striving to dwell with inarticulate fondness upon the last word of hope for mankind. It soon appeared that the principle of life was essential to the resplendence of the Purple Head. Within a few moments it had assumed so ghastly a hue that the Rajah himself was intimidated, and directed that it should be consumed with the body. The same full moon that watched the white-robed throng busied with the rites of incineration in a grove of palms, beheld also the seven dragons contending for the body of Marcobad. But, for many a year, the maids and matrons of Rome were not weary of regarding, extolling and coveting the priceless purple tissue that glowed in the fane of Jupiter Capitolinus." The outlines are clear, but they are not abrupt; the sentences are well co-ordinated, but full of variety; the style interprets the material exactly, but with a grace of movement of its own. As verse examples I suggest. Francis Thompson's "Ode to the Dead Cardinal of Westminster" and James Thomson's "To our Ladies of Death" : 'Last Thou, retirèd nun and throneless queen, Of the pseudo-picturesque I need give you no examples. Open a daily newspaper and compare its idiom (varying of course in degree) with the novels, speeches, travels, biographies, criticism, essays which resemble it in kind. They are not few. XIV THE ARTIST, THE STATE, AND THE AMATEUR MY DEAR X, I am afraid you found my last letter both sporadic and laborious, attributes that do not properly belong to the dashing Curtian. In this letter, I want to pique you by enforcing the astonishing paradox that a healthy nation cannot do without the arts. By arts, I do not mean only the crafts, but painting, music, sculpture, and, above all, sweet Mistress Literature. How it would benefit a Labour Leader if he knew a little literature ! You must not imagine that I am an advocate of classical austerities, by conviction. I have been merely attempting to give a definition of style which will in the first place begin a counter-offensive against the pseudo-picturesque, and, in the second, may serve as a nucleus from which future literature might once more reaffirm its proper intimacy with the national life. The evolution of style or rather the emergence of the synthetic quality out of understanding (which is not necessarily knowledge)* is in microcosm what we have a right to expect of society. Art, as Morris truly said, "is, and must be, either in its abundance or its barrenness, in its sincerity and hollow * Those who confuse knowledge with understanding forget what happened to Alice's bulrushes. ness, the expression of the society amongst which it exists." Precisely, in fact, what is wrong with style is wrong with society. There is no surer index of the corruption of modern England than the slovenly, garish, sentimental style (so viciously hard and prosaic if you dig to its root) paramount in the commoner fashions of contemporary writing. Let it not be forgotten therefore that the degradation of style is not only a consequence of industrial slavery but that mankind positively cannot live without feeling in one way or another towards form. Is not the tragedy of modern society proof enough of this commonplace-modern society disintegrating in the shapeless clash of discords, in its lack of any sense of coherence and equilibrium, and pawning itself to what is surely the most ironical of alliances, greed on the one hand and incompetence on the other. The present system then must stand or fall according as it stimulates or debases the ultimate forces by which man exists-the faculty for idleness or pleasure and the faculty for energy or work. And the principle of reconstruction, unless we are to perpetuate the system in another shape, must aim towards the readjustment of an internal order in social and public life. Not external, because there again you are caught between incoherence and coercion, the besetting follies of the age. It is this reintegrating power which must occupy reformers in the future; this should be a goal for them over and beyond economic changes, political discontents and social upheavals. I used to incline towards the Guild idea of selfgovernment more than any other, for England during the last decade has had a bitter taste of State and Government control-unchecked by any free organization out side of it-which she is not likely to forget. But neither a Guild nor any other system deserves to prosper unless it takes this further purpose into account. Otherwise they are mere machinery which the Guild system has given ample evidence of being. Nor do I believe that we shall ever achieve internal order or synthesis or form under a Guild or any other potential community, except by formulating the relations between art and the commonwealth. The whole question depends on the expansion or contraction of the meaning of art. If we assume that humanity in its individual or collective aims contains within itself the seed of an artistic purpose, then it is the plain obligation of all who are interested in its welfare to help the seed first to germinate, and then to be cultivated to its full flower-in other words to give it expression and finally form. If, on the other hand, humanity presents too arid a soil for these pioneers, then let us in at the gates of the City of Dreadful Night and have done with it. But the first assumption is the more probable one. A perverted æsthetic energy is implicit even amid the chaos and dissolution of modern life and in spite of the organized efforts of vested interests to uproot it. The poorest slum-dweller indulges his taste in superfluous ornament; the industrial drudge trims and finishes the shoddy material in the use of which he has neither interest nor pleasure. In every trade and profession there is a mass of talent-but untrained, undirected, a-synthetic and devoted purely to external and material ends. The damnable acquisitive appetite deflects and disfigures the whole thing. Even in literature the cult of the pseudopicturesque admits the power of aesthetic execution. G But if there is a creative instinct it is certainly sprung upon and choked by the thorns. It is for that reason— that he may realize indefinite æsthetic needs-that the artist relies upon any democratic developments you will, and they, if they are going to make any difference to society, must rely upon the artist. For what, after all, is the principle of democracy (in its proper, not its mob sense) but to divert the fruits of labour from the gratification of an economically parasitic class to the enjoyment and satisfaction of the whole community? What does that mean but, to quote Morris again," that the true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life"? This awakened interest surely implies an æsthetic and (if that interest cover both conception and fulfilment, both the selection of appropriate material and trained skill in interpreting it) points out the road to some final synthesis. To what degree again will social health and sanity abound and flourish unless an organic meaning be given to this individual impulse and it be manifested in all the busy, humming cells of national life? Such a principle may be Utopian, but a true democracy is an inn on the road to the spiritual Eldorado and Utopia itself, the logical goal of man's genuine needs and aspirations. Only under the influence of this conception may one dare to dogmatise upon what the public wants or about the authority of the artist in a future state. After all, true happiness is in itself an art, a delicate poise and a spontaneous equilibrium of the natural faculties. A forcible disharmony therefore (it must be forcible because the proper exercise of personality depends upon natura unity) between man's several parts, between his intellect |