It was the _highest_ quality you were to give to your moments as
they passed; to fail to do this was "on this short day of frost and sun
to sleep before evening." ("The Renaissance.") "Marius the Epicurean" was
not an Epicurean in the sense in which the doctrines of Epicurus have
been travestied through the ages: he turned away sickened from the
barbarities of the gladiatorial combats, longing for the time when the
forces of the future would create a heart that would make it impossible
to be thus pleasured. If "_Carpe diem_" is Pater's motto, the hour is not
to be plucked ignobly; if style is his watchword in art, style alone
cannot make great Art, though it may make good Art. The distinction,
between good Art and great Art depends immediately _not on its form_ but
on its matter. "It is on the quality of the matter it informs or
controls, its compass, its variety, its alliance to great ends, or the
depth of the note of revolt, or the largeness of hope in it, that the
greatness of literary art depends, as 'The Divine Comedy,' 'Paradise
Lost,' 'Les Miserables,' the English Bible, are great art." ("Essay on
Style.") Your Chelsea manikin would never dream of these things as great
art: his whole soul is expressed in ballads and canzonets, in strange
esoteric contes, in nocturnes and colour-symphonies, in the bric-a-brac
of aesthetics.
Pages:
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335