Intentions | Page 8

of twenty years ago, with their solemn
depressing truths, their inane worship of Nature, their sordid reproductions of visible
objects, have become, even to the Philistine, a source of laughter. A cultured Mahomedan
once remarked to us, "You Christians are so occupied in misinterpreting the fourth
commandment that you have never thought of making an artistic application of the
second." He was perfectly right, and the whole truth of the matter is this: The proper
school to learn art in is not Life but Art.'
And now let me read you a passage which seems to me to settle the question very
completely.

'It was not always thus. We need not say anything about the poets, for they, with the
unfortunate exception of Mr. Wordsworth, have been really faithful to their high mission,
and are universally recognised as being absolutely unreliable. But in the works of
Herodotus, who, in spite of the shallow and ungenerous attempts of modem sciolists to
verify his history, may justly be called the "Father of Lies"; in the published speeches of
Cicero and the biographies of Suetonius; in Tacitus at his best; in Pliny's Natural History;
in Hanno's Periplus; in all the early chronicles; in the Lives of the Saints; in Froissart and
Sir Thomas Malory; in the travels of Marco Polo; in Olaus Magnus, and Aldrovandus,
and Conrad Lycosthenes, with his magnificent Prodigiorum et Ostentorum Chronicon; in
the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini; in the memoirs of Casanova; in Defoe's History
of the Plague; in Boswell's Life of Johnson; in Napoleon's despatches, and in the works
of our own Carlyle, whose French Revolution is one of the most fascinating historical
novels ever written, facts are either kept in their proper subordinate position, or else
entirely excluded on the general ground of dulness. Now, everything is changed. Facts
are not merely finding a footing-place in history, but they are usurping the domain of
Fancy, and have invaded the kingdom of Romance. Their chilling touch is over
everything. They are vulgarising mankind. The crude commercialism of America, its
materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of
imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having
adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable
of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the
cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale
in the whole of literature.'
CYRIL. My dear boy!
VIVIAN. I assure you it is the case, and the amusing part of the whole thing is that the
story of the cherry-tree is an absolute myth. However, you must not think that I am too
despondent about the artistic future either of America or of our own country. Listen to
this:-
'That some change will take place before this century has drawn to its close we have no
doubt whatsoever. Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have
neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance, tired of the intelligent person
whose reminiscences are always based upon memory, whose statements are invariably
limited by probability, and who is at any time liable to be corroborated by the merest
Philistine who happens to be present, Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader,
the cultured and fascinating liar. Who he was who first, without ever having gone out to
the rude chase, told the wandering cavemen at sunset how he had dragged the
Megatherium from the purple darkness of its jasper cave, or slain the Mammoth in single
combat and brought back its gilded tusks, we cannot tell, and not one of our modern
anthropologists, for all their much-boasted science, has had the ordinary courage to tell us.
Whatever was his name or race, he certainly was the true founder of social intercourse.
For the aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis
of civilised society, and without him a dinner-party, even at the mansions of the great, is
as dull as a lecture at the Royal Society, or a debate at the Incorporated Authors, or one of
Mr. Burnand's farcical comedies.

'Nor will he be welcomed by society alone. Art, breaking from the prison-house of
realism, will run to greet him, and will kiss his false, beautiful lips, knowing that he alone
is in possession of the great secret of all her manifestations, the secret that Truth is
entirely and absolutely a matter of style; while Life--poor, probable, uninteresting human
life--tired of repeating herself for the benefit of Mr. Herbert Spencer, scientific historians,
and the compilers of statistics in general, will follow meekly after him,