Coasting Bohemia

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO
COASTING BOHEMIA
BY J. COMYNS CARR AUTHOR OF ‘KING ARTHUR,’ ‘TRISTRAM AND ISEULT,’ ‘PAPERS ON ART,’ ‘SOME EMINENT VICTORIANS,’ ETC. ETC.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1914
COPYRIGHT
Many of the papers which give to the present volume its title first appeared in the columns of the Daily Telegraph , and are here reprinted by the courteous permission of the proprietors of that journal.
A portion of the essay on Burne-Jones was originally designed as an introduction to the catalogue of an exhibition of his collected works held, shortly after his death, at the New Gallery. The essay on Sex in Tragedy was written on the occasion of Sir Henry Irving’s last revival of the play of Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre.
The papers which compose this volume make no claim to any sort of ordered plan in their composition. They reflect in some measure the varied activities of a life that has been passed in close association with more than one of the arts, and therein lies their sole title to so much of coherence as they may be found to possess.
Lord Beaconsfield once defined critics as men who had failed in art. The reproach, however, is not always deserved, for youth is often confident in its judgment of others at a time when it is still too timorous to make any adventure of its own. For myself I may confess that I had adopted the calling of a critic long before I had found the courage to make even the most modest incursion into the field of authorship. My first essays in journalism, made at a time when I was still a student at the bar, were chiefly concerned with the art of painting, and I look back now with feelings almost of dismay at the spirit of reckless assurance in which I then assumed to measure and appraise the achievement of contemporary masters. A little later in my career I was brought into still closer contact with the art of the theatre, and in both these worlds, as well as in that of literature itself, I was fortunate in the formation of many valued and enduring friendships which have enabled me, in such of the following chapters as bear a distinctively biographical character, to record my personal impressions of some of the notable figures in the literature and art of the later Victorian era.