Personality in Literature Part 3

Leaving out of count, then, the "sentiment" of love, we have an obvious distinction between the literature which deals with the love pa.s.sion and the literature which deals with sensual desire. But I do not propose any grandmotherly legislation which permits one subject to the artist and relegates the other to the p.o.r.nographer. For it is clear that an author may deal well or ill with a subject intended to yield genuine pa.s.sion (though in the latter case the popular interest will attach to the sensational character of the incidents rather than to the treatment of pa.s.sion as such, and a book of this kind may be considered as I have already considered the "novel of incident"). And, again, an author may deal well or ill with the sensations of s.e.x; those sensations can provide material for fine art. It is a matter of treatment. Upon feelings of this sort Maupa.s.sant based some of his most felicitous stories. But Maupa.s.sant did not use s.e.xual incidents for the sake of s.e.x feeling; for him such incidents were various symbols, flickering images, of life, incarnations of the brooding spirit of cynicism and scorn. We have already seen that to Fielding, for whom they were of less special significance on their own account, they were presented as a.s.sertions of boisterous physical eagerness, of delight in energetic life for its own sake.

It has already become obvious that the tendency of the most popular literature is to subst.i.tute the cruder sensations for the higher emotions and sentiments. We have seen how incident is liked for the mere sensation it can afford; how sentiment is turned into sentimentality. As a rule, in discussing inferior literature the higher emotions need be taken little into account. But in the case of love it is different. The average man, by reason of his pre-occupation and his averageness, is little affected by a variety of fine emotions; the hard facts of life smother them. But everyone can observe that the emotion of love is not only an emotion to which most men at a certain age are susceptible, but that it seems to present itself, at some time or another, in a form finer than that of any other feeling entertained by average men. I believe that all observers would agree that innumerable men and women who cannot be touched in a subtle way by any other emotion--unless we except, especially in primitive men, the emotion of war; and then it is rather intense than subtle--can be and are so touched by the emotion of love.

Here, then, we might expect to find the basis for a literature which may be both widely popular and at the same time finely imagined.

Within certain limits I believe the love pa.s.sion does afford such a basis. If we can imagine an artist confining himself to this single issue, relying on no finenesses outside it, then we might have a work of art which men and women, representing in other respects any degree of imagination and dullness, might all almost equally enjoy. In practice it is seldom that an artist is content to confine himself so exclusively to this issue; it is not in the nature of the imaginative temperament to limit itself in that way. But I think we have an example approximating to the supposed type in Emily Bront's _Wuthering Heights_. The strenuousness of the love emotion is in this book rendered with consummate power, and hence the hold it has over men of intelligence and over fools. But in almost every other respect the novel is sheer rhetoric, crudeness, and unshapeliness.

The novel (or popular biography) which deals not with the emotion of love but the s.e.x sensation, requires little discussion. If the object of the writer is to treat such a theme with imaginative criticism, well and good. If he intends only to reproduce the sensation, he is a p.o.r.nographer.

IV. It is extraordinary that there should be so little humorous literature distributed among the English-speaking peoples, for a sense of humour is a boon which has been allotted to a very large minority of the human race, and some sense of the ridiculous to the majority.

It is through his sense of what is ridiculous in life, and his power of presenting it imaginatively, that d.i.c.kens seems to have acquired not only a permanent place in English literature, but a popularity quite unique among standard English novelists. The jocularity of Mark Twain is equally dexterous, but it is not so completely imagined as the humour of d.i.c.kens; it springs more often from situation than from character, and to that extent belongs more to the accidents than to the essentials of life. Mr. W.W. Jacobs deserves a higher place than is usually accorded to him in contemporary literature. His short stories are excellently contrived within their limits; the humour springs from situation and character conjoined. When a clever writer is content to confine himself primarily to the ridiculous in life, it is possible for him to make his effect both for the million and the more exacting few. As _Wuthering Heights_ was popular because it was little more than a brilliant presentation of the love pa.s.sion, so _Many Cargoes_ and _Light Freights_ are popular as well as excellent because they aim at nothing but the broad effect of laughter. Mr.

Jacobs is inferior to d.i.c.kens because he is a humorist and nothing more, and also because he has an infinitely narrower range. His art is one which presents but a single aspect of life, and suggests no ambition to exhibit a large grasp upon life as a whole. But he succeeded exactly in what he set out to do.

But have any of Mr. Jacobs' books, or any of d.i.c.kens', enjoyed greater popularity than fell to Mr. Jerome's _Three Men in a Boat_? In this book the humour sprang in no sense out of character; nor did it even spring out of situations contrived with especial skill. It consisted of a series of ludicrous impressions such as that of a man sitting on a pat of b.u.t.ter. Well, a man sitting on a pat of b.u.t.ter is a funny thing--when it happens naturally in life. But a collection of incidents, each of which might be funny if it happened among the accidents of life, are a poor source of entertainment when strung together without the life which makes them real. It should be remembered that what is an accident in life ceases to be an accident when it is invented in a story. A writer must needs supply from the imagination something which may give the artistic effect of accident.

Even farce misses its true effects if it contains no verisimilitude.

To see your friend sitting on a pat of b.u.t.ter is amusing; to listen to an invented account of besmeared garments is not amusing; for it misses the amusing point--which was the fact of its happening. But the admirers of _Three Men in a Boat_ see only trousers and b.u.t.ter, trousers and b.u.t.ter; and they find nothing offensive in the manner in which this incongruity has been thrust upon their sight. Their complacent minds receive this funny visual impression because they do not perceive the glaring artifice which for another banishes the humour.

V. Morality among the Anglo-Saxon races is a popular theme. It can cover a mult.i.tude of artistic sins. Religion is popular in all countries, and is not always a.s.sociated with good morals; but in England and the United States good religion and good morals fall under the same hierarchy. Both have their corresponding sensations and emotions. We may see them violently operative at revival meetings, distracting agents which are sometimes indeed so powerful as to lead to extraordinary reactions. It is difficult to attain the same violence with the written as with the spoken word, but if any living novelist has succeeded in attaining the effect of pandemonium through the use of religious and moral subjects, it is Miss Marie Corelli. As _proxime accessit_ I might name Mr. Hall Caine. By the same methods Mr. Guy Thorne (_alias_ Ranger Gull) attained, with the pulpit a.s.sistance of the Bishop of London, a sensational popular success in _When it was Dark_. There have also been many fine writers who did not aim at spurious effects, but received praise by reason of their "moral tone" in circles where they would never have received it on the grounds of literary excellence. If George Eliot had not been a moralist she would not have been so popular in England. If Ruskin had not been primarily a preacher he could never have wielded his vast influence. Tennyson was beloved as much for his moralism as for his sweetness; and to-day so admirable a writer as Mr. John Galsworthy is, even in "serious" circles, regarded as a serious novelist mainly because he is a critic of morals. Mr. John Masefield wrote many novels and plays in which he showed singular fineness of feeling and beauty of style. But when he wrote a poem called _The Everlasting Mercy_--a story of thrilling incident with an admirable moral--lo! his popular reputation was made! People could understand a story of sensational incident. They could understand the moral. They flattered themselves that they were enjoying poetry!

If anyone should reproach me with adopting the tone of that odious thing the "superior person," and should declare that I underestimate the intelligence and good sense of the majority of readers, my reply is that the finest literature is not that which is most read, and I am compelled to conclude that the finest ideas are not those which are most often embraced. To a.s.sert this is not to disparage the common sense and the practical intelligence of the ma.s.s of mankind. I believe that they are capable of vast activity and eagerness, much of which runs to waste through the fatigues of excessive labour; much, through lack of training and mental stimulus, can find no congenial outlet through the mysterious processes of art. The outlet which the majority of men find for their superfluous energy is not through the channel of fine ideas. Such literature as they read is for distraction and not for the vigorous use of their faculties. It cannot be otherwise. That is the condition imposed by the fragmentary education alone vouchsafed to the majority of men and women, giving them no more than that modic.u.m of learning which is a dangerous thing. And it is a matter of supreme importance because this new reading habit of the million has turned the energies of authors and publishers from the few to the many. It has introduced into the literary profession a demagogic habit, and has set up a quant.i.tative instead of a qualitative standard.

PART TWO

LITERATURE AND MODERN LIFE

I.

TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY

1.

"We must read what the world reads at the moment," said Dr. Johnson, giving the remark an ironical meaning when he added, "A man will have more gratification for his vanity in conversation from having read modern books than from having read the best works of antiquity."

Nevertheless, one great difference between the time of Dr. Johnson and the world of to-day is, that whilst the former lived in perpetual admiration of antiquity, we live in perpetual admiration of ourselves.

Though Johnson agreed that Pope's poetry was not talked of so much after his death as in his lifetime, he declared that it had "been as much admired since his death as during his life.... Virgil is less talked of than Pope, and Homer is less talked of than Virgil; but they are not less admired."

But in the intellectual circle which is most before the public to-day there is a tendency to despise the traditions of English literature and to wors.h.i.+p only the idol of originality. In a paper largely devoted to literary matters I recently read a statement to the effect that many authors, indifferent to books, neither buy nor read them, whilst others positively dislike them. Mr. Shaw's quarrel with Shakespeare has been of long standing, but at least Mr. Shaw has done his old-fas.h.i.+oned rival the honour of reading him. Mr. Arnold Bennett, on the other hand, who is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant contemporary novelists, has declared, not without pride, that the only novel of d.i.c.kens that he had ever read was _Little Dorrit_, and this but recently, and that he considered him a greatly overrated novelist.

The conclusion is not surprising, and the living author is no doubt confirmed in his opinion that the works of Mr. Bennett are of vastly superior merit.

This modern self-confidence is undoubtedly a healthy sign of intellectual activity and eagerness. It goes to show that authors are scrutinising keenly the life that is going on around them; that they are interested in facts and things, and seeking to give them a larger reality in terms of ideas; and we see that they are finding a similar response from the reading public. It was not without significance that all through the period of the great Coal Strike publishers reduced their output of books to the smallest possible dimensions, and especially refrained from issuing books of the highest cla.s.s. I do not believe that this was merely due to the fact that in times of economic crisis there is a lack of pocket-money with which to purchase literature. The fact surely was that much of the attention which in many circles is given to modern books was drawn away by the stirring events that were happening in our midst. The study and contemplation of the Coal Strike were of precisely the same nature as the study and contemplation of original contemporary literature. For that literature in its most characteristic forms is concerned with the problems and the structure of modern society.

If at the time of the Coal Strike we had inquired what English plays had recently called forth the most criticism and interest in intellectual circles, we should probably have named, first, Mr.

Galsworthy's _Justice_, and secondly, his _Strife_. The latter was concerned with a situation exactly similar to that developed by the Coal Strike. The action of the drama took place in the middle of a great strike. Mr. Galsworthy presented typical characters representing owners and men, both acting on principle, both determined and irreconcilable, stubborn and loyal, both betraying human qualities fundamentally the same. I am not for the moment concerned with the conclusion drawn by the dramatist, but with the fact that the serious attention which is given to modern literature and drama is the same sort of attention as that given to the great social questions of our time.

2.

To search for hidden unities in the literature of an age is often to distort facts in the interest of theory. But there may come a point--and I think the most notable literature of the year preceding the Coal Strike marks such a point--when certain salient facts emerge so violently and so repeatedly from the written page that no one but the blindest can ignore or deny them. If one should take six books written in that period by six authors who are fairly representative of contemporary English literature--E.M. Forster, Arnold Bennett, H.G.

Wells, Granville Barker, Bernard Shaw, and John Galsworthy--there would be found one truth about them so obvious that it has been remarked by dozens of reviewers. It is that they are concerned with the same social problems as those which fall under the science of sociology; that they advocate, criticise, or imply reforms scarcely less directly than do those for whom social reform is a profession.

But this, I think, is scarcely the most satisfactory way of putting the matter. The same truth may perhaps be expressed in wider and more significant terms by saying that the characteristic literature of to-day is the literature of change. The most vigorous writers are generally those who respond most to their environment, in the same sense that to such men everything must be full of suggestion, interesting, and matter for the interpretative mind; though the greatest of all are those who nourish themselves at all the sources of inspiration, in the past and the present, in the seen and the unseen.

The latter are in consequence not so purely representative of their own special time as are those vigorous, active minds which fill a secondary place in the world's literature, but bulk largest to their contemporaries. Shakespeare is not so representative of the Elizabethans as is Marlowe or Chapman. Probably if a greater number of Greek plays survived we should find that Sophocles is less characteristically Athenian than Euripides. And in the same way Mr.

Joseph Conrad is not so representative of the contemporary world as is Mr. Bernard Shaw or Mr. Wells. But it is in men of the latter type that we shall find the qualities by which their epoch is differentiated from others, the qualities which to some extent appear in the greatest, which appear far more abundantly in those biggest only in contemporary estimation--which in any case mark the trend of thought and the peculiar contribution of the time. The literature produced by men of this type is most profoundly impressed by what may be called the spirit of change.

The briefest consideration of contemporary literature is sufficient to prove how powerfully these minds have been moulded, either by observing this fact of change or contemplating its possibility. The fact itself may perhaps best be ill.u.s.trated by the case of Mr. Edmund Gosse and the story told in his memorable book, _Father and Son_. As a piece of biography alone that book stands high, for the fine drawing of the mind and character of the father. But the noticeable point lies in the vivid contrast between the father and son, the transition from the hard-headed, scrupulous, rigid, narrow-minded Puritan, who is so typical of the Victorian age, to the broad-minded, cultured _littrateur_ of to-day. There is the fact of change--the Rev. Philip Gosse of forty years ago has become the Mr. Edmund Gosse of to-day.

If we would see how this actual change in the outward and inward order of the world has affected novelists we may turn to Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Wells, or Mr. E.M. Forster. In _Clayhanger_, as in _Old Wives'

Tales_, Mr. Bennett traces the progression of the English world from the generation of our grandfathers to our own generation; he shows this change creeping upon us at an accelerated pace, catching the older inhabitants unawares, a visible change in bricks and mortar, in widening streets, in enlarged factories, in the introduction of trams which in due course became electric trams; and a change no less decisive in customs and habits, the older folk marvelling at the new-fangled independence of the young; the whole being nothing less than a revolution which has descended with the sure but imperceptible advance of a glacier, so that within living memory the face and character of England have been altered. In _Milestones_ he has more recently given us another account of the same historic progression.

And an exactly similar idea has captured the imagination of Mr. Wells.

In _The New Machiavelli_, as in _Tono-Bungay_ and other books, he tells the story of the rapidly evolving world in which his heroes have grown up; of the ever-spreading suburbs stretching out their tentacles north and south and east and west, of the mushroom houses which arose without order or system, of the changing system of education, the changing ideas towards parents--everything spasmodic, growing, muddled. Similarly, Mr. E.M. Forster, in _Howard's End_, shows the old house so dear to the heart of Mrs. Wilc.o.x, as the symbol of permanence in an unfixed society which is homeless, restless, changing. Even if we look abroad we shall find something of this same sense of the transformation in the order of things; in America, Mr. Winston Churchill has written a series of novels to ill.u.s.trate the successive phases in the American character; and in France authors like M. Paul Bourget and M. Ren Bazin emphasise respectively the change from aristocracy to democracy, and from the reverence of orthodoxy to the revolutionary secular spirit.

In a somewhat different way Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Shaw, and Mr.

Granville Barker are affected by the fluidity of their environment. Of Mr. Galsworthy I shall have something more to say, and need merely point out for the moment that in _Fraternity_, _Strife_, and especially _Justice_, the author is not merely indicating but advocating changes which, instead of being left to accident, are to be guided in accordance with a definite human purpose. Mr. Shaw is so minded that he preaches against change wherever he perceives it, and clamours for it when he perceives it not. Thus in _The Doctor's Dilemma_ and the Preface to it, finding himself confronted with great changes in medical science, he denounces medical progress and its pretensions as a superst.i.tion and a fraud. In _Getting Married_, on the other hand, finding that the public is still often content with old-fas.h.i.+oned ideas of s.e.x relations and home life, he ridicules "home life as we understand it," on the ground that it is "no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a c.o.c.katoo." I am not accusing him of any real inconsistency in thus alternating between conservative and revolutionary dogmas. He would doubtless hold that changes ought to have been made where there have been none, and that those which have occurred have not followed the course which he, or men gifted with similar foresight, would have prescribed.

It may be objected that the influence of change upon literature is not only felt by our contemporaries, but has affected the literature of all times; that it is the function of men of letters to be ahead of their contemporaries and to initiate ideas which are productive of change; that the history of literature is the history of the progress of thought and imagination; and that therefore the present age does not differ in this respect from others. To which I would reply that whilst other literatures have represented or initiated change, there has never been a time when so many of the best creative intellects have consciously concerned themselves with this process, making change of conditions either their artistic subject or their deliberate practical object. The reason, of course, is obvious; there never has been a time when the world was undergoing such a startling and rapid transformation. It is true, the economic, material, scientific, and moral changes in the Athens of the fifth century came about quickly and drastically, and the reconst.i.tution of intellectual and moral ideas mooted by the Sophists found a profound expression in the dialectic of the drama. How far the Elizabethans were influenced by the revival of learning and science, the discovery of the new world and the expansion of commerce, is a question I need not embark upon.

But it will not be disputed that the face of the world has never in any known period of history been so changed out of all recognition as it has been by the scientific and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century. The barbarian invasions which put an end to Imperial Rome can have had no outward and visible effect comparable to that of the invasion of the machine. What wonder that the superficial, hurried reader of to-day finds little to satisfy him in the literature of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, the former so much concerned either with religion or pleasure, the latter with the moral virtues or their opposites!

The Renaissance did not reach its moral consummation till the time of the French Revolution, its intellectual consummation till the nineteenth century, its material consummation till the twentieth century and thereafter. The growth of science first affected the imagination, for it was an emanc.i.p.ating idea; its first offspring was Romanticism and the idea of liberty and democracy. But science as it progressed in the nineteenth century came, first with the machine and the whip, then with the machine and the moralist, at its elbow. But wherever and however it came, it transformed with lightning rapidity, just in that way in which Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Forster, and Mr.

Winston Churchill, the American, have indicated; till the mere fact of its transforming became so remarkable and absorbing that that fact has almost exhausted the attention of three-fourths of the artists and intellectuals of our age.

So habituated then have we become to rapid change in the conditions of life that the first thing we postulate is further change. The rustic accustomed to the same food every day of his life does not criticise his fare; it is the epicure, accustomed to variety, who is critical of the menu. The active mind which witnesses perpetual variety must be perpetually critical. To be aware that the conditions of to-day are different from the conditions of yesterday and of to-morrow is, according to the temperament of the beholder, to lament the past or to hasten the future. In this respect the Radical and the Conservative are alike, that it is the perception of change which determines them, though it determines them in different ways, the one being affected by hope, the other by fear. Both are discontented with the present, the one because it falls short of the future, which he imagines, the other because it has departed from the security of the past, which he idealises. And, as we have seen, even the creative artist cannot escape from the fascination of this ever-changing environment, where the unsystematised present obtrudes its fresh discontents, and the unknown future is pregnant with possibilities of good and the alternative of unimaginable evil. All perceive that something must be done to direct the plunging course of this hydra-headed democracy which, as its onrush is in any case irresistible, may at any moment deviate from the path and fling itself headlong to perdition. When the guns are firing and the battle is joined and the cries of the wounded fill the air, there are not many who can sit down in the midst, like the German philosopher at the battle of Austerlitz, to contemplate the Absolute. Most of them, even though their function is art, rush out to join the mle; and this is why they incur the censure of the reviewers, making fiction and drama a branch of sociology.

But one seems to hear, distinguishable occasionally amidst the din, a low, faint murmur. This way madness lies. Is man, the master of his soul, to be thus enslaved to his conditions? Is he to be tossed hither and thither by changes which he did not create, by ideas to which he did not subscribe, by a tempest he never wished to combat? Is there no quiet place of refuge wherein he may be at peace to live as his ancestors lived, and to cherish the humble ambitions which they cherished? The answer, in a certain sense, is "No." The conventions which served their purpose have in many cases lost their meaning; the duties our ancestors performed have lost their usefulness; the old bottles will not hold the new wine which our generation serves to us.

And this is one reason why so many people rate and gibe at what they call the "muddle-headed British public; "because it cannot change its ideas so quickly as it is forced to change its conditions of life.

But is there not an important significance in the very fact which makes our intellectuals desperate with indignation, the fact that you cannot change the "public mind" so rapidly as you can change its tramway services, its government, or the place--the cellar, the crust of the earth, or the sky--in which it is to be housed? It is easier to take a man up in an aeroplane than it is to make him agree that his neighbour ought to run away with his wife, or that his sons ought not to read Thucydides. Even amongst those writers whom I have named there is beginning to arise a half-formed consciousness that amid all these changes in circ.u.mstances we must be careful how we admit changes in character and in mental calibre; a consciousness that we are in need of some fixed point by which the world may be enabled to retain its sanity. Now there are two cla.s.ses of people who believe in permanence: those who think that the world is the same always because they are too silly to open their eyes; and the very small cla.s.s of those who have felt profoundly that all things are changing in something more than the Herac.l.i.tean sense, who have yet penetrated to the necessity of a permanence, of an organic human continuity, underlying the multiplex circ.u.mstances and ideas of our life.

And this brings me back to Mr. Forster and Mr. Galsworthy. "Howard's End," the old-fas.h.i.+oned house which gives its name to Mr. Forster's novel, is contrasted with the new buildings which are occupied and vacated, which spring up on all sides and are vicariously inhabited, which draw nearer and nearer to the garden and the wych-elm of "Howard's End." It is the symbol of permanence, of the old order which "connects" the past with the present, the personal and individual with the cosmopolitan and indifferent; it is the something sacred which neither an individual nor a nation can afford to neglect. Mr. Forster, impressed as he is with the need of change, directed instead of haphazard, nevertheless perceives that there are permanent elements, belonging to character, in our blood and our tradition, which cannot be ignored without peril.

Mr. Galsworthy, in _The Patrician_, is no longer the mere antagonist of the established order of things. He seems to have attained a sort of optimism strangely at variance with his earlier views; to have declared that running through all these conflicts, revolutions, and evolutions there is and has been a certain national sense, a sort of collective reasonableness, which is constantly making itself felt, and being expressed in its best form by the leaders of opinion, the aristocrats of nature; that the torrent runs, as it were, between solid banks; that in the long run character triumphs over confusion.

3.

It would be folly to regret that the drama of modern life, of our swiftly evolving modern society, has become absorbingly interesting to so many of the best brains of the time. Although we may detect a serious limitation to literature, a didacticism alien to the disinterested spirit of art, still we cannot fail to see that a new sort of vitality, belonging rather to the moral sense than the intellect or the perceptions, has been infused into imaginative literature. Something, at least, which is fresh and real and vital has been introduced, exclusive of much that we have been accustomed to regard as excellent, but serving surely to give a distinctive and far from negligible character to the typical literature of our time. That typical literature, in its most important manifestations, is concerned with the events that are happening around us here and now--with ideas, largely partisan, that give meaning to them--with the purposes that direct and determine them. Criticism, if it is to be vital criticism, cannot dissociate itself from those ideas, nor look on with sublime indifference to opinions as to the true and the false, the desirable and the undesirable.

But when we have said that, we are also bound to recognise the drawbacks and serious limitations of the modern tendency. It includes--and we come back to the point at which we started--a tendency to dissociate modern writing from the continuous stream of English and world literature. Incidentally the didacticism of modern writers, and their absorption in the affairs of the moment, have not only served to make a breach between themselves and English literature as a whole, to the detriment of their perspective, but have also set a gulf between themselves and those of another school, for whom world literature is more important than the literature of to-day, for whom erudition and interest in the past are not to be lightly dismissed as academicism. I can imagine no greater disaster to letters than a breach between the literary originator and the man of learning. Such a breach can only mean that learning is cast back upon itself, loses humanity, and becomes academic; and that the author who despises or ignores erudition, and with it the sense of human continuity and permanence for which it ought to stand, tends to become opinionative and shallow. His work must lack the imaginative range, the mellowness, the beauty which cannot take form through instinct alone, which cannot be expressed by those who have not lovingly studied the models of antiquity and our own literature, who have not sought contact with the life of other times as well as with the life of to-day.

The great gain to literature in recent years is that it is more closely related to action and those general ideas which lead to action. Its great corresponding defect--and this is immeasurable--is its loss in form, in universality, in that disinterestedness which is essential to art. Erudition, when it is humane, and even when it is merely academic, has, at any rate, always that disinterestedness which is essential alike to science and art. If it is humane--as it was, on the whole, in the Elizabethan age--its whole moral support, vast in this age of idol-wors.h.i.+ppers, will be on the side of disinterested art and literature. We do not hope, or wish, that all authors should be men of learning--they should be of all sorts. But if authors and men of learning continue to be removed in sympathy, interests, and ideals, it is a sign that both are in a bad way.