back. That is, I will admire, but I will not be magnetised, either by
mysticism or militarism. I am all for German fantasy, but I will resist
German earnestness till I die. I am all for Grimm's Fairy Tales; but if
there is such a thing as Grimm's Law, I would break it, if I knew what
it was. I like the Prussian's legs (in their beautiful boots) to fall
down the chimney and walk about my room. But when he procures a head and
begins to talk, I feel a little bored. The Germans cannot really be deep
because they will not consent to be superficial. They are bewitched by
art, and stare at it, and cannot see round it. They will not believe
that art is a light and slight thing--a feather, even if it be from an
angelic wing. Only the slime is at the bottom of a pool; the sky is on
the surface. We see this in that very typical process, the Germanising
of Shakespeare. I do not complain of the Germans forgetting that
Shakespeare was an Englishman. I complain of their forgetting that
Shakespeare was a man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and,
above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of
deity. That is what is the matter with the Germans; they cannot "ring
fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. The phrase of Hamlet about
"holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest
critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. But it really
means (or at least its author really thought) that art is nothing if not
artificial. Realists, like other barbarians, really _believe_ the
mirror; and therefore break the mirror. Also they leave out the phrase
"as 'twere," which must be read into every remark of Shakespeare, and
especially every remark of Hamlet. What I mean by believing the mirror,
and breaking it, can be recorded in one case I remember; in which a
realistic critic quoted German authorities to prove that Hamlet had a
particular psycho-pathological abnormality, which is admittedly nowhere
mentioned in the play. The critic was bewitched; he was thinking of
Hamlet as a real man, with a background behind him three dimensions