HIEROGLYPHICS

I

Do you know that just before you came in I found something highly

significant in the evening paper? I am afraid from your expression that

you rather undervalue the influence of the press; indeed, 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 winners. I think I pointed out at the

time that even horse-racing and an interest in "events" are preferable

to stagnation, and that there is something august in the universal human

passion for gambling. And, after all, the office-boy who "puts on"

half-a-crown is really only an example of the love of man for the

unknown; the half-crown is a venture into mystery, with that due flavour

of commercialism which we in England add to most of our interests. But

you see, don't you? that gambling, even under its most sordid aspects,

is not altogether sordid; it's the mystery, the uncertainty, the hours

of "strange surmise" that the smallest bet gives to the bettor that

make the real delight of betting. When the office-boy wins and gets ten

shillings for the risk of his two-and-six, his delight is not by any

means pure love of gain, it is distinguished by a very marked line from

the constantly repeated joys of the grocer, who is always buying

delicious tea at ninepence and selling it at one-and-six. Here you have

commercialism in its simplest form; but our office-boy, though he likes

the money well enough, stands on a much higher plane. For the moment he

is the man who has succeeded in solving the enigma of the Sphinx, in

discovering the unknown continent, in reading the cypher, in guessing at

the song the Sirens sang, in unveiling the hidden treasure that the

buccaneers buried on the lonely shore; he has ventured successfully into

the dim region of surmises. And when he loses, there are always

consolations; the Indies have not been discovered on this voyage,

certainly, but there have been wonders on the way, he has enjoyed many

hours of delicious expectation. The proof that he likes the sport, even

when he loses, is that he invariably takes the first opportunity of

venturing again in the same manner. And, by the way, perhaps I was a

little severe just now on trade, and especially on the grocer's sugary

and soapy enterprise. Perhaps if we were to look with a rather finer

vision into the commercial spirit, we might find that it is not wholly

commercial, not altogether sordid. Of course if the grocer opens his

shop with a certainty, mathematical or almost mathematical, that the

public will buy his wares, he is a wicked fellow; he is gambling with

loaded dice, betting against a horse that he knows is to be made "all

right," playing cards with honours up his sleeve, and I am sure that if

this be his enterprise, it will always meet with our sternest

disapproval. Casanova died towards the close of the last century, and

since then cardsharping has become impossible to a man of taste. But

seriously, I suspect that a good deal of the allurement that trade

possesses for so many of us is the risk which it almost always implies,

and risk means uncertainty, and uncertainty connotes the unknown. So you

see our despised grocer turns out, after all, to be of the kin of

Columbus, of the treasure-seekers, and mystery-mongers, and delvers

after hidden things spiritual and material. I suppose we have here the

real explanation of the human trading passion, and the solution of a

problem that has often puzzled me. The problem I mean is this: how does

it happen that the English are both the greatest poets and the greatest

tradesmen of the modern world? Superficially, it seems that keeping

shops and making poetry are incompatibles, and Wordsworth and Coleridge,

Keats and Shelley, Tennyson and Poe, should have come from Provence or

Sicily, from the "unpractical," uncommercial Latin races. 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 disappears, and it

will become perfectly natural that the race which has gone to the

world's end with its merchandise, has penetrated so gloriously into the

further regions of poetry.

But that reminds me of what I was saying just after you had lit your

pipe. I think I remarked that I had seen something of very high

significance in the evening paper, and the glare of disgust with which

you greeted my observation constituted an interruption, and an

interruption that had to be dealt with. Now again you seem to hint at

doubt with your eyebrows; you would say, perhaps, that I have not made

out a very convincing case for journalism? But you must remember that

my mental process resembles that of Coleridge; you called on the Seer at

eleven o'clock in the morning, and (if young and imprudent) asked him a

question. And at the waning of the light Coleridge was still diligently

engaged in answering your question for you, having talked without

intermission all the summer day. A "cyclical mode of discoursing" the

pious Henry Nelson Coleridge called it, and he deals faithfully with

certain persons who complained "that they could get no answer to a

question from Coleridge." And you will please to remember this when you

think that I am "wandering"--a vice of which Coleridge also was accused.

To-night, for example, on the evening paper being mentioned, your face

expressed disgust and contempt, which I diagnosed (and rightly, I

believe?) as a tribute to the enormous interest taken by the editors of

these agreeable journals in the very latest sporting news; an interest

which allows but little space for the discussion of pure literature.

Hence my remarks on the gambling-spirit; and now I hope you will at

least assume a thrill of interest when the boy bawls in your ear "All

the winners and S. P." It is possible you may be thinking of Ulysses or

of Keats at the moment, and the interruption may annoy you, 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 foam,

and the Isle of Calypso, and the "strange surmise" of Pizarro and all

his men.

But here is the evening-paper in question. Yes, the colour is, perhaps,

a little sickly. A kind of pinky-green, it seems, doesn't it? But it

forced itself on my notice in the most extraordinary manner, and I

expect you will have to admit, when you have heard the story, that some

Powers were at work. Well, I was walking up and down the room, just as

it was getting dusk, and every now and then I stopped and looked out of

the window. Yes, I was making phrases as usual, and thinking of a new

story in the middle of the old one: hence the quarter-deck exercise. I

daresay you have remarked that I do not keep my window in a very

brilliant condition, and the air this evening, you will remember, was

rather misty--October, I always think, wears a peculiar dim grace in

Barnsbury--so I hope you will not find my impressions too incredible. I

was staring, then, out of the window, when to my vast astonishment, a

great pale bird seemed suddenly to shoot up into the air from the road,

and to flutter into the garden, where it became entangled in that

sapless old laburnum that weeps green tears upon the wall. I saw, as I

thought, the beating and fluttering of wings, and I ran out, imagining

that I was to secure a strange companion for my solitude. It was the

evening paper, not a bird, and I saw at once that it would be impious to

let it flutter there unread, so I secured it and brought it in,

meditating the adventure, and wondering what strange message was thus

borne to my eyes. So I went through its columns patiently, even to the

leaderettes, 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 fashion. It was a short comment upon some

agitation that is now appealing rather strongly to Progressive leaders;

but the subject-matter is of no consequence, since the significance lies

in the last sentence. Here it is: "We are glad to hear that extensive

arrangements have been made for the dissemination of literature."

You don't see the immense importance of that? You surprise me. Let us go

into it, then. 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 "lydy," it may be an affair of

restricting the franchise to citizens thoroughly ignorant of history; it

doesn't matter--but here are men who wish some political change to be

effected, and these men are issuing printed matter, the purpose of which

is to convince others of the righteousness of this particular "program."

And this printed matter is called "literature." You know the sort of

thing indicated. It may be a series of arguments, simple and fallacious,

it may be in dialogue, it may be in story form, it may assume the guise

of parody, it may be a brief history. And now what I want to know is

this: here we have a vast body of thought, clothed in words, ranging

from the agreeable leaflets that we have been speaking of up to--let us

say--the Odyssey, and all this mass is known as literature: what is to

be our criterion, our means of distinguishing between the two extremes

I have mentioned and all the innumerable links between them? Is the

whole mass literature in the true sense of the word? If not, with what

instrument, by what rule are we to divide the true from the false, to

judge exactly in the case of any particular book whether it is

literature or not? Of course you may say that the question is rather

verbal than real; that "literature" is a general term conveniently

applied to anything in print, and that in practice everybody knows the

difference between a political pamphlet and the Odyssey. I very much

doubt whether people do understand precisely the distinction between the

two, but for the avoidance of verbal confusion I suggest that when we

mean literature in its highest sense we shall say (for the present at

all events), "fine literature"; and the question will be, then: what is

it that differentiates fine literature from a number of grammatical, or

partly grammatical, sentences arranged in a more or less logical order?

Why is the Odyssey to come in, why is the "literature" of our evening

paper to be kept out? And again, to put the question in a more subtle

form: to which class do the works of Jane Austen belong? Is "Pride and

Prejudice" to stand on the Odyssey shelf, or to lie in the pamphlet

drawer? Where is Pope's place? Is he to be set in the class of Keats? If

not, for what reason? What is the rank of Dickens, of Thackeray, of

George Eliot, of Hawthorne; and in a word, how are we to sort out, as it

were, this huge multitude of names, giving to each one his proper rank

and station?

I am glad it strikes you as a big question: to me it seems _the_

question, the question which covers the final dogma of literary

criticism. Of course after we have answered this prerogative riddle,

there will be other questions, almost without end, classes, and

sub-classes of infinite analysis. But this will be detail; while the

question I have propounded is the question of first principles; it marks

the parting of two ways, and in a manner, it asks itself not only of

literature, but of life, but of philosophy, but of religion. What is the

line, then; the mark of division which is to separate spoken, or

written, or printed thought into two great genera?

Well, as you may have guessed, I have my solution, and I like it none

the less, because the word of the enigma seems to me actually but a

single word. Yes, for me the answer comes with the one word, _Ecstasy_.

If ecstasy be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be

absent, then, in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the

workmanship and observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I

think, we have a product (possibly a very interesting one), which is not

fine literature.

Of course you will allow me to contradict myself, or rather, to amplify

myself before we begin to discuss the matter fully. I said my answer was

the word, ecstasy; I still say so, but I may remark that I have chosen

this word as the representative of many. Substitute, if you like,

rapture, beauty, adoration, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown,

desire for the unknown. All and each will convey what I mean; for some

particular case one term may be more appropriate than another, 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 meaning. I claim, then, that here we have the touchstone

which will infallibly separate the higher from the lower in literature,

which will range the innumerable multitude of books in two great

divisions, which can be applied with equal justice to a Greek drama, an

eighteenth century novelist, and a modern poet, to an epic in twelve

books, and to a lyric in twelve lines. I will convince you of my belief

in my own nostrum by a bold experiment: here is _Pickwick_ and here is

_Vanity Fair_; the one regarded as a popular "comic" book, the other as

a serious masterpiece, showing vast insight into human character; and

applying my test, I set _Pickwick_ beside the Odyssey, and _Vanity Fair_

on top of the political pamphlet.

I will not argue the matter at the moment; I would merely caution you

against supposing that I imply any equality of merit in the books that I

have thus summarily "bracketed." You mustn't suppose that I think

Dickens's book as good as Homer's, or that I have any doubts as to the

vast superiority of _Vanity Fair_ over all the pamphlets in the world.

"Here is a temple, here is a tub," we may suppose a child to say,

learning from a picture-alphabet; but the temple may be a miserably

designed structure, in ruinous condition, and the tub is, perhaps, a

miracle of excellent workmanship. But one means worship and the other

means washing, and that is _the_ distinction. Or, to take a better

example; the bottom boy in the sixth form may be a miserable dunce

compared with the top boy in the fifth; still the dunce is in the sixth

form, and the genius is in the fifth. Or, to take a third instance (I

want you to understand what I'm driving at), the fact that an English

orator is fluent, brilliant, profound, convincing, while a Greek orator

is stuttering, stupid, shallow, illogical does not hinder that the

former, though he may speak ever so well, still speaks English, while

the latter, however badly he may speak, speaks in Greek for all that.

Analogies, as you know, are never perfect, and must not be pressed too

far; they suggest rather than prove; but I hope you understand me though

you may not agree with me.

But before we argue the merits of my own literary solvent, we might very

well see what we can do with other tests. I daresay you can suggest a

good many. We won't go into the question of printed and not printed,

written or not written, because it is obvious that the visible symbols

by which literature is recorded have nothing to do with literature

itself. In the beginning all literature was a matter of improvisation

or recitation and memory, and hieroglyphics, writing, printing are mere

conveniences. Indeed the point is only worth mentioning because there

are, I believe, simple souls who think that the invention of printing

has some sort of mysterious connection with the birth of literature, and

that the abolition of the paper duty was its coming of age. 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 mother. Many people think, on the other hand, that literature is

to be estimated by its effect on the emotions, by the shock which it

gives to the system. You may say that a book which interests you so

intensely that you cannot put it down, that affects you so acutely that

you weep, that amuses you so immensely that you roar with laughter must

be very good. I don't object to "very good," but from my point of view,

"very good" and "fine literature" are two different things. You see

I believe that the difference between interesting, exciting,

tear-compelling, laughter-moving reading matter and fine art is not

specific but generic: who would blaspheme against good bitter beer, who

would say that _because_ it is good, it is _therefore_ Burgundy?

I am not quite sure that I am not muddling up two things which are in

reality distinct. 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 intensely. On the whole I think that it would be well to draw a line

between the two, especially as "interesting" is somewhat ambiguous.

And you think it a paradox, then, to maintain that the power of exciting

the emotions to a high degree is not a mark of fine literature? But just

think it over. Suppose that a few yards from this room--in the next

house, in the next street--a woman is waiting for the return of her

husband and son. A ring comes at the bell, there's a reddish-brown

envelope, and inside it the message: "Railway accident father killed."

Well, you can imagine the effect that these four words will have on the

woman's emotions; she will either faint away, or burst into an agony of

tears; she may even die of the shock, and you can't have a more striking

emotional result than death, can you? Very well; but is the telegram

fine art? Is it art? Is it even artifice? It isn't art because it is

true! But if I invented such a telegram and sent it to a woman whose

husband and son were away, would it thereby become art? You must see

perfectly well that it would be nothing of the kind; and I must ask you

to explain how a book which is, virtually, a long succession of such

telegrams can rise higher than its origin and source? You must see, I

think, that the question of truth and falsity can make no real

difference to our (no doubt pompous) high æsthetic standpoint; and if

you admit that four words which produce an emotional result are not

necessarily art, then it follows that four hundred or four hundred

thousand words woven together on the same principle are in no better

position. An increased quantity means no doubt an increased artifice,

but artifice and art are very different things. 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 readers. I have never read the

"Sorrows of Werther"; 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 æsthetic value.

I confess all this seems A B C to me, 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" book. As I said "interesting" seems such an

ambiguous word. It may stand for that æsthetic emotion produced, say, by

the Œdipus; 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 are, virtually,

"Tales of My Landlady" printed and bound. We must really then omit

"interesting" in our account of the possible criteria of fine art; the

word as it were cancels itself out, because it may mean on the one hand

the possession of the highest artistic value, or on the other it may

serve as epithet for a book which gratifies the lowest curiosity. You

know there are books which the French have kindly named "romans à clef";

and I suppose there is no more miserable form of book-making. The

receipt is easy enough. The grocer's daughter, to whose amours I alluded

just now, is really named Miss Buggins, and the gentleman is Mr Tibb.

Well, suppose that my landlady, relating their lyric to the butcher's

wife, should, with a knowing wink, profess to tell the story of Miss

Ruggins and Mr Ribb--she would simply be composing a _roman à clef_

without knowing it. You might say that it is hardly worth while to

labour the point, 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 note, in criticising the

"Heptameron," 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 told!

But there is another interest of a much higher kind, and that is the

sensational. We have done some excellent books of this sort in England,

and perhaps you will understand the class I mean when I say that a novel

of this description is hard to lay down, and harder still to take up

again when you have once found out the secret. This is not high art; you

are always at liberty to put down "Lycidas," but then you are compelled

to take it up again and again, and the secret of "Lycidas" is always a

secret, and one never fails to experience the joy of an artistic

surprise. Still the books I mean sometimes show very high artifice, and

in itself, perhaps, the quality that I am talking about, the power of

exciting a vivid curiosity, an earnest desire to know what is to come

next is not, like the vulgar _roman à clef_ curiosity, in actual

disaccord from the purpose of art. Indeed I imagine that this trick of

stimulating the curiosity may be made subservient to purely æsthetic

ends, 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--Ecstasy. Still, though the trick is a good one, it will not, by

itself, make fine art. You may discover so much by reading the

"Moonstone," that monument of ingenuity and absurdity. On the face of it

all detective stories come under this heading: formally, no doubt, they

must all be reckoned as tricks, and they may vary from the infinitely

ingenious to the infinitely imbecile, and so far as I remember, the

famous French tales of detection verge towards the lower rather than the

higher ground. But I am inclined, not very logically, perhaps, to make

an exception in favour of Poe's Dupin, and to place him almost in the

sphere of pure literature. Logically, he is a detective, but I almost

think that in his case the detective is a symbol of the mystagogue. As

I say, I should be pressed hard if I were asked to make out my case in

terms and syllogisms, but if you require me to do so, I would say first

of all that the atmosphere of Dupin--and you must remember that in

literature everything counts; it is not alone the plot, or the style

that we have to consider--has to me hints of that presence which I have

called ecstasy. Listen to this:

"It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?)

to be enamoured of the Night for her own sake; and into this

_bizarrerie_, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up

to his wild whims with a perfect _abandon_. The sable divinity would not

herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her presence. At

the first dawn of the morning we closed all the massive shutters of our

old building; lighting a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed,

threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these

we then buried our souls in dreams--reading, writing, or conversing,

until warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we

sallied forth into the streets, arm in arm, continuing the topics of

the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking amid the

wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental

excitement which quiet observation can afford."

And again; in the stories themselves, in the conduct of M. Dupin's

detective processes, I find a faint suggestion of the under-consciousness

or other consciousness of man, a mere hint, not, I think, expressed in so

many words, rather latent than patent, that if you would thoroughly

understand the rational man you must have sounded the irrational man, the

mysterious companion that walks beside each one of us on the earthly

journey. Of course the artifice in the Dupin stories is of the very

highest kind, but for the reasons I have given I am inclined to think that

there is more than artifice, and the shadow, at all events, of art itself.

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 not, in itself, mark out a book as being fine literature.

I think I proved the proposition by my instance of the "Moonstone," but

if that does not convince you, we might demonstrate this theorem in the

same way as we demonstrated the other one about the "literature" that

produces its effect on the emotions. We have only to send out a series

of telegrams, or we may even glance at the newspaper, and follow a case

in the Central Criminal Court. Or we may affirm, more generally, that

life often offers many highly absorbing and highly interesting

spectacles, but that life is not art, and therefore, that literature

which fails to rise above the level of life, or rather, to penetrate

beneath the surface of life, is not fine literature in our sense of that

term. A gold nugget may be as pure and fine as you like, but it is not a

sovereign; it lacks the stamp; and it is the business of art to give its

stamp and imprint to the matter of life.

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 grief, interest,

curiosity, and so forth which he experiences or may experience in his

everyday life, which he really does experience in greater or less degree

every time he talks to a friend, takes up a newspaper, or receives a

telegram. It comes to this again and again, doesn't it, that Art and

Life are two different spheres, and that the Artist with a capital A is

not a clever photographer who understands selection in a greater or less

degree.

But before we go on with our work and see what can be done with other

literary "solvents" I want to make a digression. I should have made it

before, if you had pulled me up at the proper cue, and that was when I

spoke of "interest" as a highly ambiguous term, the fruitful parent of

"undistributed middles." You see how the unscrupulous sophist would bend

this word to his dark work, don't you? It would be, I suppose, something

like this:

A very high degree of interest [of the artistic kind] is the mark

of fine literature.

But, the "Moonstone" excites a very high degree of interest [of the

sensational kind].

_Therefore_, the "Moonstone" has the mark of fine literature.

You note the "paltering" with the word, its use now in one sense, and

now in another; and if that sort of thing were allowed we should have

Wilkie Collins placed among the Immortals before we knew where we were.

But hasn't it occurred to you that nearly all the terms we are using are

patient of the same vile uses? You remember that we began with

"literature" itself, as a monstrous example of ambiguity, sheltering as

it did both the publications of the Anti-Everything Society and the Song

of Ulysses' Wandering; even now we are trying to track the monster to

his den in spite of his manifold turnings and disguises. In the

meanwhile, for the sake of clearness, we agreed to prefix the epithet

"fine" to the word when we meant the "Odyssey" class, though if we say

"fine" so often I am afraid we run the risk of being thought superfine.

However one must run all risks in the cause of making oneself

understood; and so I say you ought to have pulled me up when I talked

about "art" and "books that appealed to the emotions." My "art" may not

be the same as your "art," and "emotions" are still more dangerous in

the same way.

I think I made some attempt to deal with "art" as I was talking. I

contrasted it with "artifice," and my phrase "Artist with a big A" was

another hint to you that the word must be handled cautiously. You know

that in ordinary conversation we say that bees have "the art" or "an

art" of making hexagonal cells of wax, that wasps have an art of making

a sort of paper for their nests, that there is an art of logic, an art

of cookery, an art in making a gravel path. Now in each of these

instances the word really speaks of the adaptation of means to ends. In

the case of the bees and wasps there is a slightly different _nuance_ of

meaning, because they make their cells and their paper just as a bird

builds its nest, through the influence of forces which to us are occult,

which we conveniently sum up under the word instinct. In the arts of

cookery and pathmaking there is a conscious employment of certain means

towards the securing of certain ends; and it is at least possible that

the swallow, gathering its materials and shaping them, has at the moment

nothing but a blind impulse, similar to that of hunger--we all know when

we are hungry and we all know what to do in such a case, but we do not

all know the physiology of the stomach and the gastric juices, and

perhaps not one of us knows the whole secret of inanition and

nutrition. We simply eat because we want to eat, not because we wish to

supply ourselves with a certain quantity of peptones; and so perhaps the

swallow gathers her nest and shapes it, without the consciousness of the

eggs and the little birds that are to follow. But I need not remind you

that there are plenty of well authenticated instances of animals who

have consciously used means to secure ends, and thus "art" in its common

significance is not even an exclusively human faculty. When, for

example, the bees find themselves in danger of being left queenless,

they administer what has been called "royal food" to a common grub, and

that which would have been a worker becomes a queen; 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 flavour.

Now, then, let us apply all this to our matter. I daresay you have often

heard a book praised for its "great art," and if you have read it you

will have discovered that its "art" is simply contrivance, the very

adaptation of means to ends that we have been discussing. "The art with

which the mystery is carefully kept in the background," "the art by

which the two characters are contrasted throughout the volume," "the

highly artistic manner in which Fernando and the heroine are brought

together on the last page"--these, you see clearly, are contrivances,

artifices, in no way differing in degree from the contrivances of the

man who makes the garden path, of the cook who "dusts in" just a

suspicion of lemon-rind, of the bee who administers the "royal food."

This "art" then is a totally different thing from our Art with the

capital letter, with the epithet "fine," or "high" before it; and in

future when I mean "adaptation of means to ends," I shall always say

"artifice"; while "art" will be retained and set apart for higher uses.

And now as to "emotion." Here, I think, you ought to have been down on

me. You might have said: "You declare that the appeal to the emotions is

not a test of fine literature. But to what then does Homer appeal? What

is the "Œdipus" but an appeal to the emotions? What is all exquisite

lyric poetry but the cry of the emotions, set to music?" I suppose that,

as a matter of fact, you understood my real meaning by the instance I

gave; the anguish of a wife at the loss of a husband; you saw that what

I wanted to say was this: that fine literature does not content itself

with repeating, or mimicking, the emotions of private, personal,

everyday life. Still, I should have gone into the matter more fully

then, and as I did not do so, we had better see what can be done now.

And do you know that I believe that the best approach we can make to a

rather subtle question will be a somewhat indirect one? Just now I was

talking about Poe's Dupin stories, and I tried, rather vaguely, to

justify my tentative inclusion of them in the higher class of letters,

by pointing out that Poe seemed to hint at the "other-consciousness" of

man, and to suggest, at least, the presence of that shadowy, unknown, or

half-known companion who walks beside each one of us all our days. I

tried to realise the image of a man, followed or rather attended, by a

spiritual fellow, treading a path parallel with but different from his

own; and now I want you to carry out this image into the sphere of

words. Already you must have a hint of it. One might draw a figure;

something like this:

+--------------------+-----------------+

| | |

| Fine Literature. | "Literature." |

| Art. | Artifice. |

| Emotion. | Feelings. |

| | |

+--------------------+-----------------+

And before I go into the special question, let me extend the list; it

will explain itself.

+------------------------+-----------------------------------------+

| | |

| Romance, romantic. | A "Romantic" Affair in the West End. |

| Tragedy, tragic. | "Tragedy" in Soho. |

| Drama, dramatic. | Le "drame" de la Rue Cochon: |

| | "Dramatic" Elopement in Peckham. |

| Interest, interesting | An "interesting" number of "Snippets." |

| [of "Hamlet"]. | |

| Lyric. | The "Lyric" Theatre. |

| Inebriated. | In an "inebriated" condition. |

| | |

+------------------------+-----------------------------------------+

That almost gives my secret away, doesn't it? Of course you see the

place that the words in the right-hand column take in the scheme. The

"Romantic" Affair in the West End really concerned the life of a

draper's assistant, who robbed his master's till, in order that he might

make presents to Miss Claire Tilbury, one of the "Sisters Tilbury" now

performing at the "Lucifer." An unmentionable person cut his throat in

some alley off Greek Street; hence the "Tragedy" in Soho. Two

peculiarly squalid servants, who beat out their master's brains, under

singularly uninteresting circumstances, acted the "Drama" of the Rue

Cochon, and it was a dissolute barmaid who eloped "dramatically" from

Peckham in the dog-cart of her employer. The two varying uses of the

word "lyric" need not be underlined for you, who know the Elizabethans

and the Cavaliers; but perhaps I may say that he who tastes _calix meus

inebrians_ will not be in an "inebriated" condition. It would be

possible to extend these parallel columns almost to infinity; but I

think the list is long enough for our purpose, and "Trench on Words" is

a well-known handbook. But you see my right-hand column word, parallel

with "Emotion"? You see I have written "Feelings," and I suggest that it

will be convenient to speak of feelings when we mean the things of life,

of society, of personal and private relationship, while we may reserve

emotion for the influence produced in man by fine art. Thus it will be

with emotion that we witness the fall of Œdipus, the madness of Lear,

while we feel for our friends and ourselves in misfortune. That seems to

make it plain enough, doesn't it; you see now, clearly, what I mean by

saying that the power of producing an emotional shock cannot be a test

of fine literature. Art must appeal to emotion, and sometimes, no doubt,

with a shock; but it must always be to the emotion of the left-hand

column, never to the "feelings" on the right hand. So you must never

tell me that a book is fine art because it made you, or somebody else,

cry; your tears are, emphatically, not evidence in the court of Fine

Literature.

I daresay it may have struck you that the tests we have considered

hitherto have been, in the main, popular tests. No doubt many persons

calling themselves critics have praised the art of a book because it has

drawn tears from eyes, or because it has not suffered itself to be put

down, or because it contains easily recognisable portraits of well-known

people, but such critics are to be spelt with a very small initial

letter, and, as I said, I don't think we want to extend that list of

parallels. There is another test that I had forgotten: I suppose there

really are people who believe that a book is fine "because it will do

good," but I don't think we'll argue with them, 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 clergy." So we will reckon our

"popular" tests as done with, and proceed to the more technical solvents

that are proposed by professed men of letters.

Three of these more literary criteria occur to me at the moment, and I

believe we shall understand them and the position which they represent

better if we take them, at first, at all events, in a mass. I can

conceive, then, that many persons whose opinion one would respect would

state their position in literary criticism somewhat as follows:--"If a

book (they would say) shows keenness of observation, insight into

character, with fidelity to life as the result of these capacities; if

its art (we should say, artifice) in the design and 'laying out' of the

plot, in the contrivance of incident is confessedly admirable, and

finally if it is written in a good style: then you have fine literature.

Fine art, in short, is a clear mirror, and the artist's skill consists

in arranging and selecting such parts of life as he thinks best for his

purpose of reflection."

Well, now, as to the first point: fidelity to life, clearness of

reflection, the selection being taken for granted, as no one out of an

asylum would maintain that a book must mirror the whole of life, or even

the millionth part of one particular man's life. Come, let us apply the

test in question to one or two of the acknowledged excellencies--to the

"Odyssey" for instance, to the "Morte D'Arthur," to "Don Quixote." Is

the story of Ulysses, in any accepted sense of the phrase "faithful" to

life as we know it? Is it "faithful," that is to say, with the fidelity

of Jane Austen, of Thackeray, of George Eliot, of Fielding? Is there

anything in our experience answering to the episodes of the

Lotus-Eaters, Calypso's Isle, the Cyclops' Cavern, the descent of the

Goddess? Is the "reflection" even a reflection of Homer's own

experience? Had he escaped from the cave under the belly of a ram? Had

he been in the world of one-eyed giants? Were his friends in the habit

of talking in hexameter verse? We may go on, of course, but is it worth

while? It is surely hardly necessary to demonstrate the fact that the

author of the "Morte D'Arthur" had never seen the Graal, that such a

character as Don Quixote never existed in the natural order of things.

We might have gone more sharply to work with this "fidelity" test: we

might have said that poetry being, admittedly fine literature at its

finest, and (admittedly also) being unfaithful to life as we know it

both in matter and manner, that therefore the test breaks down at once.

If fine literature must be faithful to life, then "Kubla Khan" is not

fine literature; which, I think we may say, is highly absurd.

I daresay you think I have dealt rather crudely, in a somewhat

materialistic spirit, with this criterion of "fidelity to life." I admit

the charge, but you must remember that I am dealing with very bad

people, who understand nothing but materialism. 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 common, social life around

him--then, believe me, the only thing to be done is to throw "Odyssey"

and "Œdipus," "Morte D'Arthur," "Kubla Khan" and "Don Quixote" straight

in their faces, and to demonstrate that these eternal books were not

constructed on the proposed receipt. Of course if I were treating with

the initiated, if I were commentating and not arguing, I should handle

the great masterpieces in a much more reverent manner. I mean that for

those who possess the secret it skills not to bring in the Cyclops (who

for us is not a giant but a symbol); we have only to bow down before the

great music of such a poem as the Odyssey, recognising that by the very

reason of its transcendent beauty, by the very fact that it trespasses

far beyond the world of our daily lives, beyond "selection" and

"reflection," it is also exalted above our understanding, that because

its beauty is supreme, that therefore its beauty is largely beyond

criticism. For ourselves we do not need to prove its transcendence of

life by this or that extraordinary incident; it is the whole spirit and

essence and sound and colour of the song that affect us; 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 country. You look

as if you thought I were fighting with the vanquished, but let me tell

you that great people have praised Homer because he depicted truthfully

the men and manners of his time.

But as I was saying, all this would be too subtle for the enemy, for the

people who maintain that fine literature is a faithful reflection of

life, and think that Jane Austen touched the point of literary

supremacy. With them, as I said, we must be rough; we must ask: Did

Sophocles describe the ordinary life of Athens in his day? No: very

well, then; since the works of Sophocles are fine literature, it follows

that some fine literature does not reflect ordinary life, and therefore

that fidelity to nature is not the differentia of the highest art.

I wonder whether I ought to caution you again against the ambiguity of

language? We are dealing easily enough with such words as "life" and

"nature," and from what you know of my system you may perhaps have seen

that I have been using these words as the people use them, as those use

them who would say that "Vanity Fair" is a faithful presentation of

life. I thought you would understand this, but I may just mention in

passing that words like "nature," "life" and "truth" or "fidelity" have

also their esoteric values, that (by way of example) the truth of the

scientist and the truth of the philosopher are two very different

things. So it may turn out by and bye that in the occult sense,

"fidelity to life" _is_ the differentia of fine literature; that the

aim of art is truth; that the artist continually mirrors nature in its

eternal, essential forms; but for the present moment, it is understood,

is it not, that these words have been used in their common, everyday

popular significance? The "Dunciad" is a study of man, and Wordsworth's

"Ode on Intimations of Immortality" is a study of man, and the literary

standpoint that we have been attacking is that of Pope and not that of

Wordsworth.

If I remember, the next test we have to analyse is that of artifice,

often and improperly called art. But I think we have already demolished

this criterion. In distinguishing between art and artifice I pointed out

that the latter merely signifies the adaptation of means to an end, and

has no relation whatever with art properly so-called; it is simply the

mental instrument with which man performs every task and every work of

his daily life; it consists in the rejection of that which is unfit for

the particular purpose in view, and in the acceptance and use of that

which is fit for the desired end and likely to bring it about. It

concerns not creation but execution, and it is I need hardly say as

indispensable to the author as are his pen and ink, and (I might almost

say) is as little concerned as these with the essence of his art. Of

course in works of the very highest genius we may declare that, in a

sense, art has become all in all, that the necessary artifice has been

interpenetrated with art, so that we can hardly distinguish in our minds

between the idea and the realisation of it. In such cases, artifice has

been lifted up and exalted into the heaven of art, and it remains

artifice no longer; but in the view that we are considering it is merely

the adaptation of means to an end, a clever choice of incident, the

knack of putting in and leaving out. The faculty may, as I said, be

glorified and transfigured by genius, but every newspaper reporter must

have more or less of it, and it is clear enough I think (perhaps I may

mention Wilkie Collins once more) that in itself it cannot establish the

claim of any book to be fine literature.

And lastly we have to deal with style; and here again I must have

recourse to my distinctions. What _is_ a good style? If you mean by a

"good" style, one that delivers the author's meaning in the clearest

possible manner, if its purpose and effect are obviously utilitarian, 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--indeed, 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 art, since the object of art is not information, but a peculiar

kind of æsthetic delight. 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

music, if the sense and sound and colour of the words affect us with an

almost inexplicable delight, then I say that while Idea is the soul,

style is the glorified body of the very highest literary art. Style, in

short, is the last perfection of the very best in literature, it is the

outward sign of the burning grace within. But we must keep the

systematic consideration of style for some other night; it's not a

subject to be dealt with by the way, and I have only said so much

because it was necessary to draw the line between language as a means of

imparting facts (good style in the sense of our opponents) and language

as an æsthetic instrument, which is a good, or rather a beautiful style

in our sense. In the latter sense it is the form of fine literature, in

the former sense it is the medium of all else that is expressed in

words, from a bill of exchange upwards.

It seems to me, then, that we have considered one by one the alternative

tests of fine literature which have been or may be proposed, and we have

come to the conclusion that each and all are impossible. It is no longer

permissible, I imagine, for you or for me to say: "This book is fine

literature because it makes me cry, because it was so interesting that I

couldn't put it down, because it is so natural and faithful to life,

because it is so well (plainly and neatly) written." We have picked

these reasons to pieces one by one, and the result is that we are driven

back on my "word of the enigma"--Ecstasy; the infallible instrument, as

I think, by which fine literature may be discerned from reading-matter,

by which art may be known from artifice, and style from intelligent

expression. At any rate we have got our hypothesis, and you remember

what stress Coleridge laid on the necessity of forming some hypothesis

before entering on any investigation.

I believe we began to-night with the evening paper, and the strange

glimpse it gives us, through a pinky-green veil, through a cloud of

laborious nonsense about odds and winners and tips and all such foolery,

into that ancient eternal desire of man for the unknown. And that, you

remember, was one of the synonyms that I offered you for ecstasy; 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 Atlantis.