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Why Gethryn should want to read this letter four times, when one perusal of it had been more than enough, no one, least of all himself, could have told. He sat now crushing it in is hand, tasting all the bitterness that is stored up for a sensitive artist tied by fate to an omniscient Philistine who feeds his body with bread and his soul with instruction about art and behavior.
How he would himself have revelled in the paradox "that books which were household words with every cow-boy in Nevada, and every Baboo in Bengal, were condemned by men of culture as the work of a Philistine and a mannerist"; "how ballads which were the delight of every child were ridiculed by critics as rhetorical jingles that would hardly win a prize in a public school"; "how the most famous of all modern reviewers scarcely gave us one example of delicate appreciation or subtle analysis"; how it comes about "that the most elaborate of modern histories does not contain an idea above the commonplaces of a crammer's textbook" and so forth, in the true Black-and-White style which is so clear and so familiar.
"The colt is young," replied Jane, "and he must lie idle till he gets the necessary strength; one must not sacrifice the future to the present." The reader will say that is most mean and trivial stuff, the vulgar English nature in full force; just such food as the Philistine would naturally provide for his young.
Along with Arm he would have been brought to Canaan, and though we first meet with his name in the Old Testament in connection with the Philistines, it is certain that he was already one of the deities of the country whom the Philistine invaders adopted. One of the Canaanitish governors in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence bears the Assyrian name of Dagon-takala, "we trust in Dagon."
Had I been compelled to pass my life in such a house, this Philistine attitude might have palled upon me; but, under the circumstances, it refreshed me, and I made use of my welcome, which I believe was genuine, to its full extent. As months went by, they seemed to me to draw closer to one another, though I am given to understand that such is not the rule in fashionable circles.
Art is in our ideal synonymous with creation, it must look ahead; but save a few rare, very rare exceptions, the professional artist remains too philistine to perceive new horizons. Moreover, this inspiration cannot come from books; it must be drawn from life, and present society cannot arouse it.
And to afflict him she began, and then His strength became like that of other men. Then said she, Samson, thy Philistine foes Are just at hand: and he from sleep arose, And as at other times went forth to shake him, Not knowing that the Lord did now forsake him.
He had found refuge in a little city of the Philistines, far down in the South, from which he and his men had marched as a contingent in the Philistine army, which was preparing an attack upon Saul. But, naturally, the Philistine soldiers doubted their ally, and he was obliged to take himself and his troops back again to their temporary home. When he came there it was a heap of smoking ruins.
Some make themselves notorious for their drawing-room patronage of artists, which, however, does not often include buying their pictures; others gather around them scores of obscure authors, whose books they talk of, if they do not read; a few, a short time since, were centres of spiritualistic circles, and got a queer kind of social influence thereby, so far as Philistine desire to witness the "manifestations" went; and one or two are names of weight in the emancipated ranks, and take chiefly to what they call "working women."
Whatever its justification, the excuse for the poets flaunting an addiction to immorality lies in the obnoxiousness of the philistine element among their enemies. When mass feeling, mass-morality, becomes too oppressive, poets are wont to escape from its trammelling conventions at any cost.
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