Platform Monologues | Page 5

in its form, with its feeling, in its mood; the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth of his conception and
its atmosphere. No doubt the thing of beauty, the profound thing, the
thing of joy, is most delightful for the spectator to contemplate; to the
artist himself it is apt to be most inspiring, and therefore art seems to be
concerned mainly with beauty and joy. But that is the only reason. As

artist, his function is simply to body forth, and present to other minds,
whatever he conceives, and he is consummate artist just in proportion
as he secures that end.
Now take the literary artist. He in his turn conceives a thought, or
picture of the imagination or fancy. A feeling may come over him with
a gentle grace, a subtle influence, an overmastering passion. A mood--a
state of soul--may colour all his view, tinging it with some haunting
melancholy or irradiating his whole world till it seems a Paradise. How
is he to communicate to us this thought, this picture, this fancy, the
grace and subtlety and passion, the precise hues of his mood for
sombreness or radiancy? Well, he takes words, and by selecting them,
by combining them, by harmonizing them with a master's hand, he sets
before us certain magic phrases wrought into a song, an ode, an elegy,
or whatsoever form of creation is most apt and true, and he makes us
see just what he sees and feel just what he feels, printing it all upon our
own brains and hearts.
In this then must lie the essence of the literary gift--in the power of a
writer to express himself, to communicate vividly, without mistiness of
contents or outline, his own spirit and vision. I repeat that it is
irrelevant whether what he sees and feels be beautiful or not, joyful or
not, profound or not, even true or not. Nor does it matter either what his
style may be. He is a master in the art of writing when he can make his
own mind, so to speak, entirely visible or audible to us, when he can
express what his inward eye beholds in such terms that we can behold
it in the same shape and in the same light--if, for example, when he
sees a thing in "the light which never was on sea or land, the
consecration and the poet's dream," he can make us also see it in that
faëry light.
This is no such easy thing. The fact that there are a hundred thousand
words in the English dictionary does not make it easier. It is not those
who know the most words that can necessarily best express themselves.
Neither is it true that, because feeling is real, it can therefore speak.
"Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh" has no such sense
as that. Many and many a fine thought is lost to the world, and all the

value of many a deep emotion, because he who thinks or feels cannot
voice himself, any more than you or I can necessarily take a brush and
paint, like Turner, the unspeakable glories of a sunset which our eyes
and soul can nevertheless appreciate to the very full. "What makes a
poet?" says Goethe, and he replies, "A heart brimful of some noble
passion." No doubt the noble passion must be there before a man can be
a poet, but equally beyond doubt the passion alone cannot make him
one. To say that a heart full of the ardour of religion, of love, of hope,
of sorrow or joy, can always express its ardour, is an assertion against
which thousands of poor inarticulate human beings would rise in
protest. It is simply contrary to experience. There is many a man and
woman besides Wordsworth to whom "the meanest flower that blows
can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears"; but, unlike
Wordsworth, no sooner do these less gifted men and women attempt to
express one such thought and impart it to others, than lo! the subtle
thought evades them and is gone. They can give it no embodiment in
language. Their attempt ends in words which they know to be obscure,
cold, trivial, hopelessly ineffectual.
* * * * *
How unevenly distributed is this power of expression! Let us begin as
low in the scale of verbal art as you choose. Let two observers chance
to see some previously unknown plant, with novel leaf and flower and
perfume. If they could paint the leaf and flower, well and good; but ask
each separately to communicate to you in words a mental picture of
that plant. Observe how, with equal education in the matter of language,
the one will describe you the