IV

Do you know that when we last talked _belles lettres_ the whole evening

went by (or at least I think so) without my saying anything about

"Pickwick"? I hope you noted the omission in your diary, if you keep

one, because I find it difficult to talk much about literature, without

drawing some illustration from that very notable, and curious, and

unappreciated book. Yes, I maintain the justice of the last epithet in

spite of circulation, in spite of popularity, and in spite of "Pickwick

'literature.'" You may like a book very much and read it three times a

year without appreciating it, and if a great book is really popular it

is sure to owe its popularity to entirely wrong reasons. There are

people, you know, who study Homer every day, because he throws so much

light on the manners and customs of the ancients, and if a book of our

own time is both great and popular, you may be sure that it is loved for

its most peccant parts, just as nine people out of ten will recall the

"Raven" and the "Bells" if the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe is mentioned.

After all, I needn't have excused myself for my constant references to

Dickens's masterpiece, since I have already informed you that, like

Coleridge, I love a "cyclical" mode of discoursing; and I honestly think

that if you want to understand something about the Mysteries or the Fine

Arts (which are the expression of the mysteries) it is the only way. A

proposition in Euclid is demonstrated and done with, since nothing can

be added to a mathematical proof; but literature is different. It is

many-sided and many-coloured, and variable always; you can consider it

in half-a-dozen ways, from half-a-dozen standpoints, and from

half-a-dozen judgments, each of which will be true and perfect in

itself, and yet each will supplement the other. Two or three weeks ago I

think I tried to show you what a complex organism any given book

reveals, if one examines it with a little attention, and if one specimen

be so curiously and intricately fashioned, you may imagine the

complexity of the whole subject.

But I have a more particular reason for turning once more to the

"Posthumous Papers." We have noted that that which at first sight seems

significant, may turn out to be insignificant, and I think that in

passing I hinted that the reverse was sometimes the case. Very good; 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

associates. Of course you've noticed it; perhaps you have thought it a

nuisance and a blemish from the artistic standpoint, just as many "good

people" have found it a nuisance and a blemish from the temperance or

teetotal standpoint. You may have felt quite certain that a set of men

who were always drinking brandy and water, and strong ale, and

milk-punch, and madeira, who constantly drank a great deal too much of

each and all of these things, would be extremely unpleasant companions

in private life; I daresay you have been thankful that you never knew Mr

Pickwick or any of his followers. You know, I expect, by personal

experience, that a man whose daily life is a pilgrimage from one whiskey

bar to another is, in most cases, an extremely tedious and unprofitable

companion; and it is undeniable that the "Pickwickians" rather made

opportunities for brandy and water than avoided them. And in an

indirect manner, you feel that all this makes you like the book less.

But (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

beverage) do you know that there are really people who make their liking

or disliking of the characters the criterion of literature--of romances,

I mean? We touched on this some time ago, and I remember saying that in

the case of such secondary books as Jane Austen's and Thackeray's, it

was permissible enough to go where one was best amused, that one had a

right to say, "Yes, the artifice may be the better here, but the

characters are much more amusing there, and I had rather talk to the

cosmopolitan whose manners are now and then a little to seek, than to

the maiden lady in the village, whose decorum is so unexceptionable."

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

grounds. I believe, however, that such is the case; I believe, indeed,

that the egregious M. Voltaire was dimly moved by some such feeling when

he wrote his famous "criticism" of the prophet Habakkuk. What (he must

have said to himself) would they think in the _salons_ of a man who

talked like this:--

And the everlasting mountains were scattered,

The perpetual hills did bow:

His ways are everlasting?

Evidently Habakkuk could never hope for a second invitation; and

_therefore_ he wrote rubbish. And I believe, as I said, that there are

many people who more or less unconsciously judge literature by this

measure, by asking, "Would these people be pleasant to meet? would one

like to hear this kind of thing in one's drawing-room?" And this is well

enough with secondary books, since they contain nothing but

"characters," and "incidents," and "scenes," and "facts"; but it is by

no means well in literature, in which, as we found out, all these things

are symbols, words of a language, used, not for themselves, but because

they are significant. Remember our old definition--ecstasy, the

withdrawal, the standing apart from common life--and you will see that

we may almost reverse this popular method of judgment, and turn it into

another test, or rather another way of putting the test, of art. For, if

literature be a kind of withdrawal from the common atmosphere of life,

we shall naturally expect to find its utterance, both in matter and

manner, wholly unsuitable for the drawing-room or the street, and its

"characters" persons whom we cannot imagine ourselves associating with

on pleasant or comfortable terms. Neither you nor I would be very happy

on Ulysses's boat, we should soon become irritated with Don Quixote, we

should hardly feel at home with Sir Galahad. It is true that all the

good there is in men is this--that at rare intervals, in certain lonely

moments of exaltation they do feel for the time a faint stirring of the

beautiful within them, and _then_ they would adventure on the Quest of

the Graal; but as you know few of us are saints, fewer, perhaps, are men

of genius; we are sunk for the most part of our days in the common life,

and our care is for the body and for the things of the body, for the

street and the drawing-room, and not for the perpetual, solitary hills.

So you see that if you read a book and can say of the characters in it:

"I wish I knew them," there is very strong reason to suspect that the

book in question is not literature, though it may well be a pleasant

picture of pleasant people.

Yes, I was expecting that question. 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 life, a

profound and lonely ecstasy. But don't you remember that when we were

discussing "Pickwick" before, and comparing it with the "Odyssey," I

suddenly deserted Homer, and brought in Sophocles? I think I contrasted,

very briefly, the education of the dramatist with the education of the

romance writer, the London of the 'twenties and 'thirties with the city

of the Violet Crown, the fate of him,

ἀεὶ διὰ λαμπροτάτου

βαίνοντος ἁβρῶς αἰθέρος

with that of the other who tried to find the way through the evil and

hideous London fog.

Well, you might have been inclined to ask, why Sophocles? But do you

remember for whose festivals, in whose honour the Greek wrote his dramas

and his choral songs? It was the god of wine who was worshipped and

invoked at the Dionysiaca, in the praise of Dionysus the chorus sang and

danced about the altar, and all the drama arose from the celebration of

the Bacchic mysteries. So you get, I think, a pretty fair proportion: as

the Athens of Sophocles is to the Cockneydom of Dickens, so is the cult

of Dionysus to the cult of cold punch and brandy and water. The interior

meaning is in each case the same; the artistic expression has lamentably

deteriorated, in the degree that the artistic atmosphere on the banks of

Fleet Ditch, the "mother of dead dogs," was inferior to the artistic

atmosphere on the banks of the Ilissus.

I expect you have gathered from all this talk the point I want to make:

that the brandy and water and punch business in "Pickwick," which at

first sight seems trivial and insignificant and even disgusting, is, in

fact, full of the highest significance. Don't you notice the insistence

with which the writer dwells on drinking, the unction and enthusiasm

with which he describes it? We have admitted the poverty of the

"materials" with which Dickens works, 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 Greek. He expressed himself as best he

could, in the "language" (that is with the incidents and in the

atmosphere) that he knew, but there can be no possible doubt as to his

meaning. In a word, I absolutely identify the "brandy and water scenes"

with the Bacchic cultus and all that it implies.

This is "a little too much for you" is it? Well, let us take another

well-known book, the "Gargantua" and "Pantagruel." You know it well, and

I have only to remind you of the name to remind you that as "Pickwick"

has been said to "reek with brandy and water," so does Rabelais

assuredly reek of wine. The history begins:--

"Grandgousier estoit bon raillard en son temps, aimant à boire

net,"

it ends with the Oracle of the Holy Bottle, with the word

"_Trinch_ ... un mot panomphée, celebré et entendu de toutes

nations, et nous signifie, _beuvez_;"

and I refer you to the allocution of Bacbuc, the priestess of the

Bottle, at large. "By wine," she says, "is man made divine," 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 you. You know

how they drink, those strange figures, the giants and their followers,

you know the aroma of the vintage, the odour of the wine vat that fills

all those marvellous and enigmatic pages, and I tell you that here again

I recognise the same signs as in "Pickwick," the same music as that of

the dithyrambic choruses in honour of Dionysus, which were eventually

amplified into that magnificent literary product, the Greek drama. And

if we wish to penetrate the secret we must not forget the Hebrew

psalmist, with his _calix meus inebrians quam præclarus est_. And

remember, too, if you feel inclined to shudder at the milk-punch, that

the words which I have just quoted might be rendered, "how splendid is

this cup of wine that makes me drunk!" and we may say that, in a manner,

poor Dickens did so render them, since, as I have reminded you he

belonged, after the flesh, to the Camden Town of the 'twenties, and was

forced to use its unbeautiful dialect because he knew no other.

And after all, then, what does this Bacchic cultus mean? We have seen

that under various disguises the one spirit appeared in Greece, in the

France of the Renaissance, and in Victorian England, and that in each

instance there is an apparent glorification of drunkenness. The Greeks,

indeed, a sober people by necessity, as all Southerners are,

impersonated the genius of intoxication, and made excessive drinking, as

it would seem, an elaborate religion, with rites and festivals and

mysteries. The Tourainian, whose personal habit was that not of a

drunkard, but of a learned physician and restorer of ancient letters,

who probably drank very much in the manner of the good curé I once knew

("My God!" he said to me, after the third small glass of small white

wine, "'tis a veritable debauch!"), has, on the face of it, dedicated

all his enormous book to the same cause, so that to read Pantagruel is

like walking through a French village in the vintage season, when the

whole world, as Zola unpleasantly and nastily expresses it "pue le

raisin." Thirdly, Dickens, who loved to talk of concocting gin-punch,

and left it, when concocted, to be drunk by his guests, shows us Mr

Pickwick "dead drunk" in the wheel-barrow. And, for a final touch of

apparent absurdity, you remember that the Dionysus myth represents wine

as a civilising influence! You may well think of the public-house at

the corner, and ask yourself how strong drink can contribute to

civilisation.

Well, that is, in very brief outline, the problem and the puzzle; and I

may say at once that to the literalist, the rationalist, the materialist

critic, the problem is quite insoluble. But to you and me, who do not

end in any kind of _ist_, the enigma will not be quite so hopeless. Let

us get back to our maxim that, in literature, facts and incidents are

not present for their own sake but as symbols, as words of the language

of art; it will follow, then, that the incidents of the Dionysus myth,

the incidents of "Pantagruel" and "Pickwick" are not to be taken

literally, but symbolically. We are not to conclude that the Greeks were

a race of drunkards, or that Rabelais and Dickens preached habitual

excess in drink as the highest virtue; we are to conclude that both the

ancient people and the modern writers recognised Ecstasy as the supreme

gift and state of man, 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 consciousness, and

taking him from the dust of the earth, sets him in high places, in the

eternal world of ideas. And, after all, I cannot do better than quote at

length the sermon of Bacbuc, priestess of the Dive Bouteille.

"Et icy maintenons que non rire, ains boire, est le propre de

l'homme: je ne dis boire simplement et absolument, car aussi bien

boivent les bestes: je dis boire vin bon et frais. Notez, amis, que

de vin, divin on devient: et n'y a argument tant seur, ni art de

divination moins fallace. Vos academiques l'afferment, rendans

l'etymologie de vin lequel ils disent en Grec ΟΙΝΟΣ, estre comme

_vis_, force, puissance. Car pouvoir il a d'emplir l'ame de toute

verité, tout savoir et philosophie. Si avez noté ce qui est en

lettres Ioniques escrit dessus la porte du temple, vous avez peu

entendre qu'en vin est verité cachée."

You see how that passage lights up the whole book, 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' shops,

the which boxes are painted on the outside with joyous and fantastic

figures ... but within they hold rare drugs, as balm, ambergris, amomum,

musk, civet, certain stones of high virtue, and all manner of precious

things." I do not know whether you have read any of our English

commentators on Rabelais, if not, I would not advise you to do so,

unless you take pleasure in futility. For instance they take the passage

from the prologue, and seeing the hint that something is concealed, try

by some complicated chain of argument to show that Rabelais veiled his

attacks on the Church under a mask of "wild buffoonery." Of course the

attacks on the Church (the "secondary" and comparatively unimportant

element in the book, fairly answering to the attacks on books of

Chivalry in the Don Quixote) are as open as any attack can well be, 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 concealment, and a still more singular misapprehension of

the motive-forces which make and shape great books. Art, you may feel

quite assured, proceeds always from love and rapture, never from hatred

and disdain, and satire of every kind _qua_ satire is eternally

condemned to that Gehenna where the pamphlets, the "literature of the

subject," and the "life-like" books lie all together. In "Don Quixote"

one perceives that Cervantes loved the romances he condemns, and the

satire is therefore good-humoured, and, one may say, does his book

little harm or none at all; but Rabelais had been harshly treated by the

friars, and his consequent ill-humour, his very violent abuse _are_ in

disaccord with the eternal melodies which may be discerned in

"Pantagruel," noted there under strange symbols. Yes, the satire in

Rabelais is an "accident," which one has to accept and to make the best

of; some of it is amusing enough, "joyous and fantastic," like the "apes

and owls and antiques" that adorn the little boxes of the apothecaries,

some of it is a little acrid, as I said; but let us never forget that

the essence of the book is its splendid celebration of ecstasy, under

the figure of the vine.

You know I have not opened the door; I have only put the key into your

hands, in this as in other instances. There are things, which, strange

to say, are better left unsaid, and this, no doubt, Rabelais perceived

when he devised his symbolism and set many traps in the paths of the

shallow commentator. It was not from dread of the consequences of

attacking the clergy that he devised curious veils and concealments,

since, as I have noted, his hatred of the church is quite open and

unconcealed. He chose the method of symbolism, firstly because he was

an artist, and symbolism is the speech of art; and secondly because the

high truth that he prophesied was not, and is not, fit for vulgar ears.

The secret places of the human nature are not heedlessly to be exposed

to the uninitiated, who would merely profane this occult knowledge if

they had it. By consequence the "Complete Works of Rabelais" are

obtainable in Holywell Street, and many, seeking the libidinous, have

found merely the tiresome, and have cursed their bargain.

No, I will positively say no more. The key is in your hands, and with it

you may open what chambers you can. There is only this to be mentioned:

that, if I were you, I would not be "afraid with any amazement" should

Mr Pickwick's overdose of milk punch prove, ultimately, a clue to the

labyrinth of mystic theology.

There are, however, one or two minor points in Rabelais that may be

worth notice. I might, you know, analyze it as I attempted to analyze

"Don Quixote." There is in "Gargantua" and "Pantagruel" that same

complexity of thought and construction: you may note, first of all, the

great essence which is common to these masterpieces as to all

literature--ecstasy, expressed in the one case under the similitude of

knight-errantry, in the other by the symbol of the vine. Then, in

Rabelais you have another symbolism of ecstasy--the shape of

_gauloiserie_, of gross, exuberant gaiety, expressing itself by

outrageous tales, outrageous words, by a very cataract of obscenity, if

you please, if only you will notice how the obscenity of Rabelais

transcends the obscenity of common life; how grossness is poured out in

a sort of mad torrent, in a frenzy, a very passion of the unspeakable.

Then, thirdly, there is the impression one collects from the book: a

transfigured picture of that wonderful age: there is the note of the

vast, interminable argument of the schools, and for a respond, the

clear, enchanted voice of Plato; there is the vision, there is the

mystery of the vast, far-lifted Gothic quire; and those fair, ornate,

and smiling _châteaux_ rise smiling from the rich banks of the Loire and

the Vienne. The old tales told in farmhouse kitchens in the Chinonnais,

the exultation of the new learning, of lost beauty recovered, the joy of

the vintage, the old legends, the ancient turns of speech, the new style

and manner of speaking: so to the old world answers the new. Then one

has the satire of clergy and lawyers--the criticism of life--analogous,

as I said with much that is in Cervantes, and so from divers elements

you see how a literary masterpiece is made into a whole.

But now, do you know, I am going to make a confession. You have heard me

say more than once that in art, in literature properly so called, liking

and disliking count for nothing. We have understood, I think, that when

once amusing reading matter has been put out of court, the question of

how often, with what absorption one reads a work of art, matters

nothing. Well, I want to contradict, or rather to modify that axiom; we

have been speaking of three great books, each of which I believe firmly

to be true literature--"Pickwick," "Don Quixote," and "Pantagruel." Here

is my confession. I read "Pickwick," say, once a year, "Don Quixote,"

once every three years, while I read Rabelais in fragments perhaps once

in six years. You might suppose that I have indicated the order of

merit? Well, I have, but you must reverse the order, since I firmly

believe that "Pantagruel" is the finest of the three. We will leave

Dickens out of account, since we are agreed that though the message was

that of angels, the accent and the speech were of Camden town; he, that

is to say, approaches most nearly to the common life, to the common

passages in which we live, and hence he, naturally, pleases us the most

in our ordinary and common humours. But, of the other two, I confess

that Cervantes pleases me much the more; the vulgarity of Dickens is

absent or rather it is concentrated in Sancho, in a much milder form

than that of "Pickwick," for a Spanish peasant of the sixteenth century,

with all his "common-sense," and practical reason, is less remote from

beauty than the retired "business man" of the early nineteenth century;

just as poor Mr Pickwick, an honest, kindly creature, is vastly superior

to the blatant, pretentious, diamond-bedecked swindlers who represent

the city in our day. But Cervantes, who lacks, as I say, the

"commonness" of Dickens, has something of the urbanity, the

cosmopolitanism of Thackeray, he is, to a certain degree, a Colonel

Newcome of his time, but he has seen the world more sagaciously than

Colonel Newcome ever could. So while Rabelais appals me with his

extravagance, his torrents of obscene words, I am charmed with the good

humoured and observant companionship of Cervantes.

And hence I conclude that "Pantagruel" is the finer book. It may sound

paradoxical to say so, but don't you see that the very _grotesquerie_ of

Rabelais shows a further remove from the daily round, a purer metal,

less tinged with the personal, material, interest than "Don Quixote."

Mind you, I find greater deftness, a finer artifice in Cervantes, who I

think expressed his conception the more perfectly, but I think that the

conception of Rabelais the higher, precisely because it is the more

remote. Look at the "Pantagruel"; consider those "lists," that more than

frankness, that ebullition of grossness, plainly intentional, designed:

it is either the merest lunacy, or else it is sublime. Don't you

remember the trite saying "extremes meet," don't you perceive that when

a certain depth has been passed you begin to ascend into the heights?

The Persian poet expresses the most transcendental secrets of the Divine

Love by the grossest phrases of the carnal love; so Rabelais soars above

the common life, above the streets and the gutter by going far lower

than the streets and the gutter: he brings before you the highest by

positing that which is lower than the lowest, and if you have the

prepared, initiated mind, a Rabelaisian "list" is the best preface to

the angelic song. All this may strike you as extreme paradox, but it has

the disadvantage of being true, 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 themselves. No; you are right: this is not the psychology of the

"scientific" persons who write hand-books on the subject, it is not the

psychology of the "serious" novelists, of those who write the annals of

the "engaged"; but it happens to be the psychology of man.

I don't know that very much can be made of the signification of the

characters in "Pantagruel," as I hardly think that Rabelais was anxious

to be systematic or consistent in delineating them. I believe that there

are two reasons for the gigantic stature of Pantagruel, or perhaps

three. The form of the whole story came from popular legends about a

giant named Gargantua, and that is the first and least important reason.

Secondly the "giant" conception does something to remove the book from

common experience; it is a sign-post, warning you _not_ to expect a

faithful picture of life, but rather a withdrawal from life and from

common experience, and you are in a position to appreciate the value of

that motive, since I have never ceased from telling you that it is the

principal motive of all literature. And, thirdly, I hesitate and doubt,

but nothing more, whether the giant Pantagruel, he who is "all thirst"

and ever athirst, may not be a hint of the stature of the perfect man,

of the ideal man, freed from the bonds of the common life, and common

appetites, having only the eternal thirst for the eternal vine.

Candidly, I am inclined to favour this view, but only as a private

interpretation; it may be all nonsense, and I shall not be offended or

surprised if you can prove to me that it is nonsense. But have you

noticed how Pantagruel is at once the most important and the least

important figure in the book? He is the most important personage; he is

the hero, the leader, the son of the king, the giant, wiser than any or

all of his followers: formally, he is to Rabelais that which Don Quixote

is to Cervantes. And yet, actually, he is little more than a vague,

tremendous shadow; the living, speaking, impressive personages are

Frère Jean and Panurge, who occupy the stage and capture our attention.

Doesn't this rather suggest to you the part played by the "real" man in

life itself; a subordinate, unobtrusive part usually, hidden very often

by an exterior, which bears little resemblance to the true man within.

You know Coleridge says that:--

"Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the Understanding--the pollarded man,

the man with every faculty except the reason. I scarcely know an example

more illustrative of the distinction between the two. Rabelais had no

mode of speaking the truth in those days but in such form as this; as it

was, he was indebted to the king's protection for his life."

I must cavil at the last sentence, in which Coleridge seems to hint that

Rabelais was in danger because he had hinted the distinction between the

Reason and the Understanding. With all respect to Coleridge, Rabelais

might have gone to the limits of psychology and metaphysics without

incurring any danger; he was threatened on account of his very open

satire of the church and the clergy, which, as I have pointed out, is as

plain spoken as satire well can be. Still, I think that Coleridge,

using the technical language of German philosophy, had a glimpse of the

truth, and Mr Besant's remark that Panurge is a careful portrait of a

man without a soul is virtually the same definition in another

terminology. As I have already said, I don't think that Rabelais kept

his characters within the strict limits of consistence--they are only

significant, perhaps, now and then--and I want to say, again, that I

speak under correction in this matter, not feeling at all sure of my

ground. But I am inclined to think that Pantagruel, Panurge, and the

Monk are not so much three different characters, as the representative

of man in his three persons. Frère Jean is, perhaps, the natural man,

the "healthy animal," Panurge is the rational man, and Pantagruel, as I

said, is the spiritual, or perfect man, who looms, gigantic, in the

background, almost invisible, and yet all important, and the three are,

in reality, One. If I may apply the case to our own subject, I may say

that while Pantagruel conceives the idea, Panurge writes the book, and

Brother John has the courage to take it to the publishers. The first is

the artist, the second the artificer, and the third the social being,

ready to battle for his place in the material world. The giant is

always calm, since his head is high above earth--_vidit nubes et

sidera_--but the other two have to face the compromises of life, and

suffer its defeats. All this may be purely fantastical; and at any rate

I am sure that anyone who knows his Rabelais could pick many holes in my

interpretation. For example, I said that the monk was the "healthy

animal," and Panurge the rational man; but there are occasions when

Panurge assumes the character of the unhealthy beast, the hairy-legged,

hybrid, creature of the Greek myth, who uses the superior human artifice

for ends that are wholly bestial or worse than bestial. Still; is this a

valid objection? Are there not such men in life itself? Is it not,

perhaps, the peculiar and terrible privilege of humanity that it may, if

it pleases, prostitute its most holy and most blessed gifts to the worst

and most horrible uses? And does not each one of us feel that,

potentially, at all events, there is such a being within him, not

yielded to, perhaps, for a moment, yet always present, always ready to

assume the command. The greatest saints, we are told, have suffered the

most fiery temptations; in other words--Pantagruel is always attended by

_Panurge diabolicus_. I have talked once or twice of the Shadowy

Companion, but one must not forget that there is the Muddy Companion

also; a being often of exquisite wit and deep understanding, but given

to evil ways if one do not hold him in check.

But, in any case, I think I have shown that the Pantagruel is one of the

most extraordinary efforts of the human mind, full of "Pantagruelism";

and that word stands for many concealed and wonderful mysteries.

It is not in the least a "pleasant," or a "life-like," or even an

"interesting" book; I think that when one knows of the key--or rather of

the keys--one opens the pages almost with a sensation of dread. So it is

a book that one consults at long intervals, because it is only at rare

moments that a man can bear the spectacle of his own naked soul, and a

vision that is splendid, certainly, but awful also, in its constant

apposition of the eternal heights and the eternal depths.

V

I have been waiting for that question for a very long time, 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 paradoxes, though I have

assured you that I deal merely in the plainest truth. But, after all,

your question is quite a legitimate one, 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 you,

ever since that talk of ours about the _haulte sagesse Pantagrueline--et

Pickwickienne_, and perhaps before it.

Yes, I will put the question in its plainest, crudest form, and I will

make you ask, if you please, whether Charles Dickens had any

consciousness of the interior significance of the milk-punch, strong

ale, and brandy and water which he caused Mr Pickwick and his friends to

consume in such outrageous quantities. It sounds plain enough and simple

enough, doesn't it, and yet I must tell you that to answer that

question fairly you must first analyze human nature, and I needn't

remind you that _that_ is a task very far from simple. "Man" sounds a

very simple predicate, as you utter it; you imagine that you understand

its significance perfectly well, but when you begin to refine a little,

and to bring in distinctions, and to carry propositions to their

legitimate bounds, you find that you have undertaken the definition of

that which is essentially indefinite and probably indefinable. And,

after all, we need not pitch on this term or on that, there is no need

to select "man" as offering any especial difficulty, for, I take it,

that the truth is that all human knowledge is subject to the same

disadvantage, the same doubts and reservations. _Omnia exeunt in

mysterium_ was an old scholastic maxim; and the only people who have

always a plain answer for a plain question are the pseudo-scientists,

the people who think that one can solve the enigma of the universe with

a box of chemicals.

But all this is a caution--necessary I suppose--that you need not expect

me to give you a plain, cut and dried answer to your question whether

literature is a conscious production--or, in more particular form--was

Dickens aware that by milk-punch he meant ecstasy? I shall "ask you

another" in the approved Scotch manner. 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 fifteen, dancing to the rattling tune of a piano-organ. You

spoke of the charm of their movements--_motus Ionici_, some of them, I

fear--of the purely æsthetic delight there was in the sight of young

girls, disguised as horrible little slatterns, leaping and dancing as

young girls have always leapt and danced, I suppose, from the time of

the cave-dwellers onwards. Well, but do you suppose that this charm you

have remarked was conscious? Do you think that Harriet and Emily

realised that they were of the kin of the ecstatic dancers of all time,

that they were beautiful because they were naturally expressing by a

symbol that is universal, the universal and eternal ecstasy of life?

Look back in your memory for illustrations; I, as you know, am rather

the enemy of facts, and it is rarely that I am able to support a theory

by a systematic _catena_ of instances and authorities. But, if one had

the industry and energy, one might make a most curious history of the

dance. Remember the Hebrew dances of religious joy, of ecstasy in its

highest form, remember that strange survival of the choristers' dance

before the high altar in Spain on certain solemn feasts, a survival

which has persisted in spite of the strong Roman influences which make

for rigid uniformity. Think of the Greek Menads and Bacchantes, of the

Dionysiac chorus in the theatre, of our old English peasants "treading

the mazes," and dancing round the maypole, of dances at Breton

_Pardons_, of the fairies, supposed to dance in the forest glade beneath

the moon. Why, dancing is as much an expression of the human secret as

literature itself, and I expect it is even more ancient; and Harriet and

Emily, leaping on the pavement, to that jingling, clattering tune, were

merely showing that though they were the children of the slum, and the

step-children of the School Board, they were yet human, and partakers of

the universal sacrament.

But if you ask, were they conscious of all this, it will be very

difficult to give a direct answer. 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 do,

as much as if they had been initiated in all the mysteries. If someone

with the genius of Socrates for propounding searching questions could

"corner" Harriet and Emily, and face and overcome that preliminary,

inevitable "garn," it is possible that he might find that they were

fully conscious of the reasons why they danced and delighted in dancing;

just as Socrates demonstrated to the slave that he was perfectly

acquainted with geometry; but failing a Socrates, and using words in

their usual senses, I suppose we must say that they are not conscious.

They dance and leap without calculation, as they eat and drink, and as

birds sing in springtime; and very much the same answer must be given to

the similar question as to literature.

I said that to answer the riddle fully and completely, one would have to

make an analysis of human nature; and, in truth, the problem is simply a

problem of the consciousness and subconsciousness, and of the action and

interaction between the two. I will not be too dogmatic. We are in

misty, uncertain and unexplored regions, and it is impossible to chart

all the cities and mountains and streams, 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 self; or, in other words, that

the artificer seldom or never understands the ends and designs and

spirit of the artist. Our literary architects have all, I think, builded

better than they knew, and very often, I expect, the draughtsman who

sees the triumph and enjoys it in his manner, takes all the credit to

himself, and ludicrously imagines that it is his careful drawing and

amplification of the sketch, and following the scale, that have created

the high and holy house of God. 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 day, and I can't be bothered getting it

down and verifying the quotation--but I believe the author, after

telling us that the original design was to give opportunities to the

etcher Seymour, goes on to recapitulate, as it were, the achievements of

the book, and his list of triumphs is much more amusing than any list in

Rabelais. The law of imprisonment for debt has been altered! Fleet

Prison has been pulled down! The School-Board is coming! Lawyers'

clerks have nicer manners! Parliamentary elections are a little better,

but they might be better still! and one wonders that he does not

announce that, in consequence of the publication of "Pickwick," medical

students have given up brandy for barley-water. It is evident, you see,

that Dickens thought (or thought that he thought, for it is very

difficult to be exact) that his masterpiece of the _picaresque_, his

epitome of Pantagruelism, was written to correct abuses, and looking

back, many years after its publication, he congratulates himself that

most of these abuses have been corrected, and (one can almost hear him

say) _ergo_, it is a very fine book. He was impelled to write this

nonsense of the preface because he was, by comparison, "educated";

Harriet, the dancer, would probably tell you, if you succeeded in

penetrating beyond "garn," that she danced because she liked it; but,

granting that the poisoning process had been carried out more

successfully in the case of Emily, she might, conceivably, reply that

she danced "becos it's 'elthy, and Teacher says as 'ow it cirkilates the

blood." Emily, you see, obtained the prize for Physiology, as well as

for French and the Piano-Forte; she is thus enabled to give "reasons,"

and they are quite as valuable as the "reasons" of Dickens, explaining

the merits of "Pickwick." You know that pompous old fool Forster, who

took in Dickens at times, sniffed a little at "Pickwick," and thought

the later books, with their ingenious plots, and floods of maudlin

tears, and portentous "character-drawing," immense advances, and I

suppose the master felt obliged to justify himself for that first

enterprise--to show that he had not really been inspired, but had

written a useful tract! You remember he "explains" Stiggins; he warns

you not to be under any misconceptions, not to suppose that Stiggins

satirises a, b, or c, since he is only aimed at x, y, and z. Can you

conceive that a mediæval artist in gurgoyles, having perfected for our

eternal joy, a splendid grinning creature, lurking on the parapet, and

having endowed him, greatly to our oblectation, with the tail of a

dragon, the body of a dog, the feet of an eagle, the head of a bull in

hysterics, with a Franciscan cowl, by way of finish, should afterwards

explain that no offence was intended to Father Ambrose, the prior over

the way?

So it seems fairly plain, doesn't it, that in the case of Dickens, at

all events, there was no very clear consciousness of what had been

achieved, and I believe that you would find the rule hold good with

other artists in a greater or less degree. With Dickens it holds in a

very high degree, just because there was that tremendous gulf I have so

often spoken about between his inward and his outward self; because,

with the soul of rare genius, his intelligence lived in those dreary,

dusty London streets, because the artificer, even while he carried out

the artist's commands, understood very little what he was doing. But one

can trace the same working in other cases. Take the case of Mr Hardy,

for instance. You remember what I said about his "Two on a Tower"; I

praised it for its ecstatic passion, for that revelation of a great

rapture, for its symbolism, showing how one must withdraw from the

common ways, from the dusty highroad and the swarming street, and go

apart into high, lonely places, if one would perceive the high, eternal

mysteries. I did not say so in so many words, but you no doubt saw that

I was indicating that which is, in my opinion, valuable in Mr Hardy's

work, that which makes his books literature. And I am sure he would most

decidedly and entirely disagree with me, and if you want to know why I

am sure, I refer you to his later books, to his "Tess" and "Jude." You

know how the "Tess" was talked about, how it remade the author from the

commercial standpoint, simply because it contained, with many beautiful

things, many absurd "preachments," much pseudo-philosophy of a kind

suited to the intelligence of persons who think that "Robert Elsmere" is

literature. If Mr Hardy had been a conscious artist, if he had

understood, I mean, what makes the charm and the wonder of "Two on a

Tower," he could never have adulterated the tale of "Tess" with a

free-thinking tract, he would never have turned "Jude" into a long

pamphlet on secondary education for farm labourers, with agnostic notes.

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 utterance, longing to sing us his incantations, in spite of the

preacher, who howls him down. Think of that distant vision of Oxford

from the lonely field, of all those clustering roofs and spires, wet

with rain, suddenly kindling into glancing, and scintillant fire, at the

sunset; and then remember, with what sorrow, that this is but an oasis

in a barren land of blundering argument. 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 prison. You can trace the struggle all through the book: "Sue" was

an artistic conception, a very curious but a very beautiful revelation

of some strange elements in the nature and in the love of women; but how

difficult it is to detect this--the real Sue--underneath the surface,

which makes Sue seem the prophetess of the "Woman Question," or whatever

the contemporary twaddle on the subject was called. Conceive the

"Odyssey" so handled that it seems like a volume in a "technical series"

dealing with "Seamanship and Navigation," 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 hand, and had silenced that other

Rabelais--that solitary and rapturous soul who had seen as in a glass

the marvellous face of man. Well, the five books of the "Pantagruel"

would have conveyed to us, no doubt with some eloquence and vigour, the

highly unimportant fact that François Rabelais, runaway Franciscan

friar, did not like Franciscan friars; and now that the centuries have

gone by we see how (comparatively) worthless such a book as that would

have been. Fortunately Pantagruel was too strong for the forces of

Panurge and Frère Jean combined, and so they have been able to do little

harm to the book.

And how one wishes that it might be so with Mr Hardy! It is not as if he

had no "body" for his conceptions; his studies of peasant folk do very

well as backgrounds for his dramas, though, of course, his work in this

way, good as it is, is not his element of real value. But it is

inoffensive always, sometimes amusing, and it might well suffice him in

his more material moments, when he feels the necessity of descending

from the solitary heights into the pleasant, populous valleys and

villages of common life. But his true work is--as it is the work of all

artists--the shaping for us of ecstasy by means of symbols; and for him

the symbol which he understands is, no doubt, the passion of love, and

with it the symbol of red, lonely ploughlands, of deep overshadowed

lanes that climb the hills and wander into lands that we know not, of

dark woods that hide a secret, of strange, immemorial barrows where one

may have communion with the souls of the dead. The passion of love, the

passion of the hills--no artist could desire more exquisite or

significant symbols than these, nor need he seek for more beautiful

forms for the expression of the perfect beauty. And Mr Hardy has chosen

to be a pamphleteer, to voice for us our poor, ignorant contemporary

chatter: it is as if an angel's pen were to be occupied in inditing

"Society Small Talk!"

But it proves the unconsciousness of Mr Hardy's art; and here, by the

way, I am moved to revert to the case of Rabelais. How far, you may ask,

was he conscious of what he was saying, 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 divine." That passage, and

indeed many other passages in the final chapters, would seem to show

that the author had worked consciously, and I certainly think the point

worth our consideration. You will remember that I stated my rule without

bigotry; I rather proposed it as a pious opinion--to the effect that in

literature the finest things are not designed. And I confess, that at

first sight, this matter of Bacbuc and her allocution looks rather like

an exception to the rule, a proof that Rabelais, at all events,

understood clearly what he was doing.

Well; it may have been so; for Rabelais was, as I think I have shown, a

very exceptional man, whom it would be difficult to place in any class.

But I hardly think this _is_ an instance of the proverbial (and

fallacious) exception that proves the rule. In the first place I believe

that some French editors have grave doubts whether Rabelais wrote the

fifth book at all; but I am not inclined to press this point. _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 author; and I am in no way concerned to defend the position that

an author must always remain unconscious of the work that he has done.

As a matter of fact I think that always, or almost always, he is

unconscious while he is writing; but I see no reason why the revelation

may not come to him afterwards, especially in such a case as the

"Pantagruel," which was the affair of many years--of a lifetime, indeed.

In the beginning of production, in the youth, the springtime of artistic

work, the creative influence prevails, and this, it seems to me, always

or almost always operates secretly; but in later years the critical

spirit is apt to assert itself, and this will lead, very naturally,

to the artist's understanding more plainly the nature of his

accomplishment. Rabelais had a long, wonderful career; his life was full

of incident, of violent breaks, and his books were produced at

intervals, and it seems to me very possible that, towards the end, he

may have reflected on what he had done, and have understood in part, at

all events, the sense of the amazing message that he had delivered.

This, I think, is the explanation of the "Holy Bottle" chapters, and you

will note that, admirable as criticism, they are inferior as art to

those astounding early pages where there is no hint of conscious

workmanship, but rather evidence of a man for whom the world has been

transformed, who has been visited by an astounding vision. He takes an

old, popular story about a giant, he takes the vine that flourishes in

his native Chinonnais, he takes the New Learning that seems to him like

the New Wine, he takes the gross tale of the farmhouse and the tavern,

the rank speech of the people, and with these elements, with these

"facts," he symbolises the revelation that he has received. He writes,

he writes on, he writes madly, and every line is written in a fury of

delight; but, I think I may say, there is at the moment of writing, no

conscious apperception of all that that torrent of words conveys and

implies. _That_ may well come later; one may well begin with legend:

"Grandgousier was a good drinker," and end with the interpretation: "All

truth and every philosophy is contained in wine"; but I believe that if

Rabelais had perceived this at the beginning he would have been not an

artist but a philosopher.

Well; if you are content with this comment on Bacbuc, I should like to

give you a very curious instance of our own day, in which the

unconscious artist has been subdued by the conscious preacher. You

remember those very notable books: "Keynotes" and "Discords"? I have not

seen them for some time, so I am afraid my criticism will be very loose

and general, but I think that the two volumes mark very well the fatal

descent from the higher to the lower ground. In the first, it seems to

me, there is a somewhat slight, but very genuine, note of ecstasy;

I mean that you can collect a certain distinct image of real

womanhood--not the laboured, foolish, inane psychology of Mr Meredith

and those who work with him--not the analysis of the surface, of the

"society" woman, belonging to a particular grade, and a particular

period, but of the very woman who remains really the same in all social

grades and in all ages. I remember thinking when I read "Keynotes" that

it was a "lonely" book; it hinted, I think, a soul apart, and afar from

the secondary, tertiary problems of an organised civilisation, and

though there was an undertone of "preaching" and arguing, the total

impression was curiously and beautifully artistic. I found, if I

remember rightly, that subordination of the accidental to the essential

that I praised in "Two in a Tower," and I am the more convinced that

this is so by my own recollections. I have forgotten all about social

conditions, if any such things are indicated; I only think of women and

of men, of the true, inalterable human nature; and here, it seems to me,

you have a very high achievement. But the next volume "Discords" took

distinctly lower ground. The artifice was better, the stories, as

stories, were told with more skill and more deftness than anything in

"Keynotes"; but there was no more literature; there was only the

"literature of the subject." The incidents were no longer symbols of an

emotion; they had become the basis of an agitation, concerning which my

curiosity never led me to inquire further: and there you see another

proof of the unconsciousness of art. If the author of "Keynotes" had

understood her achievement "Discords" would never have been written. One

might continue the _catena_ almost _ad infinitum_: would not Wordsworth,

supposing him to have been a conscious artist, 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 Works"?

Well, there is the evidence that must guide us in answering the question

you propounded, and it shows, conclusively enough, I think, that art is

not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a conscious product.

Perhaps it would be a perilous dogmatism, on the other hand, to

definitely pronounce it to be unconscious; and I expect we had better

take refuge in the subconscious, that convenient name for the

transcendental element in human nature. For myself, I like best my old

figure of the Shadowy Companion, the invisible attendant who walks all

the way beside us, though his feet are in the Other World; and I think

that it is he who whispers to us his ineffable secrets, which we

clumsily endeavour to set down in mortal language. I think that while

the artist works he is conscious of joy and of nothing more; he works

beautifully but he could give no _rationale_ of the process, and when he

endeavours to explain himself, we are often perplexed by this strange

spectacle of a man wholly ignorant of his own creation. Consider again

the grotesqueness of that preface to "Pickwick"; it is really as if a

great sculptor, congratulated on his achievement, should answer that his

Venus was indeed beautiful--because it tended to improve the marble

industry and the general knowledge of anatomy.

And after all the conclusion does return to us from other than literary

sources. You cannot conceive a builder of the fourteenth century

hesitating as to the respective merits of Romanesque, Norman, First and

Second Pointed; to him there was only one possible method, and he built,

as he spoke, without calculation and without conscious effort, only

knowing the joy of his work. So indeed we all speak and live when we are

not bound by convention and acquired usages and manners, and you see

that art, properly so called, takes its place in the great scheme of

things; it is no studied contortion, no strange trick acquired by the

late ingenuity of man, but as "natural" (and as supernatural) as the

blossoming of a flower, and the singing of the nightingale. Art, indeed,

is wholly natural, artifice is more or less acquired, the creature of

reason, of experiment, of systematised intelligence. It is doubtful, I

suppose, whether the natural, untaught man has of himself, by endowment,

any artifice at all; doubtful, perhaps, whether, in the beginning, his

artifice was not the product of his art; whether he did not learn to

speak with artifice because he had received from nature the art of

singing; certainly the child, entering the world, has not the inborn

artifice of the swallow and the bee. This artifice, it seems, man has

been forced to acquire by slow and painful degrees, and perhaps it only

differs from the artifice of animals in that it has been aided and

reinforced by imagination, that is by art, that is by the power the

human soul possesses of projecting itself into the unknown, and

adventuring in the realm of nothingness. Man, I mean, could never have

invented the telephone, had he not first created it, had he not

conceived the possibility of its existence, when as yet, it was

non-existent, and so his artifice will always be progressive, and

distinguished from the artifice of animals.

But art is born with man, and is of the essence, the very differentia of

man. It is of his very inmost being, and therefore, I suppose, is

removed from his consciousness simply because it is within and not from

without. You may say that I have been vague, that I have not solved the

problem I propounded, that I have not clearly explained whether the

Greeks knew what they did when they worshipped Dionysus, whether

Rabelais was conscious of an inner meaning in his praise of wine,

whether Dickens understood the value of his punch and brandy. But if I

have been vague it is because man, in the last analysis, is a tremendous

mystery, because he is a complex being, because he is at once

Pantagruel, and Panurge, and Frère Jean, because he is both Don Quixote

and Sancho Panza. In some cases Pantagruel and Panurge seem to speak a

common language, to be able to communicate the one with the other: if

Rabelais wrote the "Dive Bouteille" chapters, he certainly understood

much of that which he had expressed in symbols. Sometimes the two seem

like foreigners in one home, Pantagruel dictates, and Panurge the scribe

writes down his words, hardly or not at all comprehending the magic

symbols that he expresses. So Dickens ludicrously misinterprets his own

"Pickwick." And, doubtless, this understanding of the artificer of the

artist varies in an almost infinite chain of _nuances_: there have been

artists, perhaps, who have worked like men under the influence of

haschish, who have opened their mouths and prophesied, and then

recovering from the possession, have sat up and stared, and asked where

they were, and what they had been doing. Indeed, it may be that this was

the condition of the working of art in the very dawn of human life, for

this, no doubt, is the explanation of that old equation in which bards,

magicians, seers, prophets, and madmen ranked all together as men who

spoke and worked miracles, things unintelligible to the "common sense,"

to the understanding which regulates and arranges the affairs of the

common life. All these were alike men of the mountains, men who withdrew

from the camp, and went apart into high solitary places, into the lonely

wilderness, into the forest, and in such retirements and cells they

uttered the voices that came to them, speaking words that were

unintelligible to themselves.

On the other hand there may have been artists in whom the two persons

have been happily reconciled, who have not only the "gift of tongues"

but also the gift of the interpretation of tongues. Even these, I think,

are always "possessed," ecstatic, rapt from their common nature at the

moment of inspiration, but afterwards, when the magic song is done, they

awake and return and remember, and understand, in a measure at least,

the meaning of their prophecies. They never wholly understand, they are

never able to express in rational terms the _whole_ force of the

message, for the good reason that the language of the soul infinitely

transcends the language of the understanding; because art is, indeed,

the sole channel by which the highest and purest truth can reach us. You

may, perhaps, succeed in giving a Boer "some notion" of a Greek chorus

through the medium of the "Taal," but it would be vain to dream of

translating almost perfect beauty into that poor medium, framed for the

temporary and corporal necessities of rough and illiterate farmers. And

so, however well an artist or those who appreciate his work may

"understand" his meaning, they do but "understand" a little; since the

tongue of art has many words which have no rendering in the speech of

the understanding.

Here, then, is another form of our text which enables us to separate art

from artifice, literature from reading matter. Artifice is explicable;

you remember that someone has said Thackeray was simply the ordinary

clubman _plus_ genius and a style. We must correct his phrases: but if

you substitute an "immense talent of observation" for genius, and a

"great gift of expression" for style, I think the definition admirable.

Thackeray, in short, is the clubman of heightened faculties; he differs

not in quiddity but in quality and quantity from his neighbour at the

window; he looks more closely than Tom Eaves, and he can give you the

result of his inspection in better phrases and with a better system, but

he looks at the same things from the same standpoint, and you and I can

admire his work and be amused and delighted by it, but we have no sense

of miracle, of transcendent vision and achievement. We simply see a man

who does the things that we do, but does them with a far greater

dexterity: you may watch an acrobat with an immense admiration, but you

recognise that you, too, are potentially an acrobat, that with a little

training you, too, could hang by the heels, though not with such grace,

nor for so long a time.

But art is always miraculous. In its origin, in its working, in its

results it is beyond and above explanation, and the artist's

unconsciousness is only one phase of its infinite mysteries.