Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/103

 number of self-called "stylists" who can always be relied upon to praise the indecent in literature. They call it "strong," or "virile," and reck nothing of the fact that the "strong" stench of it may poison previously healthy minds, and corrupt otherwise innocent souls. Prurient literature is always a never-failing accompaniment of social "blight." The fancy for it arises when wholesome literary fare has become too simple for the diseased and capricious mental appetite, and when the ideal conceptions of great imaginative minds, such as the romances of Scott and Dickens, are voted "too long and boresome!—there's really no time to read such stories nowadays!" No,—there is no time! There's plenty of time to play Bridge though!

Poetry—the greatest of the arts—is neglected at the present day, because nobody will read it. Among the most highly "educated" persons, many can be met with who prattle glibly about Shakespeare, but who neither know the names of his plays nor have read a line of his work. With the decline of Poesy comes as a matter of course the decline of Sculpture, Painting, Architecture and Music. For Poesy is the parent stem from which all these arts have sprung. The proofs of their decline are visible enough amongst us to-day. Neither Great Britain, nor Europe, nor America, can show a really great Poet. England's last great poet was Tennyson,—since his death we have had no other. Similarly there is no great sculptor, no great painter, no great novelist, no great architect, no great musician. I use the word "great," of course, in its largest sense, in the sense wherein we speak of Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, or Beethoven. There