All these appeals to art to set herself more in harmony with modern
progress and civilisation, and to make herself the mouthpiece for
the voice of humanity, these appeals to art 'to have a mission,'
are appeals which should be made to the public. The art which has
fulfilled the conditions of beauty has fulfilled all conditions:
it is for the critic to teach the people how to find in the calm of
such art the highest expression of their own most stormy passions.
'I have no reverence,' said Keats, 'for the public, nor for
anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the memory of great
men and the principle of Beauty.'
Such then is the principle which I believe to be guiding and
underlying our English Renaissance, a Renaissance many-sided and
wonderful, productive of strong ambitions and lofty personalities,
yet for all its splendid achievements in poetry and in the
decorative arts and in painting, for all the increased comeliness
and grace of dress, and the furniture of houses and the like, not
complete. For there can be no great sculpture without a beautiful
national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed
that; no great drama without a noble national life, and the
commercial spirit of England has killed that too.
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