meet it,
we hunt it down even with a pack of critics. In our chastest moments we
enter a concert-hall or gallery with the deliberate intention of being
moved; in our most abandoned we pick up Browning or Alfred de Musset and
allow our egotism to bask in their oblique flattery. Now, when we come
to art with a mood of which we expect it to make something brilliant or
touching there can be no question of being possessed by absolute beauty.
The emotion that we obtain is thrilling enough, and exquisite may be;
but it is self-conscious and reminiscent: it is conditioned. It is
conditioned by our mood: what is more--critics please take note--this
precedent mood not only colours and conditions our experience, but draws
us inevitably towards those works of art in which it scents sympathy and
approval. To a reflective moralist Wordsworth will always mean more
than a yellow primrose meant to Peter Bell. In our moments of bitter
disillusionment it is such a comfort to jest with Pope and His Lordship
that we lose all patience with the advanced politician who prefers
Blake. And, behold, we are in a world of personal predilections, a
thousand miles from absolute values.

Discussion of this question is complicated by the fact that a belief in
the absolute nature of beauty is generally considered meritorious. It
can be hitched onto, and even made to support, a disbelief in the theory
that the universe is a whimsical and unpremeditated adventure which
rolls merrily down the road to ruin without knowing in the least where
it is going or caring to go anywhere in particular. This theory is
unpopular. Wherefore, absolute beauty is too often fitted into a whole
system of absolutes or rather into The Absolute; and, of course,
it would be intolerable to suppose that we could ever fail to
recognize--should I say Him? Unluckily, history and personal
experience--those two black beasts of _a priori_ idealists--here await
us. If beauty be absolute, the past was sometimes insensitive, or we
are: for the past failed to recognize the beauty of much that seems to
us supremely beautiful, and sincerely admired much that to us seems
trash. And we, ourselves, did we never despise what to-day we adore?
Murillo and Salvator Rosa and forgers of works by both enjoyed for years
the passionate admiration of the _cognoscenti_ In Dr. Johnson's time
"no composition in our language had been oftener perused than Pomfret's
_Choice_." If ever there was a man who should