And thus
all our imitations of other peoples' work are futile. We must learn
first to make honest English wares, and afterward to decorate them as
may please the then approving Graces.
Secondly--and this is an incapacity of a graver kind, yet having its
own good in it also--we shall never be successful in the highest fields
of ideal or theological art.
For there is one strange, but quite essential, character in us--ever
since the Conquest, if not earlier:--a delight in the forms of burlesque
which are connected in some degree with the foulness in evil. I think
the most perfect type of a true English mind in its best possible
temper, is that of Chaucer; and you will find that, while it is for
the most part full of thoughts of beauty, pure and wild like that of
an April morning, there are, even in the midst of this, sometimes
momentarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil--while the
power of listening to and enjoying the jesting of entirely gross
persons, whatever the feeling may be which permits it, afterwards
degenerates into forms of humour which render some of quite the
greatest, wisest, and most moral of English writers now almost useless
for our youth. And yet you will find that whenever Englishmen are
wholly without this instinct, their genius is comparatively weak and
restricted.
Pages:
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326