and light, of atmospheric effect and curve; in painting it seemed we were in search of harmony, rhythm, and tone.  I should not have minded if I had felt that these words really meant anything in the minds of those who used them; but it seemed to me that the critics were more in love with their terminology than with the effects themselves; and still more, that they went not to form novel impressions, but to search for things which they had been told to expect.

It was the same with the treatment of literature; it all seemed reduced to a game played with counters.  There was no simplicity of apprehension; the point seemed to be to apply a certain set of phrases as decisively as possible.  I never heard a generous appreciation of a book; what I rather heard was trivial gossip about the author, followed by shallow, and I thought pedantic, judgments upon an author’s lack of movement or aerial quality.  If one of the approved authors under discussion seemed to me painfully sordid and debased, one was told to look out for his tonic realism and his virile force.  How many times in those sad hours was I informed that the artist had no concern with ethical problems!  If I maintained that an artist’s concern is with any motives that sway humanity, I was told smilingly that I wanted to treat art in the spirit of a nursery governess.  If, on the other hand, a book appeared to me utterly unreal and false, I was told that it was typical and spiritual, and that the conception of the artist must not be limited by his experience, but that he arrived at correct intuitions by the force of penetrating insight and by the swift inference of genius.

What seemed to me to be absent from it all was the spirit of liberty, of frank enjoyment, of eager apprehension.  I do not say that my friends seemed to me to admire all the wrong things; they had abundant appreciation for certain masters, both in art and music; but I felt that they swallowed masters whole, without any discrimination, and that the entire thing was a matter of tradition and rule and precept and authority, not of irresponsible and ardent enjoyment.  It was all systematised and regulated; there was no question of personal preferences.  The aim of the perceptive man was to find out what was the correct standard of good taste, and then to express his agreement with it in elaborate phrases.  Most of the party were of the same type.  Not that they were oddly-dressed, haggard, affected women or long-haired, pretentious, grotesque men.  I have been at such coteries, too, where they praised each other’s work with odd, passionate cries and wriggling, fantastic gestures.  That is terrible too, because that is culture which has turned rancid.  But at my friend’s house it was not rancid at all, it was simply unassimilated.  My friend himself handed out culture in neat pieces, carefully done up, as a vendor of toffee might hand it out to purchasers; and the people who came there, well-dressed, amiable,