DOI article:
Noble, James Ashcroft: Mr. Stevenson's Forerunner
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0131
By James Ashcroft Noble 127
is moulded by some central mood—whimsical, serious, or satirical.
Give the mood, and the essay, from the first sentence to the last, grows
around 1t as the cocoon grows around the silkworm. . . . Theessayist
is a kind of poet in prose, and if harshly questioned as to his uses, he
might be unable to render a better apology for his existence than a
flower might. The essay should be pure literature, as the poem is
pure literature. The essayist wears a lance, but he cares more for the
sharpness of its point than for the pennon that flutters upon it, than
for the banner of the captain under whom he serves. He plays with
death as Hamlet played with Yorick’s skull, and he reads the morals—
strangely Stern, often, for such fragrant lodging—which are folded up
in the bosoms of roses. He has no pride, and is deficient in a sense
of the congruity and fitness of things. He lifts a pebble from the
ground, and puts it aside more carefully than any gern ; and on a nail
in a cottage door he will hang the mantle of his thought, heavily
brocaded with the gold of rhetoric.”
It may be remarked in parenthesis that the above sentences
were published in 1863, and they provide what is probably the first
Statement by an English writer with any repute of the famous
doctrine “Art for art’s sake ” to which Smith seems to have
worked his own way without the prompting of Gallican Sugges-
tion. Indeed, even in 1869, when Mr. Patrick Proctor
Alexander edited Smith’s posthumous volume, Last Leaves, he
remarked in his introduction that he had thought of excluding
the essay entitled “ Literary Work,” in which the same doctrine
was more elaborately advocated, apparently on the ground that it
was a new heresy which might expose Smith to the pains and
penalties of literary excommunication. How curious it seems.
In ten years the essay which Mr. Alexander printed with an
apology became the accepted creed of all or nearly all the younger
men of letters in England, and now it is no longer either a
dangerous
is moulded by some central mood—whimsical, serious, or satirical.
Give the mood, and the essay, from the first sentence to the last, grows
around 1t as the cocoon grows around the silkworm. . . . Theessayist
is a kind of poet in prose, and if harshly questioned as to his uses, he
might be unable to render a better apology for his existence than a
flower might. The essay should be pure literature, as the poem is
pure literature. The essayist wears a lance, but he cares more for the
sharpness of its point than for the pennon that flutters upon it, than
for the banner of the captain under whom he serves. He plays with
death as Hamlet played with Yorick’s skull, and he reads the morals—
strangely Stern, often, for such fragrant lodging—which are folded up
in the bosoms of roses. He has no pride, and is deficient in a sense
of the congruity and fitness of things. He lifts a pebble from the
ground, and puts it aside more carefully than any gern ; and on a nail
in a cottage door he will hang the mantle of his thought, heavily
brocaded with the gold of rhetoric.”
It may be remarked in parenthesis that the above sentences
were published in 1863, and they provide what is probably the first
Statement by an English writer with any repute of the famous
doctrine “Art for art’s sake ” to which Smith seems to have
worked his own way without the prompting of Gallican Sugges-
tion. Indeed, even in 1869, when Mr. Patrick Proctor
Alexander edited Smith’s posthumous volume, Last Leaves, he
remarked in his introduction that he had thought of excluding
the essay entitled “ Literary Work,” in which the same doctrine
was more elaborately advocated, apparently on the ground that it
was a new heresy which might expose Smith to the pains and
penalties of literary excommunication. How curious it seems.
In ten years the essay which Mr. Alexander printed with an
apology became the accepted creed of all or nearly all the younger
men of letters in England, and now it is no longer either a
dangerous