But without that sympathy
Dickens would not be a writer like Dickens; and probably not a writer at
all. A mere conviction that Catholic thought is the clearest as well as
the best disciplined, will not make a man a writer like Newman. But
without that conviction Newman would not be a writer like Newman; and
probably not a writer at all. It is useless for the aesthete (or any
other anarchist) to urge the isolated individuality of the artist, apart
from his attitude to his age. His attitude to his age is his
individuality: men are never individual when alone.
It only remains for me, therefore, to take the more delicate and
entangled task; and deal with the great Victorians, not only by dates
and names, but rather by schools and streams of thought. It is a task
for which I feel myself wholly incompetent; but as that applies to every
other literary enterprise I ever went in for, the sensation is not
wholly novel: indeed, it is rather reassuring than otherwise to realise
that I am now doing something that nobody could do properly. The chief
peril of the process, however, will be an inevitable tendency to make
the spiritual landscape too large for the figures.
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