WHICH (AFTER SOME BRIEF DISCOURSE OF FIRES AND FRYING-PANS) ELUCIDATES
THE INEXPEDIENCY OF PUBLISHING THIS BOOK, AS WELL AS THE NECESSITY OF
WRITING IT: AND THENCE PASSES TO A MODEST DEFENSE OF MORE VITAL THEMES.
The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying
runs, old as the hills--and as immortal. Questionless, there was many
a serviceable brick wasted in Nineveh because finicky persons must
needs be deleting here and there a phrase in favor of its cuneatic
synonym; and it is not improbable that when the outworn sun expires in
clinkers its final ray will gild such zealots tinkering with their
"style." Some few there must be in every age and every land of whom
life claims nothing very insistently save that they write perfectly of
beautiful happenings.
Yet, that the work of a man of letters is almost always a congenial
product of his day and environment, is a contention as lacking in
novelty as it is in the need of any upholding here. Nor is the
rationality of that axiom far to seek; for a man of genuine literary
genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of
wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one
most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in
consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits
the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his
writings--where it conceivably might be just predetermined
affectation--but in his personality.
Such being the assumption upon which this volume is builded, it appears
only equitable for the architect frankly to indicate his cornerstone.
Hereinafter you have an attempt to depict a special temperament--one in
essence "literary"--as very variously molded by diverse eras and as
responding in proportion with its ability to the demands of a certain
hour.
In proportion with its ability, be it repeated, since its ability is
singularly hampered. For, apart from any ticklish temporal
considerations, be it remembered, life is always claiming of this
temperament's possessor that he write perfectly of beautiful happenings.
To disregard this vital longing, and flatly to stifle the innate
striving toward artistic creation, is to become (as with Wycherley and
Sheridan) a man who waives, however laughingly, his sole apology for
existence. The proceeding is paltry enough, in all conscience; and
yet, upon the other side, there is much positive danger in giving to
the instinct a loose rein. For in that event the familiar
circumstances of sedate and wholesome living cannot but seem, like
paintings viewed too near, to lose in gusto and winsomeness. Desire,
perhaps a craving hunger, awakens for the impossible. No emotion,
whatever be its sincerity, is endured without a side-glance toward its
capabilities for being written about. The world, in short, inclines to
appear an ill-lit mine, wherein one quarries gingerly amidst an abiding
loneliness (as with Pope and Ufford and Sire Raimbaut)--and wherein one
very often is allured into unsavory alleys (as with Herrick and
Alessandro de Medici)--in search of that raw material which loving
labor will transshape into comeliness.
Such, if it be allowed to shift the metaphor, are the treacherous
by-paths of that admirably policed highway whereon the well-groomed and
well-bitted Pegasi of Vanderhoffen and Charteris (in his later manner)
trot stolidly and safely toward oblivion. And the result of wandering
afield is of necessity a tragedy, in that the deviator's life, if not
as an artist's quite certainly as a human being's, must in the outcome
be adjudged a failure.
Hereinafter, then, you have an attempt to depict a special
temperament--one in essence "literary"--as very variously molded by
diverse eras and as responding in proportion with its ability to the
demands of a certain hour.