ly did their best to amuse
me; they had agreeable people of a literary type to luncheon, tea, and
dinner. We heard some music, we went to a play or two, we went to look
at some pictures. But I confess to having laboured under an increasing
depression, because the whole thing was conducted by rule and line, and
in a terribly businesslike way; we knew beforehand exactly what we were
to look out for. We did not go in a liberal and expectant spirit,
hoping that we might find or see or hear some unexpectedly beautiful
thing, but we went in a severely critical spirit, to see if we could
detect how the painters and musicians, whose art we were to inspect,
deviated from received methods. We went, indeed, not to gain an
impression of originality and personality, but to look out for certain
tabulated qualities; it depressed me too, perhaps unduly, to hear the
jargon with which these criticisms were heralded. The triumph appeared
to be to use a set of terms, appropriate to one art, of the effects
produced by the others; thus in music we went in search of colour and
light, of atmospheric effect and curve; in painting it seemed we were
in search of harmony, rhythm, and tone. I should not have minded if I
had felt that these words really meant anything in the minds of those
who used them; but it seemed to me that the critics were more in love
with their terminology than with the effects themselves; and still
more, that they went not to form novel impressions, but to search for
things which they had been told to expect.

It was the same with the treatment of literature; it all seemed reduced
to a game played with counters. There was no simplicity of
apprehension; the point seemed to be to apply a certain set of phrases
as decisively as possible. I never heard a generous appreciation of a
book; what I rather heard was trivial gossip about the author, followed
by shallow, and I thought pedantic, judgments upon an author's lack of
movement or aerial quality. If one of the approved authors under
discussion seemed to me painfully sordid and debased, one was told to
look out for his tonic realism and his virile force. How many times in
those sad hours was I informed that the artist had no concern with
ethical problems! If I maintained that an artist's concern is with any
motives that sway humanity, I was told smilingly that I wanted to treat
art in the spirit of a nursery governess. If, on the other hand, a book
appeared to me utterly unrea