1906.] on Walter Pater. 223 



convince or state. The danger of the perfection to which he 

 attained is the danger of over-influence of seductive sweetness ; the 

 value is to suggest the unexplored possibilities of English, for a kind 

 of prose that is wholly and essentially poetical. The triumph of his 

 art is to be metrical without metre, rhythmical without monotony. 

 There will, of course, always be those whom this honeyed, laboured 

 cadence will affect painfully, with a sense of something stifling and 

 over-perfumed ; but the merits of a work of art can never be estab- 

 lished by explanation, or defended by argument. The victory rests 

 with those who can apprehend, feel and enjoy ; to these comes the 

 pleasure of perfected art, of language that first obeys and then 

 enriches thought, of calculated effect, of realisation, with a supreme 

 f eHcity, of the intention of the writer. 



And then, too, I believe that he did a greater work still. In 

 saying this I am fully ahve to the danger of overbalancing the 

 sensuous side of one's nature, of setting too high a value on the 

 thrills and pulsations of beauty, until life may become a mere 

 voluptuous quest for what is delicious ; but I do not honestly think 

 that this is a danger to which the English temperament is particu- 

 larly Uable. A far graver danger for most of us is to pursue too 

 steadfastly the material and the social side of life, to busy ourselves 

 with politics, with commerce, with games, with society, with amuse- 

 ment, to live in the surface of things. But behind the great, glitter- 

 ing, pleasant, exciting world, in which we live, lie vast and shadowy 

 tracts of mystery, of beauty, of awe. We know nothing of whence 

 we came, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Science 

 traces out for us a strange pageant of developed hfe, digging the 

 bones of vanished monsters from the rocks, that lie fathoms beneath 

 our feet. Religion casts a glimmering light upon the path we tread 

 — but outside all is darkness. And yet to most of us there come 

 moments when, as the sun sets smouldering behind the dark grove, 

 as the morning dawns over dewy woods, as the flowers break from 

 underground ; in the soft rise and fall of musical notes, in the 

 passage of a song, in the glance of an eye, in the touch of a hand, 

 there flashes upon us a ray of that strange and subtle essence which 

 we call beauty, a thing which we cannot define or analyse, but 

 which is certainly there, and which affects us with a certain divine 

 spell. It is hard to resist the thought that this is the very language 

 of God, reminding us, if we will but hsten, that there is something 

 sweet and holy all about us, which would tell us what we desire to 

 know, if we were not so dull of heart to understand. 



The work of the poet is to interpret this strange quality to us, to 

 show us that all our hie is shot through with it, as with the glancing 

 colours that shift and flame upon the neck of the dove. 



I think that anyone who will bring this quality before us, who 

 will arrest us in our thoughtless course, who will show us the secrets 

 of art, does for us more than we perhaps know. We cannot, indeed, 



