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In Friendship's Garland, from the very structure of the book, his serious judgments have to be delivered by the mouth of his Prussian friend; and here is his judgment on our public concessions to pruriency "By shooting all this garbage on your public, you are preparing and assuring for your English people an immorality as deep and wide as that which destroys the Latin nations."
For one hundred years these subjects have been suppressed in America to the great benefit of society and it is well that they should remain so. So-called reforms in this direction are made the excuse for pruriency in drama, in novels, in moving pictures and in other ways that are distinctly vicious in their effect.
The immoral incidents, round which a veil of poetic sanctity had been cast by the great consecrator time, are here displayed in all their mundane pruriency. In the Metamorphoses Jupiter is introduced as smitten with the love of a nymph, Dictynna; some compunctions of conscience seize him, and the image of Juno's wrath daunts him, but he finally overcomes his fear with these words
The play, which had been going none too well, straightway sold out a fortnight in advance, thereby attesting the power of the press as well as the appeal of pruriency to an eager and jaded public. Zucker left a note on the editorial desk warmly thanking his confrère for this evidence of coöperation. Life was practicing its lesser ironies upon Banneker whilst maturing its greater ones.
So imperfect is still the education of the multitude that in these matters the ill-bred fanatic of pruriency usually gains his will. Such a state of things cannot but have an unwholesome reaction on the moral atmosphere of the community in which it is possible. Even from the religious point of view, prurient prudery is not justifiable.
By its suggestion of horror it provoked that hunger for details which, in its acute stage, becomes pruriency. This is what the eye, with a constantly augmenting expression of fearfulness, conveyed to the brain: "DREADFUL TRAGEDY. About mid-day yesterday one of the most fearful tragedies ever enacted in this province, indeed in Canada, took place in the village of Megantic.
A poet, if he understands the theory of his own calling, may learn much from pictures; for the analogy between the sister arts is very strong. The secret of preserving richness without glare, fulness without pruriency, and strength without exaggeration, must be attained alike by poet and painter, before either of them can take their rank among the chosen children of immortality.
There have been some cases where a funny sort of swindle has been effected by these peddlers of pruriency, by selling some dirty-minded dupe a cheap good book, at the extravagant price of a dear bad one. More than one foolish youth has received, instead of the vile thing that he sent five dollars for, a nice little New Testament.
The question is complicated among ourselves because established traditions of rigid concealment have fostered a pruriency which is an offensive insult to naked modesty. In many lands the women who are accustomed to be almost or quite naked in the presence of their own people cover themselves as soon as they become conscious of the lustful inquisitive eyes of Europeans.
My plan, therefore, being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some people, when they hear it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the splendour of the project which has been lately laid upon your table by the noble lord in the blue riband.
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