A MALFORMED GIANT 189 



arrests Ms fall, and he clings to it -with, desperate 



grip- 

 Here Hugo dallies witli him and gloats over him. 

 He is suspended two hundred feet above the pave- 

 ment, and cannot long maintain his hold. It is a 

 startling situation, and Hugo loves startling situa- 

 tions. He contemplates him panting, perspiring, 

 his nails bleeding against the stones, his knees 

 grazing the wall, the lead pipe gradually yielding, 

 his strength failing, his hands slipping, his vitals 

 freezing, till the inevitable moment comes, and he 

 falls through the void to the earth beneath. We 

 repeat that there would be no objection to aU this 

 if it contained food for the imagination, if it opened 

 any ideal depths in the mind or was relieved by any 

 background; but, excepting that the verbal work- 

 manship is vastly better, it ranks no higher as art 

 than the blood-and-thunder stories of the weekly 

 novelette. 



If a man is drawn into the maelstrom, or falls 

 into a volcano, or is lost at sea, or goes down in 

 battle, or meets suffering and death in a heroic man- 

 ner, there is room for the imagination to work; but 

 art would have little interest in a man being sawed 

 in two, or roasted alive, or crushed under a weight, 

 or dangling at the end of a rope. If the " Prome- 

 theus " of ^schylus had nothing to recommend it 

 but the aspect of physical torture which it depicts, 

 however vividly painted it would at once lose its 

 value as a work of art. 



There is therefore this final remark to be made 



