f their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular.
The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide
difference. If a man of science were told that the results of his
experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a
character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the
subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of
people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that
he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought,
provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those
who had never thought in any sphere at all--well, nowadays the man of
science and the philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is
really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected
to brutal popular control, to authority in fact--the authority of
either the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed
for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have
to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the
community, or the Church, or the Government, to interfere with the
individualism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with
the individualism of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does
more than linger; it is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.

In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the
public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have
been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read
it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult
poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them,
they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in
which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of
popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces
such badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form,
such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The
popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It
is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is
too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style,
psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned
are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most
uncultivated mind. It is too di