hardly go on. Why
are modern sunsets so intolerably true to Turner?"

He looked round as if for an answer; but, since nobody had anything to
say, he passed one hand over his eyes, as if to shut out some dreadful
vision, and continued with rather less vivacity--

"For the true artist is always conceited, just as the true Philistine is
always fond of going to the Royal Academy. I have brought the art of
preposterous conversation to the pitch of perfection; but I have been
greatly handicapped in my efforts by the egregious wisdom of a world
that insists upon taking me seriously. There is nothing that should be
taken seriously, except, possibly, an income or the music halls, and I
am not an income or a music hall, although I am intensely and strangely
refined. Yet I have been taken seriously throughout my career. My
lectures have been gravely discussed. My plays have been solemnly
criticised by the amusing failures in literature who love to call
themselves 'the gentlemen of the press.' My poems have been boycotted by
prurient publishers; and my novel, 'The Soul of Bertie Brown,' has
ruined the reputation of a magazine that had been successful in shocking
the impious for centuries. Bishops have declared that I am a monster,
and monsters have declared that I ought to be a bishop. And all this has
befallen me because I am an artist in absurdity, a human being who dares
to be ridiculous. I practise the exquisite art of folly, an art that
will in the future take rank with the arts of painting, of music, of
literature. I was born to be absurd. I have lived to be absurd. I shall
die to be absurd; for nothing can be more absurd than the death of a man
who has lived to sin, instead of having lived to suffer. I married to be
absurd; for marriage is one of the most brilliant absurdities ever
invented by a prolific imagination. We are all absurd; but we are not
all artists, because we are not all self-conscious. The artist must be
self-conscious. If we marry seriously, if we live solemnly, and die with
a decent gravity, we are being absurd; but we do not know it, and
therefore our absurdity has no value. I am an artist, because I am
consciously absurd; and I wish to impress upon you to-day, that if you
wish to live improperly, you must be consciously absurd too. You must
commit follies; but you must not be under the impression that you are
performing sensible acts, otherwise you will take rank with sensible
people, who are invariably