president's address — SECTION I. 175 



contribution to literature. I would rather march through 

 50 miles of the jangle described in it than read it from cover 

 to cover. The office of literature — I think it is Mr. Birrell 

 who says it — is to please ; and I think the same writer 

 quotes Dr. Johnson's remark that a book should either make 

 life happier or teach us to endure it. When Epicurus said 

 pleasure was the summum bomim he meant the highest kinds 

 of pleasure, and in the same way it is the highest kind of 

 pleasure that literature aims at. " We needs must love the 

 highest when we see it." 



The French term for Literature is prettier than the English. 

 They call it belles lettres — Les belles lettres et les beaux arts. 

 There you have the connection between the two divisions of 

 this incongruous Section. The element of the beautiful is 

 present in both of them, and is an ideal at which both 

 Literature and Art must aim. And now see how difficult it 

 is to treat such things as scientific questions are treated. 

 Analyse the rose and you lose its perfume. After dissection 

 the beautiful will not remain beautiful. We all desire that 

 good literature and good pictures should be produced in 

 these Colonies. What avails it that we read papers on 

 poetry ? It is the old fallacy of an art of poetry. Rules 

 will not produce poetry. And if a critic wishes to draw 

 attention to what is good, other modes are open to him. 

 Young Mr. O'Hara, of Melbourne, has lately produced a 

 pleasant little volume of poems. Would it help him, or 

 would it help forward the poetic muse, if there were a 

 discussion of his poems in this Section, and one praised and 

 another blamed them ? The test of poetry is the highest 

 enjoyment ; and disputes as to matters of taste are proverbially 

 unprofitable. 



May one not say something very similar with respect to 

 pictures.'' A controversy such as lately took place in 

 Melbourne over Mr. Water house's Sirens is interesting as 

 far as it shows that public attention is been given to pictures 

 and to Art questions, and as it shows how wide is the 

 divergence even among educated tastes. We can only hope 

 it forwards Art. Why don't the public galleries buy the 

 works of local artists ? Could you not imagine a paper on 

 that subject — the jealousy, the prejudice, the ignorance that 

 would be imputed to the committees charged with the 

 selection of pictures.'' The standard of excellence is so 

 manifestly and so rapidly rising in our leading local schools 

 of Art that it is less cruel to say now that when the pictures 



