“Italy,” said the Spanish painter to Michael Angelo, “produces the best Art, because Italians hate mediocrity.” We are clay in the hands of the potter. We may affect to be proud and solitary as Lucifer, but in vain; the artist gives that he may receive; to seek sympathy and desire companionship is as instinctive as hunger and thirst. To the true artist exacting criticism is comforting as mother’s love; and, wanting this exacting criticism, Watts fell away into slackness of work and of thought.
We can only say that had he lived in Dublin his fate would have been worse. Indifference, however polite and respectful, is bad: but destructive criticism kills.
There was once a small but mighty nation, now numerous as the sands of the seashore, and no longer so interesting. To this nation was born a poet, and they made him the poet of all time. They took him and taught him all they knew—and they had great things to teach; and when, at their command, he made great dramas, they stood at his elbow; and everything they gave him he gave back to them tenfold.
England was then Shakespeare’s land.
The poet is always amongst us: the difficulty is how to find him; he is like the proverbial needle in a bundle of hay.
But one thing is certain—logicians without love will not find him; they leave a desolation, and call it peace—nay, they call it culture. Critics of this sort will allow nothing to exist except themselves. No; I am wrong. There is one thing they admire more even than themselves—the fait accompli, a mundane success. Had Watts been born in Dublin, he would have read for the “Indian Civil,” and perhaps—passed.
J. B. Yeats, r.h.a.
1907.