Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/159

 Hubert Crackanthorpe's Sentimental Studies, the other Mr. George Moore's Celibates.

In dealing with Mr. Crackanthorpe's book, my prize-critics will kindly give attention to the actuality of his subjects, the clearness of his psychological insight, the intensity of his realisation, the convincingness of his presentation, and the sincerity and dignity of his manner. At the same time, they will point out that Mr. Crackanthorpe often says too much, that he is reluctant to leave anything to his reader's imagination, his reader's experience. He doesn't make enough allowance for his reader's native intelligence. He forgets that the golden rule in writing is simply a paraphrase of the other Golden Rule: Write as you would be written to. Mr. Crackanthorpe strains a little too hard, a little too visibly, for the mot juste. But the mot juste is sometimes not the best word to use. One must know what the mot juste is, but sometimes one should erase it and substitute the demi-mot. And then isn't Mr. Crackanthorpe handicapped as an artist by a trifle too much moral earnestness? Moral earnestness in life, I daresay, does more good than harm; but in Art, if present at all, it should be concealed like a vice. Mr. Crackanthorpe hardly takes pains enough to conceal his. If he won't abandon it—if he won't leave it to such writers as the author of Trilby and Miss Annie S. Swann—he should at least hide it under mountains of artistry.

And now for ''Celibates. Celibates is an important book; I'm not quite sure that Celibates isn't a great book, but Celibates'' is assuredly a most perplexing, a most exasperating book. How one and the same man can write as ill and as well, as execrably and as effectively, as Mr. George Moore writes, passes my comprehension. His style, for instance. His style is atrocious, and his style is almost classical. His style is like chopped straw, and his style is like architecture. In its material, in its words, phrases, The Yellow Book—Vol. VII.