nt of
the drama either. The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a
country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the
classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the
free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer
why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not
paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of
them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh
mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it
appears they get so angry and bewildered, that they always use two
stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly
unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What
they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is
grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a
beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly
immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing
that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter
to subject-matter. But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an
ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones. There is not a single
real poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the
British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and
these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France,
is the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make
the establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England.
Of course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word. That
they should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet, was only to be
expected. Wordsworth was a poet. But that they should have called
Charles Kingsley an immoral novelist is extraordinary. Kingsley's prose
was not of a very fine quality. Still, there is the word, and they use
it as best they can. An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it. The
true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is
absolutely himself. But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of
art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the
public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that
was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously
question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and
co