Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-01-01
EXCELLENCE in ART
Is Not Concerned with Private Moral
Character.

SO far as authors. artists and actors are in
question it is in their public performances and
not in their private characters that society is
principally, if not exclusively, interested. 1t
is on, the London World says, the first; and not
on the second, that their claims to recognition
are founded, and there is, as a matter Of fact.
no necessary connection between them.
Nothing can be more certain than that
neither in literature nor in art does excellence
in any way depend on the personal cultivation
of morals, whether major or minor, and very
few people are likely, we should imagine, to
agree with Mrs. Lynn Linton in her article
on 1.-The responsibilities of Genius"
that it would have been better for
mankind il Coleridge and Moore had been
two worthy citizens and exemplary fathers OF
families, even if the sweet music Of Christie
bel had been forever mute and the gilt
tering gems of 'Lalla Rookh' had never been
polished. than that two prominent examples OF
undutifulness and inconsistency should have
been provided for the imitation of weak
brethren" 1t would, we think, be going only
a little farther to say that it would have been
better that Hamlet or the ''Novum Organum
should never have been written than that
Shakespeare should have supplied us with a
precedent in deer stealing, or Bacon with pre-
cedent in judicial corruption.
1t is really in their public, not in their pri-
vate capacity that authors, artists and actors
are admitted into society, and il Is with their
public offenses not with their private delin-
quencies, that society is primarily concerned.
Hence it follows that an author or authores5
who writes an immoral or an irreligious book
ordinarily suffers considerably more than an
author or authoress who leads an immoral or
irreligious life. and when they are guilty on
both counts of the Indictment their position is
naturally worse than if they were innocent on
one or other of them. 1t is by no means only
in literature and art that public achievement Is
accepted in palliation of private transgresslon.
What does it signify to anybody that William
Pitt lived an habitual drunkard and died an in
solvent debtor, or that Charles James Fox was
a gamester and debauchee?
No doubt it would have been better if there
had been none of those things, as it would
have been better if Coleridge had eschewed
opium and Moore had been faithful to his wife.
But ii is the statesmen and the writers, and
not the private persons, who were of import
ance to their contemporaries and to posterlty.
That Southey and Wordsworth were moral
men, or that Dickens, Thackeray, TrollOpe
and others worked hard and managed their
affairs creditably, is very satisfactory and
agreeable to know. 1t proves that genius, more
or less. as the case may be, is at all events not
incompatible with responsibility and its sur
roundings and consequences. But it does not
in the slightest degree affect the value of their
contributions to the literature of their country,
and il was on account of their contributions to
the literature of their country that they were
courted when they were alive, and are remem-
bered now that they are dead In the case of
women of genius. it is to be feared that the
single virtue on which their good names used
formerly, more than at present, perhaps to
depend. has. seldom been their strong point,
and from the social elevation of the Empress
Theodore or the Empress Catherine III down
ward. great capacity has rarely been associated
in the fair sexwith temperament favorable to
ch astity