Charles Sorley remarks on this that an exact parallel may be found in the Odyssey where the gentleman expostulates οὐ γαρ ἐγώ γε τερπομ' ὀδυρόμενος μεταδόρπιος {ou gar egô ge terpom' oduromenos metadorpios}—I hate being forced to grieve in the middle of supper.
The letters are full of casual literary criticism, and provide a curious contrast to the letters of Lionel Johnson recently published. Charles Sorley strikes one as having a far clearer idea of the position of literature in life than had Johnson, but he shows little sign of that fine critical intelligence which mark Johnson's best judgments. Sorley passes passionately from Masefield to Housman, from Housman to Hardy, from Hardy to Ibsen and Goethe. It seems odd that a boy of his temperament should think Faust greater than anything of Shakespeare's, and by implication greater than Peer Gynt; elsewhere he passes a really witty judgment on Goethe: "If Goethe really died saying 'More light,' it was very silly of him: what he wanted was more warmth."
His life in the Army was not long. After a hard training in England he left for France in May, 1915, and was killed by a sniper on October 13th. The books he had over there were Faust and Richard Jefferies. To some of us Jefferies is chiefly lovable and remarkable because of the men who have loved him; and that he could charm Sorley and bring to him, amid the disgust of the battlefield, something of the English countryside, gives him an additional claim on our gratitude:
I read Richard Jefferies to remind me of Liddington Castle and the light green and dark green of the Aldbourne Downs in summer.
The book is edited by Professor and Mrs. Sorley, and Mrs. Sorley contributes a brief biographical chapter. There are one or two references to living persons which would, perhaps, be better away, though we cannot imagine any person of humour objecting to the fun of this high-spirited, generous boy. Incidentally, in its picture of Marlborough and Sorley's literary activities, the letters provide a useful counterpoise to the rather reckless attacks made on the uncultured public schools of England.
ESSAYS ON ART. By A. Clutton-Brock. Methuen. 5s. net.
Shall we ever have a satisfactory æsthetic? Sometimes, in moments of hopefulness, one believes that there may be a few points of agreement in ethics, in politics, in metaphysics, even in economics: but to read a new book on æsthetic is to wonder again whether we shall ever get beyond the old tag, that it's a mere waste of time arguing about taste. Certainly Mr. Clutton-Brock's book, interesting, acute, and charmingly written as it is, does not show us how to reconcile, let us say, Tolstoy's What is Art? with Whistler's Ten o'Clock: or either with the great and unjustly-despised body of criticism to be found in Ruskin's works. His essays are provocative: at times he appears to clear up certain matters, and then the reader finds himself wondering.
In the very first essay Mr. Clutton-Brock discourses on nature and art. "There is one beauty of nature and another of art." "Nothing kills art so certainly as the effort to produce a beauty of the same kind as that which is perceived in nature. In the beauty of nature, as we perceive it, there is a perfection of workmanship which is perfection because there is no workmanship. Natural things are not made, but born; works of art are made. There is the essential difference between them and between their beauties." Now is there any truth in those statements? Take, for instance, the simplest kind of beauty, the beauty which appeals to touch: is there any essential difference between the sensations of beauty given by stroking a sable and stroking a piece of exquisite silk velvet? Again, is the beauty conveyed by the sight of Cader Idris really different in kind from the beauty conveyed by the sight of Amiens Cathedral? Is a singer's appeal fundamentally different from the appeal of the nightingale?
Mr. Clutton-Brock goes on to say that "all great works of art show an effort, a roughness, an inadequacy of craftsmanship which is the essence of their beauty, and distinguishes it from the beauty of nature." That sentence betrays what seems to us his saddest error. He is confusing, we think, art and craft. It simply is not true that a work of art must show "inadequacy of craftsmanship." What is essential is that the artist should not seem to be satisfied with his mere technical skill of craft. He should, somehow, convey to us that he knows there is a beauty which no craft can render perfectly. He must, in short, be humble. For lack of that humility Blake refused to call Rubens a great artist. Yet Rubens, superb craftsman as he was, was not the superior of Velasquez, who yet preserves in all his work that sense of something desired yet unachieved—unachieved not because Velasquez's craft was inadequate, but because his vision was interpretative rather than imitative. It is important that the distinction between craft and art should be recognised, otherwise Mr. Clutton-Brock's perfectly sound contention that the beauty of art "is produced by the effort to accomplish the impossible" will be made a mere excuse for slovenly workmanship. This sort of discussion, however, is unsuitable for a review; even where space is, for practical purposes, infinite (e.g. in a conversation), it seldom leads to agreement. We can only say (what everybody knows) that Mr. Clutton-Brock is the sanest of all professional art-critics and that to differ from him is to doubt one's own opinions.