one’s own views, this acceptance of the classics does a great deal of harm.  The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in England is an instance of what I mean.  With regard to the Bible, considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter, so that I need not dwell upon the point.  But in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays.  If they saw the beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama; and if they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of the drama either.  The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art.  They degrade the classics into authorities.  They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.  They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.  A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry, and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions—­one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral.  What they mean by these words seems to me to be this.  When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.  The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter.  But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones.  There is not a single real poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France, is the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make the establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England.  Of course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word.  That they should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet, was only to be expected.  Wordsworth was a poet.  But that they should have called Charles Kingsley an immoral novelist is extraordinary.  Kingsley’s prose was not of a very fine quality.  Still, there is the word, and they use it as best they can.  An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it.  The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.  But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever.