f
himself. But in the other work of his it was otherwise. He has put his
method on record: he listened through a chink in the floor, and wrote
around other people. It is characteristic of the art of our time. Let it
be called art if the critics will, but it is not life.

IV

No, it is not life. But there is so much talk just now of getting "down
to fundamentals," of the poetry of the tramp "walking the world," and
the rest of it, that it would be well if we _did get_ down to
fundamentals; and this is one thing fundamental--the tramp is a deserter
from life. He evades the troubled field where great causes are fought;
he shuns the battle because of the wounds and the sacrifice; he has no
heart for high conflict and victory. Let him under the cover of darkness
but secure his share of the spoils and the world may go to wreck. Yes,
he is the meanest of things--a deserter. On the field of battle he would
be shot. If we let him desert the field of life, go his way and walk the
world, let us not at least hail him as a hero.

The Repertory Theatre is the nursery of this particular art-cult, and
'twould relieve some of us to talk freely about it. The Repertory
Theatre has already become fashionable, and is quite rapidly become a
nuisance. Men are making songs and plays and lectures for art's sake,
for the praise of a coterie or to shock the bourgeois--above all shock
the bourgeois. A certain type of artist delights in shocking the
bourgeois--a riot over a play gives him great satisfaction. In passing,
one must note with exasperation, perhaps with some misgiving, how men
raise a riot over something not worth a thought, and will not fight for
things for which they ought to die. But he likes the bourgeois to think
him a terrible person; in his own esteem he is on an eminence, and he
proceeds to send out more shock-the-bourgeois literature; and 'tis
mostly very sorry stuff. Sometimes he tries to be emotional and is but
painfully artificial; sometimes he tries to be merry and gives us
flippancy for fun. And we feel a terrible need for getting back to a
standard, worthy and true. Great work can be made only for the love of
work; not for money, not for art's sake, not for intellectual appeal nor
flippant ridicule, but for the pure love of things, good, true and
beautiful. With the best of intentions we may fail; and this should be
laid down as a safe guiding principle; a dramatist should be moved by
his own tragedy; the novelist