searching gaze of one who expects the unexpected. It is his
business to make experience interesting, not, like Swinburne, by
multiplication, but rather by division--by the method of the
microscope which reveals in a fly's wing some unsuspected fineness of
pattern and variegated brilliance of colour. He himself is fond of the
word "curiosity"; it defines something that is central to his
personality; this, brought into activity by the "representational
impulse" (which in his opinion is the one justification for the
artist), takes form in the intricate and delicately woven patterns of
human temperament which are the objects of his curiosity.

And now we begin to see why every critic, when considering an author's
works, almost invariably, and instinctively, examines not only his
finished works, but also whatever may be known about him as a man. I
admit, as all would admit, that his works must stand or fall solely on
their own account; but the critic finds that in seeking to discover
the central interest and significance of an author's art his task is
facilitated if once he can find the clue to his temperament. This
backstairs knowledge does the trick for him. The bond between the man
and his art is so necessary and immediate that no objectiveness of
method can conceal it. It was by realising this fact, and applying his
exceptionally fine critical intuition to this task, that Professor
Raleigh, considering the _essentials_, was able to draw a very much
more convincing picture of the personality of Shakespeare than that
which was drawn, brilliantly indeed, by Mr. Frank Harris; but Mr.
Harris, I think, devoted his attention to qualities in Shakespeare
which--whether in any sense real or not--were in any case secondary
and inessential elements in the dramatist's character. And this is why
his criticism, in spite of its brilliance, was comparatively
unimportant.

I must not be supposed to mean that the artist begins with an abstract
conception, and that he then proceeds to search for objects suitable
to its concrete representation. There are, I know, brilliant novelists
and painters who have proceeded in that manner; but the result, to my
mind, seldom reveals that complete unity of object and idea which men
require; for this method is so dependent upon the intellectual fitting
of facts to idea that either the facts are forced and made unreal, or
the idea is sacrificed. I am told that in the case of Mr. Joseph
Conrad the proces