selves. Banville stopped halfway at the classical Renaissance. He is the great reviver of forgotten metres and disused rhythms, the poet not only of every classic measure, but of the rondels, triolets, sonnets, and ballades which were the native growths of French soil. He worships Ronsard. Like him, he is a prodigious artist, whose ideas flow into every variety of harmonious strophes. His enemies may designate him a poetic mason rather than a poetic architect, but no one can deny that he is a perfect master of his craft. Banville possesses almost unrivalled skill in the form and manner of poetry. In words and cadences he is a consummate artist. He distinguishes, with almost unerring instinct, among a number of words expressing the same order of ideas, the one which most definitely sums up the desired impression, or which conveys the exact shade of meaning with the perfect fit of a kid glove. He loves words for their own sake, for their grace of movement, their enchantment of color, the charm of their syllables; and he groups them in such a way as to produce the richest possible effects. With the same artistic instinct, he chooses the rhyme which forms the most perfect symphony in sound with the vision he desires to evoke. In his skilful hands metre is adapted to sense, not as though she were a slave bound to obedience, but as if she was the divine mistress at whose voice ideas and words fall into harmonious order. Rhyme is linked to thought, and transformed in sympathy with the subject, till it becomes anything, from an Amazon in corslet of steel to a nymph babbling to the brook, and even to a dancer balancing on the tight rope. One thing only rhyme could not, in Banville's opinion, become a citizeness loaded with jewelry. If Banville's matter had been equal to his manner, he would have been beyond all question a great poet. But his substance is so inferior to his form that he is rarely anything else than a great writer. The faults which mar the value of his prose works reappear in his poetry. There is the same artificiality, the same disregard for facts, the same exaggeration. He has verbal enthusiasms, esthetic passions, artistic emotions; but human sympathy is wanting. He sees in the world nothing but beauties and glories. If things are obtrusively mean or ugly, he identifies them with the most divine forms of which they are the degraded manifestations. He removes the inequalities which constitute the misery and the perplexity of life by raising every deteriorated variety to the primary perfection from which it is derived. He looks at life through ruby. colored spectacles. As all his aspirants to poetic fame are Homers, or as all his friends are Saladins, so he recognizes no differences in conditions, no shades of color. White is to him the whiteness of the lily or the swan; blue is the azure depth of heaven, green the brilliant clearness of the emerald. His world is a puppet-show, and even the classic or heroic past is to him little more than poetic furniture. He is lavish of romantic allusions, because they give color and richness to the external form of his verse, and not because he values the delicacy of feudal honor that shines through the coarseness of feudal manners. As literary stock-in-trade, he delights in the company of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. Sometimes indeed he writes of classic subjects with classic restraint and statuesque simplicity, as in the following poem Sculpteur, cherche avec soin, en attendant l'extase, Even this illustration gives an inadequate idea of the richness of coloring with which he adorns the divinities of Greece. They dwell in the marble halls of the Italian Renaissance, or walk through Florentine gardens, decked with roses and lilies, clothed in purple and gold, gleaming with topaz, emerald, and amethyst. Not content with tinting Venus, he presents her in polychrome. The distinctive note of Banville's lyric verse is gayety. Even the metrical flow of his lines suggests happiness by the gliding ease of its movements. He sings with inexhaustible delight the rapture of existence to an age that was weary of life. He dwells in an enchanted palace of which his fancy was the architect, a stranger to the disquietude, discontent, and despair of the century. By nature he was designed for the Italian Renaissance; but his belated birth threw him into the midst of a positive and melancholy era. He was not the contemporary of his generation, and the anachronism explains his relative unpopularity as a poet. A man who can transport his fellows out of their black throughts into a fairyland of the imagination is en dowed with a priceless gift and a sacred mission. But the power is only wielded by those who have themselves felt and suffered. It is in this respect that Banville is so inferior to Victor Hugo. Both poets are optimists. Hugo knows that the problem of evil exists, and that he is surrounded by grim realities. And it is the effort which he makes that gives his finest flights their force, and redeems even his noisy rhetoric. Banville's optimism is part of his nature. His self-deceptions are involuntary, his illusions unstudied, his hallucinations natural. They cost him no effort, and therefore offer no relief or consolation to those whose temperaments are differently constituted. Banville, then, is intensely artificial and irrepressibly gay. He has but little human sympathy. But his passion for art is so sincere, his æsthetic conscience so sensitive, his knowledge so complete, his resources so abundant, that he has produced works in which form and substance are simultaneously raised into artistic masterpieces. Such brilliant triumphs are like choice bouquets of hothouse exotics, less attractive, perhaps, to many than the country nosegays, which speak of nature because they come from nature, and suggest by their pure fragrance air and space, clear brooks, and the songs of birds. Banville's sparkling tours de force are not so touching as pieces in which, like Font-Georges, his motive is both human feeling and æsthetic emotion. O champs pleins de silence, O ma vieille Font-Georges, Vers qui les rouges.gorges Et le doux rossignol Prenaient leur vol! Maison blanche où la vigne O claire source froide, A moitié creux ! Sources fraîches fontaines ! Qui, douces à mes peines, Frémissiez autrefois Rien qu'à ma voix ! Bassin où les laveuses Chantaient insoucieuses En battant sur leur banc Le linge blanc ! O sorbier centenaire, Tonnelles et coudrettes, O vignes purpurines, MORALITY IN FICTION.* BY CANON MACCOLL. A SOMEWHAT bitter cry has lately gone up from a popular writer that in England, as distinguished from other countries, men cannot write as they would (unless they are rich and can afford to publish, like Orion' Horne, at a farthing a copy), because the public and its distributing agents dictate to them so absolutely how and what they are to produce that they can't escape from it." Consequently letters, as a whole, in Britain have a great injustice done them by their inartistic environments." Authors in other countries have the advantage of addressing a cosmopolitan public because they are allowed to write what they please; but can anybody pretend that any English work of imagination of the last thirty years has ever produced anything like the immediate sensation produced on Europe by the Kreutzer Sonata,' by 'Thermidor,' by 'Les Rois en Exil,' by Hedda Gabler?' What a national disgrace !" Why Is "immediate sensation" the test of literary excellence ? Do the "Kreutzer Sonata" and " Hedda Gabler" owe their popularity to their artistic merits? They owe it rather to the spice of impropriety which is supposed to garnish them. The "Kreutzer Sonata" is by no means Tolstoi's chef d'œuvre, but it has been far more widely read than any other of his works; and any one who finds evidence of great dramatic talent or literary excellence in "Hedda Gabler" must be easy to plea e. These epidemics of "im The Wages of Sin. A Novel, by Lucas Malet. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 1891. mediate sensation" are no more a criterion of intellectual appreciation than the popularity of Tom Thumb or the revelations of a divorce trial. They are simply the offspring of curiosity, or of a morbid craving after what is abnormal or naughty. The writer from whom I am quoting, indeed, goes on to ask, "Do we want obscenity? Do we want adultery? Do we want Zolaism in its ugliest developments ?" And he answers, "Not at all." Then why his sneer soon after at the British bourgeoisie? The said bourgeoisie, we are told, can kick a fellow when he's down most effectively. It gave sinister evidence of its power the other day when it managed almost to overthrow the strongest man in Ireland for a breach of etiquetteif I remember aright, he'd broken an egg at the little end, or he'd got out of a house without the aid of a footman." So, then, the seduction of your friend's wife under your friend's roof, and then a precipitate exit by a fire-escape to avoid the outraged husband's chastisement, is but a breach of etiquette, no more blameworthy than 66 breaking an egg at the little end!" And it is because the British public will not pay for the glorification of such exploits, or give their confidence to the heroes of them, that it is to be denounced as stodgy," and its conduct as sinister!" 66 66 vogue ? From a Christian point of view it may be said that it is hardly possible for any work of a rational human being to be unmoral; and not merely from a Christian point of view. I believe that all great moralists, Pagan as well as Christian, would say so. Plato and Aristotle certainly would. The critic, of course, has nothing to do with the moral character of an author, but he is within his rights in passing judgment on the moral character of his work. This is peremptorily denied by those who contend that a novelist need not, and ought not to, concern himself with the moral consequences of his work. "The artist," says one of these apologists of "unmoral" art, "works with his eye on the object. Nothing else interests him. An artist has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him simply what the colors on his pal ette are to the painter. They are no more, and they are no less. He sees that by these means a certain effect can be produced, and he produces it. Iago may be inorally horrible, and Imogene stainless purity. Shakespeare had as much delight in creating the one as he had in creating the other. There is here a strange confusion of thought. The question is not whether dramatist or novelist may delight in creating a bad character, but whether he engages our sympathies on behalf of bad characters. Shakespeare never does so. If his artistic mind had not been charged with "ethical sympathies" he could never have created Iago. Doubtless he delighted in that superb creation; but he delighted in it just because of its extraordinary ethical interest, and he would have considered his creation a failure if he found the public applauding the conduct of Iago. And what is true of Shakespeare is true of all great artists. Who can read Sophocles without being touched by the contagion of his ethical sympathies ! Hence the laudatory dictum of Aristotle, that Sophocles drew men as they ought to be, Euripides as they actually are. This does not mean that Sophocles never paints bad characters, but that he gives us ideals of moral conduct for our guidance and encouragement Plato was probably, on the whole, the greatest literary artist the world has yet seen. So much value did he set on style that, after his death, a sentence was found written in seventy different * : (ώς forms in the manuscript of one of his Dialogues. But so far was Plato from thinking that an artist has no ethical sympathies at all," that he emphatically declared that he was no true artist who worked without a moral purpose; and a moral purpose runs through all his own Dialogues. In fact, a novelist cannot help showing his moral sympathies in his creations; and he who can regard his characters with the same ethical indifference as the painter does the colors on his palette is no artist at all he is a mere artisan, and his characters will have no more life in them than the marionettes of a conjurer. The greatest critic of ancient Greece, perhaps of the world-the master of all who know"-says that the true end of tragedy is to purify the passions, and he condemns as bad art any work that has an immoral tendency" Blaßɛpà)†; which is but another way of saying that morality is the end of the dramatic art. The greatest of English art-critics insists on the same truth. highest thing," says Ruskin, "that art can do is to set before you the true image of the presence of a noble human being. It has never done more than this, and it ought not to do less."'+ And to illustrate "the essential relations of art to morality," he quotes a fine passage in which Plato lays it down that the business of a poet, and, indeed, of every artist, is to "create for us the image of a noble morality,' so that the young men, living in a wholesome atmosphere, may be profited by everything that, in work fairly wrought, may touch them through hearing or sight-as if it were a breeze bringing health to them from places strong for life." § 99 66 The Another great authority on the same side is Lessing, a critic to whom Goethe, Herder, and Macaulay owned their obligations more than to any other writer. "To act with a purpose," says Lessing, 66 is what raises man above the brutes; to invent with a purpose, to imitate with a *"It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters had deep faults of character; but their faults show in their works. It is true that some could not govern their passions; if so, they died young, or they painted ill when old."-Ruskin, "Lectures on Art," P. 96. Aristotle, "Poet," c. iv. 26. a purpose, is that which distinguishes genius from the petty artists who only invent to invent, imitate to imitate. Genius aims at working on our powers of desire and abhorrence with objects that deserve these feelings, and ever strives to show these objects in their true light, in order that no false light may lead us to what we should desire and abhor." Accordingly he damns Marmontel's "Soliman" with stern censure, because we see in that play couple of persons whom we ought to despise, one of whom should fill us with disgust and the other with anger-a blunted sensualist and a prostitute-painted in the most seductive and attractive colors." * Goethe seems to take an opposite view when he says that a good work of art may and will have moral results; but to require of the artist a moral aim is to spoil his work." But there is no real contradiction. Lessing would not deny that an artist is likely to spoil his work by being intent on teaching a specific moral lesson; nor would Goethe deny that an habitual moral purpose on the part of the artist is essential to all good art. He advises the artist "to live with steady purpose in the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful ;" and he made this his own aim. "The fashion of this world," he says, passes, and I would fain occupy myself with that only which constitutes abiding relations"—that is, with the true and good, for nought else abides eternally. Similarly Milton declares that the poet's mission is to allay the perturbation of the mind and set the affections in right tune." But this mission need not be present to the poet's mind as he writes. If his own character be set in the right key he will of necessity "set the affections in right tune." His own character will inevitably permeate his work. "The point to fix on is that the artist's mind cannot be inoperative in the processes of art. The important element of subjectivity will be definite or vague according to the intensity of the artist's character, and according to the amount of purpose or conviction which he felt while working; it will be genial or repellent, tender or austere, humane or barbarous, depraving or ennobling, chaste or licentious, sensual or spiritual, according to the bias of his tem Hamburg Dramaturgy," No. 34. "Dichtung und Wahrheit," ii. 112. perament. Schiller may not have had a distinct moral aim before his mind as he wrote "The Robbers, but Hazlitt says of that drama that it " gave him a deep sense of suffering and a strong desire after good which haunted him ever since." t The habitual attitude of the poet's mind was in a moral direction; his art, therefore, was contagious for good. To claim, then, that novels are not amenable to criticism on moral, but only on artistic grounds, is an absurdity. But what do we mean when we condemn a novel as 66 'immoral"? It is not necessarily immoral because it deals with immoral subjects or paints immoral characters. The morality or immorality of the work depends on the bias which it is calculated to give to our sympathies. If that bias is toward evil, the novel is immoral; if toward good, it is moral. The subject has little or nothing to do with it. There is hardly any subject with which a great artist may not deal in such a way as to influence for good those who contemplate it; and if his own soul is pure his tact may be trusted to guide him aright. All depends, therefore, not on the subject, but on the artist's treatment of it. Compare in this respect the art of classic Paganism in its prime and in its decadence. In the one we see, for example, the nude figure represented with such purity of conception and such grace and refinement in execution as to excite feelings of admiration and reverence. In the other (e.g., the pornographic sculpture and mural decorations found in Pompeii) we see men and women yes, and young children of both sexes depicted in a way that degrades humanity below the level of the brutes. No excellence in style or execution can redeem from the just stigma of vile art any work of which the conception and treatment are immoral. And what a picture these Pompeiian objects give of the moral abyss into which the civilized world of Paganism had fallen in the beginning of the Christian era, when exhausted humanity needed those foul incentives, in its public rooms and private chambers, to inflame its degraded imaginations and jaded lusts! |