Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/102

 that philosophy and religion used to do is, of course, manifestly absurd. I will not argue the point at length, being content to observe that the cry seems to me oddly superfluous. Of all the dangers to which modern novelists, for example, are exposed, that against which they are least required to guard is the danger of being too philosophical. They really may feel at their ease; nor do I think that they need feel much alarmed as to the risk of being too moral. Meanwhile, it is my belief that nobody is the better in any department of life or literature for being a fool or a brute: and least of all in poetry. I cannot think that a man is disqualified for poetry either by thinking more deeply than others or by having a keener perception of (I hope I may join the two words) moral beauty. A perception of what it is that makes a hero or saint is, I fancy, as necessary to a great literary artist as a perception of what it is that constitutes physical beauty to a painter. The whole doctrine, in short, seems to me to be a misstatement of the very undeniable and very ancient truth that it is a poet's business to present types, for example, and not to give bare psychological theory: not that he is the worse for being even a deep philosopher or a subtle