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Druses." The plot is obscure; the motive, nebulous; the situations forced; the language, stilted. In this "drama " the author scarcely manifests an inkling of the requirements of dramatic art, which cannot be said to exist unless a clear story

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emerge from it. One Melanthius, being asked what he thought of the tragedy of Dionysius, said: "I have not seen it, it is so obfuscated with language." Like this tragedy, "The Return of the Druses may be said to be obfuscated with language. Browning should have saved himself from the trouble of writing it, and us from the trouble of reading it. Than such a "drama " I would rather read Byles On Bills.' It is the more vexing to think that he should have achieved so bad a pre-eminence in the obscure and muddled, for, as anybody would allow, his matter is frequently sound and good; but even in this case he has an evil habit of musing and meditating and ratiocinating and monologising upon it until he sometimes loses both himself and his readers in pithless vagueness and verbosity. I think we may safely take it that vagueness and verbosity would mar an Angel's speech.

10. Lucidity in Art.-The same doctrine applies to Art. In general, says Ruskin, "all great drawing is distinct drawing; for truths which are rendered indistinctly might, for the most part, not be rendered at all. Good and noble knowledge is distinguished from vain and useless knowledge chiefly by its clearness and distinctness, and by the vigorous consciousness of what is known and what is not.1 The best drawing

1 According to Cervantes, Orbeneja, the painter of Ubeda, on being asked what he painted, answered, "As it may hit "; and when he had sprawled out a misshapen cock, was forced to write underneath in Gothic letters, This is a cock." We have a great many Orbenejas both in Literature and Art, but, I am afraid, without his candour.

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involves a wonderful perception and expression of indistinctness; and yet all noble drawing is separated from the ignoble, by its distinctness, by its fine expression, and firm assertion of something (note well!), "whereas the bad drawing, without either firmness or fineness, expresses and asserts nothing. The first thing, therefore, to be looked for as a sign of noble art is a clear consciousness of what is drawn and what is not; the bold statement and frank confession, 'This I know' and 'This I know not'; and, generally speaking, all haste, slurring, obscurity, and indecision are signs of low art; and all calmness, distinctness, luminousness, and positiveness of high art," 1 which doctrine, it seems to me, ought to be regarded as beyond dispute.

11. Exemplifications.-Take, for instance, some of the pictures of G. F. Watts. With all respect to a great painter, his picture of "Faith, Faith," as far as I can see, fails to express any particular mental state. In "Time, Death, and Judgment," I am bound to confess that I can discern no meaning, no assertion of anything. "Chaos " seems to me to be quite a banal composition. "Love Triumphant, Love and Life," "The All-pervading," "The Dweller in the Innermost "-I confess that, to me, these pictures are dumb.2

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1 'Modern Painters,' Vol. iii. p. 40. In the same place, and elsewhere, he speaks of the province of the indistinct: "In the works of all the great masters there are portions which are explanatory rather than representative, and typical rather than imitative."-Ib., Vol. i. p. 227, note. There is the assuredly intended and resolute abstraction of the Ninevite and Egyptian sculptors. The man who cut those granite lions in the Egyptian room of the British Museum, and who carved the calm faces of those Ninevite Kings, knew much more, both of lions and kings, than they chose to express."-Stones of Venice,' Vol. i. p. 233. Such characteristics mark Reserve in Realisation.

2 In his "Jonah " there is vitality and power, but surely the figure is more suggestive of the Devil in a great rage than of a Prophet delivering a Divine warning.

The mountain heaves, but nothing emerges-not even the little quadruped. Very different with "Love and Death"; so with "Sic Transit." This is a powerful picture, full of meaning. By the simplest and most legitimate means, it produces a deep impression of the silence and sadness of Death. Vital and powerful also is the picture "For he had great possessions." You have only to look at it to understand and to be impressed. It is to the eye what lucid language is to the ear.

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11a. Music also should be lucid.-A similar law, I believe, is applicable to musical compositions. There are no great artists who are great artists simply for a mind or two here and there," says Mr Ernest Newman. The greatest artists are always the most universally comprehensible." 1

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12. Great Work almost immediately evokes appropriate feeling in the intelligent reader or hearer.— Lucidity, then, we must hold to be an essential quality of all Literature worthy of the name. a poem or a part of a poem, a story or part of a story, possesses first-rate value if, indeed, a literary composition of any kind is to be held in high account,-it will be found, on the intelligent reading or hearing, to touch the chords of feeling almost immediately; it will be found to evoke almost immediately the appropriate emotion of the reader or hearer of ordinary intelligence and endowment. If it does not almost immediately produce such results, or, still worse, if the readers or hearers have to read the story or the poem over and over again to arrive at its meaning; if they have to sweat their brains over it and make ingenious constructions in order to squeeze a meaning out of it (as we have to do with the gnarled and noduled utterance which Browning 1 'The Sunday Times,' 22nd August 1920.

inflicts upon us in his evil days), we may safely come to the conclusion that such story or poem has failed in rational purpose, and that as a contribution to Literature it must be held to be worthless, if not a positive nuisance, to real students. The object of the lamplighter is to illuminate the wayfarer's feet; the steady purpose of the writer should be to illuminate his Head.

13. Nature herself evokes the right feeling in the beholder at once, or probably never.-Test the principle in the presence of Nature herself. Ocean, air, landscape, forest, flower, song of bird, sighing of the breeze, rippling of the brook-all these practically produce their appropriate esthetic effect upon the observant and well-endowed mind at once, or probably never. Of course we throw out of account the careless and unendowed person. If, for instance, there be one who cannot immediately see and feel the glory of the setting sun, he is not esthetically endowed, and there's an end of the matter; if he cannot at once perceive and feel the grandeur and sublimity of "the World of Waters," he may as well cultivate his artistic instincts on a canal-bank; if he feel no emotion of awe in the cataclysmic roll and crash of the thunderstorm, we must leave him to amuse himself with squibs and crackers; if he do not instantaneously hear music in the rippling of a brook or the whispering of a breeze, that soul will probably find its joy in Sambo and his bones. But, I repeat, Nature will always receive appropriate responses from the well-endowed and observant mind as soon as it is directed to her charms. Upon this point I apprehend that all will be agreed, unless it be the capricious and the crotchety, who, of course, must be left to their own resources.

14. So, a joke, or a play of wit or humour.-Or test the principle-necessity of lucidity by a joke

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or play of wit or humour. The effect must, on the whole, be immediate to the ordinary apprehension, or the joke is most probably worthless; the wit, no wit; the humour, no humour. Undoubtedly there are some people who seem to have no sense of wit or humour at all, like the serious old gentleman mentioned in the Life of Swift.' One Rossengrave played a voluntary at St Patrick's Cathedral, where Dr Pratt heard him, and Swift was also present. Pratt dined at the Deanery the same day, and was so extravagant in his encomiums on Rossengrave's performance that several of the company said they wished they had heard it. "Do you," said Swift; "then you shall hear it," and immediately sung out so lively and yet so ridiculous an imitation of it, that all the company were drowned in laughter except one old gentleman, who sat still with great composure, and showed neither curiosity nor approbation. On being asked the reason of his indifference, he answered with great gravity "that he had heard Mr Rossendale himself play it before." 1 It would be useless, therefore, to address our present argument to anybody of such a temperament; but we shall suppose that our audience is not quite so phlegmatic as that old gentleman, and, in order to test the doctrine for which I contend (namely, that the effect of real wit, or humour, or drollery of any kind is instantaneous), I request their attention to a few more or less familiar cases.

1 Hawkesworth, 'Life of Swift,' p. 63. There is also the classic story of the Scottish judge. During the trial of a case an advocate made a joke which excited all the Court except the judge into a high degree of hilarity. Exactly twenty-four hours later the same judge, on the same bench in the same Court, suddenly broke out into loud laughter (to the astonishment of everybody in the Court), and, clapping his hands with joy, exclaimed, "I see through it noo; I see through it noo!"

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