The Certain Hour (Dizain des Poëtes)

  AUCTORIAL INDUCTION

  WHICH (AFTER SOME BRIEF DISCOURSE OF FIRES AND FRYING-PANS) ELUCIDATESTHE INEXPEDIENCY OF PUBLISHING THIS BOOK, AS WELL AS THE NECESSITY OFWRITING IT: AND THENCE PASSES TO A MODEST DEFENSE OF MORE VITAL THEMES.

  The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the sayingruns, old as the hills--and as immortal. Questionless, there was manya serviceable brick wasted in Nineveh because finicky persons mustneeds be deleting here and there a phrase in favor of its cuneaticsynonym; and it is not improbable that when the outworn sun expires inclinkers its final ray will gild such zealots tinkering with their"style." Some few there must be in every age and every land of whomlife claims nothing very insistently save that they write perfectly ofbeautiful happenings.

  Yet, that the work of a man of letters is almost always a congenialproduct of his day and environment, is a contention as lacking innovelty as it is in the need of any upholding here. Nor is therationality of that axiom far to seek; for a man of genuine literarygenius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are ofwider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the onemost variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, inconsequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibitsthe impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in hiswritings--where it conceivably might be just predeterminedaffectation--but in his personality.

  Such being the assumption upon which this volume is builded, it appearsonly equitable for the architect frankly to indicate his cornerstone.Hereinafter you have an attempt to depict a special temperament--one inessence "literary"--as very variously molded by diverse eras and asresponding in proportion with its ability to the demands of a certainhour.

  In proportion with its ability, be it repeated, since its ability issingularly hampered. For, apart from any ticklish temporalconsiderations, be it remembered, life is always claiming of thistemperament's possessor that he write perfectly of beautiful happenings.

  To disregard this vital longing, and flatly to stifle the innatestriving toward artistic creation, is to become (as with Wycherley andSheridan) a man who waives, however laughingly, his sole apology forexistence. The proceeding is paltry enough, in all conscience; andyet, upon the other side, there is much positive danger in giving tothe instinct a loose rein. For in that event the familiarcircumstances of sedate and wholesome living cannot but seem, likepaintings viewed too near, to lose in gusto and winsomeness. Desire,perhaps a craving hunger, awakens for the impossible. No emotion,whatever be its sincerity, is endured without a side-glance toward itscapabilities for being written about. The world, in short, inclines toappear an ill-lit mine, wherein one quarries gingerly amidst an abidingloneliness (as with Pope and Ufford and Sire Raimbaut)--and wherein onevery often is allured into unsavory alleys (as with Herrick andAlessandro de Medici)--in search of that raw material which lovinglabor will transshape into comeliness.

  Such, if it be allowed to shift the metaphor, are the treacherousby-paths of that admirably policed highway whereon the well-groomed andwell-bitted Pegasi of Vanderhoffen and Charteris (in his later manner)trot stolidly and safely toward oblivion. And the result of wanderingafield is of necessity a tragedy, in that the deviator's life, if notas an artist's quite certainly as a human being's, must in the outcomebe adjudged a failure.

  Hereinafter, then, you have an attempt to depict a specialtemperament--one in essence "literary"--as very variously molded bydiverse eras and as responding in proportion with its ability to thedemands of a certain hour.