At the same time, here and there are evidences that Mr. Sitwell has felt as well as fancied.  The opening verse of Pierrot Old gives us a real impression of shadows: 

  The harvest moon is at its height,
  The evening primrose greets its light
  With grace and joy:  then opens up
  The mimic moon within its cup. 
  Tall trees, as high as Babel tower,
  Throw down their shadows to the flower—­
  Shadows that shiver—­seem to see
  An ending to infinity.

But there is too much of Pan, the fauns and all those other ballet-dancers in his verse.  Mr. Sitwell’s muse wears some pretty costumes.  But one wonders when she will begin to live for something besides clothes.

XXI.—­LABOUR OF AUTHORSHIP

Literature maintains an endless quarrel with idle sentences.  Twenty years ago this would have seemed too obvious to bear saying.  But in the meantime there has been a good deal of dipping of pens in chaos, and authors have found excuses for themselves in a theory of literature which is impatient of difficult writing.  It would not matter if it were only the paunched and flat-footed authors who were proclaiming the importance of writing without style.  Unhappily, many excellent writers as well have used their gift of style to publish the praise of stylelessness.  Within the last few weeks I have seen it suggested by two different critics that the hasty writing which has left its mark on so much of the work of Scott and Balzac was a good thing and almost a necessity of genius.  It is no longer taken for granted, as it was in the days of Stevenson, that the starry word is worth the pains of discovery.  Stevenson, indeed, is commonly dismissed as a pretty-pretty writer, a word-taster without intellect or passion, a juggler rather than an artist.  Pater’s bust also is mutilated by irreverent schoolboys:  it is hinted that he may have done well enough for the days of Victoria, but that he will not do at all for the world of George.  It is all part of the reaction against style which took place when everybody found out the aesthetes.  It was, one may admit, an excellent thing to get rid of the aesthetes, but it was by no means an excellent thing to get rid of the virtue which they tried to bring into English art and literature.  The aesthetes were wrong in almost everything they said about art and literature, but they were right in impressing upon the children of men the duty of good drawing and good words.  With the condemnation of Oscar Wilde, however, good words became suspected of kinship with evil deeds.  Style was looked on as the sign of minor poets and major vices.  Possibly, on the other hand, the reaction against style had nothing to do with the Wilde condemnation.  The heresy of the stylelessness is considerably older than that.  Perhaps it is not quite fair to call it the heresy of stylelessness:  it would be more accurate to describe it as the heresy of style without pains.  It springs from the idea that great literature is all a matter of first fine careless raptures, and it is supported by the fact that apparently much of the greatest literature is so.  If lines like