GILBERT.Ah!it is so easy to convert others.It is so difficult to convert oneself.To arrive at what one really believes,one must speak through lips different from one's own.To know the truth one must imagine myriads of falsehoods.For what is Truth?
In matters of religion,it is simply the opinion that has survived.
In matters of science,it is the ultimate sensation.In matters of art,it is one's last mood.And you see now,Ernest,that the critic has at his disposal as many objective forms of expression as the artist has.Ruskin put his criticism into imaginative prose,and is superb in his changes and contradictions;and Browning put his into blank verse and made painter and poet yield us their secret;and M.Renan uses dialogue,and Mr.Pater fiction,and Rossetti translated into sonnet-music the colour of Giorgione and the design of Ingres,and his own design and colour also,feeling,with the instinct of one who had many modes of utterance;that the ultimate art is literature,and the finest and fullest medium that of words.
ERNEST.Well,now that you have settled that the critic has at his disposal all objective forms,I wish you would tell me what are the qualities that should characterise the true critic.
GILBERT.What would you say they were?
ERNEST.Well,I should say that a critic should above all things be fair.
GILBERT.Ah!not fair.A critic cannot be fair in the ordinary sense of the word.It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiassed opinion,which is no doubt the reason why an unbiassed opinion is always absolutely valueless.
The man who sees both sides of a question,is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.Art is a passion,and,in matters of art,Thought is inevitably coloured by emotion,and so is fluid rather than fixed,and,depending upon fine moods and exquisite moments,cannot be narrowed into the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma.It is to the soul that Art speaks,and the soul may be made the prisoner of the mind as well as of the body.One should,of course,have no prejudices;but,as a great Frenchman remarked a hundred years ago,it is one's business in such matters to have preferences,and when one has preferences one ceases to be fair.It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of Art.No;fairness is not one of the qualities of the true critic.It is not even a condition of criticism.Each form of Art with which we come in contact dominates us for the moment to the exclusion of every other form.
We must surrender ourselves absolutely to the work in question,whatever it may be,if we wish to gain its secret.For the time,we must think of nothing else,can think of nothing else,indeed.
ERNEST.The true critic will be rational,at any rate,will he not?
GILBERT.Rational?There are two ways of disliking art,Ernest.
One is to dislike it.The other,to like it rationally.For Art,as Plato saw,and not without regret,creates in listener and spectator a form of divine madness.It does not spring from inspiration,but it makes others inspired.Reason is not the faculty to which it appeals.If one loves Art at all,one must love it beyond all other things in the world,and against such love,the reason,if one listened to it,would cry out.There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty.It is too splendid to be sane.Those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always seem to the world to be pure visionaries.
ERNEST.Well,at least,the critic will be sincere.
GILBERT.A little sincerity is a dangerous thing,and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.The true critic will,indeed,always be sincere in his devotion to the principle of beauty,but he will seek for beauty in every age and in each school,and will never suffer himself to be limited to any settled custom of thought or stereotyped mode of looking at things.He will realise himself in many forms,and by a thousand different ways,and will ever be curious of new sensations and fresh points of view.Through constant change,and through constant change alone,he will find his true unity.He will not consent to be the slave of his own opinions.For what is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
The essence of thought,as the essence of life,is growth.You must not be frightened by word,Ernest.What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
ERNEST.I am afraid I have not been fortunate in my suggestions.
GILBERT.Of the three qualifications you mentioned,two,sincerity and fairness,were,if not actually moral,at least on the borderland of morals,and the first condition of criticism is that the critic should be able to recognise that the sphere of Art and the sphere of Ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.When they are confused,Chaos has come again.They are too often confused in England now,and though our modern Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing,yet,by means of their extraordinary prurience,they can almost taint beauty for a moment.It is chiefly,I regret to say,through journalism that such people find expression.I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism.By giving us the opinions of the uneducated,it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life,it shows us of what very little importance such events really are.By invariably discussing the unnecessary it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture,and what are not.But it should not allow poor Tartuffe to write articles upon modern art.When it does this it stultifies itself.And yet Tartuffe's articles and Chadband's notes do this good,at least.They serve to show how extremely limited is the area over which ethics,and ethical considerations,can claim to exercise influence.Science is out of the reach of morals,for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths.
