word "curiosity"; it defines something that is central to his personality; this, brought into activity by the "representational impulse" (which in his opinion is the one justification for the artist), takes form in the intricate and delicately woven patterns of human temperament which are the objects of his curiosity. And now we begin to see why every critic, when considering an author's works, almost invariably, and instinctively, examines not only his finished works, but also whatever may be known about him as a man. I admit, as all would admit, that his works must stand or fall solely on their own account; but the critic finds that in seeking to discover the central interest and significance of an author's art his task is facilitated if once he can find the clue to his temperament. This backstairs knowledge does the trick for him. The bond between the man and his art is so necessary and immediate that no objectiveness of method can conceal it. It was by realising this fact, and applying his exceptionally fine critical intuition to this task, that Professor Raleigh, considering the _essentials_, was able to draw a very much more convincing picture of the personality of Shakespeare than that which was drawn, brilliantly indeed, by Mr. Frank Harris; but Mr. Harris, I think, devoted his attention to qualities in Shakespeare which--whether in any sense real or not--were in any case secondary and inessential elements in the dramatist's character. And this is why his criticism, in spite of its brilliance, was comparatively unimportant. I must not be supposed to mean that the artist begins with an abstract conception, and that he then proceeds to search for objects suitable to its concrete representation. There are, I know, brilliant novelists and painters who have proceeded in that manner; but the result, to my mind, seldom reveals that complete unity of object and idea which men require; for this method is so dependent upon the intellectual fitting of facts to idea that either the facts are forced and made unreal, or the idea is sacrificed. I am told that in the case of Mr. Joseph Conrad the process is reversed; he perceives, as by vision, some intense single situation--that picture, for instance, in _Lord Jim_, where the Captain looking over the side of his ship is tempted to desert his crew. Such a situation, a focal point in a story, is for the artist object and idea in one, simultaneously presented by the imagination; the union of matter and spirit is already there at the moment of creation; and in that way, I imagine, most of the finest pictures, poems, dramas and stories have been first conceived. When once that focal point has been presented in all its vividness and significance by the imagination, it remains for the artist to mass his detail in and around it as appropriately as his invention and technique permit.