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Culture and refinement take on airs it is the deepest artificial instinct of enlightenment to pose in the presence of naturalness; and there is a certain style of ignorance which attitudinizes before the gate of knowledge. The return to nature has always been the dream of the conventionalized soul, while the simple Arcadian is forever longing for the maddening honey of sophistication.
If a lack of freedom in method and in choice of subject is one reason for the sophistication of our short story, then the editorial policy of American magazines is a legitimate field for speculation. I can reason only from the evidence of the product and the testimony of authors, successful and unsuccessful. Yet one conclusion springs to the eye, and is enough in itself to justify investigation.
Byron's innate sophistication saves him from the ludicrous depths to which Wordsworth sometimes fell, but he, too, is Rousseau's disciple, a moral rebel, a highly personal and subjective poet of whom Goethe said that he respected no law, human or divine, except that of the three unities.
It was a clearer, steadier, surer thing than he had ever known them to reflect before; all hint of lost-dog sophistication was gone; even the smile that touched his thin, pain-straightened lips was different somehow.
The spirit of frank camaraderie displayed by the children they mistake for "pertness"; the trustful freedom of their attitude toward their elders they interpret as "lack of reverence"; and their eager interest in subjects ostensibly beyond their years they misread as "sophistication."
But it is simpler to take on the cold glaze of sophistication than to remain simple. When the eyelids become weary, it is as if little red dancing shoes were being wrapped away forever, or a very tight heartstring had suddenly sagged, and when plucked at could no longer plong.
Blair absently, her mind occupied by her young daughter's large sophistication. "Johnny," said Ruth. She leaned half out the window as the red roadster shot thunderously across the rustic bridge and brought up sharply on the driveway below. With a shouted greeting she brought the driver's red-blonde head to attention. "Hullo where's the Bob?" Johnny grinned.
It is easy to regard the Lane of the Mad Eccentrics from the point of view of metropolitan sophistication; to dismiss the Vermilion Hound and the Hell Hole and the Pirate's Den and the Purple Pup and Polly's as clap-trap and tinsel designed for the mystification of yokels and social investigators from Long Island City.
'But for all this, it remains true, that in the intellectual sphere grasp and mastery are incompatible with the exigencies of a struggle. The reader will hardly retain gravity of feature before the self-indulgent, self-deceiving sophistication of a canon, which actually excludes from grasp and mastery in the intellectual sphere Dante, Milton, and Burke.
"They wear sleeves puffed at the bottom instead of the top, and a good deal longer, in East Westland," said Sylvia. "Why, this was made from a Paris model," said Rose, meekly. Again sophistication was abashed before the confidence of conservatism. "I don't know anything about Paris models," said Sylvia. "Mrs. Greenaway gets all her patterns right from Boston."
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