is the golden rule of the Futurists. They have conceived a
strange contempt for the visible world. They tell us that a running
horse "has not four legs, but twenty," but that is no reason for
leaving the horse entirely out of the picture, as some of the
enthusiasts do. They do not realise that our sensations about horse
and the movements of horse can only be painted in terms of horse--that
art is not a dissipation of life into wavy lines and dots and dashes,
but the opposite. There may be a science of Futurism in which the
"force-lines" of a horse or a motor car may be part of a useful
diagram. These arbitrary lines, however, have no more to do with
imaginative art than the plus and minus signs in arithmetic.
Occasionally, of course, there is an obvious symbolism in the lines as
in the charging angles which represent the dynamism of a motor car.
But this is merely speed expressed by a commonplace symbol instead of
by a symbolic impression of the flying car itself. This is an
intellectual game rather than an art. Occasionally it gives us a
wonderful piece of broken impressionism; but the stricter Futurists
are symbolistic beyond all understanding. Their work is like an
allegory, to the meaning of which one has no key--an allegory printed
in the hieroglyphs of an unknown language.

XXVII

A DEFENCE OF CRITICS

Mr E. F. Benson has been attacking the critics, and reviving against
them the old accusation that they are merely men who have failed in
the arts. There could scarcely be a more unsupported theory. As a
matter of fact, to take Mr Benson's own art, there are probably far
more bad critics who end as novelists than bad novelists who end as
critics. Criticism is usually the beginning, and not the decadence, of
a man's authorship. Young men nowadays criticise before they graduate.
One becomes a critic when one puts on long trousers. It is as natural
as writing poetry. Indeed, the gift seems in some ways to be related
to poetry. It springs at its best from the same well of imagination.
This is not to compare the art of the critic to the art of the poet in
importance, but only in kind. Criticism is by its nature bound to keep
closer to the earth than poetry. It has frequently more resemblance to
the hedge-sparrow than to the lark. It is a chatterbox of argument,
not a divine spendthrift of the beauty that is above argument. It is
the interpreter of an interpretation. It gives us beauty second-hand.
Critics are