The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-04-05

Jacks mind, but he said nothing) Sin these
days when, as l said. all is commercial and
commonplace, you should be one of us. All
young men should be: all who have soul
for the nobler emotions and love for that
higher culture which alone can confer the
highest qualification to the aesthetic sense as
distinguished from the baser and more Phil
istine feelings which it is at once our duty
and our pride to conquer" Here Theocri-
tus was interrupted by the arrival of break
FAST borne in by picturesque little waiting
maid who might very well have played
temporary Cypassis to the Ovid OF Theocri-
tus, and who looked with surprise at Harris
as a very different being from the aesthetic
youths who were in the habit of frequenting
those rooms All through breakfast Theoc
ritus kept up an incessant fire of talk about
poetry and painting, about music and sculp-
ture, about love and the beautiful, and
pointed out to his bewildered guest all the
beauties of the higher culture. When break
fast was done Theocritus produced some
slender cigarettes daintily scented with otto
of roses, offered one to Jack and lit one him
self. Jack, who did not smoke, but did not
like to say so, followed his example, and
while he was gasping and swallowing his
smoke, and feeling very uncomfortable, his
friend dropped into rocking chair and be-
gan to PROFOUND the eternal theory of Fart
pour Fart to his new disciple. If any in
credulous reader observe that it is very I'M
likely that high-cultured aesthetic would
unstate his happiness and be staged to the
show with Philistine, can only remind
that incredulous reader that the desire to
proselytize is one of the strongest passions
of the many that stir up our quiet machine
ny and make the wheels go round too fast,
and that among the aesthetics of the year of
grace 1879 the desire for making pupils and
followers was quite as strong as, if not
stronger than, with the schoolmen who hung
upon the lips of Abelard and Rugged their
Aristotles. might also add that Theocri-
tus was especially addicted to the mania for
spreading the gospel of higher culture, and
was at the present time very anxious indeed
for new disciple to trot at his heels and
| retail his maxims, no true aesthetic being
complete without some such companion,
playing to him the part of Hyllas to Her.
culeS.
For this reason he welcomed Jack, and
was willing to take no little trouble to win
him to his side. So he talked much and at
great length, overpowering Jack with per-
feet showerbath of words, out of which Jack
managed to piece together certain coherent
facts, certain stray scraps Of dogma, to take
| away with him and ruminate upon. He
learned that the true maxim of life was cart
for art" He did not know what it meant,
neither did Theocritus; but Jack did not
the essential canons of the new faith which
was being propounded unto him, and which
was awakening within him strange pulsa-
lions of agreement, of conviction. Poor Jack
was OF that kind who are not difficult to Con-
vince in a belief directly opposite to that
which they have INDUCED in for long time.
| Fine shades of opinion would be lost upon
| them; they would not understand the idea
| of ground shifted few PAGES further on or
further NV 10 ms of
missing logical proof; but there is something
to them so attractive in the glitter of fire.
works thrown up around the very diverse of
their moral medal, that they fall into sim
pie snare with exceeding ease; flying from
| pole to pole of opinion, when they would
have grudged hairs breadth to Socrates or
Cicero. Jack learned, too, in that fateful
interview with the aesthetic poet, Theocritus
| Marlowe, that another great thing was beau
ty for beauty's sake, that the moral laws
which bound plain work-a-day folk 1.-THE Phil
| istines, Theocritus called them) were not
fashioned to gall the necks of all who were
of the artist world; that the souls of fire and
children Of the night were, in fact, freed
from all responsibility for their acts, on the
ground that genius gave them authority to
do as they liked, plenary indulgence for any
amount of peccavi-crying. 1t was novel to
Jack to learn that the moral laws did not ex-
ist for him; it was pleasant to hear that he
I was thus exempted from the common lot by
reason of his genius.
Encouraged by these observations, he sub
mitted to the eyes of the poet his own pro-
| auctions, which he had brought with him.
Theocritus received the limitations of Black
stone and Darwin coldly, and proceeded to
read Jack letter on the complete art of DO
etry, such as would have startled Master
George Puttenham could that worthy Eliza
bethan have listened to it. Jack learned that
the first business of poetry was passion, that
in hysteria and delirium great deal of CAPT.
tai was to be found, that little general
blasphemy of what the majority believed in
always told well, and gave its utterer the
appearance of boldness and thought; but
that, above all, the great thing was to star
tie. He gave good many excellent receipts
for startling the herd, as Theocritus desig-
mated the public. $50 into ecstacies of
equal delight over rotting corpse or beau
tiful woman; tell everything that most peo-
pie would leave untold, describe all that or
binary civilization leaves undescribed; be old
English, or old Greek, or old Provepcal, or
old French, or anything at all but what you
are; assume that passion is the only thing
worth caring for or writing about; talk
great deal about beauty and revel in the foul
and you will do,' said Theocritus-or such,
at least, was the lesson Jack learned.
To further him in this aim, Theocritus
lent Jack small library of works compris-
ing his own poems and those of his friend
Heliogabalus Murdle, the tragedies ''Semi-
ramis" and Imperial of that eminent au-
thor Hamburg Pattle, and the exquisite es-
says on the higher culture of Greece, the
Renaissance, and the Neo-Pagans by Boiar-
do Polwheedle. These, with young Lord
Lydgate's TRANSACTIONS from the French,
and some numbers of an aesthetic review, to
which these young men contributed, and
which they chiefly read, the Stoa, completed
the list. Jack took these treasures to his
chambers-a glance or two at their contents
as he walked through the streets warning
him that they did not seem to be of nature
calculated to al ouse proper degree of en-
thusiasm in his parents or even in cousin
Maggie-and for the first time since he had
been in these buildings he let old father an
tic-the law-sleep undisturbed upon his
shelves
Jack began at the top of his pile and read
steadily. After going little way through
Boiardo Polwheedle's essays, and finding
them little mystical to his unframed mind,
he turned to the poetry and dipped boldly
into Heliogabalus hurdles first volume,
can Epic Of Sin and Other POEMS" After
he had read few pages of this promising
young author, whose first appearance in the
literary world fiuttered the readers of the
Stoa so greatly, and caused that unhappy
quarrel between Murdle and his father
which compelled Murdle to degrade his tai
ents by working for living, Jack began to
blush and look round uneasily, lest even the
only specimen of womanhood near the place
the old woman who looked after the cham
bers-might enter and find him at such nov
ell occupation. After while he put Murdle
down with sigh, and took up the poems of
his friend Theocritus But if the free and
easy familiarity with the fair sex which
Murdle had displayed had shocked the mind
| of Jack, he roared you mild as any sucking
dove compared with the fercer frenzy Of
Marlowe's music. Theocritus had come
later into the poetic field than Murdle, but
he fairly outdid his master; through some
hundred pages he howled like priest of Cy-
belle or some delirious dame at the ceremo-
MES of the Bona Dea. Jack read him to the
end, ard arose from the reading new man.
He was determined to become an aesthetic
That night he solemnly burned all his ear
ly poems and began anew.
After few hours hard work he produced
something almost as indecent as Theocritus
himself could have desired. At the end of
the week he had left him nowhere He COM
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