et within singeing
distance of the "everlasting bonfire." In other words, I have not yet
written "London Nights," which, it appears (I can scarcely realize it,
in my innocent abstraction in aesthetical matters), has no very
salutary reputation among the blameless moralists of the press. I
need not, therefore, on this occasion, concern myself with more than
the curious fallacy by which there is supposed to be something
inherently wrong in artistic work which deals frankly and lightly
with the very real charm of the lighter emotions and the more
fleeting sensations.

I do not wish to assert that the kind of verse which happened to
reflect certain moods of mine at a certain period of my life, is the
best kind of verse in itself, or is likely to seem to me, in other years,
when other moods may have made me their own, the best kind of
verse for my own expression of myself. Nor do I affect to doubt that
the creation of the supreme emotion is a higher form of art than the
reflection of the most exquisite sensation, the evocation of the most
magical impression. I claim only an equal liberty for the rendering
of every mood of that variable and inexplicable and contradictory
creature which we call ourselves, of every aspect under which we
are gifted or condemned to apprehend the beauty and strangeness
and curiosity of the visible world.

Patchouli! Well, why not Patchouli? Is there any "reason in nature"
why we should write exclusively about the natural blush, if the
delicately acquired blush of rouge has any attraction for us? Both
exist; both, I think, are charming in their way; and the latter, as a
subject, has, at all events, more novelty. If you prefer your
"new-mown hay" in the hayfield, and I, it may be, in a scent-bottle, why
may not my individual caprice be allowed to find expression as well
as yours? Probably I enjoy the hayfield as much as you do; but I
enjoy quite other scents and sensations as well, and I take the former
for granted, and write my poem, for a change, about the latter. There
is no necessary difference in artistic value between a good poem
about a flower in the hedge and a good poem about the scent in a
sachet. I am always charmed to read beautiful poems about nature in
the country. Only, personally, I prefer town to country; and in the
town we have to find for ourselves, as best we may, the _decor_
which is the town equivalent of the great natural _decor_ of fields
and hills. Here it is that artific