for the praise of a coterie or to shock the bourgeois--above all shock
the bourgeois. A certain type of artist delights in shocking the
bourgeois--a riot over a play gives him great satisfaction. In passing,
one must note with exasperation, perhaps with some misgiving, how men
raise a riot over something not worth a thought, and will not fight for
things for which they ought to die. But he likes the bourgeois to think
him a terrible person; in his own esteem he is on an eminence, and he
proceeds to send out more shock-the-bourgeois literature; and 'tis
mostly very sorry stuff. Sometimes he tries to be emotional and is but
painfully artificial; sometimes he tries to be merry and gives us
flippancy for fun. And we feel a terrible need for getting back to a
standard, worthy and true. Great work can be made only for the love of
work; not for money, not for art's sake, not for intellectual appeal nor
flippant ridicule, but for the pure love of things, good, true and
beautiful. With the best of intentions we may fail; and this should be
laid down as a safe guiding principle; a dramatist should be moved by
his own tragedy; the novelist should be interested in his own story; the
poet should make his song for the love of the song and his comedy for
the fun of the thing.


VI


We naturally think of the Abbey Theatre when we speak of these things,
and as the Abbey work has certainly suffered from overpraise we may
correct it by comparison with Shakespeare. Before the Abbey we were so
used to triviality that when clever and artistic work appeared we at
once hailed it great. We _did_ get one or two great things, a fact to
note with hearty pleasure and pride. But the rest was merely clever; and