box. There is such a thing as
civilized art, but its civility lies in adventitious and subsidiary
qualities--in the means, not in the end. It seems to me we do mean
something when we say that Phidias, Sophocles, and Aristophanes,
Raphael, Racine, Moliere, Poussin, Milton, Wren, Jane Austen and Mozart
are highly civilized artists, and that the creators of the Gothic
cathedrals and the author of the _Chanson de Roland_, Villon, Webster,
Rembrandt, Blake, Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, Whitman, Turner, Wagner
and the Congolese fetish-makers are not. But, whatever we may mean,
assuredly we do not mean that one set is superior to the other. They
differ widely; but they differ in the means by which they compass the
same end. It is absurd to argue that civilization is either favourable
or unfavourable to art; but it is reasonable to suppose that it may be
the one or the other to a particular artist. Different temperaments
thrive in different atmospheres. How many mute, inglorious Miltons,
Raphaels, and Mozarts may not have lost heart and gone under in the
savage insecurity of the dark ages? And may not the eighteenth
century, which clipped the wings of Blake, have crushed the fluttering
aspirations of a dozen Gothically-minded geniuses and laughed some
budding Wagner out of all idea of expressing his ebullient personality?

It is possible to speak of civilized or uncivilized art and mean
something by our words; but what we mean has nothing to do with the
ultimate value of the work. And, in the same way, there may be an
unessential connection between art and politics, though more remote and
unimportant still. As I have explained too often already, an artist,
before he can create effectively, has got to work himself into a
passion; by some means he has got to raise his feelings to the creative
temperature and his energies to a corresponding pitch of intensity. He
must make himself drunk somehow, and political passion is as good
a tipple as another. Religion, Science, Morals, Love, Hate, Fear,
Lust--all serve the artist's turn, and Politics and Patriotism have done
their bit. It is clear that Wordsworth was thrown into the state of mind
in which he wrote his famous sonnets by love of England and detestation
of France, by fear of revolution and longing for order; but how much
patriotism or constitutionalism has to do with the suave beauty of those
harmonious masterpieces may be inferred from the fact that "hoarse
Fitzgerald" and Mr. K