"And I, on the other hand," said Herries gravely, "think that such a life is almost as noble a one as I can well conceive."
His words sounded to me like a kind of pontifical blessing pronounced at the end of a liturgical service; and, dinner now being over, we adjourned to the library. Then Musgrave entertained us with an account of a squabble he had lately had with a certain editor, who had commissioned him to write a set of papers on literary subjects, and then had objected to his treatment. Musgrave had trailed his coat before the unhappy man, laid traps for him by dint of asking him ingenuous questions, had written an article elaborately constructed to parody derisively the editor's point of view, had meekly submitted it as one of the series, and then, when the harried wretch again objected, had confronted him with illustrative extracts from his own letters. It was a mirthful if not a wholly good-natured performance. Herries had listened with ill-concealed disgust, and excused himself at the end of the recital on the plea of work.
As the door closed behind him, Musgrave said with a wink, "I am afraid my story has rather disgusted our young transcendentalist. He has no pleasure in a wholesome row; he thinks the whole thing vulgar—and I believe he is probably right; but I can't live on his level, though I am sure it is very fine and all that."
"But what do you really think of his work?" I said. "It is very promising, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Musgrave reflectively, "that is just what it is—he has got a really fine literary gift; but he is too uncompromising. Idealism in art is a deuced fine thing, and every now and then there comes a man who can keep it up, and can afford to do so. But what Herries does not understand is that there are two sides to art—the theory and the practice. It is just the same with a lot of things—education, for instance, and religion. But the danger is that the theorists become pedantic. They get entirely absorbed in questions of form, and the plain truth is that however good your form is, you have got to get hold of your matter too. The point after all is the application of art to life, and you have got to condescend. Things of which the ultimate end is to affect human beings must take human beings into account. If you aim at appealing only to other craftsmen, it becomes an erudite business: you become like a carpenter who makes things which are of no use except to win the admiration of other carpenters. Of course it may be worth doing if you are content with indicating a treatment which other people can apply and popularise. But if you isolate art into a theory which has no application to life, you are a savant and not an artist. You can't be an artist without being a man, and therefore I hold that humanity comes first. I don't mean that one need be vulgar. Of course I am a mere professional, and my primary aim is to earn an honest livelihood. I frankly confess that I don't pose, even to myself, as a public benefactor. But Herries does not care either about an income, or about touching other people. Of course I should like to raise the standard. I should like to see ordinary people capable of perceiving what is good art, and not so wholly at the mercy of conventional and melodramatic art. But Herries does not care twopence about that. He is like the Calvinist who is sure of his own salvation, has his doubts about the minister, and thinks every one else irreparably damned. As I say, it is a lofty sort of ideal, but it is not a good sign when that sort of thing begins. The best art of the world—let us say Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare—was contributed by people who probably did not think about it as art at all. Fancy Homer going in for questions of form! It is always, I believe, a sign of decadence when formalism begins. It is just like religion, which starts with a teacher who has an overwhelming sense of the beauty of holiness; and then that degenerates into theology. These young men are to art what the theologians are to religion. They lose sight of the object of the whole thing in codification and definition. My own idea of a great artist is a man who finds beauty so hopelessly attractive and desirable that he can't restrain his speech. It all has to come out; he cannot hold his peace. And then a number of people begin to see that it was what they had been vaguely admiring and desiring all the time; and then a few highly intellectual people think that they can analyse it, and produce the same effects by applying their analysis. It can't be done so; art must have a life of its own."
"Yes," I said, "I think you are right. Herries is ascetic and eremitical—a beautiful thing in many ways; but there is no transmission of life in such art; it is a sterile thing after all, a seedless flower."
"Let us express the vulgar hope," said Musgrave, "that he may fall in love; that will bring him to his moorings! And now," he added, "we will go to the music-room and I will see if I cannot tempt the shy bird from his roost." And so we did—Musgrave is an excellent musician. We flung the windows open; he embarked upon a great Bach "Toccata"; and before many bars were over, our idealist crept softly into the room, with an air of apologetic forgiveness.
XIV. A MIDSUMMER DAY'S DREAM
I suppose that every one knows by experience how certain days in one's life have a power of standing out in the memory, even in a tract of pleasant days, all lit by a particular brightness of joy. One does not always know at the time that the day is going to be so crowned; but the weeks pass on, and the one little space of sunlight, between dawn and eve, has orbed itself