I am in sympathy with that view so far as it implies that the artist cannot be content with a slavish reproduction of isolated facts taken from nature; and that he sets his gaze upon "_le Beau dans le vrai_," which I should like to render, not the "beautiful in the true," but the "Ideal in the true." But I am not in sympathy with it so far as it implies a formal beauty which the artist discerns in accordance with a principle mysteriously and exclusively artistic, existing in a region remote from life. Art is not a sacred mystery into which only the initiated can penetrate. It is not concerned with beauties drawn from a peculiar and exclusive artistic Absolute. Literature deals with life, but in life in an intense manifestation, with that passionate life which attains its richness, its breadth, its tremendous lustiness through the desire for something more than normal life can give. Nobody can object that these ideals are not real, that they are not true to life, and indeed the most vital part of life. The passions they call forth in men are the most real, the most vivid, the most illuminating; they widen and refine experience; they bring us into a larger universe, they add to the stature of personality, they are the means of growth. Literature is an expansion of the mind out of the narrower truth into the larger. It despises no experience, but drags to light its hidden resources, its unexpected wealth. It is profoundly interested in experience on its intense, that is to say, its passionate side. The original mind, not content to find poetic value in a single emotion such as that of love, finds it on all sides, discovering interests here, there, and everywhere. If it concentrates on one of these for the purposes of a poem, a play, a novel, it neglects, of course, no adventitious aid which gives reality to the persons, sufficiency to their motives, contrast, relief, atmosphere--all that is expressed by the ordinary jargon of criticism. To sum up: great creative literature does not deal with things painful or otherwise merely because they are facts of life. Its business is the intensification of life, to bring home to us its myriad finenesses; it achieves this end by presenting persons passing through the intense experiences which we call passions; and these are conditions of the spirit in which an idealised object encourages, thwarts, or tantalises the seeker, and dejects him utterly if the reality turns out to be less than the ideal. The inquiry opens a question for the metaphysician--What is the source of this ideal element which enters into every object passionately sought, and so transcends realisation that the object cannot be attained without a sense of loss? IV THE POPULAR TASTE