temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various
impressions that beauty gives us. Under what conditions, and by what
means, this temperament is engendered in race or individual, we will not
discuss at present. It is sufficient to note that it exists, and that
there is in us a beauty-sense, separate from the other senses and above
them, separate from the reason and of nobler import, separate from the
soul and of equal value—a sense that leads some to create, and others,
the finer spirits as I think, to contemplate merely. But to be purified
and made perfect, this sense requires some form of exquisite environment.
Without this it starves, or is dulled. You remember that lovely passage
in which Plato describes how a young Greek should be educated, and with
what insistence he dwells upon the importance of surroundings, telling us
how the lad is to be brought up in the midst of fair sights and sounds,
so that the beauty of material things may prepare his soul for the
reception of the beauty that is spiritual. Insensibly, and without
knowing the reason why, he is to develop that real love of beauty which,
as Plato is never weary of reminding us, is the true aim of education.
By slow degrees there is to be engendered in him such a temperament as
will lead him naturally and simply to choose the good in preference to
the bad, and, rejecting what is vulgar and discordant, to follow by fine
instinctive taste all that possesses grace and charm and loveliness.
Ultimately, in its due course, this taste is to become critical and
self-conscious, but at first it is to exist purely as a cultivated
instinct, and ‘he who has received this true culture of the inner man
will with clear and certain vision perceive the omissions and faults in
art or nature, and with a taste that cannot err, while he praises, and
finds his pleasure in what is good, and receives it into his soul, and so
becomes good and noble, he will rightly blame and hate the bad, now in
the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why’:
and so, when, later on, the critical and self-conscious spirit develops
in him, he ‘will recognise and salute it as a friend with whom his
education has made him long familiar.’ I need hardly say, Ernest, how
far we in England have fallen short of this ideal, and I can imagine the
smile that would illuminate the glossy face of the Philistine if one
ventured to suggest to him that the true aim of education was the love of
beauty, and that the methods by which education should work were the
development of temperament, the cultivation of taste, and the creation of
the critical spirit.
Yet, even for us, there is left some loveliness of environment, and the
dulness of tutors and professors matters very little when one can loiter
in the grey cloisters at Magdalen, and listen to some flute-like voice
singing in Waynfleete’s chapel, or lie in the green meadow, among the
strange snake-spotted fritillaries, and watch the sunburnt noon smite to
a finer gold the tower’s gilded vanes, or wander up the Christ Church
staircase beneath the vaulted ceiling’s shadowy fans, or pass through the
sculptured gateway of Laud’s building in the College of St. John. Nor is
it merely at Oxford, or Cambridge, that the sense of beauty can be formed
and trained and perfected. All over England there is a Renaissance of
the decorative Arts. Ugliness has had its day. Even in the houses of
the rich there is taste, and the houses of those who are not rich have
been made gracious and comely and sweet to live in. Caliban, poor noisy
Caliban, thinks that when he has ceased to make mows at a thing, the
thing ceases to exist. But if he mocks no longer, it is because he has
been met with mockery, swifter and keener than his own, and for a moment
has been bitterly schooled into that silence which should seal for ever
his uncouth distorted lips. What has been done up to now, has been
chiefly in the clearing of the way. It is always more difficult to
destroy than it is to create, and when what one has to destroy is
vulgarity and stupidity, the task of destruction needs not merely courage
but also contempt. Yet it seems to me to have been, in a measure, done.
We have got rid of what was bad. We have now to make what is beautiful.
And though the mission of the æsthetic movement is to lure people to
contemplate, not to lead them to create, yet, as the creative instinct is
strong in the Celt, and it is the Celt who leads in art, there is no
reason why in future years this strange Renaissance should not become
almost as mighty in its way as was that new birth of Art that woke many
centuries ago in the cities of Italy.
Certainly, for the cultivation of temperament, we must turn to the
decorative arts: to the arts that touch us, not to the arts that teach
us. Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least,
some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are
too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too
obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One exhausts what they
have to say in a very short time, and then they become as tedious as
one’s relations. I am very fond of the work of many of the Impressionist
painters of Paris and London. Subtlety and distinction have not yet left
the school. Some of their arrangements and harmonies serve to remind one
of the unapproachable beauty of Gautier’s immortal _Symphonie en Blanc
Majeur_, that flawless masterpiece of colour and music which may have
suggested the type as well as the titles of many of their best pictures.
For a class that welcomes the incompetent with sympathetic eagerness, and
that confuses the bizarre with the beautiful, and vulgarity with truth,
they are extremely accomplished. They can do etchings that have the
brilliancy of epigrams, pastels that are as fascinating as paradoxes, and
as for their portraits, whatever the commonplace may say against them, no
one can deny that they possess that unique and wonderful charm which
belongs to works of pure fiction. But even the Impressionists, earnest
and industrious as they are, will not do. I like them. Their white
keynote, with its variations in lilac, was an era in colour. Though the
moment does not make the man, the moment certainly makes the
Impressionist, and for the moment in art, and the ‘moment’s monument,’ as
Rossetti phrased it, what may not be said? They are suggestive also. If
they have not opened the eyes of the blind, they have at least given
great encouragement to the short-sighted, and while their leaders may
have all the inexperience of old age, their young men are far too wise to
be ever sensible. Yet they will insist on treating painting as if it
were a mode of autobiography invented for the use of the illiterate, and
are always prating to us on their coarse gritty canvases of their
unnecessary selves and their unnecessary opinions, and spoiling by a
vulgar over-emphasis that fine contempt of nature which is the best and
only modest thing about them. One tires, at the end, of the work of
individuals whose individuality is always noisy, and generally
uninteresting. There is far more to be said in favour of that newer
school at Paris, the _Archaicistes_, as they call themselves, who,
refusing to leave the artist entirely at the mercy of the weather, do not
find the ideal of art in mere atmospheric effect, but seek rather for the
imaginative beauty of design and the loveliness of fair colour, and
rejecting the tedious realism of those who merely paint what they see,
try to see something worth seeing, and to see it not merely with actual
and physical vision, but with that nobler vision of the soul which is as
far wider in spiritual scope as it is far more splendid in artistic
purpose. They, at any rate, work under those decorative conditions that
each art requires for its perfection, and have sufficient æsthetic
instinct to regret those sordid and stupid limitations of absolute
modernity of form which have proved the ruin of so many of the
Impressionists. Still, the art that is frankly decorative is the art to
live with. It is, of all our visible arts, the one art that creates in
us both mood and temperament. Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and
unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand
different ways. The harmony that resides in the delicate proportions of
lines and masses becomes mirrored in the mind. The repetitions of
pattern give us rest. The marvels of design stir the imagination. In
the mere loveliness of the materials employed there are latent elements
of culture. Nor is this all. By its deliberate rejection of Nature as
the ideal of beauty, as well as of the imitative method of the ordinary
painter, decorative art not merely prepares the soul for the reception of
true imaginative work, but develops in it that sense of form which is the
basis of creative no less than of critical achievement. For the real
artist is he who proceeds, not from feeling to form, but from form to
thought and passion. He does not first conceive an idea, and then say to
himself, ‘I will put my idea into a complex metre of fourteen lines,’
but, realising the beauty of the sonnet-scheme, he conceives certain
modes of music and methods of rhyme, and the mere form suggests what is
to fill it and make it intellectually and emotionally complete. From
time to time the world cries out against some charming artistic poet,
because, to use its hackneyed and silly phrase, he has ‘nothing to say.’
But if he had something to say, he would probably say it, and the result
would be tedious. It is just because he has no new message, that he can
do beautiful work. He gains his inspiration from form, and from form
purely, as an artist should. A real passion would ruin him. Whatever
actually occurs is spoiled for art. All bad poetry springs from genuine
feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be
inartistic.
ERNEST. I wonder do you really believe what you say?
GILBERT. Why should you wonder? It is not merely in art that the body
is the soul. In every sphere of life Form is the beginning of things.
The rhythmic harmonious gestures of dancing convey, Plato tells us, both
rhythm and harmony into the mind. Forms are the food of faith, cried
Newman in one of those great moments of sincerity that make us admire and
know the man. He was right, though he may not have known how terribly
right he was. The Creeds are believed, not because they are rational,
but because they are repeated. Yes: Form is everything. It is the
secret of life. Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to
you. Find expression for a joy, and you intensify its ecstasy. Do you
wish to love? Use Love’s Litany, and the words will create the yearning
from which the world fancies that they spring. Have you a grief that
corrodes your heart? Steep yourself in the Language of grief, learn its
utterance from Prince Hamlet and Queen Constance, and you will find that
mere expression is a mode of consolation, and that Form, which is the
birth of passion, is also the death of pain. And so, to return to the
sphere of Art, it is Form that creates not merely the critical
temperament, but also the æsthetic instinct, that unerring instinct that
reveals to one all things under their conditions of beauty. Start with
the worship of form, and there is no secret in art that will not be
revealed to you, and remember that in criticism, as in creation,
temperament is everything, and that it is, not by the time of their
production, but by the temperaments to which they appeal, that the
schools of art should be historically grouped.
ERNEST. Your theory of education is delightful. But what influence will
your critic, brought up in these exquisite surroundings, possess? Do you
really think that any artist is ever affected by criticism?
GILBERT. The influence of the critic will be the mere fact of his own
existence. He will represent the flawless type. In him the culture of
the century will see itself realised. You must not ask of him to have
any aim other than the perfecting of himself. The demand of the
intellect, as has been well said, is simply to feel itself alive. The
critic may, indeed, desire to exercise influence; but, if so, he will
concern himself not with the individual, but with the age, which he will
seek to wake into consciousness, and to make responsive, creating in it
new desires and appetites, and lending it his larger vision and his
nobler moods. The actual art of to-day will occupy him less than the art
of to-morrow, far less than the art of yesterday, and as for this or that
person at present toiling away, what do the industrious matter? They do
their best, no doubt, and consequently we get the worst from them. It is
always with the best intentions that the worst work is done. And
besides, my dear Ernest, when a man reaches the age of forty, or becomes
a Royal Academician, or is elected a member of the Athenæum Club, or is
recognised as a popular novelist, whose books are in great demand at
suburban railway stations, one may have the amusement of exposing him,
but one cannot have the pleasure of reforming him. And this is, I dare
say, very fortunate for him; for I have no doubt that reformation is a
much more painful process than punishment, is indeed punishment in its
most aggravated and moral form—a fact which accounts for our entire
failure as a community to reclaim that interesting phenomenon who is
called the confirmed criminal.
ERNEST. But may it not be that the poet is the best judge of poetry, and
the painter of painting? Each art must appeal primarily to the artist
who works in it. His judgment will surely be the most valuable?
GILBERT. The appeal of all art is simply to the artistic temperament.
Art does not address herself to the specialist. Her claim is that she is
universal, and that in all her manifestations she is one. Indeed, so far
from its being true that the artist is the best judge of art, a really
great artist can never judge of other people’s work at all, and can
hardly, in fact, judge of his own. That very concentration of vision
that makes a man an artist, limits by its sheer intensity his faculty of
fine appreciation. The energy of creation hurries him blindly on to his
own goal. The wheels of his chariot raise the dust as a cloud around
him. The gods are hidden from each other. They can recognise their
worshippers. That is all.
ERNEST. You say that a great artist cannot recognise the beauty of work
different from his own.
GILBERT. It is impossible for him to do so. Wordsworth saw in
_Endymion_ merely a pretty piece of Paganism, and Shelley, with his
dislike of actuality, was deaf to Wordsworth’s message, being repelled by
its form, and Byron, that great passionate human incomplete creature,
could appreciate neither the poet of the cloud nor the poet of the lake,
and the wonder of Keats was hidden from him. The realism of Euripides
was hateful to Sophokles. Those droppings of warm tears had no music for
him. Milton, with his sense of the grand style, could not understand the
method of Shakespeare, any more than could Sir Joshua the method of
Gainsborough. Bad artists always admire each other’s work. They call it
being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist
cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any
conditions other than those that he has selected. Creation employs all
its critical faculty within its own sphere. It may not use it in the
sphere that belongs to others. It is exactly because a man cannot do a
thing that he is the proper judge of it.
ERNEST. Do you really mean that?
GILBERT. Yes, for creation limits, while contemplation widens, the
vision.
ERNEST. But what about technique? Surely each art has its separate
technique?
GILBERT. Certainly: each art has its grammar and its materials. There
is no mystery about either, and the incompetent can always be correct.
But, while the laws upon which Art rests may be fixed and certain, to
find their true realisation they must be touched by the imagination into
such beauty that they will seem an exception, each one of them.
Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist
cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the æsthetic
critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of
music—his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of
painting—that which he himself employs. The æsthetic critic, and the
æsthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and modes. It is to him
that Art makes her appeal.
ERNEST. Well, I think I have put all my questions to you. And now I
must admit—
GILBERT. Ah! don’t say that you agree with me. When people agree with
me I always feel that I must be wrong.
ERNEST. In that case I certainly won’t tell you whether I agree with you
or not. But I will put another question. You have explained to me that
criticism is a creative art. What future has it?
GILBERT. It is to criticism that the future belongs. The subject-matter
at the disposal of creation becomes every day more limited in extent and
variety. Providence and Mr. Walter Besant have exhausted the obvious.
If creation is to last at all, it can only do so on the condition of
becoming far more critical than it is at present. The old roads and
dusty highways have been traversed too often. Their charm has been worn
away by plodding feet, and they have lost that element of novelty or
surprise which is so essential for romance. He who would stir us now by
fiction must either give us an entirely new background, or reveal to us
the soul of man in its innermost workings. The first is for the moment
being done for us by Mr. Rudyard Kipling. As one turns over the pages of
his _Plain Tales from the Hills_, one feels as if one were seated under a
palm-tree reading life by superb flashes of vulgarity. The bright
colours of the bazaars dazzle one’s eyes. The jaded, second-rate
Anglo-Indians are in exquisite incongruity with their surroundings. The
mere lack of style in the story-teller gives an odd journalistic realism
to what he tells us. From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is
a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is
a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.
Dickens knew its clothes and its comedy. Mr. Kipling knows its essence
and its seriousness. He is our first authority on the second-rate, and
has seen marvellous things through keyholes, and his backgrounds are real
works of art. As for the second condition, we have had Browning, and
Meredith is with us. But there is still much to be done in the sphere of
introspection. People sometimes say that fiction is getting too morbid.
As far as psychology is concerned, it has never been morbid enough. We
have merely touched the surface of the soul, that is all. In one single
ivory cell of the brain there are stored away things more marvellous and
more terrible than even they have dreamed of, who, like the author of _Le
Rouge et le Noir_, have sought to track the soul into its most secret
places, and to make life confess its dearest sins. Still, there is a
limit even to the number of untried backgrounds, and it is possible that
a further development of the habit of introspection may prove fatal to
that creative faculty to which it seeks to supply fresh material. I
myself am inclined to think that creation is doomed. It springs from too
primitive, too natural an impulse. However this may be, it is certain
that the subject-matter at the disposal of creation is always
diminishing, while the subject-matter of criticism increases daily.
There are always new attitudes for the mind, and new points of view. The
duty of imposing form upon chaos does not grow less as the world
advances. There was never a time when Criticism was more needed than it
is now. It is only by its means that Humanity can become conscious of
the point at which it has arrived.
Hours ago, Ernest, you asked me the use of Criticism. You might just as
well have asked me the use of thought. It is Criticism, as Arnold points
out, that creates the intellectual atmosphere of the age. It is
Criticism, as I hope to point out myself some day, that makes the mind a
fine instrument. We, in our educational system, have burdened the memory
with a load of unconnected facts, and laboriously striven to impart our
laboriously-acquired knowledge. We teach people how to remember, we
never teach them how to grow. It has never occurred to us to try and
develop in the mind a more subtle quality of apprehension and
discernment. The Greeks did this, and when we come in contact with the
Greek critical intellect, we cannot but be conscious that, while our
subject-matter is in every respect larger and more varied than theirs,
theirs is the only method by which this subject-matter can be
interpreted. England has done one thing; it has invented and established
Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organise the ignorance of the
community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force. But
Wisdom has always been hidden from it. Considered as an instrument of
thought, the English mind is coarse and undeveloped. The only thing that
can purify it is the growth of the critical instinct.
It is Criticism, again, that, by concentration, makes culture possible.
It takes the cumbersome mass of creative work, and distils it into a
finer essence. Who that desires to retain any sense of form could
struggle through the monstrous multitudinous books that the world has
produced, books in which thought stammers or ignorance brawls? The
thread that is to guide us across the wearisome labyrinth is in the hands
of Criticism. Nay more, where there is no record, and history is either
lost, or was never written, Criticism can re-create the past for us from
the very smallest fragment of language or art, just as surely as the man
of science can from some tiny bone, or the mere impress of a foot upon a
rock, re-create for us the winged dragon or Titan lizard that once made
the earth shake beneath its tread, can call Behemoth out of his cave, and
make Leviathan swim once more across the startled sea. Prehistoric
history belongs to the philological and archæological critic. It is to
him that the origins of things are revealed. The self-conscious deposits
of an age are nearly always misleading. Through philological criticism
alone we know more of the centuries of which no actual record has been
preserved, than we do of the centuries that have left us their scrolls.
It can do for us what can be done neither by physics nor metaphysics. It
can give us the exact science of mind in the process of becoming. It can
do for us what History cannot do. It can tell us what man thought before
he learned how to write. You have asked me about the influence of
Criticism. I think I have answered that question already; but there is
this also to be said. It is Criticism that makes us cosmopolitan. The
Manchester school tried to make men realise the brotherhood of humanity,
by pointing out the commercial advantages of peace. It sought to degrade
the wonderful world into a common market-place for the buyer and the
seller. It addressed itself to the lowest instincts, and it failed. War
followed upon war, and the tradesman’s creed did not prevent France and
Germany from clashing together in blood-stained battle. There are others
of our own day who seek to appeal to mere emotional sympathies, or to the
shallow dogmas of some vague system of abstract ethics. They have their
Peace Societies, so dear to the sentimentalists, and their proposals for
unarmed International Arbitration, so popular among those who have never
read history. But mere emotional sympathy will not do. It is too
variable, and too closely connected with the passions; and a board of
arbitrators who, for the general welfare of the race, are to be deprived
of the power of putting their decisions into execution, will not be of
much avail. There is only one thing worse than Injustice, and that is
Justice without her sword in her hand. When Right is not Might, it is
Evil.