"I don't know; surely it does, sometimes," said Parry, "for instance, there's the realistic novel!"
"Oh, that!" cried Ellis. "That's the most ideal of all—only it's apt to be such bad idealism!"
"Anyhow," said Bartlett, "in so far as it is real, it's not Art, in the sense, in which we have been using the word."
I began to be afraid that we should drift away into a discussion of realism in Art. So, to recall the conversation to the point at issue, I turned to Bartlett, and said:
"Your criticism seems to me to be fair enough as far as it goes. You say that the world of Art is a world by itself; that side by side of it, and unaffected by it, moves the world of what you call real life. And that whatever be the relation between the two worlds, whether we are to say that the one imitates the other, or interprets it, or idealizes it, it does not, in any case, set it aside. Art is a refuge from life, not a substitute for it; a little blessed island in the howling sea of fact. Its Good is thus only a partial Good; whereas the true Good, I suppose, would be somehow universal."
"Still," said Leslie, "as far as it goes it is a Good without blemish."
"I am not so sure," I said, "even of that. I am inclined to think that Bartlett's criticism, if we squeeze it tight, will yield us more than we have yet got out of it—perhaps even more than he knows is in it"
"You don't mean to say," cried Bartlett, "that you are coming over to my side!"
"Yes," I said, "like a spy to the enemy's camp to see where your strength really lies."
"I have no objection," he replied, "if it ends in your discovering new defences for me."