of that
phrase, he is not. Still, he might be considered as an exemplification
of what the phrase might be made to mean. But instead of being diverted
into a barren dispute over terminologies, one may endeavour to bring
into prominence an aspect of Tchehov which has an immediate
interest--his modernity. Again, the word is awkward. It suggests that he
is fashionable, or up to date. Tchehov is, in fact, a good many phases
in advance of all that is habitually described as modern in the art of
literature. The artistic problem which he faced and solved is one that
is, at most, partially present to the consciousness of the modern
writer--to reconcile the greatest possible diversity of content with the
greatest possible unity of aesthetic impression. Diversity of content we
are beginning to find in profusion--Miss May Sinclair's latest
experiment shows how this need is beginning to trouble a writer with a
settled manner and a fixed reputation--but how rarely do we see even a
glimmering recognition of the necessity of a unified aesthetic
impression! The modern method is to assume that all that is, or has
been, present to consciousness is _ipso facto_ unified aesthetically. The
result of such an assumption is an obvious disintegration both of
language and artistic effort, a mere retrogression from the classical
method.

The classical method consisted, essentially, in achieving aesthetic unity
by a process of rigorous exclusion of all that was not germane to an
arbitrary (because non-aesthetic) argument. This argument was let down
like a string into the saturated solution of the consciousness until a
unified crystalline structure congregated about it. Of all great artists
of the past Shakespeare is the richest in his departures from this
method. How much deliberate artistic purpose there was in his
employment of songs and madmen and fools (an employment fundamentally
different from that made by his contemporaries) is a subject far too big
for a parenthesis. But he, too, is at bottom a classic artist. The
modern problem--it has not yet been sufficiently solved for us to speak
of a modern method--arises from a sense that the classical method
produces over-simplification. It does not permit of a sufficient sense
of multiplicity. One can think of a dozen semi-treatments of the problem
from Balzac to Dostoevsky, but they were all on the old lines. They
might be called Shakespearean modifications of the classical method.

Tchehov, we