Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/318

272 as his later review of Elsie Clews Parsons' Fear and Conventionality, and his mordant exposure of Clayton Hamilton. It is when he sets out to apply these theories that all his pent-up hatred of Presbyterianism, Puritanism, and the seven deadly virtues comes gushing out in a stream of blinding indignation. There is not room here, unfortunately, to notice the men he douses under it or the paradoxical manner in which the hose sometimes gets partially turned on himself. I can only advise you to read the book through for yourself, turning to page 16, where he observes, outraged, thatThis girl is pretty,' says the artist. 'But she has left off her undershirt,' protests the head-master," and do your own wondering as to whether or not, if Mr. Mencken took a part in the conversation, it would not run: This girl is pretty,' says the artist. 'But she has put her undershirt on!

Or, turning to page 26, conclude for yourself if a critic, reviewing the later novels of H. G. Wells, and announcing that "once a critic begins to suffer from a messianic delusion his days as a serious artist are ended," might not with equal propriety develop that aesthetic formula and state frankly that "once a critic begins to suffer from a diabolic delusion his days as a bigoted critic are begun."

But these exterior flaws, after all, are more the flaws of critical vehemence than of actual critical vice. They mar the surface of Mr. Mencken's prejudices, but they are cracks which give outer indications of an internal, high-pressure revolt against the stupidities of the day. They show that his prejudices, inside, are really opinions.

Those opinions are not always tempered with tolerance, and his defence of the Goethe-Arnold-Spingarn-Croce theory of aesthetics sometimes talks so loud, as Emerson would have put it, that you cannot quite hear what it says. But again this is probably less Mr. Mencken's fault than the fault of the land and age in which he lives. In a country which has produced little art you cannot expect much criticism of art that is sober, mature, or restrained. In such a land you should be grateful if occasionally you discover one more man who, if only at times, is content to hang the crystal globes of literature in his window and say, looking at them without rancour and with very little impatience, "Je n'impose rien; Je ne purpose rien; J'expose."