They say that I used to go about begging a dinner on the
strength of it. Did I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is
over sometime ago, and _his_ kitchen is safe!"
To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory
of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living
in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern
chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:--
_When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green
and gold,
The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould--
They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink
and the anguish start,
For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"_
The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an
"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it
far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form
of _teaching_. For by the nature of things there happens to be something
of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the
pedant is to remove everything--but Literature especially--out of the
category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it
has but a remote concern.
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