Literature differs from explanatory and scientific writing in being
wrought about a mood, or a community of moods, as the body is wrought
about an invisible soul; and if it uses argument, theory, erudition,
observation, and seems to grow hot in assertion or denial, it does so
merely to make us partakers at the banquet of the moods. It seems to me
that these moods are the labourers and messengers of the Ruler of All, the
gods of ancient days still dwelling on their secret Olympus, the angels of
more modern days ascending and descending upon their shining ladder; and
that argument, theory, erudition, observation, are merely what Blake
called 'little devils who fight for themselves,' illusions of our visible
passing life, who must be made serve the moods, or we have no part in
eternity. Everything that can be seen, touched, measured, explained,
understood, argued over, is to the imaginative artist nothing more than a
means, for he belongs to the invisible life, and delivers its ever new and
ever ancient revelation. We hear much of his need for the restraints of
reason, but the only restraint he can obey is the mysterious instinct that
has made him an artist, and that teaches him to discover immortal moods in
mortal desires, an undecaying hope in our trivial ambitions, a divine love
in sexual passion.
1895.