelings on the right hand4 ,so you must never tell me that a book is fine art because it made you1 or somebody else1 cry2 your tears are1 emphatically1 not evidence in the court of ,fine ,literature4 ,i daresay it may have struck you that the tests we have considered hitherto have been1 in the main1 popular tests4 ,no doubt many persons calling themselves critics have praised the art of a book because it has drawn tears from eyes1 or because it has not suffered itself to be put down1 or because it contains easily recognisable portraits of well-known people1 but such critics are to be spelt with a very small initial letter1 and1 as ,i said1 ,i don't think we want to extend that list of parallels4 ,there is another test that ,i had forgotten3 ,i suppose there really are people who believe that a book is fine because it will do good1 but ,i don't think we'll argue with them1 though ,i once knew a liberally-educated man who said a certain book was fine because it tended to raise one's opinion of the clergy4 ,so we will reckon our popular tests as done with1 and proceed to the more technical solvents that are proposed by professed men of letters4 ,three of these more literary criteria occur to me at the moment1 and ,i believe we shall understand them and the position which they represent better if we take them1 at first1 at all events1 in a mass4 ,i can conceive1 then1 that many persons whose opinion one would respect would state their position in literary criticism somewhat as follows3--,if a book 7they would say7 shows keenness of observation1 insight into character1 with fidelity to life as the result of these capacities2 if its art 7we should say1 artifice7 in the design and 'laying out' of the plot1 in the contrivance of incident is confessedly admirable1 and finally if it is written in a good style3 then you have fine literature4 ,fine art1 in short1 is a clear mirror1 and the artist's skill consists in arranging and selecting such parts of life as he thinks best for his purpose of reflection4 ,well1 now1 as to the first point3 fidelity to life1 clearness of reflection1 the selection being taken for granted1 as no one out of an asylum would maintain that a book must mirror the whole of life1 or even the millionth part of one particular man's life4 ,come1 let us apply the test in question to one or two of the acknowledged excellencies--to the ,odyssey for instance1 to the ,morte ,d',arthur1 to ,don ,quixote4 ,is the story of ,ulysses1 in any accepted sense of the phrase faithful to life as we know it8 ,is it faithful1 that is to say1 with the fidelity of ,jane ,austen1 of ,thackeray1 of ,george ,eliot1 of ,fielding8 ,is there anything in our experience answering to the episodes of the ,lotus-,eaters1 ,calypso's ,isle1 the ,cyclops' ,cavern1 the descent of the ,goddess8 ,is the reflection even a reflection of ,homer's own experience8 ,had he escaped from the cave under the belly of a ram8 ,had he been in the world of one-eyed giants8 ,were his friends in the habit of talking in hexameter verse8 ,we may go on1 of course1 but is it worth while8 ,it is surely hardly necessary to demonstrate the fact that the author of the ,morte ,d',arthur had never seen the ,graal1 that such a character as ,don ,quixote never existed in the natural order of things4 ,we might have gone more sharply to work with this fidelity test3 we might have said that poetry being1 admittedly fine literature at its finest1 and 7admittedly also7 being unfaithful to life as we know it both in matter and manner1 that therefore the test breaks down at once4 ,if fine literature must be faithful to life1 then ,kubla ,khan is not fine literature2 which1 ,i think we may say1 is highly absurd4 ,i daresay you think ,i have dealt rather crudely1 in a somewhat materialistic spirit1 with this criterion of fidelity to life4 ,i admit the charge1 but you must remember that ,i am dealing with very bad people1 who understand nothing but materialism4 ,and when these people tell you in so many words that it is the author's business clearly and intelligently to present the life--the common1 social life around him--then1 believe me1 the only thing to be done is to throw ,odyssey and dipus1 ,morte ,d',arthur1 ,kubla ,khan and ,don ,quixote straight in their faces1 and to demonstrate that these eternal books were not constructed on the proposed receipt4 ,of course if ,i were treating with the initiated1 if ,i were commentating and not arguing1 ,i should handle the great masterpieces in a much more reverent manner4 ,i mean that for those who possess the secret it skills not to bring in the ,cyclops 7who for us is not a giant but a symbol72 we have only to bow down before the great music of such a poem as the ,odyssey1 recognising that by the very reason of its transcendent beauty1 by the very fact that it trespasses far beyond the world of our daily lives1 beyond selection and reflection1 it is also exalted above our understanding1 that because its beauty is supreme1 that therefore its beauty is largely beyond criticism4 ,for ourselves we do not need to prove its transcendence of life by this or that extraordinary incident2 it is the whole spirit and essence and sound and colour of the song that affect us2 and we know that the ,odyssey surpassed the bounds of its own age and its own land just as much as it surpasses those of our time and our country4 ,you look as if you thought ,i were fighting with the vanquished1 but let me tell you that great people have praised ,homer because he depicted truthfully the men and manners of his time4 ,but as ,i was saying1 all this would be too subtle for the enemy1 for the people who maintain that fine literature is a faithful reflection of life1 and think that ,jane ,austen touched the point of literary supremacy4 ,with them1 as ,i said1 we must be rough2 we must ask3 ,did ,sophocles describe the ordinary life of ,athens in his day8 ,no3 very well1 then2 since the works of ,sophocles are fine literature1 it follows that some fine literature does not reflect ordinary life1 and therefore that fidelity to nature is not the differentia of the highest art4 ,i wonder whether ,i ought to caution you again against the ambiguity of language8 ,we are dealing easily enough with such words as life and nature1 and from what you know of my system you may perhaps have seen that ,i have been using these words as the people use them1 as those use them who would say that ,vanity ,fair is a faithful presentation of life4 ,i thought you would understand this1 but ,i may just mention in passing that words like nature1 life and truth or fidelity have also their esoteric values1 that 7by way of example7 the truth of the scientist and the truth of the philosopher are two very different things4 ,so it may turn out by and bye that in the occult sense1 fidelity to life is the differentia of fine literature2 that the aim of art is truth2 that the artist continually mirrors nature in its eternal1 essential forms2 but for the present moment1 it is understood1 is it not1 that these words have been used in their common1 everyday popular significance8 ,the ,dunciad is a study of man1 and ,wordsworth's ,ode on ,intimations of ,immortality is a study of man1 and the literary standpoint that we have been attacking is that of ,pope and not that of ,wordsworth4 ,if ,i remember1 the next test we have to analyse is that of artifice1 often and improperly called art4 ,but ,i think we have already demolished this criterion4 ,in distinguishing between art and artifice ,i pointed out that the latter merely signifies the adaptation of means to an end1 and has no relation whatever with art properly so-called2 it is simply the mental instrument with which man performs every task and every work of his daily life2 it consists in the rejection of that which is unfit for the particular purpose in view1 and in the acceptance and use of that which is fit for the desired end and likely to bring it about4 ,it concerns not creation but execution1 and it is ,i need hardly say as indispensable to the author as are his pen and ink1 and 7,i might almost say7 is as little concerned as these with the essence of his art4 ,of course in works of the very highest genius we may declare that1 in a sense1 art has become all in all1 that the necessary artifice has been interpenetrated with art1 so that we can hardly distinguish in our minds between the idea and the realisation of it4 ,in such cases1 artifice has been lifted up and exalted into the heaven of art1 and it remains artifice no longer2 but in the view that we are considering it is merely the adaptation of means to an end1 a clever choice of incident1 the knack of putting in and leaving out4 ,the faculty may1 as ,i said1 be glorified and transfigured by genius1 but every newspaper reporter must have more or less of it1 and it is clear enough ,i think 7perhaps ,i may mention ,wilkie ,collins once more7 that in itself it cannot establish the claim of any book to be fine literature4 ,and lastly we have to deal with style2 and here again ,i must have recourse to my distinctions4 ,what is a good style8 ,if you mean by a good style1 one that delivers the author's meaning in the clearest possible manner1 if its purpose and effect are obviously utilitarian1 if it be designed solely with the view of imparting knowledge--the knowledge of what the author intends--then ,i must point out that style in this sense is or should be amongst the accomplishments of every commercial clerk--indeed1 it will be merely a synonym for plain speaking and plain writing--and in this sense it is evidently not one of the marks of art1 since the object of art is not information1 but a peculiar kind of sthetic delight4 ,but if on the other hand style is to mean such a use and choice of words and phrases and cadences that the ear and the soul through the ear receive an impression of subtle but most beautiful music1 if the sense and sound and colour of the words affect us with an almost inexplicable delight1 then ,i say that while ,idea is the soul1 style is the glorified body of the very highest literary art4 ,style1 in short1 is the last perfection of the very best in literature1 it is the outward sign of the burning grace within4 ,but we must keep the systematic consideration of style for some other night2 it's not a subject to be dealt with by the way1 and ,i have only said so much because it was necessary to draw the line between language as a means of imparting facts 7good style in the sense of our opponents7 and language as an sthetic instrument1 which is a good1 or rather a beautiful style in our sense4 ,in the latter sense it is the form of fine literature1 in the former sense it is the medium of all else that is expressed in words1 from a bill of exchange upwards4 ,it seems to me1 then1 that we have considered one by one the alternative tests of fine literature which have been or may be proposed1 and we have come to the conclusion that each and all are impossible4 ,it is no longer permissible1 ,i imagine1 for you or for me to say3 ,this book is fine literature because it makes me cry1 because it was so interesting that ,i couldn't put it down1 because it is so natural and faithful to life1 because it is so well 7plainly and neatly7 written4 ,we have picked these reasons to pieces one by one1 and the result is that we are driven back on my word of the enigma--,ecstasy2 the infallible instrument1 as ,i think1 by which fine literature may be discerned from reading-matter1 by which art may be known from artifice1 and style from intelligent expression4 ,at any rate we have got our hypothesis1 and you remember what stress ,coleridge laid on the necessity of forming some hypothesis before entering on any investigation4 ,i believe we began to-night with the evening paper1 and the strange glimpse it gives us1 through a pinky-green veil1 through a cloud of laborious nonsense about odds and winners and tips and all such foolery1 into that ancient eternal desire of man for the unknown4 ,and that1 you remember1 was one of the synonyms that ,i offered you for ecstasy2 and so in a sense ,i expect that we shall have the evening paper close beside us all the way of our long voyage in quest of the lost ,atlantis4 ,,ii ,i think it is a horrible thing to have such a good memory as that4 ,i recollect1 now that you remind me1 that ,i did lay down ,pickwick v4 ,vanity ,fair as a sort of test case of my theory of literature2 but you surely do not expect me to work out the arguments in detail8 ,of course if ,i were giving a series of lectures ,i should set a paper after each one2 but ,i expect you to content yourself with the suggestion1 with the skeleton map1 as it were4 ,besides1 if we take that special case of two eminent ,victorian novels as a concrete instance of the abstract argument1 don't you see that we are answering the particular question all the while that we are investigating the general proposition8 ,surely if you recollect all that we said about fine literature in general1 you won't have much difficulty in adjudicating on the claims of ,thackeray4 ,don't you see that he never withdraws himself from the common life and the common consciousness1 that he is all the while nothing but a photographer2 a showman with a set of pictures4 ,a consummately clever photographer1 certainly1 a showman with a gift of amusing1 interesting patter that is quite extraordinary1 an artificer of very high merit4 ,but where will you find ,ecstasy in ,thackeray8 ,where is his adoration8 ,you may search1 ,i think1 from one end of his books to the other1 without finding any evidence that he realised the mystery of things2 he was never for a moment aware of that shadowy double1 that strange companion of man1 who walks1 as ,i said1 foot to foot with each one of us1 and yet his paces are in an unknown world4 ,and 7unless you have got any fresh arguments7 ,i think we decided last week that the book which lacks the sense of all this is not fine literature4 ,i hope you don't think ,i am abusing ,thackeray4 ,i am always reading him1 and ,i chose his ,vanity ,fair because it strikes me as such a supremely clever example of its class4 ,i suppose there is nothing more amusing than the society of a brilliant1 observant man of the world4 ,well1 ,thackeray was brilliant and observant in excelsis1 and besides that1 he understood the artifice of story-telling1 and he could write a terse1 clean-cut ,english which was always sufficient for his purpose4 ,he contrives the corporal overthrow of the ,marquis of ,steyne1 he shows you that bald old nobleman sprawling on the floor1 and the words that he uses are his brisk1 willing1 and capable servants4 ,he has observation1 and artifice1 and style in that secondary sense which we distinguished from the real style2 from those melodies unheard which ,i called 7,i think rather picturesquely7 the glorified body of the highest literary art4 ,but these qualities1 we found out1 are not1 separately or conjointly1 the differentia of fine literature as we understand the term2 and consequently1 with all our admiration and all our interest we are compelled to place ,thackeray in the lower form1 simply because he is clearly and decisively lacking in that one essential quality of ecstasy1 because he never leaves the street and the highroad to wander on the eternal hills1 because he does not seem to be aware that such hills exist4 ,of course ,i have only taken ,thackeray as the representative of his class1 and ,i chose him1 as ,i remarked1 because1 for me1 he is the most favourable representative of it4 ,i am thinking1 really1 of the plain man whom we have engaged in so many forms1 and of his plain argument which comes to this--for me a great book is a book that amuses me greatly and that ,i enjoy reading4 ,and ,i say that ,thackeray amuses me greatly and that ,i enjoy reading his books immensely1 but that1 with due respect to common sense1 such an argument fails to prove that ,vanity ,fair is fine literature4 ,other people would1 no doubt1 have chosen other books2 many would have selected ,miss ,austen1 and ,i daresay they would have a good deal to say for their choice4 ,undoubtedly there is a severity1 a self-restraint1 a fineness of observation1 a delicacy of irony in ,pride and ,prejudice which are unmatched of their kind 7the ,thackeray of the caricatures1 of those queer woodblocks1 comes out now and then in the books1 and digression occasionally goes beyond due bounds72 but ,i named ,vanity ,fair because1 personally1 ,i find it more amusing than ,pride and ,prejudice4 ,in neither of these books is there art in our high sense of the word1 and in preferring the one over the other ,i am simply saying that ,i prefer the company of a brilliant and witty cosmopolitan to that of a very keen and delicate1 but very limited maiden lady1 who lives in a remote country town and understands thoroughly the reason why the vicar bowed so low when a certain carriage rolled up the high street1 and why that pretty1 prim girl crossed over the way when the handsome gentleman from the ,hall came out of the chymist's4 ,yes1 the cosmopolitan at the club window certainly fails a little in his manners now and then1 and the country gentlewoman's breeding is perfect of its kind1 but the circles in which ,pendennis moved are 7to me7 so infinitely the more entertaining of the two4 ,you see1 ,i think that the question of liking a book or not liking it has nothing whatever to do with the consideration of fine art4 ,art is there1 if ,i may say so1 just as the ,tenth ,commandment is there2 and if we don't like them1 so much the worse for us4 ,i may find ,homer very dull reading1 ,i may covet your ox and your ass and everything that is yours1 but my limited and somewhat commonplace brains1 and my envy of your prosperity won't alter the fact that the ,odyssey is fine literature and that covetousness is wicked4 ,but when we once leave the utterances of the eternal1 universal human ecstasy1 which we have agreed to call art1 and descend to these lower levels that we are talking of now1 it seems to me that the question of liking or not liking counts for a good deal4 ,not for everything1 of course4 ,we must still distinguish3 between plots stupid or ingenious1 between observation that is close and keen and observation that is vague and inaccurate1 between artifice and the want of it1 between sentences that are neatly constructed and mere slipshod4 ,all these things naturally reckon in the account1 but when they have been estimated and allowed their value1 you will usually find that you are influenced still more by your mere liking or disliking of the subject-matter1 and it seems to me quite legitimately4 ,for1 if you look closely into the whole question1 you will find that you are judging these secondary books as you judge of life1 as you choose the scene of your holiday1 as you read the newspaper4 ,one man may say that he prefers to talk to artists1 another1 quite legitimately1 may love the society of brewers2 you may think ,norway perfection1 ,i am going to ,constantinople2 ,a4 turns at once to the quotation for ,turpentine at ,savannah1 ,b4 folds down the sheet at the ,police ,news4 ,it is not a question of art1 but of taste1 that is of individual humour and constitution2 you frequent the company that suits you1 you go to the place you like1 you read the news that happens to be most interesting from your special standpoint4 ,and in the same way1 if ,i find the conversation of ,miss ,becky ,sharpe1 as reported by ,mr ,w4 ,m4 ,thackeray1 more amusing than the conversation of ,miss ,elizabeth ,bennett as reported by ,miss ,jane ,austen2 it seems to me that there is no more to be said4 ,elizabeth's remarks are more skilfully reported8 ,very likely1 but1 granting that1 ,i had rather listen to the record1 imperfect1 if you please1 of the other lady's conversation4 ,here is a speech on ,bimetallism1 given at great length1 and 7let us presume7 with great accuracy2 here is a short summary of ,professor ,l4's ,lecture on the ,eleusinian ,mysteries1 very badly sub-edited4 ,but1 you see1 ,i happen not to care twopence about ,bimetallism1 so ,i turn away from the careful report1 growling2 while ,i cut out that wretched summary of the ,lecture with the purpose of pasting it in my scrap-book1 since every word about the ,eleusinian ,mysteries has a vivid interest for me4 ,it often amuses me to hear people quarrelling about the rival artistic merit of books which have1 in most cases1 no artistic merits at all4 ,a4 writes a book about greengrocers1 and you1 who find something singularly piquant and entertaining in the manners1 speech1 and habits of the class in question1 pronounce ,a4 to be a great artist who has written a masterpiece4 ,i love dukes1 and ,b's4 novel of the peerage strikes me as a marvel of artistic accomplishment1 while ,i pronounce the work that has charmed you to be as stupid and tiresome as the class it represents4 ,each of us is talking nonsense2 there is no art in the question1 which is purely a matter of individual taste4 ,the ,stock ,exchange column interests one man1 while the latest football news absorbs the other4 ,that is all4 ,of course1 as ,i said1 artifice counts for something3 there is a pleasure in seeing the thing neatly done1 and ,i suppose it is this pleasure that has secured ,miss ,austen her fervent admirers4 ,it is a little difficult to treat this form of pleasure quite fairly2 a musician perhaps would find it difficult to answer the question whether he would rather hear ,palestrina badly rendered or ,zingarelli executed to perfection4 ,in the latter case there would certainly be the charm of exquisite voices in perfect order and accord1 though the music were nothing or worse than nothing2 still1 our musician might say1 on the other hand1 that ,palestrina martyred was better than ,zingarelli triumphant4 ,i am afraid ,i can imagine myself saying3 ,limited country-people1 as seen by ,jane ,austen1 are so 'slow' that they rather bore me1 though the author has portrayed them with wonderful skill1 but ,i can hardly fancy myself affirming that ,becky ,sharpe is such an interesting personage that she would still delight me1 even if the author of ,ten ,thousand a ,year had written her history4 ,on the other hand ,i believe that the plot of ,jekyll and ,hyde would still have had some fascination1 though it had been treated by the veriest dolt in letters4 ,but that is not a good example1 since ,jekyll and ,hyde is certainly in its conception1 though not in its execution1 a work of fine art4 ,let us take the ,moonstone again as an example2 ,i believe then1 that if the events related in it had caught our eyes in a brief newspaper paragraph they would still have interested4 ,it seems to me that1 after all1 this question of artifice1 of how the thing is done1 comes under the same category as liking and disliking4 ,i mean it is largely a matter of the personal equation1 about which no very strict laws can be laid down4 ,you might say1 for example1 that ,becky would entertain you in any hands1 however indifferent1 provided that her facts were preserved1 and ,i don't see that ,i could argue the point with you4 ,it reminds me again of the way in which men choose their friends2 one lays stress on pleasant manners1 another on sterling goodness of character1 a third on wit1 a fourth on distinction of some kind2 and argument is really voiceless4 ,here is a book-case1 you may say1 look how exquisitely it is made4 ,yes1 but ,i don't want a book-case2 whereas that table1 ricketty as it is1 will be really useful4 ,but if you were to say3 ,look at ,westminster ,abbey1 you can hardly imagine my answering3 ,bother ,westminster ,abbey2 ,i want a pig-sty4 ,you see how1 here again1 we come to the generic difference between fine literature and interesting reading matter4 ,we read the ,odyssey because we are supernatural1 because we hear in it the echoes of the eternal song1 because it symbolises for us certain amazing and beautiful things1 because it is music2 we read ,miss ,austen and ,thackeray because we like to recognise the faces of our friends aptly reproduced1 to see the external face of humanity so deftly mimicked1 because we are natural4 ,the question of our preference for one over the other1 is1 making due allowance for analogy1 the question of our preference for a table over a bookcase or vice vers1 and the workmanship in each case is largely a matter of detail4 ,and the great poem may be equated with the great church3 each is made for beauty1 the one is ecstasy in words1 the other ecstasy in stone4 ,but the church and the pig-sty1 on the other hand1 are not to be compared together3 incidentally1 no doubt1 the former is rainproof or in ill repair1 has good or bad acoustic properties1 while the latter may be either an sthetic pest in the back-yard1 or an agreeable looking little shed enough4 ,still1 the essence of the church is beauty1 ecstasy2 of the sty utility1 the safe keeping of pigs4 ,it would be absurd1 you see1 to say3 ,i prefer an abbey to a pig-sty1 and it would be equally absurd to say3 ,i prefer the 'dipus' to ',pride and ,prejudice' or ,i prefer the ,venus of the ,louvre to the wax-figures in the exhibition4 ,of course these are only analogies1 and you mustn't press them1 but they may help to make my meaning clearer1 to enforce the vast distinction between art and artifice4 ,please don't think that ,i wish to establish a proportion3 as a pig-sty is to an abbey1 so is ,jane ,austen to ,sophocles4 ,in her case you would have to substitute a neat ,georgian house for pig-sty and then ,i think you would have a very fair proportion4 ,but all that ,i wanted to do was to draw the line between things made for use1 to occupy some definite place in relation to our common daily life2 and things made by ecstasy and for ecstasy1 things that are symbols1 proclaiming the presence of the unknown world4 ,and ,i chose ,pickwick as the antithesis to ,vanity ,fair deliberately4 ,thackeray 7in my private judgment7 is the chief of those who have provided interesting reading-matter2 ,dickens is by no means in the first rank of literary artists4 ,i think he is golden1 but he is very largely alloyed with baser stuff1 with indifferent metal1 which was the product of his age1 of his circumstances in life1 of his own uncertain taste4 ,just contrast the atmosphere which surrounded the young ,sophocles1 with that in which the young ,dickens flourished4 ,both were men of genius1 but one grew up in the ,city of the ,violet ,crown1 the other in ,camden ,town and worse places1 one was accustomed to breathe that most pellucid air1 the other inhaled the ,london particular4 ,the wonder is1 not that there are faults in ,dickens1 but that there is genius of any kind4 ,i am not going to analyze ,pickwick any more than ,i analyzed ,vanity ,fair1 but of course you see that1 in its conception1 it is essentially one with the ,odyssey4 ,it is a book of wandering2 you start from your own doorstep and you stray into the unknown2 every turn of the road fills you with surmise1 every little village is a discovery1 a something new1 a creation4 ,you know not what may happen next2 you are journeying through another world4 ,i need not remind you how glorious all this is in the ,odyssey1 which of course is so much more beautiful than ,pickwick1 as that glowing ,mediterranean ,sea1 whose bounds on every side were mystery1 is more beautiful than the muddy1 foggy ,thames1 as those rolling hexameters are more beautiful than ,dickens's prose2 and yet in each case the symbol is1 in reality1 the same2 both the heroic song of the old ,ionian world and the comic cockney romance of #ahcg communicate that enthralling impression of the unknown1 which is1 at once1 a whole philosophy of life1 and the most exquisite of emotions4 ,in varying degrees of intensity you will trace it all through fine literature in every age and in every nation2 you will find it in ,celtic voyages1 in the ,eastern ,tale1 where a door in a dull street suddenly opens into dreamland1 in the medival stories of the wandering knights1 in ,don ,quixote1 and at last in our ,pickwick where ,ulysses has become a retired city man1 whimsically journeying up and down the ,england of sixty years ago4 ,you talk of the grotesquerie of ,pickwick1 but don't you see that this element is present in all the masterpieces of the kind8 ,remember the ,cyclops1 remember the grotesque shapes that decorate the ,arabian ,nights1 remember the bizarre element1 the almost wanton grotesquerie of many of the ,arthur romances4 ,in all these cases as in ,pickwick the same result is obtained2 an overpowering impression of strangeness1 of remoteness1 of withdrawal from the common ways of life4 ,pickwick1 is1 in no sense1 or in no valuable sense1 a portrayal1 a copy1 an imitation of life in the ordinary sense of imitation1 and life2 ,pickwick1 and ,sam1 and ,jingle1 and the rest of them are not clever reproductions of actual people1 7is there any more foolish pursuit than that of disputing about the original of ,mr ,pickwick872 the book is rather the suggestion of another life1 beneath our own or beside our own1 and the characters1 those queer grotesque people1 are queer for the same reason that the ,cyclops is queer and the dwarfs and dragons of medival romance are queer4 ,we are withdrawn from the common ways of life2 and in that withdrawal is the beginning of ecstasy4 ,there are sentences in ,pickwick that give me an almost extravagant delight4 ,you remember the lines about the ,lotus-,eaters4 ' 1 ' ' ' 4 ,well1 do you know there is a brief dialogue in ,pickwick that seems almost as enchanted1 to me4 ,the scene is the manor-farm kitchen1 on ,christmas eve4 ',how it snows1' said one of the men1 in a low voice4 ',snows1 does it8' said ,wardle4 ',rough1 cold night1 sir1' replied the man1 'and there's a wind got up that drifts it across the fields1 in a thick white cloud4' ',what does ,jem say8' inquired the old lady4 ',there ain't anything the matter1 is there8' ',no1 no1 mother1' replied ,wardle2 'he says there's a snow-drift1 and a wind that's piercing cold4' ,you know this is the introduction to the ,tale of ,gabriel ,grub1 an admirable legend which ,dickens farsed with an obtrusive moral4 ,but ,i confess that the atmosphere 7which to me seems all the wild weather and the wild legend of the north7 suggested by those phrases a thick white cloud1 and a wind that's piercing cold is in my judgment wholly marvellous4 ,but ,dickens1 of course1 is full of impressions which never become expressions4 ,you remember that chapter about the lawyer's clerks in the ,magpie and ,stump8 ,it is always quite pathetic to me to note how ,dickens felt the strangeness1 the mystery1 the haunting that are like a mist about the old ,inns of ,court1 and how utterly unable he was to express his emotion--to find a fit symbol for his meaning4 ,he takes refuge1 as it were1 behind ,jack ,bamber1 who tells two very insignificant legends as to the mystery of the ,inns4 ,dickens feels that these legends are insignificant1 and throws in one that is pure burlesque1 and then changes the subject in despair2 the vague impression has refused to be put into words2 probably1 indeed1 it had stopped short of becoming thought4 ,but ,i am afraid that if ,i once begin to talk about the defects and faults of ,dickens ,i shall run on for ever1 and ,i think you will be able to find out his laches quite well for yourself4 ,what ,i want to insist on is his sense of mystery1 his withdrawal from common life1 and1 finally1 his ecstasy4 ,i have not proved my case up to the hilt by a thorough-going analysis of ,pickwick1 but ,i think ,i have suggested the heads of such an analysis4 ,there is ecstasy in the main idea1 in the thought of the man who wanders away from his familiar streets into unknown tracks and lanes and villages1 there is ecstasy in the conception of all those queer1 grotesque characters1 reminders each one of the strangeness of life1 there is ecstasy in the thought of the wild ,christmas ,eve1 of the fields and woods scourged by a wind that's piercing cold1 hidden by the thick cloud of snow1 there is ecstasy in that vague impression of the old1 dark1 ,inns1 of the rotten chambers that had been shut up for years and years4 ,in a word3 ,pickwick is fine literature4 ,well1 you've got what you wanted2 some sort of analysis of my case3 ',pickwick' v4 ',vanity ,fair'2 but it must be clearly understood that ,i'm not going to work out every example4 ,however1 ,i am not sorry that ,i have been led to go into this particular case rather fully1 because it is a typical one1 and we shall not be obliged to go over the same ground again4 ,i mean1 that having witnessed the dissection of ,thackeray1 you will have no need to come to me for my judgment of ,george ,eliot1 or of ,anthony ,trollope1 or--to make a very long list a very short one--of about ninety-nine per cent of our modern novels4 ,yes1 you have mentioned a great name1 and ,i1 like you1 take off my cap to the man who has gone on his way1 without caring for the public1 or the reviewers1 or anything else1 except his own judgment of what is right4 ,but1 frankly1 if you pass from the man and come to his work1 my plain opinion is this3 that he has written about ordinary life1 regarded from an ordinary standpoint1 in a style which is extraordinary certainly1 but very far from beautiful4 ,it is not a beautiful style1 since a fine style1 though it may carry suggestion beyond the bourne of thought1 though it may be the veil and visible body of concealed mysteries1 is always plain on the surface4 ,it may be like an ingeniously devised cryptogram1 which may have an occult sense conveyed to initiated eyes in every dot and line and flourish1 but is outwardly as simple and straightforward as a business letter4 ,but in the works of the writer whom we are discussing obscurities1 dubieties of all kinds are far from uncommon2 and in many of his books there are passages which hardly seem to be ,english at all4 ,the words are familiar--most of them--the grammatical construction often offers no very considerable difficulties--it is rarely1 ,i mean1 that one has to search very long for the nominative of the sentence--but when one has read the words and parsed them1 one feels inclined to think that after all the passage is not in ,english but in some other language with a superficial resemblance to ,english4 ,style is not everything8 ,certainly not2 a book may fail in style1 and yet be fine1 though not the finest literature4 ,you have only to open ,sir ,walter ,scott to have highly conclusive evidence on that point4 ,but the writer we are considering not only fails in the body of art but even more conspicuously in the soul of it4 ,just think for a moment of his story of the very earnest ,jew who fell in love with the baroness who was not very earnest4 ,there was a false female friend1 you remember1 and social complications perturbed the hearts of the curiously assorted lovers1 and finally the ,jew was shot in a duel by another1 less detrimental1 courtier4 ,can you conceive anything more trivial than this8 ,don't you see that from such a book as that the idea1 the soul of fine literature1 is completely lacking8 ,great books may always be summed up in a phrase1 often in a single word1 and that phrase or that word will always signify some primary and palmary idea4 ,to me the only idea suggested by the plot ,i have outlined is unimportance2 and1 as in the case of ,thackeray1 ecstasy is entirely absent both from this and from all other of the author's books4 ,you say that1 after all1 the plot in question is a plot of the love of a man for a woman1 and that that is an idea in the highest sense of the word1 and an idea which is the most of all fit for the purpose and the making of the finest literature4 ,i agree with you in the latter clause of your sentence1 but ,i must point out that the book is not the story of the love of a man for a woman1 it is the story of the flirtation of a baroness with a ,german ,jew ,socialist--a very different matter4 ,in a word1 it is a tale of the accidental1 of the particular1 of the inessential2 it is completely the play of ,hamlet with the part of ,hamlet omitted1 and the greatest stress laid on the minor characters4 ,it is quite true that when an author writes a romance containing a hero and a heroine he must tell you who they are1 he must give1 briefly and succinctly1 the necessary details--names1 ages1 conditions and so forth--but if he is a great author he will do this incidentally and make us feel that such details are incidental4 ,in short1 he must poise his feet on earth1 but his way is to the stars4 ,think of the ,scarlet ,letter1 open it again and see how admirably ,hawthorne has omitted a world of unessential details that a lesser man would have put in4 ,he has left out a whole encyclopdia of useless and tedious information2 there is the dim1 necessary background of time and place1 but in reality the scene is ,eternity1 and the drama is the ,mystery of ,love and ,vengeance and ,hell-fire4 ,of course fine literature must have its gross and carnal body1 we must know who's who1 for ,i don't think an old-fashioned receipt that ,i remember was ever very successful4 ,oh1 you must have read some of the tales ,i mean2 they used to flourish in the old ,keepsakes1 and the hero was boldly labelled ,fernando for all distinction and description4 ,one might surmise that ,fernando was domiciled on the continent of ,europe1 but that was all4 ,it was not successful1 this well-meaning school of fiction1 and ,i repeat that the finest literature must have its accidents--it cannot exist as shining substance alone4 ,it is just the same with the art of sculpture1 with the art of painting4 ,you cannot look at a ,greek ,apollo without looking at that part of the body which conceals the bowels1 but ,i imagine you don't want to treasure this thought or to insist on it8 ,and ,i suppose a geologist1 looking at a picture1 could tell you whether those wild and terrible rocks were volcanic or carboniferous2 but really one doesn't want to know4 ,bowels1 geological formation1 in sculpture and painting1 the social position of the characters and all other such details in fine literature are inessential2 and the great artist will1 as ,i said1 make us feel that they are inessential4 ,if you want an instance of what ,i mean read a book which is very comparable with the ,german-,jew-,baroness tale that we were talking about4 ,i mean ,two on a ,tower by ,mr ,hardy4 ,in that you have the contrast of social ranks3 the two are the ,lady of the ,manor and an educated peasant1 but how utterly all thought of society 7in any sense of the word7 disappears from those wonderful pages1 as you advance and find that the theme is really ,love4 ,why even the accidents are glorified and are made of the essence of the book4 ,the old tower standing in the midst of lonely1 red ploughlands far from the highway1 is at first only the convenient place where the young peasant studies astronomy2 but as you read you feel the change coming1 the tower is transmuted1 glorified2 every stone of it is aglow with mystic light2 it is made the abode of the ,lover and the ,beloved1 it is seen to be a symbol of ,love1 of an ecstasy1 remote1 and passionate1 and eternal1 dwelling far from the ways of men4 ,compare these two books1 ,i say again1 and you will know the chief distinction between fine literature and reading matter4 ,to me1 ,i confess1 the ,jew-book has not even interest of the lower sort1 not by any means the interest of ,thackeray1 or ,jane ,austen or even of poor1 dreary1 draggle-tailed ,george ,eliot2 but if you are amused by it1 ,i have no objection to make4 ,you may be amused by the plates of the ,spring and ,summer ,novelties in the lady's paper1 if you please2 but for heaven's sake don't come here and tell me that on the whole you prefer ,botticelli's ,primavera6 ,nay1 but the fashion-plates are sometimes very nicely done1 and they put in backgrounds1 and they are trying to give the faces some character4 ,do get it into your head--firmly and fixedly--that the camera and the soul of man are two entirely different things4 ,you think the photographic comparison unfair1 in this and other instances1 because of the mechanical element in photography1 because of that camera ,i have just mentioned8 ,well1 ,i suppose that it is a little misleading4 ,the sun and the camera between them certainly do your picture for you1 and as you urge1 there is more of artifice in the merest ,sunday-school tale than in the best of photographs4 ,still1 you must remember that photography too has its artifice1 its choice of the right and the wrong way1 and its exercise of judgment2 there is a great deal in it that is not mechanical2 and in its essence it is of the same class as the books ,i have been alluding to4 ,the means employed are different1 and a higher and finer artifice is required for making books than for taking photographs1 but the end of each is the same1 and that end is to portray the surface of life1 to make a picture of the outside of things4 ,it is on this ground that ,i defend my use of the analogy1 and you must understand me to speak only of the object which is common to each1 when ,i compare the secondary writer to a photographer4 ,the writers1 to be sure1 have invention in a greater or less degree1 but you will remark that the artists in literature have the power of creation1 a totally different process4 ,invention is the finding of a thing in its more or less obscure hiding-place2 creation is the making of a new thing1 the invocation of ,something from ,nothingness4 ,don ,quixote is a creation2 the clergyman in ,pride and ,prejudice is an invention1 ,colonel ,newcome is1 in all probability1 a composite portrait1 while the ,jew-,socialist who fell in love with the ,baroness is simply a portrait of ,ferdinand ,lassalle4 ,you must remember that while the two classes--fine literature and reading matter--differ the one from the other generically1 the individuals of each class differ from each other only specifically4 ,thus the difference in merit between the ,odyssey and ,pickwick is enormous1 but it is a specific difference4 ,in the same way it is hard to measure with the imagination the difference between ,madame ,bovary and that famous ,sunday-school story ,jackie's ,holiday3 the former is immensely clever1 the latter is immensely silly2 but the two are1 emphatically1 of the same genus4 ,in each case the effort of the author is to describe life1 the aim of ,flaubert is absolutely identical with the aim of ,miss ,flopkins1 and their results differ only as the ,frenchman differs from the ,englishwoman1 the one being a serious and patient artificer while the other is a bungling idiot1 who obtrudes her very empty personality and her very trashy ethics instead of studiously concealing them4 ,still3 a photograph taken in the most famous studio in ,london is still a photograph equally with the spotted and misty effort of the amateur1 and no amount of touching-up or finishing1 however patient it may be1 will turn a photograph into a work of art4 ,and1 in like manner1 no labour1 no care1 no polishing of the phrase1 no patience in investigation1 no artifice in plot or in construction will ever make reading-matter into fine literature4 ,,iii ,i see that ,i shall be obliged to keep on reiterating the difference between fine literature and literature1 or in other words between art and observation expressed with artifice4 ,i am afraid1 that in your heart of hearts1 you still believe that the ,odyssey is fine literature1 and that ,pride and ,prejudice is fine literature1 though the ,odyssey is better than ,pride and ,prejudice4 ,it is that better that ,i want to get out of your head1 that monstrous fallacy of comparing ,westminster ,abbey with the charming old houses in ,queen ,square4 ,you would see the absurdity of imagining that there can be any degree of comparison between two things entirely different1 if ,i substituted for ,pride and ,prejudice some ordinary circulating-library novel of our own times4 ,at least ,i hope you would see1 though1 as ,i told you a few weeks ago1 ,i doubt very much whether many people realise the distinction between the ,odyssey and a political pamphlet4 ,the general opinion1 ,i expect1 is that both belong to the same class1 though the ,greek poem is much more important than the pamphlet4 ,i think we succeeded in demonstrating the falsity of this idea1 in showing clearly and decisively that fine literature means the expression of the eternal human ecstasy in the medium of words1 and that it means nothing else whatsoever4 ,words1 it is true1 are used for other ends than this3 they are used in sending telegrams to stockbrokers1 for example1 but why should this double office create any confusion8 ,a tub and a tabernacle may each be made of wood1 but you don't mix the two things up on that account8 ,the other day you gave me a most amusing account of your landlady's quarrels with her servant girls4 ,i remember that ,i laughed consumedly1 and at the moment1 that solemn preconisation of the servant ,mabel to the effect that her mistress1 ,mrs ,stickings1 was not a lydy1 was more to my taste than the recitation of the ,ode on a ,grecian ,urn4 ,but you surely didn't think that you were making literature all the while8 ,or that the history of ,mrs ,stickings and ,mabel would have mysteriously become literature if you had written it down and got somebody to print it8 ,or that it would have been literature if some of the details had been a little exaggerated 7,i thought you had embroidered here and there72 or if you had made the whole story up out of your own head8 ,exactly1 you were1 as you say1 amusing me by the relation of facts a little altered1 compressed1 and embellished1 and ,i am glad that you see that no process of writing or printing1 no variation in the proportion of truth and invention1 even to the total lack of all truth1 could have changed an amusing presentation of the ,stickings mnage into fine literature4 ,but1 surely1 it is so very obvious4 ,did any cook ever think that he could change a turkey into a bird of paradise by careful attention to the farse and the sauce8 ,the farmer might as well expect to breed early phnixes for ,leadenhall ,market by the simple process of lighting a bonfire in the farmyard4 ,the young ducks would jump into the blaze1 and the transformation would be the work of a second6 ,there is no more madness in that notion than in the other one--that one has only to print an amusing1 interesting1 life-like1 or pathetic tale to make it into fine literature4 ,yes2 but what ,i am afraid is still lurking somewhere in your skull is this3 that if only the stuffing is extremely well made1 if only the sauce is an exquisite concoction1 the turkey is1 somehow or other1 changed into a bird of paradise4 ,that is1 to translate the analogy1 if only the plot is very ingenious1 if only the construction is well carried out1 if the characters are extremely life-like1 if the ,english is admirably neat and sufficient1 then reading-matter becomes fine literature4 ,make the bonfire high enough and your young ducks will be burned into phnixes fast enough2 let the artifice be sufficiently artificial and it will be art4 ,indeed you might as well maintain that a wooden statue1 if it be really well carved1 is thereby made into a gold statue4 ,well1 ,i remember saying one night that you were here that ecstasy is at once the most exquisite of emotions and a whole philosophy of life4 ,and it is to the philosophy of life that we are brought1 in the last resort4 ,you know that there are1 speaking very generally1 two solutions of existence2 one is the materialistic or rationalistic1 the other1 the spiritual or mystic4 ,if the former were true1 then ,keats would be a queer kind of madman1 and the ,morte d',arthur would be an elaborate symptom of insanity2 if the latter is true1 then ,pride and ,prejudice is not fine literature1 and the works of ,george ,eliot are the works of a superior insect--and nothing more4 ,you must make your choice3 is the story of the ,graal lunacy1 or not8 ,you think it is not3 then do not talk any more of turning glass into diamonds by careful polishing and cutting4 ,do not say3 ,mr ,a4 spends five years over a book1 and therefore what he writes is fine literature2 ,miss ,b4 polishes off five novels in a year1 and therefore she does not write fine literature4 ,do not say1 ,mr ,shorthouse has got the name of a man who kept a private school in the time of ,charles ,i4 quite right2 therefore ,john ,inglesant is fine literature1 while the archological details in ,ivanhoe are all wrong1 therefore it is not fine literature4 ,good ,lord6 ,you might as well say3 but my landlady's name is ,mrs ,stickings1 and the girl 7who left last month7 was really called ,mabel2 therefore that story of mine was fine literature4 ,what's that about sustained effort8 ,can you turn a deal ladder into a golden staircase by making it of a thousand rungs8 ,what ,i say three times is right1 eh8 and if ,i tell the tale of ,mrs ,stickings so that it extends to our minimum length for three volume novels1 it becomes fine literature4 ,well1 ,i really hope that we have at last settled the matter2 that fine literature is simply the expression of the eternal things that are in man1 that it is beauty clothed in words1 that it is always ecstasy1 that it always draws itself away1 and goes apart into lonely places1 far from the common course of life4 ,realise this1 and you will never be misled into pronouncing mere reading-matter1 however interesting1 to be fine literature2 and now that we clearly understand the difference between the two1 ,i propose that we drop the fine and speak simply of literature4 ,but ,i assure you that1 even after having established the grand distinction1 it is by no means plain sailing4 ,everything terrestrial is so composite 7except1 perhaps1 pure music7 that one is confronted by an almost endless task of distinguishing matter from form1 and body from spirit4 ,literature1 we say1 is ecstasy1 but a book must be written about something and about somebody2 it must be expressed in words1 it must have arrangement and artifice1 it must have accident as well as essence4 ,consider ,don ,quixote as an example2 it is1 ,i suppose1 the finest prose romance in existence4 ,essentially1 it expresses the eternal quest of the unknown1 that longing1 peculiar to man1 which makes him reach out towards infinity2 and he lifts up his eyes1 and he strains his eyes1 looking across the ocean1 for certain fabled1 happy islands1 for ,avalon that is beyond the setting of the sun4 ,and he comes into life from the unknown world1 from glorious places1 and all his days he journeys through the world1 spying about him1 going on and ever on1 expecting beyond every hill to find the holy city1 seeing signs1 and omens1 and tokens by the way1 reminded every hour of his everlasting citizenship4 ,from the great deep to the great deep he goes3 it is true of ,king ,arthur and of each one of us2 and this1 ,i take it1 is the essence of ,don ,quixote1 and of all his forerunners and successors4 ,then1 in the second place1 you get the eternal moral of the book1 and you will understand that ,i am not using moral in the vulgar sense4 ,the eternal moral1 then1 of ,don ,quixote is the strife between temporal and eternal1 between the soul and the body1 between things spiritual and things corporal1 between ecstasy and the common life4 ,you read the book and you see that there is a perpetual jar1 you are continually confronted by the great antinomy of life4 ,it seems a mere comic incident when the knight dreaming of enchantment is knocked about1 and made ridiculous2 but ,i tell you it is the perpetual tragedy of life itself1 symbolised4 ,i say that it is1 under a figure1 the picture of humanity in the world1 that you will find the truth it represents repeated again and again throughout all history4 ,you know that if one goes back resolutely to the first principles of things1 one finds oneself1 as it were1 in a place where all lines that seemed parallel and eternally divided meet1 and so it is with this tragedy symbolised by the ,don ,quixote4 ,it is1 you may say1 the tragedy of the ,unknown and the ,known1 of the ,soul and ,body1 of the ,idea and the ,fact1 of ,ecstasy and ,common ,life2 at last1 ,i suppose1 of ,good and ,evil4 ,the source of it lies far beyond our understanding1 but its symbol is shown again and again in ,cervantes's page4 ,then1 there is a third element in the book4 ,the author intended to write a burlesque on the current romances of chivalry2 and he wrote1 ,i suppose1 the best burlesque that has ever been written1 or ever will be written4 ,if you unhappily so choose1 you can shut your eyes to everything serious and everything beautiful1 and read merely of ,amadis and ,arthur taken off1 of the highest ideals turned into nonsense1 of the best motives shown to be1 in effect1 mischievous4 ,you will read how the knight1 in the approved manner of knights1 helped the oppressed and the wretched1 and how he usually worsened their condition tenfold4 ,you may lend your ear to ,sancho1 grumbling and quoting common-sense proverbs all the road1 as he rides on his ass1 and if it were not for the wit and the comedy1 you might fancy yourself in a suburban train bound for the city4 ,why1 if you so please1 ,don ,quixote is the ,institute of cynicism1 the reduction of every generous impulse to absurdity4 ,finally1 the knight is the mouthpiece of ,cervantes himself1 especially towards the end of the second part1 where the armour and the fantasy drop off1 piece by piece1 and shred by shred1 on that mournful1 homeward journey4 ,at last1 ,i say1 ,don ,quixote is almost simply ,cervantes1 commenting on men and affairs in ,spain1 and ,i think that in those final chapters the art has vanished together with the armour and the ecstasy4 ,yes1 ,i always dread the ending of ,don ,quixote4 ,a star drops a line of streaming fire1 down the vault of the sky1 and perhaps you may have seen the ugly1 shapeless thing that sinks into the earth4 ,but this very brief and imperfect analysis of a great masterpiece of literary art may give you some idea of the extraordinary complexity of all literature4 ,as it is ,i have omitted one most important item in the account2 ,i have said nothing of the style1 because1 ,i am sorry to say that ,i have no ,spanish1 and ,cervantes speaks to me through an interpreter named ,charles ,jarvis4 ,but1 omitting style1 you see that we have1 in this particular case1 five books in one2 we have the utterance of pure ecstasy1 the strife between ecstasy and the common life1 the burlesque of chivalry1 the institutes of cynicism1 and the comments on affairs4 ,each of these different themes is managed with consummate ability1 and 7always excepting the last chapters of the book71 each keeps its due place1 so that it really rests with the reader1 in a manner1 to choose which book he is to read4 ,and then1 there are other elements which must be accounted for if one is to judge a book as a whole1 fairly and thoroughly4 ,i may be so charmed with the writer's rapture1 with the wonder and beauty of his idea1 that ,i may forget the fact that the artist must also be the artificer2 that while the soul conceives1 the understanding must formulate the conception1 that while ecstasy must suggest the conduct of the story1 common-sense must help to range each circumstance in order1 that while an inward1 mysterious delight must dictate the burning phrases and sound in the music and melody of the words1 cool judgment must go through every line1 reminding the author that1 if literature be the language of the ,shadowy ,companion it must yet be translated out of the unknown speech into the vulgar tongue4 ,here then we have the elements of a book4 ,firstly the ,idea or ,conception1 the thing of exquisite beauty which dwells in the author's soul1 not yet clothed in words1 nor even in thought1 but a pure emotion4 ,secondly1 when this emotion has taken definite form1 is made incarnate as it were1 in the shape of a story1 which can be roughly jotted down on paper1 we may speak of the ,plot4 ,thirdly1 the plot has to be systematised1 to be drawn to scale1 to be carried out to its legitimate conclusions1 to be displayed by means of ,incident2 and here we have ,construction4 ,fourthly1 the story is to be written down1 and ,style is the invention of beautiful words which shall affect the reader by their meaning1 by their sound1 by their mysterious suggestion4 ,this1 then1 is the fourfold work of literature1 and if you want to be perfect you must be perfect in each part4 ,art must inspire and shape each and all1 but only the first1 the ,idea1 is pure art2 with ,plot1 and ,construction1 and ,style there is an alloy of artifice4 ,if then any given book can be shown to proceed from an ,idea1 it is to be placed in the class of literature1 in the shelf of the ,odyssey as ,i think ,i once expressed it4 ,it may be placed very high in the class2 the more it have of rapture in its every part1 the higher it will be3 or1 it may be placed very low1 because1 for example1 having once admired the ,conception1 the dream that came to the author from the other world1 we are forced to admit that the ,story or ,plot was feebly imagined1 that the ,construction was clumsily carried out1 that the ,style is1 sthetically1 non-existent4 ,you will notice that ,i am never afraid of blaming my favourites1 of finding fault with the books which ,i most adore4 ,i can do so freely and without fear of consequences1 since having once applied my test1 and having found that ,pickwick1 for example1 is literature1 ,i am not in the least afraid that ,i shall be compelled to eat my words if flaws in plot and style and construction are afterwards made apparent4 ,the statue is gold2 we have settled that much1 and we need not fear that it will turn into lead1 if we find that the graving and carving is poor enough4 ,once be sure that your temple is a temple1 and ,i will warrant you against it being suddenly transmuted into a tub1 through the discovery of scamped workmanship4 ,well1 suppose we begin to apply our analysis4 ,let us take the strange case of ,mr ,r4 ,l4 ,stevenson1 and especially his ,jekyll and ,hyde1 which1 in some ways1 is his most characteristic and most effective book4 ,now ,i suppose that instructed opinion 7granting its existence7 was about equally divided as to the class in which this most skilful and striking story was to be placed4 ,many1 ,i have no doubt1 gave it a very high place in the ranks of imaginative literature1 or 7as we should now say7 in the ranks of literature2 while many other judges set it down as an extremely clever piece of sensationalism1 and nothing more4 ,well1 ,i think both these opinions are wrong2 and ,i should be inclined to say that ,jekyll and ,hyde just scrapes by the skin of its teeth1 as it were1 into the shelves of literature1 and no more4 ,on the surface it would seem to be merely sensationalism2 ,i expect that when you read it1 you did so with breathless absorption1 hurrying over the pages in your eagerness to find out the secret1 and this secret once discovered1 ,i imagine that ,jekyll and ,hyde retired to your shelf--and stays there1 rather dusty4 ,you have never opened it again8 ,exactly4 ,i have read it for a second time1 and ,i was astonished to find how it had1 if ,i may say so1 evaporated4 ,at the first reading one was enthralled by mere curiosity1 but when once this curiosity had been satisfied what remained8 ,if ,i may speak from my own experience1 simply a rather languid admiration of the ingenuity of the plot with its construction1 combined with a slight feeling of impatience1 such as one might experience if one were asked to solve a puzzle for the second time4 ,you see that the secret once disclosed1 all the steps which lead to the disclosure become1 ipso facto1 insignificant1 or rather they become nothing at all1 since their only significance and their only existence lay in the secret1 and when the secret has ceased to be a secret1 the signs and cyphers of it fall also into the world of nonentity4 ,you may be amazed1 and perplexed1 and entranced by a cryptogram1 while you are solving it1 but the solution once attained1 your cryptogram is either nothing or perilously near to nothingness4 ,well1 all this points1 doesn't it1 towards mere sensationalism1 very cleverly done8 ,but1 as ,i said1 ,i think ,jekyll and ,hyde just scrapes over the border-line and takes its place1 very low down1 among books that are literature4 ,and ,i base my verdict solely on the ,idea1 on the ,conception that lies1 buried rather deeply1 beneath the ,plot4 ,the plot1 in itself1 strikes me as mechanical--this actual physical transformation1 produced by a drug1 linked certainly with a theory of ethical change1 but not linked at all with the really mysterious1 the really psychical--all this affects me1 ,i say1 as ingenious mechanism and nothing more2 while ,i have shown how the construction is ingenious artifice1 and the style is affected by the same plague of laboured ingenuity4 ,throughout it is a thoroughly conscious style1 and in literature all the highest things are unconsciously1 or at least1 subconsciously produced4 ,it has music1 but it has no under-music1 and there are no phrases in it that seem veils of dreams1 echoes of the inexpressive song4 ,it is on the conception1 then1 alone1 that ,i justify my inclusion of ,jekyll amongst works of art2 for it seems to me that1 lurking behind the plot1 we divine the presence of an ,idea1 of an inspiration4 ,man is not truly one1 but truly two1 or1 perhaps1 a polity with many inhabitants1 ,dr ,jekyll writes in his confession1 and ,i think that ,i see here a trace that ,mr ,stevenson had received a vision of the mystery of human nature1 compounded of the dust and of the stars1 of a dim vast city1 splendid and ruinous as drowned ,atlantis deep beneath the waves1 of a haunted quire where a flickering light burns before the ,veil4 ,this1 ,i believe1 was the vision that came to the artist1 but the admirable artificer seized hold of it at once and made it all his own1 omitting what he did not understand1 translating roughly from the unknown tongue1 materialising1 coarsening1 hardening4 ,don't you see how thoroughly physical the actual plot is1 and if one escapes for a moment from the atmosphere of the laboratory it is only to be confronted by the most obvious vein of moral allegory2 and from this latter light1 ,jekyll and ,hyde seems almost the vivid metaphor of a clever preacher4 ,you mustn't imagine1 you know1 that ,i condemn the powder business as bad in itself1 for 7let us revert for a moment to philosophy7 man is a sacrament1 soul manifested under the form of body1 and art has to deal with each and both and to show their interaction and interdependence4 ,the most perfect form of literature is1 no doubt1 lyrical poetry which is1 one might say1 almost pure ,idea1 art with scarcely an alloy of artifice1 expressed in magic words1 in the voice of music4 ,in a word1 a perfect lyric1 such as ,keats's ,belle ,dame ,sans ,mercy is almost pure soul1 a spirit with the luminous body of melody4 ,but 7in our age1 at all events7 a prose romance must put on a grosser and more material envelope than this1 it must have incident1 corporeity1 relation to material things1 and all these will occupy a considerable part of the whole4 ,to a certain extent1 then1 the ,idea must be materialised1 but still it must always shine through the fleshly vestment2 the body must never be mere body but always the body of the spirit1 existing to conceal and yet to manifest the spirit2 and here it seems to me that ,mr ,stevenson's story breaks down4 ,the transformation of ,jekyll into ,hyde is solely material1 as you read it1 without artistic significance2 it is simply an astounding incident1 and not an outward sign of an inward mystery4 ,as for the possible allegory ,i have too much respect for ,mr ,stevenson as an artificer to think that he would regard this element as anything but a very grave defect4 ,allegory1 as ,poe so well observed1 is always a literary vice1 and we are only able to enjoy the ,pilgrim's ,progress by forgetting that the allegory exists4 ,yes1 that seems to me the vitium of ,jekyll and ,hyde3 the conception has been badly realised1 and by badly ,i do not mean clumsily1 because from the logical1 literal standpoint1 the plot and the construction are marvels of cleverness2 but ,i mean inartistically3 ecstasy1 which as we have settled is the synonym of art1 gave birth to the idea1 but immediately abandoned it to artifice1 and to artifice only1 instead of presiding over and inspiring every further step in plot1 in construction1 and in style4 ,all this may seem to you very fine-drawn and over-subtle1 but ,i am convinced that it is the true account of the matter1 and perhaps you may realise my theory better if ,i draw out that analogy of translation which ,i suggested1 ,i think1 a few minutes ago4 ,i was passing along ,new ,oxford ,street the other day1 and ,i happened to look into a shop which displays ,bibles in all languages1 and ,i glanced at the ,french version1 open at the seventh chapter of the ,book of ,proverbs4 ,i saw the words un jeune homme dpourvu de bon sens1 and then1 lower down1 comme un buf la boucherie1 and it was some considerable time before ,i realised that these phrases translated1 a young man void of understanding1 and as an ox goeth to the slaughter4 ,now you notice that these are in every way commonplace examples2 there is nothing extraordinarily poetical in either phrase as it stands in the ,authorised ,version4 ,i might have made the contrast much more violent by choosing a passage from the ,song of ,songs or ,ecclesiastes2 and ,i wonder how ,therefore with ,angels and ,archangels would go into ,french4 ,but isn't the gulf astounding between void of understanding and dpourvu de bon sens8 ,yet the meaning of the ,french is really the same as the meaning of the ,english2 logically1 ,i should think1 the two phrases are exactly equivalent4 ,and yet 444 well1 we know perfectly well that dpourvu de bon sens in no way renders that noble and austere simplicity that we reverence in the ,english text4 ,now1 ,i think1 you ought to see what ,i have been trying to express about the gulf that may open always between the conception and the plot1 or story1 that does divide the conception from the plot of ,jekyll and ,hyde4 ,of course the analogy is not perfect1 because the magnum chaos that yawns between the unformulated ,idea and the formulated plot1 between pure ecstasy and ecstasy plus artifice1 is much vaster than the distinction between ,english and ,french1 indeed between the two former there is almost or altogether the difference of the infinite and the finite1 of soul and body2 still1 you see how a book is a rendering1 a translation of an ,idea1 and how a very fine idea may be embodied in a very mechanical plot4 ,you remember the ,socialist and ,baroness novel that we were talking about the other night4 ,we placed it outside of literature firstly and chiefly because it was not based on ecstasy1 on an idea of any kind1 and secondly1 and by way of consequence1 because in its execution and detail it was so thoroughly insignificant1 because it played ,hamlet with the part of the ,prince omitted4 ,now ,i think that it is strong evidence of the soundness of my literary theory that we are enabled by it to take two books so utterly dissimilar in manner and method1 in story and treatment1 and to judge them both by the same scale4 ,for this is what it really comes to3 we say that the ,tragic ,comedians is not literature because it simply tells of facts without their significance1 because it deals with the outward show and not with the inward spirit1 because it is accidental and not essential4 ,and in just the same way we say that ,jekyll and ,hyde 7its conception apart7 is not literature inasmuch as it too has the body of a story without the soul of a story1 the incident1 the fact1 without the inward thing of which the fact is a symbol4 ,for if you will consider the matter you will see that a fact qua fact has no existence in art at all4 ,it is not the painter's business to make us a likeness of a tree or a rock2 it is his business to communicate to us an emotion--an ecstasy1 if you please--and that he may do so he uses a tree or a rock as a symbol1 a word in his language of colour and form4 ,it is not the business of the sculptor to chisel likenesses of men in marble2 the human form is to him also a symbol which stands for an idea4 ,in the same manner it is not the business of the literary artist to describe facts--real or imaginary--in words3 he is possessed with an idea which he symbolises by incident1 by a story of men and women and things4 ,he is possessed1 let us say1 by the idea of ,love3 then he must write a story of lovers1 but he must never forget that ,a4 and ,b41 his actual lovers in the tale1 with their social positions1 their whims and fancies1 their sayings and doings are only of consequence in the degree that they symbolise the universal human passion1 which in its turn is a copy of certain eternal and ineffable things4 ,if ,a4 and ,b4 do not do this then they are nothing1 and worse than nothing1 so far as art is concerned4 ,but my tree is like a tree1 says the dull painter1 and my anatomy is faultless1 says the bad sculptor1 and my characters are life-like1 says the novelist4 ,and one can apply exactly the same reasoning to ,mr ,stevenson's ingenious story4 ,i do not know whether there is1 or has been1 or will be a salt in existence which can turn a man into another person2 that is of not the slightest consequence to the argument4 ,the result of the powder1 as it is described in the book1 is an incident1 and it makes no difference to the critical judgment whether the incident is true or false1 probable or improbable4 ,the only point1 absolutely the only point is this3 is the incident significant or insignificant1 is it related for its own sake1 or is it posited because it is a sign1 a symbol1 a word which veils and reveals the artist's ecstasy and inspiration8 ,the socialist fell in love with the baroness3 it is true1 you say1 it really happened so in ,germany some twenty-five years ago4 ,but in the book it is insignificant4 ,the doctor took the powder and became another man2 it is probably untrue4 ,but it is also insignificant2 and to the critic of art in literature the one incident stands precisely on the same footing as the other4 ,and1 do you know1 ,i am glad ,i have made this comparison between ,jekyll and ,hyde and the ,tragic ,comedians1 because it has struck me that what ,i have been saying about the essential element of all literature might be open to very grave misunderstanding4 ,i have been insisting1 with reiteration that must have tired you1 that there is only one test by which literature may be distinguished from mere reading matter1 and that that test is summed up in the word1 ecstasy4 ,and then we admitted a whole string of synonyms--desire of the unknown1 sense of the unknown1 rapture1 adoration1 mystery1 wonder1 withdrawal from the common life--and ,i daresay ,i have used many other phrases in the same sense without giving you any special warning that it was our old friend again in a new guise4 ,but it has just occurred to me that with all this wealth of synonyms1 ,i may not have made my meaning perfectly clear4 ,for example1 while ,i was laying down the law about ,dr ,jekyll's powder and its effects1 you might have interrupted me with the remark3 ,but ,i thought you said the sense of wonder was characteristic of literature2 and surely the change from ,jekyll into ,hyde is extremely wonderful4 ,or again1 when ,i was belauding the ,odyssey1 dwelling on the voyage of ,ulysses amongst strange peoples1 you might have put in some modern tale of strange adventure1 and requested me to distinguish between the two1 to justify my praise of the old1 and rejection of the new4 ,and we have mentioned ,sunday-school books1 always1 ,i think1 with a certain nuance of contempt2 but ,sunday-school books usually deal with religion1 and religion and adoration are almost synonymous4 ,and so one could go on with the list1 making out1 on our premises1 with our own test1 a plausible case for books which we know very well are neither literature nor anything remotely approaching it4 ,and that would look rather like the collapse of our literary case1 wouldn't it8 ,well1 the solution of the difficulty seems to me to be sought for in the remarks ,i was making just now about facts in art4 ,i said1 you remember1 that in art1 facts as facts have no existence at all4 ,facts1 incidents1 plots1 simply form the artistic speech--its mode of expression1 or medium--and if there is no idea behind the facts1 then you have no longer language but gibberish4 ,just as language is made up of the letters of the alphabet1 arranged in significant words and sentences2 so is the artistic language made up of plots1 incidents1 sentences which are informed with significance4 ,if ,i heap up letters of the alphabet1 and arrange them in an arbitrary collocation1 without meaning1 ,i am forming gibberish1 and not a language2 and so if ,i pepper my pages with extraordinary incidents1 without attaching to them any significance1 ,i am writing1 it may be1 an exciting1 absorbing1 interesting book1 but ,i am not making literature4 ,indeed1 some of the books that might be mentioned in this connection remind me of a man swearing3 he uses the holiest names but he does so in such a manner that he excites not reverence and awe but disgust and repulsion4 ,tell the bare plot of the ,odyssey to one of these writers1 and hint that it might be made into a successful ,christmas book for boys1 and he will produce you a book which will contain the ,lotus-,eaters1 and ,calypso and the ,cyclops1 but which will have just the same relation to literature as blasphemy bears to the ,liturgy4 ,that seems to me the explanation2 one must say again that mere incident is nothing1 that it only becomes something when it is a symbol of an interior meaning4 ,and1 turning this maxim inside out1 as it were1 we shall sometimes find that a book which seems on the surface to be reading matter is really literature1 and incidents1 apparently insignificant1 may turn out1 on a closer examination1 to be significant and symbolic in a very high degree4 ,so ,i don't think our literary criterion is in any way invalidated by the occurrence of surprising incidents in very worthless books4 ,look at ,mr ,isaacs for example4 ,in a sense it is a wonderful book1 inasmuch as it contains incidents which are far removed from common experience2 but you have only to read it to discover that the author had not been visited by any inspiration of the unseen4 ,one may trace some acquaintance with theosophical literature1 but not even the dimmest vision of the other things4 ,the other things8 ,ah1 that is another synonym1 but who can furnish a precise definition of the indefinable8 ,they are sometimes in the song of a bird1 sometimes in the scent of a flower1 sometimes in the whirl of a ,london street1 sometimes hidden under a great lonely hill4 ,some of us seek them with most hope and the fullest assurance in the sacring of the ,mass1 others receive tidings through the sound of music1 in the colour of a picture1 in the shining form of a statue1 in the meditation of eternal truth4 ,do you know that ,i can never hear a jangling piano-organ1 contending with the roar of traffic without the tears--not of feeling but of emotion--coming to my eyes8 ,and that instance--it is grotesque enough--reminds me that ,i think ,i have an explanation of another puzzle that has often perplexed me1 and ,i daresay has perplexed you4 ,do you remember the books that you read when you were a boy8 ,i can think of stories that ,i read long ago 7,i have forgotten the very names of them7 that filled me with emotions that ,i recognised1 afterwards1 as purely artistic4 ,the sorriest pirate1 the most wretchedly concealed treasure1 poor ,captain ,mayne ,reid at his boldest gave me then the sensations that ,i now search for in the ,odyssey or in the thought of it2 and ,i looked into some of these shabby old tales years afterwards1 and wondered how on earth ,i had managed to penetrate into fary lands forlorn through such miserable stucco portals4 ,and you1 you say1 extracted somehow or other1 from ,harrison ,ainsworth's ,lancashire ,witches1 that essence of the unknown that you now find in ,poe1 and ,i expect that everybody who loves literature could gather similar recollections4 ,well1 it would be easy enough to solve the problem by saying that the emotions of children are of no consequence and don't count1 but then ,i don't think that proposition is true4 ,i think1 on the contrary1 that children1 especially young children before they have been defiled by the horrors of education1 possess the artistic emotion in remarkable purity1 that they reproduce1 in a measure1 the primitive man before he was defiled1 artistically1 by the horrors of civilisation4 ,the ecstasy of the artist is but a recollection1 a remnant from the childish vision1 and the child undoubtedly looks at the world through magic casements4 ,but you see all this is unconscious1 or subconscious 7to a less degree it is so in later life1 and artists are rare simply because it is their almost impossible task to translate the emotion of the sub-consciousness into the speech of consciousness71 and as you may sometimes see children uttering their conceptions in words that are nonsense1 or next door to it1 so nonsense or at any rate very poor stuff suffices with them to summon up the vision from the depths of the soul4 ,suppose we could catch a genius at the age of nine or ten and request him to utter what he felt2 the boy would speak or write rubbish1 and in the same way you would find that he read rubbish1 and that it excited in him an ineffable joy and ecstasy4 ,coleridge was a ,bluecoat boy when he read the poems of ,william ,lisle ,bowles1 and admired them to enthusiasm1 and ,i am quite sure that at some early period ,poe had been enraptured by ,mrs ,radcliffe1 and we know how ,burns founded himself on ,fergusson4 ,when men are young1 the inward ecstasy1 the red powder of projection is of such efficacy and virtue that the grossest and vilest matter is transmuted for them into pure gold1 glistering and glorious as the sun4 ,the child 7and with him you may link all primitive and childlike people7 approaches books and pictures just as he approaches nature itself and life2 and a wonderful vision appears where many of us can only see the common and insignificant4 ,but all this has been a digression2 it has come by the way in a talk about worthless and insignificant books4 ,but ,i think that we should by this time have brought our testing apparatus into working order2 we should be able to criticise any given book on some ground or principle1 not on the rule of thumb of it sent me to sleep1 or it kept me awake4 ,and ,i think that what ,i have already remarked about the subconscious element in literature should have answered that question about books with a purpose4 ,as a matter of fact ,i believe that they are mostly trash1 but it is not a case for priori reasoning2 you must test each book by itself4 ,mr ,stevenson was1 ,i believe1 an artist at heart1 but we have seen how the artificer overcame the artist in ,jekyll and ,hyde1 and in like manner there have been cases of people who were artificers1 and even preachers1 at heart1 who were forced to succumb to the concealed1 subconscious artist1 when pen touched paper4 ,for example2 first logically analyze ,lycidas2 you will be disgusted just as ,dr ,johnson1 who had no analysis but the logical1 was disgusted4 ,forget your logic1 your common-sense1 and read it again as poetry2 you will acknowledge the presence of an amazing masterpiece4 ,an unimportant lament over an unimportant personage1 constructed on an affected pseudo-pastoral plan1 full of acrid1 ,puritanical declamation and abuse1 wantonly absurd with its mixture of the nymphs and ,st ,peter2 it is not only wretched in plan but clumsy in construction1 the artifice is atrocious4 ,and it is also perfect beauty6 ,it is the very soul set to music2 its austere and exquisite rapture thrills one so that ,i could almost say3 he who understands the mystery and the beauty of ,lycidas understands also the final and eternal secret of art and life and man4 ,,iv ,do you know that when we last talked belles lettres the whole evening went by 7or at least ,i think so7 without my saying anything about ,pickwick8 ,i hope you noted the omission in your diary1 if you keep one1 because ,i find it difficult to talk much about literature1 without drawing some illustration from that very notable1 and curious1 and unappreciated book4 ,yes1 ,i maintain the justice of the last epithet in spite of circulation1 in spite of popularity1 and in spite of ,pickwick 'literature4' ,you may like a book very much and read it three times a year without appreciating it1 and if a great book is really popular it is sure to owe its popularity to entirely wrong reasons4 ,there are people1 you know1 who study ,homer every day1 because he throws so much light on the manners and customs of the ancients1 and if a book of our own time is both great and popular1 you may be sure that it is loved for its most peccant parts1 just as nine people out of ten will recall the ,raven and the ,bells if the poetry of ,edgar ,allan ,poe is mentioned4 ,after all1 ,i needn't have excused myself for my constant references to ,dickens's masterpiece1 since ,i have already informed you that1 like ,coleridge1 ,i love a cyclical mode of discoursing2 and ,i honestly think that if you want to understand something about the ,mysteries or the ,fine ,arts 7which are the expression of the mysteries7 it is the only way4 ,a proposition in ,euclid is demonstrated and done with1 since nothing can be added to a mathematical proof2 but literature is different4 ,it is many-sided and many-coloured1 and variable always2 you can consider it in half-a-dozen ways1 from half-a-dozen standpoints1 and from half-a-dozen judgments1 each of which will be true and perfect in itself1 and yet each will supplement the other4 ,two or three weeks ago ,i think ,i tried to show you what a complex organism any given book reveals1 if one examines it with a little attention1 and if one specimen be so curiously and intricately fashioned1 you may imagine the complexity of the whole subject4 ,but ,i have a more particular reason for turning once more to the ,posthumous ,papers4 ,we have noted that that which at first sight seems significant1 may turn out to be insignificant1 and ,i think that in passing ,i hinted that the reverse was sometimes the case4 ,very good2 and the especial instance that is in my mind is the enormous capacity for strong drink exhibited by ,mr ,pickwick and all his friends and associates4 ,of course you've noticed it2 perhaps you have thought it a nuisance and a blemish from the artistic standpoint1 just as many good people have found it a nuisance and a blemish from the temperance or teetotal standpoint4 ,you may have felt quite certain that a set of men who were always drinking brandy and water1 and strong ale1 and milk-punch1 and madeira1 who constantly drank a great deal too much of each and all of these things1 would be extremely unpleasant companions in private life2 ,i daresay you have been thankful that you never knew ,mr ,pickwick or any of his followers4 ,you know1 ,i expect1 by personal experience1 that a man whose daily life is a pilgrimage from one whiskey bar to another is1 in most cases1 an extremely tedious and unprofitable companion2 and it is undeniable that the ,pickwickians rather made opportunities for brandy and water than avoided them4 ,and in an indirect manner1 you feel that all this makes you like the book less4 ,but 7,i can no more miss an opportunity of digression than ,mr ,pickwick could keep on the coach if there were a chance of drinking his favourite beverage7 do you know that there are really people who make their liking or disliking of the characters the criterion of literature--of romances1 ,i mean8 ,we touched on this some time ago1 and ,i remember saying that in the case of such secondary books as ,jane ,austen's and ,thackeray's1 it was permissible enough to go where one was best amused1 that one had a right to say1 ,yes1 the artifice may be the better here1 but the characters are much more amusing there1 and ,i had rather talk to the cosmopolitan whose manners are now and then a little to seek1 than to the maiden lady in the village1 whose decorum is so unexceptionable4 ,but ,i confess that at the time it had not dawned upon me that there are people who try to judge fine art--the true literature--on the same grounds4 ,i believe1 however1 that such is the case2 ,i believe1 indeed1 that the egregious ,m4 ,voltaire was dimly moved by some such feeling when he wrote his famous criticism of the prophet ,habakkuk4 ,what 7he must have said to himself7 would they think in the salons of a man who talked like this3-- ,and the everlasting mountains were scattered1 ,the perpetual hills did bow3 ,his ways are everlasting8 ,evidently ,habakkuk could never hope for a second invitation2 and therefore he wrote rubbish4 ,and ,i believe1 as ,i said1 that there are many people who more or less unconsciously judge literature by this measure1 by asking1 ,would these people be pleasant to meet8 would one like to hear this kind of thing in one's drawing-room8 ,and this is well enough with secondary books1 since they contain nothing but characters1 and incidents1 and scenes1 and facts2 but it is by no means well in literature1 in which1 as we found out1 all these things are symbols1 words of a language1 used1 not for themselves1 but because they are significant4 ,remember our old definition--ecstasy1 the withdrawal1 the standing apart from common life--and you will see that we may almost reverse this popular method of judgment1 and turn it into another test1 or rather another way of putting the test1 of art4 ,for1 if literature be a kind of withdrawal from the common atmosphere of life1 we shall naturally expect to find its utterance1 both in matter and manner1 wholly unsuitable for the drawing-room or the street1 and its characters persons whom we cannot imagine ourselves associating with on pleasant or comfortable terms4 ,neither you nor ,i would be very happy on ,ulysses's boat1 we should soon become irritated with ,don ,quixote1 we should hardly feel at home with ,sir ,galahad4 ,it is true that all the good there is in men is this--that at rare intervals1 in certain lonely moments of exaltation they do feel for the time a faint stirring of the beautiful within them1 and then they would adventure on the ,quest of the ,graal2 but as you know few of us are saints1 fewer1 perhaps1 are men of genius2 we are sunk for the most part of our days in the common life1 and our care is for the body and for the things of the body1 for the street and the drawing-room1 and not for the perpetual1 solitary hills4 ,so you see that if you read a book and can say of the characters in it3 ,i wish ,i knew them1 there is very strong reason to suspect that the book in question is not literature1 though it may well be a pleasant picture of pleasant people4 ,yes1 ,i was expecting that question4 ,i should have been sorry if your sense of humour had not prompted you to ask whether the drinking of too much milk-punch constituted a withdrawal from the common life1 a profound and lonely ecstasy4 ,but don't you remember that when we were discussing ,pickwick before1 and comparing it with the ,odyssey1 ,i suddenly deserted ,homer1 and brought in ,sophocles8 ,i think ,i contrasted1 very briefly1 the education of the dramatist with the education of the romance writer1 the ,london of the 'twenties and 'thirties with the city of the ,violet ,crown1 the fate of him1 with that of the other who tried to find the way through the evil and hideous ,london fog4 ,well1 you might have been inclined to ask1 why ,sophocles8 ,but do you remember for whose festivals1 in whose honour the ,greek wrote his dramas and his choral songs8 ,it was the god of wine who was worshipped and invoked at the ,dionysiaca1 in the praise of ,dionysus the chorus sang and danced about the altar1 and all the drama arose from the celebration of the ,bacchic mysteries4 ,so you get1 ,i think1 a pretty fair proportion3 as the ,athens of ,sophocles is to the ,cockneydom of ,dickens1 so is the cult of ,dionysus to the cult of cold punch and brandy and water4 ,the interior meaning is in each case the same2 the artistic expression has lamentably deteriorated1 in the degree that the artistic atmosphere on the banks of ,fleet ,ditch1 the mother of dead dogs1 was inferior to the artistic atmosphere on the banks of the ,ilissus4 ,i expect you have gathered from all this talk the point ,i want to make3 that the brandy and water and punch business in ,pickwick1 which at first sight seems trivial and insignificant and even disgusting1 is1 in fact1 full of the highest significance4 ,don't you notice the insistence with which the writer dwells on drinking1 the unction and enthusiasm with which he describes it8 ,we have admitted the poverty of the materials with which ,dickens works1 and of course it would be as idle to expect him to write a choral song in honour of ,dionysus as it would be to expect him to write in ,greek4 ,he expressed himself as best he could1 in the language 7that is with the incidents and in the atmosphere7 that he knew1 but there can be no possible doubt as to his meaning4 ,in a word1 ,i absolutely identify the brandy and water scenes with the ,bacchic cultus and all that it implies4 ,this is a little too much for you is it8 ,well1 let us take another well-known book1 the ,gargantua and ,pantagruel4 ,you know it well1 and ,i have only to remind you of the name to remind you that as ,pickwick has been said to reek with brandy and water1 so does ,rabelais assuredly reek of wine4 ,the history begins3-- ,grandgousier estoit bon raillard en son temps1 aimant boire net1 it ends with the ,oracle of the ,holy ,bottle1 with the word ,trinch 444 un mot panomphe1 celebr et entendu de toutes nations1 et nous signifie1 beuvez2 and ,i refer you to the allocution of ,bacbuc1 the priestess of the ,bottle1 at large4 ,by wine1 she says1 is man made divine1 and ,i may say that if you have not got the key to these ,rabelaisian riddles much of the value--the highest value--of the book is lost to you4 ,you know how they drink1 those strange figures1 the giants and their followers1 you know the aroma of the vintage1 the odour of the wine vat that fills all those marvellous and enigmatic pages1 and ,i tell you that here again ,i recognise the same signs as in ,pickwick1 the same music as that of the dithyrambic choruses in honour of ,dionysus1 which were eventually amplified into that magnificent literary product1 the ,greek drama4 ,and if we wish to penetrate the secret we must not forget the ,hebrew psalmist1 with his calix meus inebrians quam prclarus est4 ,and remember1 too1 if you feel inclined to shudder at the milk-punch1 that the words which ,i have just quoted might be rendered1 how splendid is this cup of wine that makes me drunk6 and we may say that1 in a manner1 poor ,dickens did so render them1 since1 as ,i have reminded you he belonged1 after the flesh1 to the ,camden ,town of the 'twenties1 and was forced to use its unbeautiful dialect because he knew no other4 ,and after all1 then1 what does this ,bacchic cultus mean8 ,we have seen that under various disguises the one spirit appeared in ,greece1 in the ,france of the ,renaissance1 and in ,victorian ,england1 and that in each instance there is an apparent glorification of drunkenness4 ,the ,greeks1 indeed1 a sober people by necessity1 as all ,southerners are1 impersonated the genius of intoxication1 and made excessive drinking1 as it would seem1 an elaborate religion1 with rites and festivals and mysteries4 ,the ,tourainian1 whose personal habit was that not of a drunkard1 but of a learned physician and restorer of ancient letters1 who probably drank very much in the manner of the good cur ,i once knew 7,my ,god6 he said to me1 after the third small glass of small white wine1 'tis a veritable debauch671 has1 on the face of it1 dedicated all his enormous book to the same cause1 so that to read ,pantagruel is like walking through a ,french village in the vintage season1 when the whole world1 as ,zola unpleasantly and nastily expresses it pue le raisin4 ,thirdly1 ,dickens1 who loved to talk of concocting gin-punch1 and left it1 when concocted1 to be drunk by his guests1 shows us ,mr ,pickwick dead drunk in the wheel-barrow4 ,and1 for a final touch of apparent absurdity1 you remember that the ,dionysus myth represents wine as a civilising influence6 ,you may well think of the public-house at the corner1 and ask yourself how strong drink can contribute to civilisation4 ,well1 that is1 in very brief outline1 the problem and the puzzle2 and ,i may say at once that to the literalist1 the rationalist1 the materialist critic1 the problem is quite insoluble4 ,but to you and me1 who do not end in any kind of ist1 the enigma will not be quite so hopeless4 ,let us get back to our maxim that1 in literature1 facts and incidents are not present for their own sake but as symbols1 as words of the language of art2 it will follow1 then1 that the incidents of the ,dionysus myth1 the incidents of ,pantagruel and ,pickwick are not to be taken literally1 but symbolically4 ,we are not to conclude that the ,greeks were a race of drunkards1 or that ,rabelais and ,dickens preached habitual excess in drink as the highest virtue2 we are to conclude that both the ancient people and the modern writers recognised ,ecstasy as the supreme gift and state of man1 and that they chose the ,vine and the juice of the ,vine as the most beautiful and significant symbol of that ,power which withdraws a man from the common life and the common consciousness1 and taking him from the dust of the earth1 sets him in high places1 in the eternal world of ideas4 ,and1 after all1 ,i cannot do better than quote at length the sermon of ,bacbuc1 priestess of the ,dive ,bouteille4 ,et icy maintenons que non rire1 ains boire1 est le propre de l'homme3 je ne dis boire simplement et absolument1 car aussi bien boivent les bestes3 je dis boire vin bon et frais4 ,notez1 amis1 que de vin1 divin on devient3 et n'y a argument tant seur1 ni art de divination moins fallace4 ,vos academiques l'afferment1 rendans l'etymologie de vin lequel ils disent en ,grec 1 estre comme vis1 force1 puissance4 ,car pouvoir il a d'emplir l'ame de toute verit1 tout savoir et philosophie4 ,si avez not ce qui est en lettres ,ioniques escrit dessus la porte du temple1 vous avez peu entendre qu'en vin est verit cache4 ,you see how that passage lights up the whole book1 and you see what ,rabelais meant in the ,prologue to the first book by that reference to certain little boxes such as we see nowadays in apothecaries' shops1 the which boxes are painted on the outside with joyous and fantastic figures 444 but within they hold rare drugs1 as balm1 ambergris1 amomum1 musk1 civet1 certain stones of high virtue1 and all manner of precious things4 ,i do not know whether you have read any of our ,english commentators on ,rabelais1 if not1 ,i would not advise you to do so1 unless you take pleasure in futility4 ,for instance they take the passage from the prologue1 and seeing the hint that something is concealed1 try by some complicated chain of argument to show that ,rabelais veiled his attacks on the ,church under a mask of wild buffoonery4 ,of course the attacks on the ,church 7the secondary and comparatively unimportant element in the book1 fairly answering to the attacks on books of ,chivalry in the ,don ,quixote7 are as open as any attack can well be1 and anyone who finds a veil drawn between ,rabelais' dislike for the clergy and his expression of it must have a very singular notion of what constitutes concealment1 and a still more singular misapprehension of the motive-forces which make and shape great books4 ,art1 you may feel quite assured1 proceeds always from love and rapture1 never from hatred and disdain1 and satire of every kind qua satire is eternally condemned to that ,gehenna where the pamphlets1 the literature of the subject1 and the life-like books lie all together4 ,in ,don ,quixote one perceives that ,cervantes loved the romances he condemns1 and the satire is therefore good-humoured1 and1 one may say1 does his book little harm or none at all2 but ,rabelais had been harshly treated by the friars1 and his consequent ill-humour1 his very violent abuse are in disaccord with the eternal melodies which may be discerned in ,pantagruel1 noted there under strange symbols4 ,yes1 the satire in ,rabelais is an accident1 which one has to accept and to make the best of2 some of it is amusing enough1 joyous and fantastic1 like the apes and owls and antiques that adorn the little boxes of the apothecaries1 some of it is a little acrid1 as ,i said2 but let us never forget that the essence of the book is its splendid celebration of ecstasy1 under the figure of the vine4 ,you know ,i have not opened the door2 ,i have only put the key into your hands1 in this as in other instances4 ,there are things1 which1 strange to say1 are better left unsaid1 and this1 no doubt1 ,rabelais perceived when he devised his symbolism and set many traps in the paths of the shallow commentator4 ,it was not from dread of the consequences of attacking the clergy that he devised curious veils and concealments1 since1 as ,i have noted1 his hatred of the church is quite open and unconcealed4 ,he chose the method of symbolism1 firstly because he was an artist1 and symbolism is the speech of art2 and secondly because the high truth that he prophesied was not1 and is not1 fit for vulgar ears4 ,the secret places of the human nature are not heedlessly to be exposed to the uninitiated1 who would merely profane this occult knowledge if they had it4 ,by consequence the ,complete ,works of ,rabelais are obtainable in ,holywell ,street1 and many1 seeking the libidinous1 have found merely the tiresome1 and have cursed their bargain4 ,no1 ,i will positively say no more4 ,the key is in your hands1 and with it you may open what chambers you can4 ,there is only this to be mentioned3 that1 if ,i were you1 ,i would not be afraid with any amazement should ,mr ,pickwick's overdose of milk punch prove1 ultimately1 a clue to the labyrinth of mystic theology4 ,there are1 however1 one or two minor points in ,rabelais that may be worth notice4 ,i might1 you know1 analyze it as ,i attempted to analyze ,don ,quixote4 ,there is in ,gargantua and ,pantagruel that same complexity of thought and construction3 you may note1 first of all1 the great essence which is common to these masterpieces as to all literature--ecstasy1 expressed in the one case under the similitude of knight-errantry1 in the other by the symbol of the vine4 ,then1 in ,rabelais you have another symbolism of ecstasy--the shape of gauloiserie1 of gross1 exuberant gaiety1 expressing itself by outrageous tales1 outrageous words1 by a very cataract of obscenity1 if you please1 if only you will notice how the obscenity of ,rabelais transcends the obscenity of common life2 how grossness is poured out in a sort of mad torrent1 in a frenzy1 a very passion of the unspeakable4 ,then1 thirdly1 there is the impression one collects from the book3 a transfigured picture of that wonderful age3 there is the note of the vast1 interminable argument of the schools1 and for a respond1 the clear1 enchanted voice of ,plato2 there is the vision1 there is the mystery of the vast1 far-lifted ,gothic quire2 and those fair1 ornate1 and smiling chteaux rise smiling from the rich banks of the ,loire and the ,vienne4 ,the old tales told in farmhouse kitchens in the ,chinonnais1 the exultation of the new learning1 of lost beauty recovered1 the joy of the vintage1 the old legends1 the ancient turns of speech1 the new style and manner of speaking3 so to the old world answers the new4 ,then one has the satire of clergy and lawyers--the criticism of life--analogous1 as ,i said with much that is in ,cervantes1 and so from divers elements you see how a literary masterpiece is made into a whole4 ,but now1 do you know1 ,i am going to make a confession4 ,you have heard me say more than once that in art1 in literature properly so called1 liking and disliking count for nothing4 ,we have understood1 ,i think1 that when once amusing reading matter has been put out of court1 the question of how often1 with what absorption one reads a work of art1 matters nothing4 ,well1 ,i want to contradict1 or rather to modify that axiom2 we have been speaking of three great books1 each of which ,i believe firmly to be true literature--,pickwick1 ,don ,quixote1 and ,pantagruel4 ,here is my confession4 ,i read ,pickwick1 say1 once a year1 ,don ,quixote1 once every three years1 while ,i read ,rabelais in fragments perhaps once in six years4 ,you might suppose that ,i have indicated the order of merit8 ,well1 ,i have1 but you must reverse the order1 since ,i firmly believe that ,pantagruel is the finest of the three4 ,we will leave ,dickens out of account1 since we are agreed that though the message was that of angels1 the accent and the speech were of ,camden town2 he1 that is to say1 approaches most nearly to the common life1 to the common passages in which we live1 and hence he1 naturally1 pleases us the most in our ordinary and common humours4 ,but1 of the other two1 ,i confess that ,cervantes pleases me much the more2 the vulgarity of ,dickens is absent or rather it is concentrated in ,sancho1 in a much milder form than that of ,pickwick1 for a ,spanish peasant of the sixteenth century1 with all his common-sense1 and practical reason1 is less remote from beauty than the retired business man of the early nineteenth century2 just as poor ,mr ,pickwick1 an honest1 kindly creature1 is vastly superior to the blatant1 pretentious1 diamond-bedecked swindlers who represent the city in our day4 ,but ,cervantes1 who lacks1 as ,i say1 the commonness of ,dickens1 has something of the urbanity1 the cosmopolitanism of ,thackeray1 he is1 to a certain degree1 a ,colonel ,newcome of his time1 but he has seen the world more sagaciously than ,colonel ,newcome ever could4 ,so while ,rabelais appals me with his extravagance1 his torrents of obscene words1 ,i am charmed with the good humoured and observant companionship of ,cervantes4 ,and hence ,i conclude that ,pantagruel is the finer book4 ,it may sound paradoxical to say so1 but don't you see that the very grotesquerie of ,rabelais shows a further remove from the daily round1 a purer metal1 less tinged with the personal1 material1 interest than ,don ,quixote4 ,mind you1 ,i find greater deftness1 a finer artifice in ,cervantes1 who ,i think expressed his conception the more perfectly1 but ,i think that the conception of ,rabelais the higher1 precisely because it is the more remote4 ,look at the ,pantagruel2 consider those lists1 that more than frankness1 that ebullition of grossness1 plainly intentional1 designed3 it is either the merest lunacy1 or else it is sublime4 ,don't you remember the trite saying extremes meet1 don't you perceive that when a certain depth has been passed you begin to ascend into the heights8 ,the ,persian poet expresses the most transcendental secrets of the ,divine ,love by the grossest phrases of the carnal love2 so ,rabelais soars above the common life1 above the streets and the gutter by going far lower than the streets and the gutter3 he brings before you the highest by positing that which is lower than the lowest1 and if you have the prepared1 initiated mind1 a ,rabelaisian list is the best preface to the angelic song4 ,all this may strike you as extreme paradox1 but it has the disadvantage of being true1 and perhaps you may assure yourself of its truth by recollecting the converse proposition--that it is when one is absorbed in the highest emotions that the most degrading images will intrude themselves4 ,no2 you are right3 this is not the psychology of the scientific persons who write hand-books on the subject1 it is not the psychology of the serious novelists1 of those who write the annals of the engaged2 but it happens to be the psychology of man4 ,i don't know that very much can be made of the signification of the characters in ,pantagruel1 as ,i hardly think that ,rabelais was anxious to be systematic or consistent in delineating them4 ,i believe that there are two reasons for the gigantic stature of ,pantagruel1 or perhaps three4 ,the form of the whole story came from popular legends about a giant named ,gargantua1 and that is the first and least important reason4 ,secondly the giant conception does something to remove the book from common experience2 it is a sign-post1 warning you not to expect a faithful picture of life1 but rather a withdrawal from life and from common experience1 and you are in a position to appreciate the value of that motive1 since ,i have never ceased from telling you that it is the principal motive of all literature4 ,and1 thirdly1 ,i hesitate and doubt1 but nothing more1 whether the giant ,pantagruel1 he who is all thirst and ever athirst1 may not be a hint of the stature of the perfect man1 of the ideal man1 freed from the bonds of the common life1 and common appetites1 having only the eternal thirst for the eternal vine4 ,candidly1 ,i am inclined to favour this view1 but only as a private interpretation2 it may be all nonsense1 and ,i shall not be offended or surprised if you can prove to me that it is nonsense4 ,but have you noticed how ,pantagruel is at once the most important and the least important figure in the book8 ,he is the most important personage2 he is the hero1 the leader1 the son of the king1 the giant1 wiser than any or all of his followers3 formally1 he is to ,rabelais that which ,don ,quixote is to ,cervantes4 ,and yet1 actually1 he is little more than a vague1 tremendous shadow2 the living1 speaking1 impressive personages are ,frre ,jean and ,panurge1 who occupy the stage and capture our attention4 ,doesn't this rather suggest to you the part played by the real man in life itself2 a subordinate1 unobtrusive part usually1 hidden very often by an exterior1 which bears little resemblance to the true man within4 ,you know ,coleridge says that3-- ,pantagruel is the ,reason2 ,panurge the ,understanding--the pollarded man1 the man with every faculty except the reason4 ,i scarcely know an example more illustrative of the distinction between the two4 ,rabelais had no mode of speaking the truth in those days but in such form as this2 as it was1 he was indebted to the king's protection for his life4 ,i must cavil at the last sentence1 in which ,coleridge seems to hint that ,rabelais was in danger because he had hinted the distinction between the ,reason and the ,understanding4 ,with all respect to ,coleridge1 ,rabelais might have gone to the limits of psychology and metaphysics without incurring any danger2 he was threatened on account of his very open satire of the church and the clergy1 which1 as ,i have pointed out1 is as plain spoken as satire well can be4 ,still1 ,i think that ,coleridge1 using the technical language of ,german philosophy1 had a glimpse of the truth1 and ,mr ,besant's remark that ,panurge is a careful portrait of a man without a soul is virtually the same definition in another terminology4 ,as ,i have already said1 ,i don't think that ,rabelais kept his characters within the strict limits of consistence--they are only significant1 perhaps1 now and then--and ,i want to say1 again1 that ,i speak under correction in this matter1 not feeling at all sure of my ground4 ,but ,i am inclined to think that ,pantagruel1 ,panurge1 and the ,monk are not so much three different characters1 as the representative of man in his three persons4 ,frre ,jean is1 perhaps1 the natural man1 the healthy animal1 ,panurge is the rational man1 and ,pantagruel1 as ,i said1 is the spiritual1 or perfect man1 who looms1 gigantic1 in the background1 almost invisible1 and yet all important1 and the three are1 in reality1 ,one4 ,if ,i may apply the case to our own subject1 ,i may say that while ,pantagruel conceives the idea1 ,panurge writes the book1 and ,brother ,john has the courage to take it to the publishers4 ,the first is the artist1 the second the artificer1 and the third the social being1 ready to battle for his place in the material world4 ,the giant is always calm1 since his head is high above earth--vidit nubes et sidera--but the other two have to face the compromises of life1 and suffer its defeats4 ,all this may be purely fantastical2 and at any rate ,i am sure that anyone who knows his ,rabelais could pick many holes in my interpretation4 ,for example1 ,i said that the monk was the healthy animal1 and ,panurge the rational man2 but there are occasions when ,panurge assumes the character of the unhealthy beast1 the hairy-legged1 hybrid1 creature of the ,greek myth1 who uses the superior human artifice for ends that are wholly bestial or worse than bestial4 ,still2 is this a valid objection8 ,are there not such men in life itself8 ,is it not1 perhaps1 the peculiar and terrible privilege of humanity that it may1 if it pleases1 prostitute its most holy and most blessed gifts to the worst and most horrible uses8 ,and does not each one of us feel that1 potentially1 at all events1 there is such a being within him1 not yielded to1 perhaps1 for a moment1 yet always present1 always ready to assume the command4 ,the greatest saints1 we are told1 have suffered the most fiery temptations2 in other words--,pantagruel is always attended by ,panurge diabolicus4 ,i have talked once or twice of the ,shadowy ,companion1 but one must not forget that there is the ,muddy ,companion also2 a being often of exquisite wit and deep understanding1 but given to evil ways if one do not hold him in check4 ,but1 in any case1 ,i think ,i have shown that the ,pantagruel is one of the most extraordinary efforts of the human mind1 full of ,pantagruelism2 and that word stands for many concealed and wonderful mysteries4 ,it is not in the least a pleasant1 or a life-like1 or even an interesting book2 ,i think that when one knows of the key--or rather of the keys--one opens the pages almost with a sensation of dread4 ,so it is a book that one consults at long intervals1 because it is only at rare moments that a man can bear the spectacle of his own naked soul1 and a vision that is splendid1 certainly1 but awful also1 in its constant apposition of the eternal heights and the eternal depths4 ,v ,i have been waiting for that question for a very long time1 and ,i only wonder that you have been able to restrain yourself so well--through such a series of what ,i know you believe to be paradoxes1 though ,i have assured you that ,i deal merely in the plainest truth4 ,but1 after all1 your question is quite a legitimate one1 and ,i remember when ,i first began to think of these things ,i went astray--simply because ,i did not recognise the existence of the difficulty that has been bothering you1 ever since that talk of ours about the haulte sagesse ,pantagrueline--et ,pickwickienne1 and perhaps before it4 ,yes1 ,i will put the question in its plainest1 crudest form1 and ,i will make you ask1 if you please1 whether ,charles ,dickens had any consciousness of the interior significance of the milk-punch1 strong ale1 and brandy and water which he caused ,mr ,pickwick and his friends to consume in such outrageous quantities4 ,it sounds plain enough and simple enough1 doesn't it1 and yet ,i must tell you that to answer that question fairly you must first analyze human nature1 and ,i needn't remind you that that is a task very far from simple4 ,man sounds a very simple predicate1 as you utter it2 you imagine that you understand its significance perfectly well1 but when you begin to refine a little1 and to bring in distinctions1 and to carry propositions to their legitimate bounds1 you find that you have undertaken the definition of that which is essentially indefinite and probably indefinable4 ,and1 after all1 we need not pitch on this term or on that1 there is no need to select man as offering any especial difficulty1 for1 ,i take it1 that the truth is that all human knowledge is subject to the same disadvantage1 the same doubts and reservations4 ,omnia exeunt in mysterium was an old scholastic maxim2 and the only people who have always a plain answer for a plain question are the pseudo-scientists1 the people who think that one can solve the enigma of the universe with a box of chemicals4 ,but all this is a caution--necessary ,i suppose--that you need not expect me to give you a plain1 cut and dried answer to your question whether literature is a conscious production--or1 in more particular form--was ,dickens aware that by milk-punch he meant ecstasy8 ,i shall ask you another in the approved ,scotch manner4 ,you were telling me that as you came along this evening you had to stop for five minutes at the corner of the ,caledonian ,road to watch the exquisite grace of two slum-girls of fourteen or fifteen1 dancing to the rattling tune of a piano-organ4 ,you spoke of the charm of their movements--motus ,ionici1 some of them1 ,i fear--of the purely sthetic delight there was in the sight of young girls1 disguised as horrible little slatterns1 leaping and dancing as young girls have always leapt and danced1 ,i suppose1 from the time of the cave-dwellers onwards4 ,well1 but do you suppose that this charm you have remarked was conscious8 ,do you think that ,harriet and ,emily realised that they were of the kin of the ecstatic dancers of all time1 that they were beautiful because they were naturally expressing by a symbol that is universal1 the universal and eternal ecstasy of life8 ,look back in your memory for illustrations2 ,i1 as you know1 am rather the enemy of facts1 and it is rarely that ,i am able to support a theory by a systematic catena of instances and authorities4 ,but1 if one had the industry and energy1 one might make a most curious history of the dance4 ,remember the ,hebrew dances of religious joy1 of ecstasy in its highest form1 remember that strange survival of the choristers' dance before the high altar in ,spain on certain solemn feasts1 a survival which has persisted in spite of the strong ,roman influences which make for rigid uniformity4 ,think of the ,greek ,menads and ,bacchantes1 of the ,dionysiac chorus in the theatre1 of our old ,english peasants treading the mazes1 and dancing round the maypole1 of dances at ,breton ,pardons1 of the fairies1 supposed to dance in the forest glade beneath the moon4 ,why1 dancing is as much an expression of the human secret as literature itself1 and ,i expect it is even more ancient2 and ,harriet and ,emily1 leaping on the pavement1 to that jingling1 clattering tune1 were merely showing that though they were the children of the slum1 and the step-children of the ,school ,board1 they were yet human1 and partakers of the universal sacrament4 ,but if you ask1 were they conscious of all this1 it will be very difficult to give a direct answer4 ,i need hardly say that they could not have put their very real emotion into the terms ,i have used--nor perhaps into any terms at all--and yet they know the delight of what they do1 as much as if they had been initiated in all the mysteries4 ,if someone with the genius of ,socrates for propounding searching questions could corner ,harriet and ,emily1 and face and overcome that preliminary1 inevitable garn1 it is possible that he might find that they were fully conscious of the reasons why they danced and delighted in dancing2 just as ,socrates demonstrated to the slave that he was perfectly acquainted with geometry2 but failing a ,socrates1 and using words in their usual senses1 ,i suppose we must say that they are not conscious4 ,they dance and leap without calculation1 as they eat and drink1 and as birds sing in springtime2 and very much the same answer must be given to the similar question as to literature4 ,i said that to answer the riddle fully and completely1 one would have to make an analysis of human nature2 and1 in truth1 the problem is simply a problem of the consciousness and subconsciousness1 and of the action and interaction between the two4 ,i will not be too dogmatic4 ,we are in misty1 uncertain and unexplored regions1 and it is impossible to chart all the cities and mountains and streams1 and fix with the nicety of the ordnance survey their several places on the map--but ,i am strangely inclined to think that all the quintessence of art is distilled from the subconscious and not from the conscious self2 or1 in other words1 that the artificer seldom or never understands the ends and designs and spirit of the artist4 ,our literary architects have all1 ,i think1 builded better than they knew1 and very often1 ,i expect1 the draughtsman who sees the triumph and enjoys it in his manner1 takes all the credit to himself1 and ludicrously imagines that it is his careful drawing and amplification of the sketch1 and following the scale1 that have created the high and holy house of ,god4 ,there is a queer instance of what ,i mean in ,dickens's preface to the later editions of ,pickwick--,i put the book up on a high shelf the other day1 and ,i can't be bothered getting it down and verifying the quotation--but ,i believe the author1 after telling us that the original design was to give opportunities to the etcher ,seymour1 goes on to recapitulate1 as it were1 the achievements of the book1 and his list of triumphs is much more amusing than any list in ,rabelais4 ,the law of imprisonment for debt has been altered6 ,fleet ,prison has been pulled down6 ,the ,school-,board is coming6 ,lawyers' clerks have nicer manners6 ,parliamentary elections are a little better1 but they might be better still6 and one wonders that he does not announce that1 in consequence of the publication of ,pickwick1 medical students have given up brandy for barley-water4 ,it is evident1 you see1 that ,dickens thought 7or thought that he thought1 for it is very difficult to be exact7 that his masterpiece of the picaresque1 his epitome of ,pantagruelism1 was written to correct abuses1 and looking back1 many years after its publication1 he congratulates himself that most of these abuses have been corrected1 and 7one can almost hear him say7 ergo1 it is a very fine book4 ,he was impelled to write this nonsense of the preface because he was1 by comparison1 educated2 ,harriet1 the dancer1 would probably tell you1 if you succeeded in penetrating beyond garn1 that she danced because she liked it2 but1 granting that the poisoning process had been carried out more successfully in the case of ,emily1 she might1 conceivably1 reply that she danced becos it's 'elthy1 and ,teacher says as 'ow it cirkilates the blood4 ,emily1 you see1 obtained the prize for ,physiology1 as well as for ,french and the ,piano-,forte2 she is thus enabled to give reasons1 and they are quite as valuable as the reasons of ,dickens1 explaining the merits of ,pickwick4 ,you know that pompous old fool ,forster1 who took in ,dickens at times1 sniffed a little at ,pickwick1 and thought the later books1 with their ingenious plots1 and floods of maudlin tears1 and portentous character-drawing1 immense advances1 and ,i suppose the master felt obliged to justify himself for that first enterprise--to show that he had not really been inspired1 but had written a useful tract6 ,you remember he explains ,stiggins2 he warns you not to be under any misconceptions1 not to suppose that ,stiggins satirises a1 b1 or c1 since he is only aimed at x1 y1 and z4 ,can you conceive that a medival artist in gurgoyles1 having perfected for our eternal joy1 a splendid grinning creature1 lurking on the parapet1 and having endowed him1 greatly to our oblectation1 with the tail of a dragon1 the body of a dog1 the feet of an eagle1 the head of a bull in hysterics1 with a ,franciscan cowl1 by way of finish1 should afterwards explain that no offence was intended to ,father ,ambrose1 the prior over the way8 ,so it seems fairly plain1 doesn't it1 that in the case of ,dickens1 at all events1 there was no very clear consciousness of what had been achieved1 and ,i believe that you would find the rule hold good with other artists in a greater or less degree4 ,with ,dickens it holds in a very high degree1 just because there was that tremendous gulf ,i have so often spoken about between his inward and his outward self2 because1 with the soul of rare genius1 his intelligence lived in those dreary1 dusty ,london streets1 because the artificer1 even while he carried out the artist's commands1 understood very little what he was doing4 ,but one can trace the same working in other cases4 ,take the case of ,mr ,hardy1 for instance4 ,you remember what ,i said about his ,two on a ,tower2 ,i praised it for its ecstatic passion1 for that revelation of a great rapture1 for its symbolism1 showing how one must withdraw from the common ways1 from the dusty highroad and the swarming street1 and go apart into high1 lonely places1 if one would perceive the high1 eternal mysteries4 ,i did not say so in so many words1 but you no doubt saw that ,i was indicating that which is1 in my opinion1 valuable in ,mr ,hardy's work1 that which makes his books literature4 ,and ,i am sure he would most decidedly and entirely disagree with me1 and if you want to know why ,i am sure1 ,i refer you to his later books1 to his ,tess and ,jude4 ,you know how the ,tess was talked about1 how it remade the author from the commercial standpoint1 simply because it contained1 with many beautiful things1 many absurd preachments1 much pseudo-philosophy of a kind suited to the intelligence of persons who think that ,robert ,elsmere is literature4 ,if ,mr ,hardy had been a conscious artist1 if he had understood1 ,i mean1 what makes the charm and the wonder of ,two on a ,tower1 he could never have adulterated the tale of ,tess with a free-thinking tract1 he would never have turned ,jude into a long pamphlet on secondary education for farm labourers1 with agnostic notes4 ,it is pathetic in the latter book amidst much weary and futile writing to come across a passage here and there that shows the artist striving for utterance1 longing to sing us his incantations1 in spite of the preacher1 who howls him down4 ,think of that distant vision of ,oxford from the lonely field1 of all those clustering roofs and spires1 wet with rain1 suddenly kindling into glancing1 and scintillant fire1 at the sunset2 and then remember1 with what sorrow1 that this is but an oasis in a barren land of blundering argument4 ,it is almost as if literature had become literature--the literature of the subject--and one must only rejoice that the artist still lives even if the enemy has shut him up in prison4 ,you can trace the struggle all through the book3 ,sue was an artistic conception1 a very curious but a very beautiful revelation of some strange elements in the nature and in the love of women2 but how difficult it is to detect this--the real ,sue--underneath the surface1 which makes ,sue seem the prophetess of the ,woman ,question1 or whatever the contemporary twaddle on the subject was called4 ,conceive the ,odyssey so handled that it seems like a volume in a technical series dealing with ,seamanship and ,navigation1 think what might have happened if the ,rabelais who had been put in the dark cell of ,fontenay-le-,comte had completely gained the upper hand1 and had silenced that other ,rabelais--that solitary and rapturous soul who had seen as in a glass the marvellous face of man4 ,well1 the five books of the ,pantagruel would have conveyed to us1 no doubt with some eloquence and vigour1 the highly unimportant fact that ,franois ,rabelais1 runaway ,franciscan friar1 did not like ,franciscan friars2 and now that the centuries have gone by we see how 7comparatively7 worthless such a book as that would have been4 ,fortunately ,pantagruel was too strong for the forces of ,panurge and ,frre ,jean combined1 and so they have been able to do little harm to the book4 ,and how one wishes that it might be so with ,mr ,hardy6 ,it is not as if he had no body for his conceptions2 his studies of peasant folk do very well as backgrounds for his dramas1 though1 of course1 his work in this way1 good as it is1 is not his element of real value4 ,but it is inoffensive always1 sometimes amusing1 and it might well suffice him in his more material moments1 when he feels the necessity of descending from the solitary heights into the pleasant1 populous valleys and villages of common life4 ,but his true work is--as it is the work of all artists--the shaping for us of ecstasy by means of symbols2 and for him the symbol which he understands is1 no doubt1 the passion of love1 and with it the symbol of red1 lonely ploughlands1 of deep overshadowed lanes that climb the hills and wander into lands that we know not1 of dark woods that hide a secret1 of strange1 immemorial barrows where one may have communion with the souls of the dead4 ,the passion of love1 the passion of the hills--no artist could desire more exquisite or significant symbols than these1 nor need he seek for more beautiful forms for the expression of the perfect beauty4 ,and ,mr ,hardy has chosen to be a pamphleteer1 to voice for us our poor1 ignorant contemporary chatter3 it is as if an angel's pen were to be occupied in inditing ,society ,small ,talk6 ,but it proves the unconsciousness of ,mr ,hardy's art2 and here1 by the way1 ,i am moved to revert to the case of ,rabelais4 ,how far1 you may ask1 was he conscious of what he was saying1 and ,i see you remember that passage ,i quoted from the last book--the splendid declaration of the ,priestess ,bacbuc that by wine is man made divine4 ,that passage1 and indeed many other passages in the final chapters1 would seem to show that the author had worked consciously1 and ,i certainly think the point worth our consideration4 ,you will remember that ,i stated my rule without bigotry2 ,i rather proposed it as a pious opinion--to the effect that in literature the finest things are not designed4 ,and ,i confess1 that at first sight1 this matter of ,bacbuc and her allocution looks rather like an exception to the rule1 a proof that ,rabelais1 at all events1 understood clearly what he was doing4 ,well2 it may have been so2 for ,rabelais was1 as ,i think ,i have shown1 a very exceptional man1 whom it would be difficult to place in any class4 ,but ,i hardly think this is an instance of the proverbial 7and fallacious7 exception that proves the rule4 ,in the first place ,i believe that some ,french editors have grave doubts whether ,rabelais wrote the fifth book at all2 but ,i am not inclined to press this point4 ,my point is that the allocution of ,bacbuc and all those chapters which describe the ,oracle of the ,holy ,bottle are the last in the book--the last words of the author2 and ,i am in no way concerned to defend the position that an author must always remain unconscious of the work that he has done4 ,as a matter of fact ,i think that always1 or almost always1 he is unconscious while he is writing2 but ,i see no reason why the revelation may not come to him afterwards1 especially in such a case as the ,pantagruel1 which was the affair of many years--of a lifetime1 indeed4 ,in the beginning of production1 in the youth1 the springtime of artistic work1 the creative influence prevails1 and this1 it seems to me1 always or almost always operates secretly2 but in later years the critical spirit is apt to assert itself1 and this will lead1 very naturally1 to the artist's understanding more plainly the nature of his accomplishment4 ,rabelais had a long1 wonderful career2 his life was full of incident1 of violent breaks1 and his books were produced at intervals1 and it seems to me very possible that1 towards the end1 he may have reflected on what he had done1 and have understood in part1 at all events1 the sense of the amazing message that he had delivered4 ,this1 ,i think1 is the explanation of the ,holy ,bottle chapters1 and you will note that1 admirable as criticism1 they are inferior as art to those astounding early pages where there is no hint of conscious workmanship1 but rather evidence of a man for whom the world has been transformed1 who has been visited by an astounding vision4 ,he takes an old1 popular story about a giant1 he takes the vine that flourishes in his native ,chinonnais1 he takes the ,new ,learning that seems to him like the ,new ,wine1 he takes the gross tale of the farmhouse and the tavern1 the rank speech of the people1 and with these elements1 with these facts1 he symbolises the revelation that he has received4 ,he writes1 he writes on1 he writes madly1 and every line is written in a fury of delight2 but1 ,i think ,i may say1 there is at the moment of writing1 no conscious apperception of all that that torrent of words conveys and implies4 ,that may well come later2 one may well begin with legend3 ,grandgousier was a good drinker1 and end with the interpretation3 ,all truth and every philosophy is contained in wine2 but ,i believe that if ,rabelais had perceived this at the beginning he would have been not an artist but a philosopher4 ,well2 if you are content with this comment on ,bacbuc1 ,i should like to give you a very curious instance of our own day1 in which the unconscious artist has been subdued by the conscious preacher4 ,you remember those very notable books3 ,keynotes and ,discords8 ,i have not seen them for some time1 so ,i am afraid my criticism will be very loose and general1 but ,i think that the two volumes mark very well the fatal descent from the higher to the lower ground4 ,in the first1 it seems to me1 there is a somewhat slight1 but very genuine1 note of ecstasy2 ,i mean that you can collect a certain distinct image of real womanhood--not the laboured1 foolish1 inane psychology of ,mr ,meredith and those who work with him--not the analysis of the surface1 of the society woman1 belonging to a particular grade1 and a particular period1 but of the very woman who remains really the same in all social grades and in all ages4 ,i remember thinking when ,i read ,keynotes that it was a lonely book2 it hinted1 ,i think1 a soul apart1 and afar from the secondary1 tertiary problems of an organised civilisation1 and though there was an undertone of preaching and arguing1 the total impression was curiously and beautifully artistic4 ,i found1 if ,i remember rightly1 that subordination of the accidental to the essential that ,i praised in ,two in a ,tower1 and ,i am the more convinced that this is so by my own recollections4 ,i have forgotten all about social conditions1 if any such things are indicated2 ,i only think of women and of men1 of the true1 inalterable human nature2 and here1 it seems to me1 you have a very high achievement4 ,but the next volume ,discords took distinctly lower ground4 ,the artifice was better1 the stories1 as stories1 were told with more skill and more deftness than anything in ,keynotes2 but there was no more literature2 there was only the literature of the subject4 ,the incidents were no longer symbols of an emotion2 they had become the basis of an agitation1 concerning which my curiosity never led me to inquire further3 and there you see another proof of the unconsciousness of art4 ,if the author of ,keynotes had understood her achievement ,discords would never have been written4 ,one might continue the catena almost ad infinitum3 would not ,wordsworth1 supposing him to have been a conscious artist1 have rather cut off his right hand than have suffered such a magisterium as the ,ode on ,intimations of ,immortality to have the companionship of the enormous mass of futility and stupidity which constitutes the greater part of the ,complete ,works8 ,well1 there is the evidence that must guide us in answering the question you propounded1 and it shows1 conclusively enough1 ,i think1 that art is not1 in the ordinary acceptation of the term1 a conscious product4 ,perhaps it would be a perilous dogmatism1 on the other hand1 to definitely pronounce it to be unconscious2 and ,i expect we had better take refuge in the subconscious1 that convenient name for the transcendental element in human nature4 ,for myself1 ,i like best my old figure of the ,shadowy ,companion1 the invisible attendant who walks all the way beside us1 though his feet are in the ,other ,world2 and ,i think that it is he who whispers to us his ineffable secrets1 which we clumsily endeavour to set down in mortal language4 ,i think that while the artist works he is conscious of joy and of nothing more2 he works beautifully but he could give no rationale of the process1 and when he endeavours to explain himself1 we are often perplexed by this strange spectacle of a man wholly ignorant of his own creation4 ,consider again the grotesqueness of that preface to ,pickwick2 it is really as if a great sculptor1 congratulated on his achievement1 should answer that his ,venus was indeed beautiful--because it tended to improve the marble industry and the general knowledge of anatomy4 ,and after all the conclusion does return to us from other than literary sources4 ,you cannot conceive a builder of the fourteenth century hesitating as to the respective merits of ,romanesque1 ,norman1 ,first and ,second ,pointed2 to him there was only one possible method1 and he built1 as he spoke1 without calculation and without conscious effort1 only knowing the joy of his work4 ,so indeed we all speak and live when we are not bound by convention and acquired usages and manners1 and you see that art1 properly so called1 takes its place in the great scheme of things2 it is no studied contortion1 no strange trick acquired by the late ingenuity of man1 but as natural 7and as supernatural7 as the blossoming of a flower1 and the singing of the nightingale4 ,art1 indeed1 is wholly natural1 artifice is more or less acquired1 the creature of reason1 of experiment1 of systematised intelligence4 ,it is doubtful1 ,i suppose1 whether the natural1 untaught man has of himself1 by endowment1 any artifice at all2 doubtful1 perhaps1 whether1 in the beginning1 his artifice was not the product of his art2 whether he did not learn to speak with artifice because he had received from nature the art of singing2 certainly the child1 entering the world1 has not the inborn artifice of the swallow and the bee4 ,this artifice1 it seems1 man has been forced to acquire by slow and painful degrees1 and perhaps it only differs from the artifice of animals in that it has been aided and reinforced by imagination1 that is by art1 that is by the power the human soul possesses of projecting itself into the unknown1 and adventuring in the realm of nothingness4 ,man1 ,i mean1 could never have invented the telephone1 had he not first created it1 had he not conceived the possibility of its existence1 when as yet1 it was non-existent1 and so his artifice will always be progressive1 and distinguished from the artifice of animals4 ,but art is born with man1 and is of the essence1 the very differentia of man4 ,it is of his very inmost being1 and therefore1 ,i suppose1 is removed from his consciousness simply because it is within and not from without4 ,you may say that ,i have been vague1 that ,i have not solved the problem ,i propounded1 that ,i have not clearly explained whether the ,greeks knew what they did when they worshipped ,dionysus1 whether ,rabelais was conscious of an inner meaning in his praise of wine1 whether ,dickens understood the value of his punch and brandy4 ,but if ,i have been vague it is because man1 in the last analysis1 is a tremendous mystery1 because he is a complex being1 because he is at once ,pantagruel1 and ,panurge1 and ,frre ,jean1 because he is both ,don ,quixote and ,sancho ,panza4 ,in some cases ,pantagruel and ,panurge seem to speak a common language1 to be able to communicate the one with the other3 if ,rabelais wrote the ,dive ,bouteille chapters1 he certainly understood much of that which he had expressed in symbols4 ,sometimes the two seem like foreigners in one home1 ,pantagruel dictates1 and ,panurge the scribe writes down his words1 hardly or not at all comprehending the magic symbols that he expresses4 ,so ,dickens ludicrously misinterprets his own ,pickwick4 ,and1 doubtless1 this understanding of the artificer of the artist varies in an almost infinite chain of nuances3 there have been artists1 perhaps1 who have worked like men under the influence of haschish1 who have opened their mouths and prophesied1 and then recovering from the possession1 have sat up and stared1 and asked where they were1 and what they had been doing4 ,indeed1 it may be that this was the condition of the working of art in the very dawn of human life1 for this1 no doubt1 is the explanation of that old equation in which bards1 magicians1 seers1 prophets1 and madmen ranked all together as men who spoke and worked miracles1 things unintelligible to the common sense1 to the understanding which regulates and arranges the affairs of the common life4 ,all these were alike men of the mountains1 men who withdrew from the camp1 and went apart into high solitary places1 into the lonely wilderness1 into the forest1 and in such retirements and cells they uttered the voices that came to them1 speaking words that were unintelligible to themselves4 ,on the other hand there may have been artists in whom the two persons have been happily reconciled1 who have not only the gift of tongues but also the gift of the interpretation of tongues4 ,even these1 ,i think1 are always possessed1 ecstatic1 rapt from their common nature at the moment of inspiration1 but afterwards1 when the magic song is done1 they awake and return and remember1 and understand1 in a measure at least1 the meaning of their prophecies4 ,they never wholly understand1 they are never able to express in rational terms the whole force of the message1 for the good reason that the language of the soul infinitely transcends the language of the understanding2 because art is1 indeed1 the sole channel by which the highest and purest truth can reach us4 ,you may1 perhaps1 succeed in giving a ,boer some notion of a ,greek chorus through the medium of the ,taal1 but it would be vain to dream of translating almost perfect beauty into that poor medium1 framed for the temporary and corporal necessities of rough and illiterate farmers4 ,and so1 however well an artist or those who appreciate his work may understand his meaning1 they do but understand a little2 since the tongue of art has many words which have no rendering in the speech of the understanding4 ,here1 then1 is another form of our text which enables us to separate art from artifice1 literature from reading matter4 ,artifice is explicable2 you remember that someone has said ,thackeray was simply the ordinary clubman plus genius and a style4 ,we must correct his phrases3 but if you substitute an immense talent of observation for genius1 and a great gift of expression for style1 ,i think the definition admirable4 ,thackeray1 in short1 is the clubman of heightened faculties2 he differs not in quiddity but in quality and quantity from his neighbour at the window2 he looks more closely than ,tom ,eaves1 and he can give you the result of his inspection in better phrases and with a better system1 but he looks at the same things from the same standpoint1 and you and ,i can admire his work and be amused and delighted by it1 but we have no sense of miracle1 of transcendent vision and achievement4 ,we simply see a man who does the things that we do1 but does them with a far greater dexterity3 you may watch an acrobat with an immense admiration1 but you recognise that you1 too1 are potentially an acrobat1 that with a little training you1 too1 could hang by the heels1 though not with such grace1 nor for so long a time4 ,but art is always miraculous4 ,in its origin1 in its working1 in its results it is beyond and above explanation1 and the artist's unconsciousness is only one phase of its infinite mysteries4 ,,vi ,i am afraid that at our last conversation ,i rather spoke to you as if you were a public meeting4 ,not precisely in that manner1 perhaps1 since no public meeting that ,i can imagine would have stood me for a moment1 but ,i fear that ,i was what is called high-flown4 ,and yet how can one avoid that reproach8 ,look here3 let us suppose an examination paper1 and the following questions set4 #a4 ,explain1 in rational terms1 the ,quest of the ,holy ,graal4 ,state whether in your opinion such a vessel ever existed1 and if you think it did not1 justify your pleasure in reading the account of the search for it4 #b4 ,explain1 logically1 your delight in colour4 ,state1 in terms that ,voltaire would have understood1 the meaning of the phrase1 the beauty of line4 #c4 ,what do you mean by the word music8 ,give the rational explanation of ,bach's ,fugues1 showing them to be as 7#a7 true as ,biology and 7#b7 useful as ,applied ,mechanics4 #d4 ,estimate the value of ,westminster ,abbey in the ,avoirdupois measure4 #e4 ,the light that never was on land or sea4 ,what light8 #f4 ,faery lands forlorn4 ,draw a map of the district in question1 putting in principal towns1 and naming exports4 #g4 ,show that1 heaven lies about us in our infancy must mean wholesome maternal influences surround us in our childhood4 ,you say that is all nonsense8 that one cannot express art of any kind in the terms of rationalism8 ,well1 ,i agree with you that it is nonsense2 that the tables of weights and measures give no sthetic guide to the value of ,westminster ,abbey2 but if we agree on this ,i am afraid that we must be content to be called high-flown4 ,having once for all settled that common sense has nothing to do with literary art1 we must be1 ,i suppose1 uncommon1 and 7apparently7 nonsensical if we want to talk about it to any profit4 ,that is what it comes to1 after all4 ,if literature be a kind of dignified reporting1 in which the reporter is at liberty to invent some incidents and leave out others1 and to arrange all in the order that pleases him best2 then1 let us have as much common sense and rationalism as you please1 and the more the better2 but if literature is a mysterious ecstasy1 the withdrawal from all common and ordinary conditions--well1 ,i suppose1 we had better be mystics when we discuss the subject1 and frankly confess that with its first principles logic has nothing to do4 ,i suppose that there are only two parties in the world3 the ,rationalists and the ,mystics1 and one's vote on literature goes with one's party4 ,one might leave the matter there1 and amiably agree to differ with the other side1 but ,i1 personally1 have the ferocity to insist1 that my side1 the mystical1 is wholly right1 and the other1 the rationalist1 wholly wrong1 and moreover ,i shall be so indecent as to prove the truth of my position4 ,but1 ,i have done so1 and with that ,examination ,paper ,i just read out to you4 ,for if rationalism be the truth1 then all literature1 all that both sides agree in thinking the finest literature is simple lunacy1 and all the world of the arts must go into the region of mania4 ,take the lowest1 the simplest instance4 ,here is a knife with a wooden handle1 and the handle has certain curious carved designs on it1 which do not enable it to be held better4 ,why is this knife better1 more to be valued1 than that other knife1 which is not decorated at all8 ,it does not cut better2 it does not justify its existence and purpose as a knife more than the other2 where is its superiority8 ,because ,i find pleasure in seeing those designs8 ,but why do ,i find any pleasure in ornament8 ,what is the rationalistic justification for that pleasure8 ,by logical definition a knife is an instrument for cutting1 and nothing else2 the plain cuts as well as the ornate2 why then are you sorry if you lose the one1 while you don't care twopence for the loss of the other8 ,you have at last to answer that you have a joy which you cannot in any way define in the purely decorative pattern2 and with that answer the whole system of rationalism topples over4 ,rationalism may say to you3 ,either give a definite reason for going to ,mass1 or leave off going4 ,you have only to answer3 ,your command is based on the premiss that one should do nothing without being able to give a definite reason for it4 ,but ,i can give no definite reason for liking--the ,odyssey or a curiously carved knife--and yet you confess that ,i am right in liking these things4 ,then ,i have proved the contradictory of your premiss1 as you have admitted that there are things that one may do without being able to give a definite reason for doing them3 ergo1 ,i shall not neglect the parson's bell4 ,of course1 all this is altogether outside of my business2 but ,i confess ,i am fond of carrying things to their limits4 ,you remember how poor ,s4 ,t4 ,c4 used to talk1 humbly and yet proudly1 of my system1 though ,i am afraid my system1 never emerged from the state of fragments and disjecta membra4 ,and ,i too1 though ,i have only broken morsels and ruinous stones to show for the splendid outlines and indicated arches of ,coleridge1 still like to follow up an argument whithersoever it will lead me1 regardless of consequences2 and this1 ,i am sure1 should count for righteousness with our friends the rationalists4 ,i love to start a sorites1 something as follows3 ,i admire that odd but beautiful little decorative scheme on the seventeenth century chest1 and therefore1 ,i think poetry1 as poetry1 finer than prose1 as prose4 ,hence ,i approve of ,ritualism in the service of the church1 and from the same premiss ,i draw the conclusion that ,keats was a poet and that ,pope was not4 ,pope not being a poet1 it follows that to intone is in every way better than to read the ,liturgy and the ,offices1 and reading the service being wrong1 you will easily infer that ,i dislike ,mr ,frith's pictures4 ,and after learning that ,i do not care for the ,derby ,day1 you will scarcely require my opinion as to the 7theoretical7 righteousness of the first ,reform ,bill1 and from my attitude towards ,lord ,john ,russell's measure1 you can1 of course1 guess my opinion on the respective merits of the ,french and ,english languages as literary instruments4 ,and ,french being vastly inferior to ,english1 it necessarily follows that the ,english ,reformation was a great 7though perhaps unavoidable7 misfortune4 ,hence1 you see1 admiring certain lines cut in an old oaken box1 ,i am led by the strictest logic to dislike the religious policy of ,edward ,,vi41 with all the other consequences in order2 and on the other hand if ,i saw no sense in that rude ornament ,i should be an ,atheist1 or at the mildest1 an attendant at ,pleasant ,sunday ,afternoons1 with ,george ,eliot for my favourite reading4 ,yes1 ,i like my theories to work through1 and ,i confess that my belief in the truth of my system is very much strengthened by the fact that it does work through1 that it seems to me justified by the facts of life4 ,i mean that the premiss which enables me to declare ,keats to be a poet and ,pope not to be a poet does really enable me to pronounce democracy to be a bad system in theory2 and the premiss baldly stated is simply this3 that logic does not cover life1 or in other words1 that life cannot be judged by the rules of logic1 of common sense4 ,but yet ,i am using logic all the time1 you say8 ,certainly1 but ,i am using it in its right place1 to do the work for which it is competent4 ,if ,i say that a scythe is not exactly the instrument for performing a surgical operation1 ,i am not therefore bound to have my meadow mown with a bistoury8 ,a microscope is good and a telescope is good1 but it is the microscope that one uses in bacteriology4 ,you know1 don't you1 that ever since that unhappy ,reformation of ours people have been talking nonsense about the ,aristotelian logic1 and fumbling1 in the most grotesque manner1 for some new logic4 ,our great false prophet ,bacon 7a wretch infinitely more guilty than ,hobbes7 began it in ,england with his ,novum ,organum2 and if you wish to really estimate educated folly1 to touch the bottom of the incredible depths to which a man of information may sink1 read ,macaulay's comparison of the old philosophy and the new philosophy4 ,the essayist says that the old philosophy was no good1 because it never led up to the steam-engine and the telegraph post4 ,isn't it almost humiliating to think that we have to acknowledge ourselves of the same genus as that brilliant ,macaulay8 ,but if ,i told you that the ,greek ,alphabet was no good because it has never grilled a single steak you would probably get uneasy and make for the door1 and if you were charitable you would tell the landlady that ,i ought to be taken care of4 ,but such a remark as that is no whit more lunatic than ,macaulay's comparison between philosophy1 properly so called1 and physical science applied to utilitarian purposes4 ,well1 all the portentous stuff that has been written about logic is nonsense of exactly the same kind4 ,the scholastic logic1 people said1 won't discover the truth4 ,that is perfectly true1 but then the scholastic logic was not intended to discover truth4 ,it will draw conclusions from truths already discovered1 from premisses granted1 but it wont make premisses any more than a scythe will make grass4 ,and1 it is1 curiously enough1 the very class of people who despise the formal logic1 who insist on your giving logical reasons for actions and emotions which are altogether outside the jurisdiction of logic4 ,with one breath they say3 ,aristotle is useless1 because the ,organon could never have led men to discover the stomach-pump2 and with the next breath they ask you what you mean by admiring the ,ode on a ,grecian ,urn if you can't give any logical reason for your admiration4 ,your religion doesn't rest on a logical foundation1 they say4 ,but does anything of any consequence rest on a logical foundation8 ,can you reduce the ,morte d',arthur into valid syllogisms in ,barbara1 can you disprove ,salisbury ,cathedral by the aid of ,celarent4 ,what is the rational explanation of our wonder and joy at the vision of the hills8 ,are a great symphony1 the swell and triumph of the organ1 the voices of the choristers1 to be tested by the process of the understanding8 ,but perhaps ,i am misjudging the people who ask these questions4 ,when they say that logic does not discover truth1 they doubtless mean by logic that formal analysis of the ratiocinative process that is rightly so called2 but ,i am inclined to think that when they condemn religious or artistic emotions because they are illogical1 they mean by illogical that which does not conduce to the ease and comfort of the digestive apparatus or the money-making faculty4 ,they are terrible fellows1 you know1 some of these persons4 ,for example1 ,i asked1 with a tone of undue triumph1 ,i am afraid1 for the reason why we experience awe and delight in the presence of the hills4 ,but in certain quarters my problem would be very quickly solved4 ,i should be told1 more in sorrow than in anger1 that my emotion at the sight of certain shapes of earth was due to the fact that hill air was highly ozonised1 and that the human race had acquired an instinctive pleasure in breathing it1 greatly to its digestive profit4 ,and if ,i tried to turn the tables by declaring that ,i experienced an equal1 though a different delight in the spectacle of a desolate1 smoking marsh1 where a red sun sinks from a world of shivering reeds1 ,i suppose ,i should hear that some remote ancestor of mine had found in some such place pterodactyls plentiful and strong on the wing4 ,and if ,i like the woods1 it was because a monkey sat at the root of my family tree1 and if ,i love an ancient garden it is because ,i am second cousin to the worm4 ,there3 ,i confess it is difficult to keep one's temper with these people1 but one must try to do so4 ,do you remember how ,trunnion's marriage was delayed8 ,the bridegroom set out bravely with his retinue for the parish-church1 where the bride waited a whole half hour--in vain4 ,a messenger was sent who saw3 ,the whole troop disposed in a long field1 crossing the road obliquely1 and headed by the bridegroom and his friend ,hatchway1 who finding himself hindered by a hedge from proceeding farther in the same direction1 fired a pistol and stood over to the other side1 making an obtuse angle with the line of his former course2 and the rest of the squadron followed his example1 keeping always in the rear of each other like a flight of wild geese4 ,surprised at this strange method of journeying1 the messenger came up 444 and desired he would proceed with more expedition4 ,to this message ,mr ,trunnion replied1 ',hark ye1 brother1 don't you see we make all possible speed8 ,go back1 and tell those who sent you1 that the wind has shifted since we weighed anchor1 and that we are obliged to make short trips in tacking1 by reason of the narrowness of the channel2 and that1 as we lie within six points of the wind1 they must make some allowance for variation and leeway4' ',lord1 sir6' said the valet1 'what occasion have you to go zig-zag in that manner8 ,do but clap spurs to your horses1 and ride straight forward1 and ,i'll engage you shall be at the church porch in less than a quarter of an hour4' ',what6 right in the wind's eye8' answered the commander4 ',ahey6 brother1 where did you learn your navigation8' ,you see ,commodore ,trunnion's logic was perfect1 only it was the logic of seamanship and not of riding to church on horseback4 ,there are a good many people at the present day who are quite unable to get to church in time1 for reasons as valid as ,trunnion's2 and when ,i hear of the scientific basis of literature ,i am always a little reminded of those scarecrows straggling in short tacks from one side of the lane to the other on their way to the wedding4 ,the moral is1 you know1 that they didn't get there4 ,i tackled a materialist once on very similar lines4 ,he began by saying that time and thought devoted to religion 7they never see that art and religion stand or fall together1 religion being the foundation of the fine arts7 were an utter waste of time as they only diverted us from consideration of the present world1 which we ought to study to the utmost2 and he went on to praise some saying of ,confucius on the folly of troubling about the future things4 ,then ,i went for him4 ,he had to admit that agriculture is good1 and ,i pointed out to him that ,england was changed from a savage wilderness into a pleasant garden by the monastic houses4 ,he agreed that to found and endow hospitals and alms-houses was not precisely a waste of time1 and ,i showed him that such institutions were begun by the religion of the past and carried on by the religion of the present4 ,then he allowed1 in response to my ,socratic question1 that painting was something1 and ,i demonstrated that all painting arose from the religious impulse1 that the greatest paintings in the world were meant to adorn churches4 ,then he admitted the value of architecture1 and he got the ,parthenon1 all the medival cathedrals1 and the wonderful mound temples of ,ceylon right at his head4 ,he granted me that travel civilised1 and ,i rubbed in the pilgrimage2 he confessed that he liked to read the ,latin and ,greek classics--sometimes--and he received from me information as to the monastic scriptorium1 and its part in the preservation of the old literature4 ,as for the blessedness of forming one's character on the teaching of ,confucius2 there happened to be an article in the morning's paper on the ,mandarin class6 ,well1 my rationalist hadn't anything to say to it at all1 with the exception of some vague remark that the ,romans made roads1 which1 considering the state of ,england in the sixth century1 was about as helpful as the somewhat similar remark of ,mr ,f's4 ,aunt--that there are milestones on the ,dover ,road4 ,i told him that the only ,roman civilisation which contributed to the making of our country was that brought over by ,st ,austin2 and he had to allow that his statement that religion was a waste of time1 an elaborate form of idleness1 was1 to put it mildly1 not proven4 ,then he said kindly but firmly that religion wasn't rational1 and ,i used up most of the arguments that ,i have used to-night2 ,i mean1 ,i showed him that it is good to paint pictures1 to write poems1 to devise romances1 and to compose symphonies1 and that it is also good to meditate and enjoy all these things4 ,hence1 he was forced to admit1 that his suppressed premiss had been disproved1 and that he must no longer say3 that which is not rational is absurd4 ,and then1 ,i think1 the fun really began4 ,i carried the war into the very camp of the enemy2 that is1 into actual1 observable life1 into the every day world of fact and experience4 ,you talk about reason1 ,i said1 and ,i presume you won't mind if ,i substitute1 occasionally1 common sense for reason1 as ,i think that in your phraseology the two terms are very fairly equated4 ,very well1 then1 don't you think that there is a good deal of common sense in many of the actions of animals8 ,take the case of the small birds who mob an owl all day1 in order that their enemy may be kept awake1 and so unable to hoot at night4 ,take the case of the ants1 who milk the aphides1 and go slave-hunting4 ,take the bees1 who rise to an emergency1 and remedy1 with singular contrivance1 the threatened lack of a queen4 ,take the dog1 who brought a wounded fellow to the hospital where he had been cured4 ,all these are instances of common sense1 aren't they1 as rational as the telegram ,sell ,cobras at once8 ,very good2 animals1 then1 have a plentiful supply of reason1 and not of a mere mechanical reason1 but of reason that can rise to the height of unforeseen cases1 and remedy unexpected evils4 ,when the experimenter tilted the bees' house to one side1 so that the equilibrium was in danger1 a sufficient number of bees climbed up1 and placed themselves on the other side so that they constituted a balance2 here there was no mechanism1 but a calculated and rational contrivance4 ,animals1 then1 have reason and its effect artifice2 the adaptation of means to secure ends4 ,but1 then1 how about instinct8 ,by what motion does the swallow make her nest in spring8 ,can the bee demonstrate the advantages of the hexagon cell8 ,does the fly1 laying its eggs1 here and there1 in this or in that according to its kind1 in meat or in dung1 or in the crevices of a wall1 rationally foresee that it is providing for the future grub its only possible food8 ,no2 but then animals1 even1 perform irrational actions2 though they have common sense they do things which must be troublesome to them1 at some instance1 which is not common sense4 ,but if a bluebottle lays her eggs in my beef1 and knows not why1 perhaps ,i1 a man1 may sing the ,sanctus1 and pray that ,i may be joined cum angelis et archangelis1 cum thronis et dominationbus1 ,cumque omni militi clestis exercitus4 ,and consider our own human life2 the great coups of war1 commerce1 diplomacy1 of all the conduct of life1 are often1 or usually1 the result of intuitions1 that is of irrational and inexplicable mental processes1 which elude all analysis4 ,if the knowledge1 the successful and triumphant knowledge of men and affairs and strategy were a rational product2 then1 indeed1 ,carlyle's dictum were true1 and each one of us were1 at choice1 a man of genius in diplomacy1 or business1 or battle4 ,we know that it is not so1 and that no man by taking thought can make himself1 say1 a ,stonewall ,jackson4 ,and we have all heard of the woman's reason--,i don't know why ,i am sure that x a1 but ,i am sure--and this extremely irrational process often corresponds with the truth4 ,so1 ,i finished up1 your reason far from being the despot of the world1 turns out to be a humble1 though useful1 deputy-assistant councillor-general1 and is by no means a prerogative force1 even in affairs of common1 everyday existence4 ,why1 reason1 alone and unassisted1 won't enable you to make a decent living by selling ribbons and laces1 and you have been trying to make me accept its dictation in the highest affairs of the soul4 ,you have been appealing from the ,king's ,majesty in ,council to the ,magistrates of ,little ,pedlington in ,petty ,sessions assembled6 ,then my rationalist made a point4 ,you know1 he said1 that some men seem to have an almost miraculous skill in solving mathematical problems3 would you1 therefore1 give up teaching the ordinary arithmetic8 ,i was not alarmed2 ,i pointed out that the analogy was not quite perfect4 ,the case1 ,i said1 was this4 ,a certain number of problems were1 confessedly1 beyond the jurisdiction of the ordinary arithmetic altogether1 but offered no difficulties to the lightning calculator1 who obtained results that were demonstratively correct1 and ,i therefore thought it well to trust to him in all problems of a similar character1 even though the ordinary arithmetic1 confessedly incompetent1 assured me that his answers were wholly unreliable--a case of a schoolboy1 well on in ,colenso1 scouting the ,binomial ,theorem because one couldn't prove it by ,practice or the ,rule of ,three4 ,i left then1 unanswered1 and ,i suppose my friend passed the rest of the evening in showing that ,salisbury ,cathedral was opposed to the facts of ,biology1 and that ,sisters of ,charity are to be classed with criminal lunatics4 ,but1 you know1 ,i was the real lunatic4 ,you would not have argued with me if ,i had disparaged the ,greek alphabet1 because it never grilled a single steak2 ,i hinted the course you would probably have pursued if ,i had chanced to make such an alarming remark4 ,and why should ,i argue with the sect of ,macaulay1 with the tribe which utters such stuff as this3 ,assuredly if the tree which ,socrates planted and ,plato watered is to be judged of by its flowers and leaves1 it is the noblest of trees4 ,but if we take the homely test of ,bacon--if we judge the tree by its fruits--our opinion of it may be less favourable4 ,when we sum up the useful truths which we owe to that philosophy1 to what do they amount4444 ,but when we look for something more--for something which adds to the comfort or alleviates the calamities of the human race--we are forced to own ourselves disappointed4 ,no2 there is1 really1 nothing to be said4 ,if the ,learned ,pig found voice and articulate speech and expressed his scorn of the poet's art1 since it added nothing to the pleasures of the wash-tub1 we might wonder but we should not argue2 and it were idle to contend with a ,laughing ,jackass1 contemptuously amused by the chanting of the cathedral choir4 ,and1 perhaps1 you are wondering what all this talk of mine has to do with our main subject--literature8 ,but don't you see that all the while ,i have merely been reiterating our old conclusions in a new phraseology8 ,i may have appeared to you to be the last of the ,cavaliers1 gallantly contending for the rights of ,holy ,church1 but1 in reality1 ,i have been showing1 at every step1 that ,jane ,austen's works are not literature4 ,yes1 but it is so4 ,if the science of life1 if philosophy1 consisted of a series of mathematical propositions1 capable of rational demonstration1 then1 ,pride and ,prejudice would be the highest pinnacle of the literary art2 but if not1 but oh6 if we1 being wondrous1 journey through a wonderful world1 if all our joys are from above1 from the other world where the ,shadowy ,companion walks1 then no mere making of the likeness of the external shape will be our art1 no veracious document will be our truth2 but to us1 initiated1 the ,symbol will be offered1 and we shall take the ,sign and adore1 beneath the outward and perhaps unlovely accidents1 the very ,presence and eternal indwelling of ,god4 ,we have tracked ,ecstasy by many strange paths1 in divers strange disguises1 but ,i think that now1 and only now1 we have discovered its full and perfect definition4 ,for ,artifice is of ,time1 but ,art is of ,eternity4 ,,appendix ,poe was not altogether right in saying that the object of poetry was ,beauty as distinguished from ,truth4 ,i don't for a moment suppose that his meaning was amiss1 but ,i hardly like his expression of it4 ,i should contend1 on the other hand1 that poetry ' 1 and literature1 generally1 are the sole media by which the very highest truth can be conveyed4 ,poe1 no doubt1 meant to state a proposition which is true and self-evident--that poetry has nothing to do with scientific truth1 or facts1 or information of any kind1 and ,i say that that proposition is self-evident1 because we have already seen that in literature1 facts as facts1 have no existence at all4 ,they are only words in the language of literary art1 and are used as symbols of something else4 ,that ,a4 is in love with ,b4 is a scientific truth1 a fact2 but if it be not also a symbol1 it has no literary existence whatever2 and this of course is what ,poe wished to say--literature is not a matter of information4 ,but ,i doubt1 after all1 whether ,poe had quite grasped the theory of literature1 of all the arts4 ,you remember that he says that he yields to no man in his love of the truth2 and unless he meant the highest truth the statement is almost nonsensical4 ,no one1 ,i should imagine1 surely not ,poe1 would express his enthusiasm for facts as facts1 would adore correct information in the abstract4 ,you remember what ,rossetti said--that he neither knew nor cared whether the sun went round the earth or the earth round the sun--and so far as art is concerned this is1 no doubt1 the expression of the true faith1 which1 from what we know of ,poe1 would be his faith also4 ,we should therefore conclude that by truth he meant philosophical truth1 the highest truth1 the essential truth as distinguished from the accidental1 the universal as distinguished from the particular4 ,yet in the next breath he contrasts this ,truth with ,beauty1 being clearly under the impression that they were two different things4 ,of course he was completely mistaken4 ,in the last analysis it is entirely true that ,beauty is ,truth and ,truth ,beauty3 they are one and the same entity seen from different points of view4 ,you will see how this fits in with all we have been saying about literature lately3 how we can if we please put our test of literature into yet another phraseology4 ,for instance3 ,vanity ,fair is information1 while ,pickwick is ,truth2 the one tells you a number of facts about ,becky ,sharpe and other people1 while the other symbolises certain eternal and essential elements in human nature by means of incidents4 ,and1 as ,i said1 it is doubtful whether truth in this1 its highest and its real significance1 can be adequately expressed in any other way4 ,all the profound verities which have been revealed to man have come to him under the guise of myths and symbols--such as the myth of ,dionysus--and truth in the form of a mathematical demonstration or a rational statement is a contradiction in terms4 ,yet note the profound vice of language2 we are obliged to use the same word to imply things which are separated by an immeasurable gulf4 ,it is true that ,mrs ,stickings sent away ,ethelberta to-night 7you imparted that interesting fact1 and ,i rely on your testimony71 and the ,don ,quixote is true3 that is1 it conveys to us by means of symbols the verities of our own nature4 ,but ,poe had not grasped the essential distinction between literature and literature4 ,he thought that poetry alone should be beautiful1 or as we should say1 ecstatic2 he did not see that the qualities which make poetry to be what it is must also be present in prose if it is to be something more than reading-matter4 ,poetry of course is literature in its purest state2 it is1 as ,i think ,i once said1 almost the soul without the body2 at its highest it is almost pure art unmixed with the alloy of artifice4 ,and to carry on the analysis1 the finest form of poetry is necessarily the lyrical4 ,where you get the element of narrative1 you are apt also to get the element of prose2 there have to be passages linking the raptures together1 and these will1 probably or indeed necessarily1 run on lower levels4 ,of course primitive man had moods in which rapture seemed to embrace everything1 to invest every detail of existence with its own singular and inexplicable glory4 ,a meal by the seashore1 the dry wood flaming and crackling on the sand1 the roasting goat's flesh1 the honey-sweet wine1 dark and almost as glorious as the sea itself--a mere dinner of half-savages1 one might think it1 but it too seems to have its solemnity and its inner meaning4 ,i believe this element in the early poetry has often been noticed2 people have wondered at the nave delight with which the writers describe the work of man's hands1 and they are1 ,i think1 inclined to account for it on the ground that then everything was new4 ,this might pass1 perhaps1 since as you1 no doubt1 perceive1 everything new means everything unknown 7that which is known is no longer new71 but ,i hardly think that the explanation can stand in its present form4 ,i am not at all up in the theories which assign this or that age to the appearance of man on the earth1 but ,i presume that on the gentlest and most antiquated computation man must have long known the world before ,homer wrote2 so one scarcely sees that human skill and art1 the knack of making things and the gift of adorning them1 could have been novelties1 or in any sense1 things unknown4 ,i repeat ,i know nothing or next to nothing about these dates in anthropology1 but one has heard something about the neolithic age1 and the palolithic age1 about the very early man who scratched the rude likeness of a reindeer on the brute's own bone1 and so there hardly seems room for this theory of novelty4 ,and besides1 as we have seen1 the rapture is universal or all but universal2 it colours the whole of life1 including the meal by the seashore2 and there1 we see1 there was no possibility of invention or sense of newness4 ,no2 the theory is tempting1 and it would fall in perfectly1 as ,i daresay you see1 with all that we have concluded about literature1 but ,i really think that it must be definitely abandoned4 ,no2 it seems to me that primitive man1 ,homeric man1 medival man1 man1 indeed1 almost to our own day when the ,school ,board 7and other things7 have got hold of him1 had such an unconscious but all-pervading1 all-influencing conviction that he was a wonderful being1 descended of a wonderful ancestry1 and surrounded by mysteries of all kinds1 that even the smallest details of his life partook of the ruling ecstasy2 he was so sure that he was miraculous that it seemed that no part of his life could escape from the miracle1 so that to him every meal became a sacrament4 ,it is the attitude of the primitive man1 of the real man1 of the child1 always and everywhere2 it may be briefly summed up in the phrase3 things are because they are wonderful4 ,this1 of course1 is the atmosphere in which poets ought to live1 and in which poetry should be produced4 ,formerly it was natural to all men or almost all2 now1 perhaps1 it has to be regained by a conscious effort2 and the difficulty of the effort1 the impossibility of sustaining it for long1 explain the supremacy of lyrical poetry4 ,if you lived in a world that could regard a common meal as a sacrament1 you could be supreme in narrative poetry2 but1 that atmosphere wanting1 we have to be content for the most part with the lyric1 with the simple incantation1 without any description of the circumstance or occasion4 ,yet prose1 though it yields in much to the world1 must still keep the same ideal before it as poetry4 ,i say1 distinctly1 that the only essential1 defining difference between the two is to be sought in the numbering of poetry1 in the fact that art1 in its intensest raptures1 in its most truly natural moment1 desires and obtains the strictest and most formal laws4 ,it is1 ,i suppose1 immaterial what these laws are1 rhyme1 assonance1 accents1 feet1 alliteration1 all testify to the important and essential rule that freedom is chiefly free when it is most bound and bounded by restrictions which we should call artificial1 which are1 in truth1 in the highest sense1 natural4 ,and this1 ,i am sure1 is the only possible distinction that can be established between such a book as the ,odyssey and such a book as the ,morte d',arthur4 ,neither is prosaic in the common sense of the word2 each is poetical2 but the ,greek book is poetry because it is numbered1 and the ,english is prose because it lacks number4 ,of course there are difficult cases2 hybrids1 as there always are1 whatever laws one may lay down4 99 99 99 99 99 ,that word natural is another of the many traps that language sets us4 ,i think that its real meaning has become almost reversed4 ,take the average man to church1 and ask him his opinion of the intoning1 and in nine cases out of ten he will say that it may be pretty1 but that it is very unnatural4 ,he means1 of course1 that speaking is natural1 and that singing--numerosity of tone--is not natural1 is1 in a word1 artificial4 ,he is utterly wrong4 ,it is artificial to speak in the ordinary manner1 while the priests' chant1 and every chant are purely natural4 ,for the proof of this you have only to read a little--a very little--about primitive1 or natural peoples1 or1 more simply1 to listen to children at play4 ,you will always find that where convention has not cast out nature1 some kind of sing-song1 some sort of chant is the entirely natural utterance of man in his most fervent1 that is1 his most natural moments4 ,listen to half-a-dozen children 7children1 you must remember1 are all primitives and therefore natural7 playing some game1 learning their lesson at school4 ,their voices are pretty sure to fall into a very rude1 but a distinctly measured1 chant4 ,the ,greek drama was intoned1 the ,koran is intoned1 the ,welsh preacher of to-day at the impassioned height of eloquence begins to chant1 the ,persian passion-plays are recited in a sing-song4 ,nay1 but listen only to our great tragic actor4 ,quite unconsciously1 ,i am sure1 he has elaborated for himself a distinctly musical and measured utterance1 so that a skilful musician1 provided with scored paper1 could note ,irving's delivery of many passages1 as if it were music4 ,the ,chinese language1 ,i am told1 depends largely on the tonal variations which distinguish the meaning of one word from that of another2 you will find the same thing in the ,norwegian2 and the ,jewish cantillation1 which is sing-song in a very simple form1 bears witness to the truth--that speaking is acquired1 conventional1 and artificial1 while singing is natural4 ,all this would be perfectly clear in itself1 would require no demonstration of any kind1 if it were not for the fact that we have1 somehow or other1 got into the way of making the very impudent assumption that man is only natural when he is doing business on the ,stock-,exchange or reading leading-articles4 ,it seems almost too nonsensical an assumption to put into words1 but ,i really do believe that at the back of our heads there is a sort of vague1 floating idea that there never were any real men at all till the period of the first ,reform ,bill1 and ,i suppose that before very long ,lord ,john ,russell will be pushed back into the region of myth1 and the foundation of the ,school ,board will be the era of true humanity4 ,i say1 this sounds too ridiculous1 but examine yourself and see whether you don't dimly believe that before the advent of trousers the whole world was really play-acting1 that existence in the days of laced coats was1 in a way1 a kind of phantasmagoria1 and that a man who wore chain-mail was hardly a man4 ,i believe it really is so1 and you will find the same nonsense influencing religious opinion4 ,take your average ,protestant1 and ,i am much mistaken if you do not discover that he believes some grotesque preacher1 in his greasy black suit1 mouthing platitudes at his conventicle to be somehow more natural than the priest1 clad in the mystical robes of his office1 chanting ,mass at the altar4 ,but in literature--why this perversion of the word influences the whole of criticism4 ,jane ,austen1 we say1 is natural1 and ,edgar ,allan ,poe is unnatural1 or as it is sometimes expressed1 inhuman4 ,of course1 if you wish for the truth1 the proposition must be reversed1 unless you are willing to believe that a ,company ,prospectus is1 somehow1 more natural and more human than1 say1 ,tennyson's ,fatima4 ,if you think that the real man is the stomach1 there is1 of course1 an end of the discussion2 but then we should have to admit that all the greatest artists of the world were maniacs4 ,but you see clearly1 don't you1 that all these questions as to what we shall get for dinner1 and whom shall we meet at dinner1 and in what order shall we go into dinner1 and how shall we behave at dinner1 are in no sense natural1 since they are all so purely temporary1 since they will be answered by one age in a manner that will seem wholly unnatural to the next4 ,that1 ,i think1 is truly natural which is unchanging1 which belongs to men always1 at all times1 and in all ages4 ,in this sense1 ecstasy is natural to man1 and it finds expression in the arts1 in poetry1 in romance1 in singing1 in melody1 in dancing1 in painting1 in architecture4 ,many animals have sufficient artifice to shelter themselves from the weather1 no animal has architecture1 or the art of beauty in building2 many animals1 or all animals1 have the faculty of communicating with one another by means of signs1 but man alone has the art of language4 99 99 99 99 99 ,has it ever struck you while ,i have been talking of ecstasy in books1 that it is nearly always a question of degree1 of more or less8 ,i think ,i indicated as much while ,i was talking about ,pickwick2 ,i showed how the ecstatic conception had been alloyed with much baser matter1 in other words that there was much in ,pickwick that was by no means literature4 ,and1 ,i daresay1 though ,i am not sure1 that if you were to go through your ,meredith you might succeed in finding some passages and sentences which are literature1 and for all ,i know there may be hints of rapture between the lines of ,pride and ,prejudice4 ,still1 we do not call a man poet on the strength of a single line4 ,but sometimes one is confronted with books which are really very difficult to judge1 and this sometimes happens because the ecstasy1 the true literary feeling1 supposing it to be present1 is present not here or there1 not in a phrase or in a particular passage1 but throughout1 in a very weak solution1 if one may borrow the phraseology of physical science4 ,we read such books1 and are puzzled1 feeling that1 somehow1 they are literature1 only we can't say why1 since on the face of it they seem only to be entertaining reading4 ,do you know that ,i can conceive many people who would find something of this difficulty in ,mark ,twain's ,huckleberry ,finn8 ,here you have a tale of the rude ,america of forty or fifty years ago1 of a ,mississippi village1 full of the most ordinary people1 of a boy and a negro who run away4 ,i don't think anyone with the slightest perception of literature could read it without experiencing extraordinary delight1 but ,i can imagine many people would be a good deal puzzled to justify the pleasure they had received4 ,the stuff of the book is so very common and commonplace1 isn't it1 it seems so frankly a rough bit of recollection drawn up from the author's boyish days with jottings added from the time when he was a pilot on one of the river-boats--it is all so apparently devoid of literary feeling that ,i am sure many a reader must have felt greatly ashamed of his huge enjoyment4 ,to me ,huckleberry ,finn is not a very difficult case4 ,that flight by night down the great unknown1 rolling river1 between the dim marshy lands and the high bluffs of the other shore comes in my mind well under the great ,odyssey class2 it has1 indeed1 the old1 unquenchable joy of wandering into the unknown in a more acute degree than ,pickwick1 which1 as we have seen1 is to be reckoned under the same heading4 ,in a word it is pure romance1 and you will note that the story is told by a boy1 and that by this method a larger element of wonder is secured1 for even in this absurd age children are allowed to be amazed at the spectacle of the world4 ,in the mouth of a man the tale would necessarily have lost somewhat of its strangeness1 since partly from affectation1 partly from vicious training1 partly from the absorption of the getting-on process1 grown-up people have largely succeeded in quenching the sense of mystery which should be their principal delight4 ,you have only to read the average book of travels to see how this affectation 7or perversion of the soul7 has deprived the seeing being of his sight4 ,dip into a book--say a book on ,china--and you will probably find that ,pekin streets are dusty in summer and muddy in winter1 and that the author caught cold through imprudent bathing4 ,so it is well for us that ,mark ,twain put his story in the mouth of an infant1 who is frankly at liberty to express his sense of the marvels of the world4 ,later1 there is an introduction of the literary feeling2 those chapters about ,jim's ,evasion are very ,cervantic in their artifice and method1 but1 to my thinking1 they have lost the spirit1 though they preserve the body4 ,they are most amusing reading1 but they are burlesque and nothing more than burlesque2 and from them one can almost imagine what ,don ,quixote would have been if it had been written by a very clever man1 by an artificer who was not an artist4 ,but the earlier chapters are wonderfully fine1 and ,i think that it would be difficult to find a more successful rendering of the old wandering theme with modern language4 99 99 99 99 99 ,but there is another writer who is much more difficult to account for--,i mean ,miss ,wilkins4 ,i confess ,i find her tales delightful1 and ,i often read them1 but as you know ,i am not content to rest on my own pleasure in literary criticism4 ,we are no longer talking of the great masterpieces1 of the gigantic achievements of such men as ,homer1 ,sophocles1 ,rabelais1 ,cervantes2 we agreed that when we spoke of these great1 enduring miracles of art1 it was best to lay aside all question of liking or not liking1 of reading often or reading seldom4 ,but when one comes to modern days1 to books which have yet to prove their merit by the test of their endurance1 it is pardonable if one is sometimes a little confused1 if one fails to discriminate at once between the merely interesting and the really artistic4 ,i may be so delighted with a book for reasons that have nothing to do with art1 that1 by an unconscious trick of the mind1 ,i persuade myself that ,i am reading literature while there is only reading-matter4 ,and at one time ,i was inclined to think that ,i had confused ,miss ,wilkins in this manner4 ,for1 on the surface1 you have in her books merely village tales of ,new ,englanders1 tales often sentimental1 often trivial enough1 and sometimes1 it would seem1 of hardly more than local interest4 ,hardly can one conceive the possibility of any ecstasy in these pleasant stories2 for they deal1 ostentatiously1 with the surface of things1 with a breed of ,englishmen whose chief pride it was to hide away and smother all those passions and emotions which are the peculiar mark of man as man4 ,yet1 ,i believe that ,i can justify my love of ,miss ,wilkins's work on a higher ground than that of mere liking4 ,in the first place ,i agree with ,mr ,t4 ,p4 ,o',connor1 who pointed out very well that the passion does come through the reserve1 and occasionally in the most volcanic manner4 ,he selects a scene from ,pembroke1 in which the young people play at some dancing game called ,copenhagen1 and ,mr ,o',connor shows that though the boys and girls of ,pembroke knew nothing of it1 they were really animated by the spirit of the ,bacchanals1 that the fire and glow of passion1 of the youthful ecstasy1 burst through all the hard crusts of ,calvinism and ,new ,england reserve4 ,and we have agreed that if a writer can make passion for us1 if he can create the image of the eternal human ecstasy1 we have agreed that in such a case the writer is an artist4 ,but ,i think that there are other things1 more subtle1 more delicately hinted things in ,miss ,wilkins's tales2 or rather ,i should say that they are all pervaded and filled with an emotion1 which ,i can hardly think that the writer has realised4 ,well1 ,i find it difficult to express exactly what ,i mean1 but ,i think that the whole impression which one receives from these tales is one of loneliness1 of isolation4 ,compare ,miss ,wilkins with ,jane ,austen1 the ,new ,england stories with ,pride and ,prejudice4 ,you might imagine1 at first1 that in one case as in the other there is a sense of retirement1 of separation from the world1 that ,miss ,austen's heroines are as remote from the great streams and whirlpools of life as any ,jane ,field or ,charlotte of ,massachusetts4 ,but in reality this is not so4 ,the people in the ,english novels are in no sense remote2 they are merely dull2 they cannot be remote1 indeed1 since they are not human beings at all but merely the representatives of certain superficial manners and tricks of manner which were common in the rural ,england of ninety years ago4 ,remoteness is an affection of the soul1 and wicker-figures1 dressed up in the clothes of a period1 cannot have any such affections predicated of them2 and consequently though ,emma or ,elizabeth may appear very quaint to us from the contrast between the manners of the 'tens and the 'nineties1 they cannot be remote4 ,but that does seem to me the quality of those books of ,miss ,wilkins's2 the people appear to be very far off from the world1 to live in an isolated sphere1 and each one lives his own life1 and dwells apart with his own soul1 and in spite of all the trivial chatter and circumstance of the village one feels that each is a human being moved by eminently human affections4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it seems to me that one of the most important functions of literature is to seize the really fine flavours of life and to preserve them1 as it were1 in permanent form4 ,when we were talking about ,huckleberry ,finn1 for example1 ,i remember that ,i spoke of it as the story of a boy who runs away4 ,but what a curious magic there is in these words runs away4 ,doesn't it1 when you come to examine the phrase1 exhale the very essence and spirit of romance8 ,some time ago ,i reminded you that the essential thing is concealed under all manner of grotesque and unseemly forms1 that one can detect a veritable human passion under the cry of the news-boy1 shouting1 ,all the winners6 ,so ,i think that phrase1 run away1 carries to us its meaning and significance4 ,for1 after all1 what did all the heroes of romance do but run away8 ,they left the region of the known1 the familiar fields or the familiar shores1 and adventured out in the great waste of the unexplored1 into the forest or upon the sea4 ,here1 perhaps1 you have the true interpretation of the phrase divine discontent1 for surely only that is divine which revolts from the commonness of the common life1 which is conscious of things beyond1 of better things1 of a world which transcends all daily experience4 ,i said once1 ,i think1 that the ,english passion for trading goes very well with the supremacy of ,english poetry1 since poetry and shop-keeping are but different expressions of the one idea2 and here again you find confirmation of the theory in that very marked ,english characteristic--the desire of wandering1 of going on and on in the manner of a knight errant or a fairy tale hero4 ,of course1 in practice1 this really divine impulse is corrupted by all kinds of earthly1 secondary motions2 and just as the love of a venture which is at the root of trade often or always ends in a very vulgar wish to make money and more money and to set up a brougham and confound the ,smiths1 so the great joy of exploration1 of running away from the mapped and charted land has for its issues the development of markets1 the progress of civilisation1 the profitable sale of poison1 and all manner of base and blackguardly manuvres4 ,but1 of course1 one expects all this2 it is the inevitable mixture of the lower with the higher which characterises all our human ways4 ,still the higher motive dwells within us--,i suspect1 indeed1 that if it were not for the higher the lower could hardly flourish--and so when you hear that a boy has run away to sea or elsewhere ,i wish you to think kindly of him as a survival of the most primitive and important human passions4 ,yes1 ,i think ,i am right in saying that the lower things of humanity only flourish in consequence of the existence of the higher4 ,take the ,french nation1 for example4 ,it is infinitely more bent on gain for the mere sake of gain than the ,english2 it is ready to work harder1 to give more time1 to live more unpleasantly1 to eat less and to drink less than the ,english2 and all in the pursuit of money4 ,rationally1 in short1 the ,french should be infinitely better men of business than the ,english2 and yet we know that this is not so1 that the ,english is1 par excellence1 the business nation4 ,seriously1 ,i believe1 that this is so because the ,french are money-grubbers and nothing more1 because they hate a risk of any kind1 because they abhor any kind of mercantile venturing into the unknown4 ,in other words1 they engage in money-making simply for the sake of making money3 they have no joy of the hazard1 they will never deserve the title of merchant adventurers1 and1 therefore1 they remain in truth a nation of shopkeepers and of second-rate shopkeepers4 ,sir1 a man of acute intelligence would1 in the seventeenth century1 have deduced the future state of ,french and ,english commerce1 of ,french and ,english colonization from a comparison between ,shakespeare and ,racine4 ,i have no doubt that the ,phnicians were shopkeepers of the ,french kind1 and hence their extinction1 their shadowy survival merely in the history of their conquerors4 99 99 99 99 99 ,you think the ,roman ,empire a formidable objection to my theory1 because ,roman literature and ,roman art show1 in general1 so little of the imaginative1 adventurous faculty8 ,i think the objection is formidable1 but ,i believe that it can be redargued1 as ,dominie ,sampson used to say4 ,the ,roman ,empire was such a purely military settlement1 wasn't it8 it was1 if one may say so1 a garrisoning of the world1 not in any way a real colonizing in the ,greek and the ,english sense4 ,and in the second place1 do you know that ,i have grave doubts whether we know very much of the ,roman spirit from the ,roman literature4 ,how far into the ,english character would the works of the excellent ,dr4 ,johnson carry us8 ,one hardly finds ,chaucer1 the ,elizabethans1 the ,cavalier poets1 ,keats or ,wordsworth in ,rasselas and ,the ,rambler1 and ,i have always suspected that ,latin literature was in a great measure ,johnsonized1 periwigged1 hidden and perverted by the irresistible flood of ,greek culture4 ,it may be a paradox1 but ,i have a very strong conviction that the ,missal and the ,breviary tell us more about the true ,latin character than ,cicero and ,horace4 ,but we must be thankful that in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries ,england stood aloof from the continent of ,europe1 and that when it did borrow it transformed and transmuted so that the original entirely lost its foreign character4 ,i always think that change of ,madame de ,querouaille into ,madam ,carewell such a wonderful instance of our nationalism--our transforming force6 ,if it had been otherwise1 if we had grovelled before the literature of ,france or ,spain or ,italy1 as ,rome grovelled before the literature of ,greece--well1 perhaps1 ,english literature would have meant ,chevy ,chace and a few old ballads1 and the eighteenth century6 ,i hate the ,reformation1 but perhaps it saved our literature1 simply by isolating the nation4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i claimed1 ,i think1 literary merit for ,miss ,wilkins because her books give out an impression of loneliness4 ,i think that is so1 but ,i should like to point out that loneliness is merely another synonym for that one property which makes the difference between real literature and reading-matter4 ,if you look into the ,french literature of the last two hundred years and complain of its elegant nothingness1 of its wholly secondary character1 ,i would point out that it is second-rate because it is the expression1 not of the lonely human soul1 like a star1 dwelling apart1 but of society1 of the ruelles1 of the salon1 of polite company1 of the caf and the boulevard4 ,i am not making an accusation1 ,i am adopting the terms of the eminent ,m4 de ,brunetire1 who tells us1 ,i think1 that ,french literature is beautiful because it is firstly sociable1 and secondly because it is a kind of a long talk to ladies4 ,i hardly think that ,i need go into the merits of the question2 you and ,i1 ,i take it1 are convinced of the vast immeasurable inferiority of ,racine to ,shakespeare 7with these two names one sums up the whole debate71 but ,i am quite sure that ,m4 de ,brunetire has given the true reason of the ,french literature being on the distinctly low level4 ,it is always ,thackeray1 it is always ,pope1 it is always ,jane ,austen2 it is1 in our sense of the word1 not literature at all1 though1 to be sure1 its artifice is often of the most exquisite description4 ,of course ,i do not speak of the ultimate reason--that is to be sought1 ,i presume1 in the mental constitution of the nation--but when one reads ,m4 de ,brunetire's account of the formation of modern ,french letters1 and notes his insistance on the social element as the chief factor1 one may be pretty sure that this social factor is responsible for the pleasant nullities which we all know4 ,you may feel pretty certain1 ,i think1 that real literature has always been produced by men who have preserved a certain loneliness of soul1 if not of body2 the masterpieces are not generated by that pleasant and witty traffic of the drawing-rooms1 but by the silence of the eternal hills4 ,remember2 we have settled that literature is the expression of the standing out1 of the withdrawal of the soul1 it is the endeavour of every age to return to the first age1 to an age1 if you like1 of savages1 when a man crept away to the rocks or to the forests that he might utter1 all alone1 the secrets of his own soul4 ,so this is my plea for ,miss ,wilkins4 ,i think that she has indicated this condition of ecstasis2 she has painted a society1 indeed1 but a society in which each man stands apart1 responsible only for himself and to himself1 conscious only of himself and his ,god4 ,you will note this1 if you read her carefully1 you will see how this doctrine of awful1 individual loneliness prevails so far that it is carried into the necessary and ordinary transactions of social life1 often with results that are very absurd4 ,many of the people in her stories are so absolutely convinced of their loneliness1 so certain that there are only two persons in the whole universe--each man and his ,god--that they do not shrink from transgressing and flouting all the social orders and regulations1 in spite of their very strong and social instinct drawing them in the opposite direction4 ,you remember the man who vowed that under certain circumstances he would sit on the meeting-house steps every ,sunday8 ,he kept his vow--for ten years ,i think--and he kept it in spite of his profound horror of ridicule1 of doing what other people didn't do1 in spite of his own happiness2 but he kept it because he realised his loneliness1 because he saw quite clearly that he must stand or fall by his own word and his own promise1 and that the opinions of others could be of no possible importance to him4 ,the instance is ludicrous1 even to the verge of farce1 and yet ,i call it a witness to the everlasting truth that1 at last1 each man must stand or fall alone1 and that if he would stand1 he must1 to a certain extent1 live alone with his own soul4 ,it is from this mood of lonely reverie and ecstasy that literature proceeds1 and ,i think that the sense of all this is diffused throughout ,miss ,wilkins's ,new ,england stories4 99 99 99 99 99 ,you ask me for a new test--or rather for a new expression of the one test--that separates literature from the mass of stuff which is not literature4 ,i will give you a test that will startle you2 literature is the expression1 through the sthetic medium of words1 of the dogmas of the ,catholic ,church1 and that which in any way is out of harmony with these dogmas is not literature4 ,yes1 it is really so2 but not exactly in the sense which you suppose4 ,no literal compliance with ,christianity is needed1 no1 nor even an acquaintance with the doctrines of ,christianity4 ,the ,greeks1 celebrating the festivals of ,dionysus1 ,cervantes recounting the fooleries of ,don ,quixote1 ,dickens measuring ,mr ,pickwick's glasses of cold punch1 ,rabelais with his thirsty ,pantagruel were all sufficiently ,catholic from our point of view1 and the cultus of ,aphrodite is merely a symbol misunderstood and possibly corrupted1 and if you can describe an initiatory dance of savages in the proper manner1 ,i shall call you a good ,catholic4 ,you say that ,robert ,elsmere is not literature1 and you are perfectly right1 but ,i hope you don't condemn it because it contains arguments directed against the ,catholic ,faith8 ,these1 from our own standpoint1 are simply nothing at all1 not reckoning either way4 ,we pass them over1 just as we should pass over a passage on quadratic equations pleasantly interpolated by an author into the body of his romance4 ,the conscious opinions of a writer are simply not worth twopence in the court of literature2 who cares to enquire into the theology of ,keats8 ,but when we find not only the consciousness but also the subconsciousness permeated by the impression that man is a logical1 rationalistic creature and nothing more1 when the total impression of the human being gathered from the book is of a simply demonstrating and demonstrable animal2 then1 we may be perfectly assured that we have not to deal with literature4 ,it is the subconsciousness1 remember1 alone that matters2 and 7to put it again theologically7 you will find that books which are not literature proceed from ignorance of the ,sacramental ,system4 ,thackeray was an unconscious heretic1 while ,george ,eliot was a conscious one1 but each was ignorant of the meaning of ,sacramentalism1 and so1 making allowance for the fact that the one was a clever man1 while the other was a dull1 industrious woman1 you have from each a view of life that is substantially the same1 and entirely false4 ,each was profoundly convinced that there are milestones on the ,dover ,road1 and each1 in his several way1 was so intent on the truth of this proposition 7and it is a perfectly true one7 that the secret of the scenery and the secret of ,canterbury ,cathedral are altogether to seek in their books4 ,certainly the gentleman is a delightful companion1 and the milestones seem few indeed while we are on the way1 while with the other guide we feel like a girls' school1 compelled to listen to the now1 young ladies and the lessons which every object on the road suggests4 ,still1 the total view is much the same1 the same in genus if not in species1 and you may add ,flaubert to your companions on the road and you will be in the same case4 ,but read a chapter of ,don ,quixote2 you will not be aware of the existence of the milestones1 since your gaze is fixed on the mystery of the woods1 and you are a pilgrim to the blissful shrine beyond4 ,don't imagine that you can improve your literary chances by subscribing the ,catechism or the ,decrees of the ,council of ,trent4 ,no2 ,i can give you no such short and easy plan for excelling2 but ,i tell you that unless you have assimilated the final dogmas--the eternal truths--upon which those things rest1 consciously if you please1 but subconsciously of necessity1 you can never write literature1 however clever and amusing you may be4 ,think of it1 and you will see that from the literary standpoint1 ,catholic dogma is merely the witness1 under a special symbolism1 of the enduring facts of human nature and the universe2 it is merely the voice which tells us distinctly that man is not the creature of the drawing-room and the ,stock ,exchange1 but a lonely awful soul confronted by the ,source of all ,souls1 and you will realise that to make literature it is necessary to be1 at all events1 subconsciously ,catholic4 99 99 99 99 99 ,have you noticed how many of the greatest writers1 so far from desiring that compliment of fidelity to life do their best to get away from life1 to make their books1 in ordinary phraseology1 unreal8 ,i do not know whether anybody has compared the facts before or made the only possible inference from them2 but you remember how ,rabelais professes to derive his book from a little mouldy manuscript1 found in a tomb1 how ,cervantes1 beginning in propria persona authoris1 breaks off and discovers the true history of ,don ,quixote in the ,arabic ,manuscript of ,cid ,hamet ,benengeli1 how ,hawthorne prologises with the custom-house at ,salem1 and lights1 in an old lumber-room1 on the documents telling him the history of the ,scarlet ,letter4 ,pickwick was a transcript of the ,transactions or ,papers of the ,pickwick ,club1 and ,tennyson's ,morte ,d',arthur shelters itself1 in the same way1 behind the personality of an imaginary writer4 ,there is a very profound significance in all this1 and you find a trace of the same instinct in the ,greek ,tragedies where the final scene1 the peripeteia1 is not shown on the stage1 but described by a messenger4 ,the fact is that the true artist1 so far from being the imitator of life1 endures some of his severest struggles in endeavouring to get away from life1 and until he can do this he knows that his labour is all in vain4 ,it would be amusing to trace all the various devices which have been used to secure this effect of separation1 of withdrawal from the common track of common things4 ,i have just pointed out one1 the hiding of the author1 as it were1 behind a mask1 and in the ,greek ,play the analogous talking of what has happened in place of visibly showing it1 but there must be many more4 ,from this instinct ,i imagine arises the historical novel in all its forms1 you make your story remote by placing it far back in time1 by the exhibition of strange dresses and unfamiliar manners4 ,or again you may get virtually the same effect by using the remoteness of space1 by playing on the theme far1 far away which really calls up a very similar emotion to that produced by the other theme of long1 long ago1 or once on a time1 as the fairy tale has it4 ,briefly we may say that all strangeness of incident1 or plot1 or style makes for this one end2 and of course you see that all this is only the repetition of our old text in another form4 ,it is1 perhaps1 hardly necessary to give the caution that1 on the principle of corruptio optimi1 there is nothing more melancholy than the book which has the body of fine literature without the soul1 which uses literary methods without understanding4 ,you needn't ask for proofs of that proposition2 our memories are aghast with recollections of futile historical novels1 of the terrific school of the two horsemen1 and every ,christmas brings its huge budget of those dreadful boys' books1 which carry commonplace to the very ends of the earth1 and occasionally penetrate to the stars4 ,and in style1 too1 what can be more depressing than the style which is meant to be strange and is only flatulent8 ,in many cases of course such books as ,i have alluded to are mere survivals of tradition1 conventions of bookmaking which bear witness to the fact that pirates and treasure-hoards were once symbols of wonder1 and the extravagancies of style are probably to be accounted for in the same way4 ,at some remote period it may1 possibly1 have been effective to call the sun1 the glorious orb1 and even now some minds may be made to realise the strangeness of great flights of birds by the phrase the feathered ,zingari of the air2 but if one is a little sophisticated one feels the pathos and the futility of such efforts4 ,the writer has felt and experienced the wonder of things--the beauty of the sun and the hieroglyphic mystery of the figures that the birds make in the air--and he feels1 quite rightly1 that to describe wonders one must suggest wonder by words4 ,unfortunately1 he breaks down at this point1 and falls back on unhappy phrases that give the very opposite impression to that which he wishes to excite4 ,here you have the whole history of poetic diction4 ,the instinct is in itself an entirely right one1 and ,i need hardly say that the masters--those who have the secret--can use archaic forms1 obsolete constructions1 conventional phrases even1 with miraculous effect4 ,but the beginner would do well to be wary of these things1 and to turn his face resolutely away from flowery meads and all the family of inversions4 ,how is one to know when such phrases may be used8 ,if ,i could give you the answer to that question ,i should be also giving you the secret of making literature1 and from all our talks ,i expect you have gathered this much at all events--that the art of literature1 with all the arts1 is quite incommunicable4 ,many kinds of artifice1 even1 are unteachable--,i could not write or be taught to write one of those ,george ,eliot novels that ,i have been abusing with such hearty good will--but art is by its very definition quite without the jurisdiction of the schools1 and the realm of the reasoning process1 since art is a miracle1 superior to the laws4 ,,printed ,,by ,,turnbull ,,and ,,spears1 ,,edinburgh 99 99 99 99 99 ,,transcriber',s ,,notes ,the variant spellings bookcase and book-case1 bookmaking and book-making1 milk punch and milk-punch1 subconsciousness and sub-consciousness1 ,morte ,d',arthur and ,morte d',arthur are all used in this text4 ,there is no consistency in the use of italics1 single quotes or double quotes4 ,for example ,vanity ,fair1 ,vanity ,fair and ',vanity ,fair' all appear4 ,the spellings gurgoyles 7p4 #acb71 insistance 7p4 #aif71 ecstasis 7p4 #aif7 and extravagancies 7p4 #bjd7 have been left unchanged4 ,the following amendments have been made3 #a7;,full stop 7period7 added after ,sophocles on p4 #ec1 after runs away on p4 #ahi and after ,dr in ,dr ,johnson on p4 #aic4 #b7 ,full stop replaced by question mark after unreal on p4 #bad4 #c7 ,the accents on two ,greek words on p4 #ef have been amended3 accent on 7where there was a circumflex over the in defiance of all laws7 amended to and amended to 4 #d7 ,the breathing on on p4 #aje has been corrected to 4 ,a ,table of ,contents has been added4