h was tacitly
accepted by even the best of the imaginative writers of the period. The
understanding was that brutality, lust and selfishness were to be
represented as being qualities only of "bad" people, plainly labelled as
such. Under this compromise some magnificent works were produced. But
inasmuch as the compromise involved a suppression of a great and
all-important fact about the human soul, it could not endure forever. The
only question was, under what influences would the revolt occur?

It occurred, as George Moore's quite typical and naively illuminating
confessions reveal, under French influences. Something of the same sort had
been happening in France, and the English rebels found exemplars of revolt
ready to their need. These French rebels were of all sorts, and it was
naturally the most extreme that attracted the admiration of the English
malcontents. Chief among these were Gautier and Baudelaire.

Gautier had written in "Mademoiselle de Maupin" a lyrical exaltation of the
joys of the flesh: he had eloquently and unreservedly pronounced the
fleshly pleasures _good_. Baudelaire had gone farther: he had said
that Evil was beautiful, the most beautiful thing in the world--and proved
it, to those who were anxious to believe it, by writing beautiful poems
about every form of evil that he could think of.

They were still far, it will be observed, from the sane and truly
revolutionary conception of life which has begun to obtain acceptance in
our day--a conception of life which traverses the old conceptions if "good"
and "evil." Baudelaire and Gautier hardly did more than brilliantly
champion the unpopular side of a foolish argument. It may seem odd to us
today that such a romantic, not to say hysterical, turning-upside-down of
current British morality could so deeply impress the best minds of the
younger generation in England. Its influence, when mixed with original
genius of a high quality, produced the "Poems and Ballads" of Swinburne. It
produced also _The Yellow Book_, a more characteristic and less happy
result. It produced a whole host of freaks and follies. But it did contain
a liberating idea--the idea that human nature is a subject to be dealt
with, not to be concealed and lied about. And, among others, George Moore
was set free--set free to write some of the sincerest fiction in our
language.

These "Confessions" reveal him in the process of revaluing the values of
life and art for himself. It was no