When Flaubert was
arraigned for his "Madame Bovary," he did not get a box of men of
letters, though there is so much more sense of art in the citizens of
Paris, that even by the bourgeois jury he was acquitted without a stain
on the character of his book. The central figure of our English episode
had nothing so creditable as an immoral book to his charge, but
indirectly the relations of art and morality came into question, and he
declared that he followed Pater, the one critic he recognised, in
believing that there were no relations between art and morality, that a
book could not be immoral, but might be something worse--badly written.
Now, this is the favourite doctrine of Chelsea, and doubtless something
may be said for it; but to put it forth, as the doctrine of Pater is a
libel--almost a criminal libel--on that great writer. These young men who
live for the Beautiful have only understood as much of Pater as would
justify epicurean existence.
Let us examine this pretension of the prophet of the importance of being
flippant, to be a disciple of Pater.
No doubt Pater was something of an Impressionist in his philosophy of
life. An eloquent expounder of the Heracletian flux, [Greek: panta rei],
of the relativity of systems of thought and conduct, and of the duty of
seizing the flying moments--"failure in life is to form habits,"--he did
not omit, like his one-sided disciples, to consider the quality of those
moments.
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