PLAYS AND PURITANS {1}

by Charles Kingsley




The British Isles have been ringing for the last few years with the
word 'Art' in its German sense; with 'High Art,' 'Symbolic Art,'
'Ecclesiastical Art,' 'Dramatic Art,' 'Tragic Art,' and so forth; and
every well-educated person is expected, nowadays, to know something
about Art. Yet in spite of all translations of German 'AEsthetic'
treatises, and 'Kunstnovellen,' the mass of the British people cares
very little about the matter, and sits contented under the imputation
of 'bad taste.' Our stage, long since dead, does not revive; our
poetry is dying; our music, like our architecture, only reproduces
the past; our painting is only first-rate when it handles landscapes
and animals, and seems likely so to remain; but, meanwhile, nobody
cares. Some of the deepest and most earnest minds vote the question,
in general, a 'sham and a snare,' and whisper to each other
confidentially, that Gothic art is beginning to be a 'bore,' and that
Sir Christopher Wren was a very good fellow after all; while the
middle classes look on the Art movement half amused, as with a pretty
toy, half sulkily suspicious of Popery and Paganism, and think,
apparently, that Art is very well when it means nothing, and is
merely used to beautify drawing-rooms and shawl patterns; not to
mention that, if there were no painters, Mr. Smith could not hand
down to posterity likenesses of himself, Mrs. Smith, and family. But
when 'Art' dares to be in earnest, and to mean something, much more
to connect itself with religion, Smith's tone alters. He will teach