Modern Æstheticism [pp. 148-163]

THE PRINCETON RE VIE W.
history has an immoral school of letters arisen save under the
ban, and by continued opposition has at length been made to
yield to the force of moral claims. It will be so with this latest
"renaissance." " He who would not be frustrate of his hope,"
says Milton, "to write well hereafter in laudable things ought
himself to be a true poem-a pattern of the best things." This
is the orthodox doctrine of the past, and which our modern
apostles have forgotten when they say "that poetry is neither
moral nor immoral;" and here is the point at which the great
danger of modern estheticism lies. Pitiable as is its want of
mental stamina, this is incidental in comparison with the untold
harm that may accrue to the rising authors of a nation and to
the people at large. Mr. Wilde, as we have seen, illustrates the
evil in the case of his own poetry. The only paradise to which
Mr. Morris invites us is an " Earthly Paradise." Rossetti in his
"Rose Mary" and other poems sings in the same unworthy
strain. One has but to read a few pages in Swinburne and
catch their spirit to endorse the reference of an English critic
to his "pagan and voluptuous verse," the true historic and
moral sequence of Shelley and Byron. It requires but a very
superficial observation of morals to note the rapid progress that
is being made in the direction of a low literary taste. Within
the sphere of poetry and prose alike, and in that department of
literature which is periodical and popular, the evil is more and
more flagrant. That high esthetic taste which seeks purity in
letters for its own sake, and which turns in disgust from the
presence of the base, is fast giving place to a sickly appetite for
the unclean. In poetry and in fiction alike he is becoming popular who keeps what morality he has to himself, and who keeps
his readers so near the border-line between the pure and the impure as to foster an unhealthful curiosity and stimulate an evil
imagination. Whatever the avowed intentions of this English
Renaissance may be, it is responsible for giving a new impulse
to these lower tendencies. Its apostles speak in pleasing phrase
of the sense of the beautiful in art, of a "supreme esthetic
faculty," of the passionate calm of the romantic spirit, of an intense seeking after perfection, of the "high hours of the artist
when thought is not." Yet we find these pet phrases to be the
veriest twaddle. They are themselves an additional proof of
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