Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/107

Rh the self-absorbed, the revolutionary, the whimsical, the one-sided, the imperfectly developed; but it never comes from mere fools — unless we are to fall back on the definition (which sometimes seems a truth) according to which fools in all ages have done a great deal for civilisation by their habit of preparing the way for the angels.

It is not difficult to look with patience into the preciosities of the past, of which we have had the good and are now spared the vexation. But it is not so easy to be dispassionate before an energetic preciosity of our own day, when it is carried on by a writer whom we feel in a manner constrained to read, while recognising his preciosity for what it is. Hence many explosions of irritation over the preciosity of Carlyle, over that of Mr. Browning, over that of Mr. Swinburne, and above all over that of Mr. Meredith. There may, however, be some little compensation to be had even now from the process of classifying these forms in relation to preciosity in general, especially as they all seem to be brief if not abortive variations, not destined to dominate periods. In each of the four cases mentioned, preciosity is simply an expression of the defiant idiosyncrasy of one man, which only to a slight extent creates a school or clique. Each one had been snapped at by the critics and disregarded by the public for his idiosyncrasy at the start; and each one — here we come to the moral lesson — has persisted and worsened in his idiosyncrasy instead of correcting it. Carlyle reached his on two lines — partly by way of reproducing the manner of talk of his strong-headed and dogmatic old father, partly by way of imitating the declamatory French writers of his youth and of the previous age, as well as the German humoristic style which alone is usually Rh