But in the meantime
there has been a good deal of dipping of pens in chaos, and authors have
found excuses for themselves in a theory of literature which is impatient
of difficult writing. It would not matter if it were only the paunched and
flat-footed authors who were proclaiming the importance of writing without
style. Unhappily, many excellent writers as well have used their gift of
style to publish the praise of stylelessness. Within the last few weeks I
have seen it suggested by two different critics that the hasty writing
which has left its mark on so much of the work of Scott and Balzac was a
good thing and almost a necessity of genius. It is no longer taken for
granted, as it was in the days of Stevenson, that the starry word is worth
the pains of discovery. Stevenson, indeed, is commonly dismissed as a
pretty-pretty writer, a word-taster without intellect or passion, a
juggler rather than an artist. Pater's bust also is mutilated by
irreverent schoolboys: it is hinted that he may have done well enough for
the days of Victoria, but that he will not do at all for the world of
George. It is all part of the reaction against style which took place when
everybody found out the aesthetes. It was, one may admit, an excellent
thing to get rid of the aesthetes, but it was by no means an excellent
thing to get rid of the virtue which they tried to bring into English art
and literature. The aesthetes were wrong in almost everything they said
about art and literature, but they were right in impressing upon the
children of men the duty of good drawing and good words. With the
condemnation of Oscar Wilde, however, good words became suspected of
kinship with evil deeds. Style was looked on as the sign of minor poets
and major vices. Possibly, on the other hand, the reaction against style
had nothing to do with the Wilde condemnation. The heresy of the
stylelessness is considerably older than that. Perhaps it is not quite
fair to call it the heresy of stylelessness: it would be more accurate to
describe it as the heresy of style without pains. It springs from the idea
that great literature is all a matter of first fine careless raptures, and
it is supported by the fact that apparently much of the greatest
literature is so. If lines like

Hark, hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings,

or

When daffodils begin to peer,

or

His golden locks time hath to silver turned,

shape themselves in the poet's first thoughts, h