THINGS AND THOUGHTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2652, 11 January 1905, Page 75

THINGS AND THOUGHTS.

By John Chkistie,

INEFFECTUAL GENIUS.

There are men of genius who are not artists, and artists who not men of genius, yet no man who is merely either will become a permanent force in the world. The mere craftsman, without inspiration or originality, need not detain us. He may be quite pleased with himself, and may be the means of giving considerable pleasure to this or that little knot or nation of admirers ; but he is of no vital value to mankind. It is otherwise with the man who is elementally a genius. His function is to deal with things of enduring interest, and he may have little to learn except the secrets oil the supreme way of dealing with them. Even if lie should, as an artist, know little at the outset, hisi is yet a case in which, by taking thought and the right kind of trouble, the Ethiopian may change his skin, the leopard it? spots, and a man add somewhat to ''•' stature.

Turn, for example, to poetry, and — what lessons await those who have wit to learn them. What are the things needful to the production of a perfect poetic work of genius? Not only dramatic insight, imagination or creative power. These sic indispensable ; but so, too, are judgment jn the selection of themes and forms, an. infallible sense of proportion, a faultless ear, a perfec* mastery of expression, a. taste that rigorously excludes defective or. ineffective words or phrases, us well : alien incidents, illustrations or reflections, and an art that knows when to stop vith a verse, a paragraph, or a complete Avork. How many poems in the English language comply with these requirements? There are some so-called masterpieces which do not, yet they continue to live in spit© of their defects. Let us assume that, for the purpose in hand, Gray's "Elegy" is one, of these; < poems : - and, having assumed , this, let us, read it as ending with the twenty-second stanza — _ . , , For who, "to dfumb forgetfulness a prey;. This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, -- Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind-? , If we do'this we have, subject to- certain minor qualifications, a perfect" poem-of its kind. But \Sray has added other verses which, while they continue to be partof the whole,, damn. the whole as a work of art. t All that follows , where we "have stopped is epilogual, and not pertinent to the main theme — namely, "the short and! simple annals of the poor" ; and- the re; flections jaxi^ing from the sympathetic survey or fnSSln- last earthly resting-place. These are finely dlaalt with in the poem as it is here proposed to read it, .and so read it closes artistically with an effectively expressed sentiment relevant to the theme, and of universal human interest. • What follows ;in the original version is verbal and sentimental surplusage, which tendis to destroy the effect of the antecedent symmetry, and deprives the poem of the artistic finish which otherwise it would have possessed in a very high degree.

There are other points in Gray's masterpiece worthy of the consideration of those who are interested in tne production of work intended to appeal to the human heart in all ages, climates, and countries. Observe how the elegy teems Avitb local allusions, and t& what an extent it is pervaded by local colour — in> other words, bowvery insular it is ; and can anything distinctively characterised, by local colour and insularity- appeal to mankind? To> men of English birth, or even of British race, the local allusions and local colour doubtless have a peculiar charm ; but howdo they affect a cultivated! Frenchman,Russian, Turk, Arab, Hindoo, Japanese, Polynesian, Maori? The subject of death itself is of universal human interest, and in so far as Gray touches its general aspects, the elegy must be as valid and effective at Delhi as it is at Stoke Pogis ; but even suck exquisite local touches as The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, and would probably be meaningless to men and women in any part of the world except England, unless they happened to be persons of exceptional knowledge, sensibility, and imagination. "The curfew tolling the knell of parting day," "drowsy tinkUngs lulling the distant fold," "the ivy-mantled tower," "the moping owl complaining to the moon," the "rugged! elms," and tho "yew tree's shade" stand for things which are part of England's imaginative heritage, and yet some of the things themselves have no longer an objective existence even in England. Their local colour, therefore, has become merely traditional even in the country of their origin, and so, even there, ■ they are already on the plane of interest! which they would have in the most distant and divergent lands, where they coulcl be expected to ap.peal only to persons of exceptional knowledge and sensibility., There may come a time when- these 'things will be so generally possessed by the human? race that what has been interesting aadJ significant to any of its members anywhere at anytime shall be so to all its inemebra gvery where, and at all times j but at m<s»

sent the indications are that local colour and local allusions must disappear in the stream of Time like dissolving dyes in the current of a river, and that the literature which depends for its effects upon them can have only a transitory interest for mankind, and sympathetic acceptance nowhere except within the province or parish of its origin.

The philosophy of this is simple enough. When an artist treats a flower or a mountain artistically for what is distinctly peculiar to it&elf, he narrows the interest, in the case of the flower, to botanists and to persons personally acquainted with its native place, and in the case of the mountain to travellers and the people who live in its neighbourhood. But when he deals with both for the. qualities which they possess in common with all flowers and mountains, all who have knowledge of any flowers or mountains will be interested in the result. In the one case the particular, in the other the -universal, has been made a subject of art ; in one the artist renders a service to a parish and a coterie, and in the other to the world and mankind.

A few instances may be cited by way of illustration. In the second stanza of Tennyson's "Dying Swan" we have an excellent example of photographic description dominated by local colour : ~~ Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white againsrfc the cold-white skyShone out the crowning snows. One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as-the wind did sigh; Above in the wind was the swallow Chasing itself at its own wild will; And far thro' thr anarish green and still The tangled water-courses slept, Shot over with purple and green and yellow.

Apart from the literary barbarism of rhyming "swallow" with "yellow," this verse is perfect in its way, in so far as its being surcharged with local colour can constitute perfection. But as poetry it is valueless, because the scene described is not only transfigured by imagination, but is untouched by the suggestion of any universal interest. It is quite otherwise with the same poet's bugle song : The splendour falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story; The long ligki stakes across the lakes-, And t'h^e wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying ; Blow, bugle; answer, echoes dying, dying, dying.

The scenery described in these magical lines is no doubt very local in one respect, but its elements are universal, and these, unitedly, are dealt with in a way which, while not excluding local colour, brings the whole within the scope of general human sympathy. This distinction is possessed in a still higher degree^ by eight lines in the fifteenth section of "In Memoriam" : To-night the winds begin to rise ,

And roar from yonder dropping ' day : The last red leaf is whirl'd away, The rooks are blown about the skies; The forest crack'd, the waters ourl'd 1 , The cattle huddled on the lea; > And wildly dash'd on tower and tree

The sunbeam strikes along the world.

The primary particulars in this magnificent description are peculiarly English and local, yet they are so vividly interfused with and dominated by elements everywhere common to Nature, and so coloured by transfiguring light from the inward eye of the poet, that the lines as they stand constitute a masterpiece which must appeal to men of sensibility in all parts of the planet.

A fine instance of the transfiguration of th© particular into the universal is found in the verse in Burns's "Mary in Heaven" which begins: —

Ayr, gurgling-, kissed Ills pebbled shore. Here the whole scene is thoroughly local, but it is penetrated and clothed with a human interest which lifts it to the level of a world-landscape of the first order.

This power of a pervasive and paramount human interest to transfigure the local and particular into the universal is finely exemplified in Scott's "Sun Upon th© Weirdlaw Hill," and in Arnold's "Scholar Gipsy" and "Thyrsis." The scenery described in these poems is distinctly local, but it is so effectually associated with a universal human element that all' three have the quality which interests and touches men as men, irrespective of race* or country. Without this they would still have teemed with local colour, but they would! have been mere, topographical and botanical descriptions {n verse, with no interfusion or touch of that transfiguring spirit Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns 1 , And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

Ifc must be admitted that this power to transfigure can work wonders with literature that may be iricrusted or even ingrained with inveterately local characteristics. For instance, the Hebrew scriptures teem with the crudest and most barbarous localism ; yet they are so penetrated with what is elemental in nature, and so pervaded by what is deepest and highest and most enduring in the spirit of man, that their localism, extreme though it be, counts for little more than the gnarled bark of an oak in the complete character of the tree. O Jerusalem., Jerusalem, Thou that kiliest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, How often would I have gathered thy children together, Even as a ten gathereih. lier chickens under her wings, And ye would not!

Here we have the cry of the idealist for all time, and the local word "Jerusalem" is eternally interchangeable with the name of every other place in the world inhabited by men and women.

This characteristic is nearly everywhere present in the Hebrew Scriptures. Hence these writings are the truest in the world ; that , is, they are the writings in which what is vital and enSuring in human nature most faithfully and thoroughly dominates •what is local and 1 particular, or merely peculiar to the Jews as Jews ; in contradistinction tp what is constitutionally characteristic of men as men, apart from place, JM§± or tjmi.. If we rea-d aright the lesson

.thus taught to us, we should soon learn to discriminate between what is temporary and what is enduring in the literature of our own day. For instance, when an author writes of a man as an Englishman, he necessarily gives us the insular, and, relatively, the particular, the parochial; but when he deals with- an Englishman as a man, on account of his human qualities and experiences, apart from manners, modes and interests strictly peculiar to him as an Englishman, we have the universal. In

the first category, the man and his doings are subjects for gossip, journalism, history, material for the interests and reputations of a day, and a locality ; in the second, for genius and art, and objects of abiding interest to mankind. This question of localism or local colour has other aspects. Authors who seek popularity by writing on occasional moods of the moment, and in language which directly appeals through its vulgarity or slanginess to the uneducated portions of the community, do so at their own peril. Even a paramount mood of the moment of to-day will have no interest to the masses who will have their own paramount moods, not cnly a hundred years hence, but even next year, or month, or week. The work which embodies such thing is not literature, but journalism, which concerns itself with what everybody is talking about today, but no one will think about tomorrow. Slang and catch phrases are similarly -deficient in the quality of diurableness. Hence the abiding writers are those who deal with "what is vital and permanently characteristic of human nature, not with evanescent moods and interests, phases of life which are crude and transitory, vanishing modes in manners or transitional types amongst men^ To be abiding they must write, too, not in slang or current catch phases, or the dialect of "a sect or a class or of a crude undeveloped people, but in language which the simplest educated mind can understand, which is strictly in keeping with the persistent genius of the tongue used, and as pure and perfect as the long results of time and judgment and taste can make it. All else must perish practically with the mood it represents, and. the vulgarity whereby the j mood appropriately expresses itself. Comi positions of this class soon cease to be readable except with the aid of a dictionary ; and a perfect work of art is always of universal significance and self-explana-tory, and requires no lneditatory expositor. It needs no notes or commentaries, and should have no label except its. name. When more than this is necessary, tho necessity proves the work to be transitory in value and provincial in character. It may here be asked how this doctrine affects the really fine poets who have written, or who may still write, in dialects, and doubtless the case of Burns will at, once present itself for consideration. But so far as Burns is concerned, the reply is that with his period and place, he could not help expressing himself as he did — that practically he tad no choice in the matter of aai effective medium of expression. Besides, his medium is wily in part a provincial dialect ; and then his matter is, in the main, so universal in kind that the world agrees to work Ihrough what is uncouth in its encasement, as men will, press through a hedge or jungle for fine fruit, or pure water, or a beautiful stretch of country, which cannot bs reached in any other way. But there can be few such instances in the history of the race. It must be admitted that there is a difference betwixt a- dialect spoken by a provincial nation or people and the jargon or slang used by persons who are merely the fungoid growths of debased social conditions which cannot last ; but nowadays the poet who expresses himself in a dialect in preference to doing so in language, deliberately handicaps himself, even if he should be a Bums. Therefore, while allowing for all the qualifying considerations, it is still true that specific local colour in expression or anything else is merely the mood of the moment in another aspect. Hence, to make it a paramount quality in literature is to insist on the parochial in preference to the national, or the national in preference to the cosmopolitan ; or on a photograph, which gives the mere letter or external part of a person or place, in preference to a painting which does not, it is true, ignore the ■external part, but lifts the whole subject from a local into a general interest by also reproducing its spirit or impart1 fcng to it the touch of a universal interest. Indeed, mere colour in human character or manners, or dialect, or scenery is, in j the pre-eminent degree, an instance of the letter that kills, unless it is interfused I with a spirit which places it permanently 1 within the sympathy of men in every part of the world. It is not wdiat interests a few that can interest all, unless the few, j while so interested, stand within the ; circle of universal feelings and relation- ' ships. The sum of the whole matter is ! that hitherto some men have achieved a local fame by writing to andi for clans, communities or nations, as others still ! achieve an evanescent reputation by writing to suit sects, cliques, classes or isolated peoples ; but now and henceforward real 1 and lasting fame will be won only by writing to and for the human race. j Men of genius who fail to learn this I lesson and to duly weigh other considerations bearing upon the adequate fulfillment of their great function will certainly become mere skeletons by the highway cf ' fame or mummies in its museums ; and not, as they should, stars that shine in the forehead of eternity. Mere genius without knowledge and without art is not sufficient to enable a man to write supremely well even for his own age, let alone for all time. For his impulse and the circuit of his power he E&iist be primarily under obligations to no one but himself ; but his art, his method of realising his impulse and expressing his power, can become (perfect only through the vigour, the insight, the skill, the taste, the comprehensiveness with which he nourishes and educates his own artistic telent with the lessons to be learned from his preijleces.-

sors and contemporaries, and from his own work critically regarded by himself. On this side of his work his reverence for his art should be greater than his reverence for the greatest masters of that art, for the judical detection and the right- use of the errors or shortcomings of those masters may be instrumental in enabling him to excel even th-em in artistry — in the consummate_use of his medium of expression. The lesson to be learned from the verbal and sentimental surplusage at the close of Gray's "Elegy" should ever be remembered in this connection. But even greater lessons that that await the sympathetic assimilation of modern men of genius. Much mental power is wasted through not being confined to the sphere within which it can be at its best. A gifted man fails somewhere in his mission when he omits to exercise discrimination in this connection. For example, Chaucer's reputation as a poet would have been greater than it is had he written only his "Canterbury Tales," with their incomparable prologue. But he, as most poets have done, ran into extravagancies and redundancies, and worked' in inferior veins not suited to— the display of his genius at its best. Milton, more almost? than anybody else, exhibits sureness of discrimination in respect to subjects suitable to his genius, though he encumbers his treatment with some things without which his work would be greater than it is, bacause it would be evener in the power with which it aspires to be interesting to what is unchanging in the mind of man. This power is at its best- in his portrayal of Lucifer and the other devils, because these are magnificently made up of the permanent elements in human nature. But when he deals with the Deity and the angels, and with the theologies of schoolmen, Hebrew priests, and English, Puritans, then, In the lowest deep, a lower deep, Still threatening to devour him, opens wide.

The reason is that such things in their particulars are of no permanent interest to the human mind, because, though man is pre-eminently a religious animal and a maker of gods, he is constantly changing, or on the point of changing, his religions and his gods, or, rather, taking up new spiritual relations to the universe, and' seeing Eternal Providence in new lights and aspects. Iso doubt every god is holy in his day, and has power unto salvation, so long as he is believed in by men — such as the miracle-working potency of -faith ; but when his day has passed, his cult and creeds are dry bones for the museums of the antiquary, but not metal for the furnaces and forges of the creative artist. Hence, even the Miltons of the race fail in themselves, and vainly vex the souls of their kind when they aspire to invest with perennial interest the dead or dying dogmas of past ages, concerning things concerning which the mind of man is in a state of eternal ebb and flow.

This failure to exercise judgment in connection with the exercise of genius has been wofully overlooked by men of great parts, with the result that libraries are crammed with lumber, and some of the brightest minds of the race are buried in rubbish which they themselves have piled upon themselves, like Sampson with the temple of the Philistines. Even a writer like Goldsmith would, have had a more felicitous fame had he left us only with, his two poems, two plays, and his one novel. , So, too, with the greatly gifted, yet too many-volumed Scott. It would* have been better for his genius and for his permanent influence had he concentrate-di nis splendid powers upon the perfectation of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake" in. poetry, and, say, "Old" Mortality," "Ivanhoe," and "Quentin Durward" in prose, instead of writing hurriedly and overmuch for the fools who rush through a book as a railway train might through the Garden of Eden, for the sake of getting to the end. Every great work should have an atmosphere within which he who once draws breath must be fain to breathe for ever ; but this character can never be adequately given to a book by any man who writes for money, or the multitude of persons who read for mere excitement.

It must be admitted that, in the case 'of original genius, much of what a poet writes may be written almost in spite of himself, when his sensibility and vocal gift yield inevitably to the pressure of the spirit of his time as the branches of a tree do to the wind. Indeed, it may be said that no pcetry really worth reading er preserving is ever written except under this influence ; but even work so done will lack enduring efficacy unless it is expressed! in the forms and terms of perfect art. Mazzini, in his essay on Byron and Goethe, ascribes this character of inevitableness to Byron's Laras, Corsairs, and! Ohilde Haroldis, and finds them full of interest and instruction, because Byron, through, them, sums up an epoch in which the human soul fruitlessly sought happiness in mere self-aggrandisement, self-assertion, and self-sufficiency. But though that maymake them interesting and instructive to the sociologist, and may have- been a factor in their popularity with Byron's contemporaries, it does not give them a permanent claim, as poems, on the interest of mankind. A great poet may be the voice or interpreter of an epoch, but his greatness will be only half realised unless his vocal methods answer the tests of his art at its highest in all particulars. This is where Byron fails in much of his work. Poetry must do more than interest or instruct the sociologist ; even in dealing with a given phase of the human spirit a poem must so deal with it that that spirit shall, in all ages, find it stimulating, strengthening, edifying, or entertaining- — a place of perennial refreshment or perfect rest ; and in itself, as a work of art, it must breathe all through of the rose of perfection. "Beppo," 5 "The Vision of Judgment," and "Don Juan," notwithstanding defects in their literary workmanship, approximately satisfx

this test, after their kind ; few, if any, of Byron's other' ■works do, and hence their character as instances of ineffectual genius. It may be' quite true that "Childe Harold," "Manfred," "Cain," "The Prisoner orChillon," "Mazeppa," "The Siege of Corinth,"' and other poems of his would secure to eny other poet an enviable reputation ; but Byron's own fame would have stood higher had they not been written by him. •In their way they are good enough, Lut they are not, like "Don Juan," "The Vision of , Judgment," and "Beppo," in Byron's most congenial manner, or in his most distinctively constitutional vein, and, therefore, as they do not represent the poet at his best, they prejudice the reputation and "the .poetic effectiveness, which would have been so much the greater but for their qualifying qualities. The list io not yet exhausted ;- indeed, there is hardly a~ poet who could not be brought into the catalogue. Even Shakespeare has Gothic extravagances and sl&TCnly details full of educational" value 'to the pilgrims of literary perfection. But, take s him in all, he is Nature's other self, and, as with Nature, the more one understands him, the more one loves, admires', and, sees the Tightness of what appears ■wrong at first sight. It is not suggested that Shakespeare's errors in style should, not* 'be called to judgment' or most carefully' avoided, nor that the great poet himself should be made the object of a demoralising fetishism. But as a whole, he Is so great in the conception and execution of his work 'that one sooner or later learns to look upon his literary Japses or shortcomings as we generally look upon' the gnarled knobs of an oak or the irregular outlines of a mountain; they are of no moment in- view of the central greatness of the object, and may even be : dramatically, quite in keeping with the subject. As a matter of fact Shakespeare's chief j lesson- for the man of genius ,lies less withii the literary than the moral sphere. The circumstance that millions of men who have never heard and -never will hear of the mighty poet are yet happy enough, and succeed fah-ly jvell in their respective paths in. life, is surely an immemorial lesson in. intellectual perspective and modesty, for ~it teaches that even the greatest man is not indispensable to Ills fellowmen. It is they who are Nature ; and he at most is only JX ature's interpreter, or double in miniature. The greatest man loes not create himself nor anything else ; ! he is the progeny "of Nature, and at most an- only interpret his .mother, and turn himself and all he knows about her to an interesting account, and perhaps even improve Nature. But in all this he is only ; a means, and Nature made the .means, j What does .Shakespeare himself say ?—? — - I Yet- Nature is -made better by no means *' But Nature made, that means. . . . This is .an 'art , - Which. does x mend Nature, change it rather, but IThe v art itself is Nature. , Yet it- has to be remembered that, although even Shakespeare may not be in- , dispensable to mankind, all, men are- made " intellectually and spiritually richer iy seeing, the" world and themselves mirrored in work like his and that of others of his creative kin; for it is only when they see ; their faces in a glass and their natures • in art that they truly know themselves. ; It is this fact which" justifies every lover , and' well-wisher of genius in suggesting . ■whatever -he honestly believes will help it . to realise itself to greater and greater per- : fection. Yefc in doing this the critic will ; merely ask genius to do what the w^orld •, asks in the case- of every worker and j craftsman — namely, to learn somewhat ] from the past, to" bring principles into a j clearer light, and to' follow such methods i as enable every doer to do his best. This j is done or can^be done in all callings ; arid j if genius cannot do likewise in its own j sphere, wherein, apart from its primary \ creative faculty, is it superior to common j talent or common sense ? The creative or \ inspirational power which is one of the factors of .genius is sometimes found in alliance with idiocy and apart from understanding, and in such cases it is as incapable of being taught as forked lightning, which* it somewhat resembles ; but there is in the greatest minds a co-ordinat? ing, self -mastering will , which, like the Jove of the' 'Grecian mythology, holds the lightning in its hand and controls the thunderbolt; and it is to,- intellect with";, this power that the^ serious critic naturally addresses ' himself. Surely of genius so endowed it is a small thing to, expect it to be able to distinguish between what to it is a fruitful and what a barren soil; and then to use its divine energy •with judgment. In exercising this high judicial faculty in connection with his work the competent disciple of art will sooner or later comp to see that in its last analysis the human spirit is , exceedingly joaaterialistic — that is, it hates futility and loves and insists on, substantial satisfactions. Therefore, the man of genius not only fails to satisfy it, but he offends it when he presents it with failures; these are felt to be reflections on the humanity of which it is a part, and which it feels should be ever ultimately successful and triumphant, as every man and woman hopes and expects to be in the long run, notwithstanding all examples to the contrary in the history of the race. Representations of gratuitous suffering or useless effort cannot, therefore, in the nature of things appeal to mankind; and every man, in so far as he is in intimate relationship with the main permanent tendencies of his race^ will recoil- from them as essentially feeble and ■unwholesome exhibitions of fiuman talent. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust him," says the chief character in the great poem of "Job" ; and this faith in, this loyalty to, this victoriously intimate alliance with the ideal and ■ydth eternal purpose aiusb emanate or flash from the human soul at its darkest or direst crises, or it fails to ' justify its kinship with humanity; and the poet who does not show in his work that he realises this^fact fails to establish lus claim to effectual genius, and will Assuredly never receive the suffrages of mankind, howerer he may stand with tha

undisoerning of his own day or with the curio-collecting minds of other times. Of course, it is not meant that a creative artist should shirk the portrayal of grief or suffering if it is in the line of the work he has in hand ; neither is it suggestedi that art should refuse to reflect or reproduce the melancholy incidents of life, or those phases of thought or feeling which are as sad as death, though they may be as transient as clouds, and yet also as natural to human nature as clouds are to the sky. But the man of genius most certainly should shun as a heinous sin the least inclination to indulge in the poor theatric talent which manufactures sadness or sorrow merely_ for the sake of moving the emotions. That is to get very far away from Nature, and' it is the glory of art to reflect, not only her external features, but to keep in intimate touch with her soul. True art, therefore, never harrows its lovers with merely manufactured ills or gratuitous grief, and never breaks humanity upon the wheel of destiny without exhibiting, in vision or reality, the destruction or transmutation of the conditions and agencies which have caused the tragedy, through which, indeed, there comes surer salvation .or- greater righteousness to the individual or the race. It may seem sometimes, on a narrow view, to be unwarranted to show this ; but the drama of the world, •studied, on the great scale, teaches that not to show it is to miss the main issue, for the ultimate fruition of every tragedy is the justification of righteousness or the indictment of iniquity at the bar of Eternal Justice. Hence, representations of sheer, unrelieved, unillumined sorrow or suffering violate the vital truth of Nature, and can be lcceptable only to_ persons who are devoid of the moral sensibility which makes other hearts turn away from them as gratuitous exhibitions of revolting falsehood.

J?he' last word is that the man of genius who would do work worthy of genius must beware of the merely local and particular, and! keep his eye fixed on Nature's universals — earth, sea, and sky, day and night, wind and rain, the interchange of seasons ; the prevailing passions and experiences of humankind — love, hatred, egoism, altruism ; life and death ; spiritual unrest ; man's yearning for the face and favour of woman ; woman's for the man or the child she loves, and "the everlasting effort to translate the ideal into the real and the real into the ideal in all things. He must also press into -the service of his creative faculty everything essential "to the production of a perfect organic whole, as an architect, in planning and constructing a great original building, diraws within the co-ordinating scope of his own genius all the lessons to be learned from Ms predecessors, and the best in kind in all the materials requisite to the harmonious execution of- his perfect design. This is indispensable, all through in poetry, as in other arts, whether a man is writing a true and enduring song, a decisive satire, a perfect comedy of work and humour, or an epic or a tragedy. It is, above all, necessary that in these graver efforts .the creative artist should never forj^t that the human soul is bornio struggle, but also to triumph in ithe main. Its* function is to surmount difficulties and to bring order .out of chaos through spiritual' insight and the application of knowledge and wisdom to character and conduct. Though the history of mankind may show many particular instances in which this function is not fulfilled, but piteously frustrated, yet the heart — while it tenderly pities the individual victims of defeat, and of deflection from its general destiny — never crowns with, its •complete acceptance the works which devote themselves to the literal treatment of ■such lives. The cause of this may be egoism 1 , but it is a wholesome -egoism, for men~and women cannot be permanently helped or cheered by discouraging instances of piteous or ignominious failure. Immortality and universal acceptance, therefore, are assured only to works which exhibit the triumph of the soul. They may show it struggling with the direst afflictions and the bitterest ' trials, but, through and -under and in spite of all these, it must gain in character ' and in strength ; in its ultimate aspect and attitude it must be seen to be a gainer ,in itself or in its relations to universal humanity*^' or in' both ; and the reader or spectator must -not be made to feel that even the most tragical death is like that of a crushed •worm, which, in so far as the intelligence of man apprehends, imparts in dying no impact of any kind to any sense or nerve in the universe. Weak and passionately pessimistic writers and artists produce work of this kind, but it helps no one. andi humanity on the great scale wisely will have nothing to j do with it. But it holds in loving and lasting remembrance all who, with ade- \ quato art, represent the struggle and stress j of life, but satisfy the genius of the race j by exhibiting men and women like ships that pass through all kinds of weather, but reach port at last ; for even when a. life goes down in the storm, the soul has always a port at hand in the realisation of its own moral integrity and in the spiritual transfiguration of folly into wisdom, weakness into strength, falseness into truth, seeming or temporary loss into actual gain for what is abiding in human feelings, aspirations, and interests.

Between the stirrap and the ground

He mercy aou^M, he mercy found.

This couplet describes, in the terminology of the age of faith, >a process which is psychologically available to men in all ages. A I'ea'djusting transfiguration may take place in the human soul up to the lasfc thrill of its mo-rlal consciousness. What then and thus happens may not make complete amends for all the past, but the process itself proves that though there may have been defect or debasement, neither the one nor the other has entailed utter destruction or irremediable demoralisation. At least- the ■elements of spiritual regeneration, readjustment and victory remain ; and with this residual, irreducible,

psychological fact before him, no writer is justified in making a pervasive presentation of sheer, unrelieved, hopeless grief or gloom. To' do this is to do violence to an essential, ultimate truth in human nature, and to harrow gratuitously the heart of the reader, listener, or onlooker. Even if aya v writer made it his business to delineate the processes whereby a soul might be presumed to bring about its own absolute extinction, it would be bad philosophy and bad art to overwhelm th© reader •with the horror or hideousness of the result. The truth of Nature requires that, even in such a case, room, should be left for a touch of moral satisfaction at the utter annihilation of so vile and irreclaimable a spirit. Such a tragedy would still, in its way, justify the ways of God. Therefore, though it would humble and awe, it should not subject the soul to paralysing sadness ; in fact, it should in the main stimulate and raise as an exemplification of the inviolable spirit of rectifying righteousness in human affairs. Hence it comes that no poem or work of art which fails to disclose a sympathetic recognition of these 1 principles will ever adequately express or satisfy the human spirit, or be in itself, even at the most favourable estimate, more than an exhibition of ineffectual genius.