t school was Paul Verlaine, the immortal
poet who enlarged the scope of French verse--the poet who achieved for
French poetry what I am told the so-called decadent philosopher Nietzsche
has done for German prose. Unfortunately I do not know German, and it
seems almost impossible to add to the German language. But Nietzsche, I
am assured by competent authorities, has performed a similar feat to that
of Luther on the issue of his Bible.

When, therefore, we hear of decadence in literature or art, even if we
accept Mr. Balfour's definition of its symptom--'_the employment of an
over-wrought technique_'--we must remember that Decadence and Decay have
now different meanings, though originally they meant the same sort of
thing. An over-wrought technique is characteristic of the decadent
school of France, particularly of Mallarme, and some of our own
decadents. Walter Pater and Sir Thomas Browne. The existence of writers
adopting an over-wrought technique, however, is not (and Mr. Balfour
would repudiate the idea) a sign of decay as commonplace moralists would
have us believe, but of realised perfection. Pater is the most perfect
prose writer we ever produced. The Euphuists of the sixteenth century
were of course decadents, and I think you will admit that they did not
herald any decay in our literature.

The truth is that men after a certain age, if not on the crest of the
waves themselves, become bored with counting the breakers, and decide
that the tide is going out. You must often have had arguments with
friends on this subject when walking by the sea. The water seems to be
receding; you can see that there is an ebb; and then an unusually long
wave comes up and wets your feet. Great writers are guilty of a similar
error without any intention of contriving a literary conceit (as I
suspect many a past outcry to have been). Even Pater declared that he
would not disturb himself by reading any contemporary literature
published by an author who did not exist before 1870. He never read
Stevenson or Kipling. Now that is a terrible state to be in; it is a
symptom of premature old age; not physical but mental old age.

The art of the present day is not architecture, painting, or literature.
It is the art of remaining young. It is the art of life. It is a
science. The fairer, the stronger, the better sex--shall I call its
members our equals or our superiors?--have always realised this. Indeed,
they have employed ing