If a person
discourses or writes of his feelings we think him a sentimentalist, and
have an uneasy suspicion that he is violating the canons of good taste.
The result is that we are a sensible, a good-humoured, and a vulgar
nation. When we are dealing with art, we have no respect for any but
successful artists. If the practice of art results in fame and money,
we praise the artist in a patronising way; when the artist prophesies,
we think him slightly absurd until he commands a hearing, and then we
worship him, because his prophecies have a wide circulation. If the
artist is unsuccessful, we consider him a mere dilettante. Then, too,
art suffers grievously from having been annexed by moralists, who talk
about art as the handmaid of religion, and praise the artist if he
provides incentives for conduct of a commercial type. It would be
better for art if it were frankly snubbed rather than thus unctuously
encouraged. We look upon it all as a matter of influence, for the one
thing that we desire is to be felt, to affect other people, to inspire
action. The one thing that we cannot tolerate is that a man should
despise and withdraw from the busy conventional world. If he ends by
impressing the world we admire him, and people his solitude with ugly
motives. The fact is that there was never a more unpromising soil for
artists than this commonplace, active, strenuous century in which we
live.
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