the fine individual
things they conceived are forgotten by the mixed multitude, and known
only to a few of the few. Of the Spanish theatre we cannot speak; but
there are no such characters in any French tragedy: the whole aim of
that tragedy forbade it. Goethe has added to literature a few great
characters; he may be said almost to have added to literature the idea
of 'intellectual creation',--the idea of describing great characters
through the intellect; but he has not added to the common stock what
Shakespeare added, a new _multitude_ of men and women; and these not
in simple attitudes, but amid the most complex parts of life, with all
their various natures roused, mixed, and strained. The severest art
must have allowed many details, much overflowing circumstance to a
poet who undertook to describe what almost defies description. Pure
art would have _commanded_ him to use details lavishly, for only by a
multiplicity of such could the required effect have been at all
produced. Shakespeare could accomplish it, for his mind was a
_spring_, an inexhaustible fountain of human nature, and it is no
wonder that being compelled by the task of his time to let the
fullness of his nature overflow, he sometimes let it overflow too
much, and covered with erroneous conceits and superfluous images
characters and conceptions which would have been far more justly, far
more effectually, delineated with conciseness and simplicity. But
there is an infinity of pure art _in_ Shakespeare, although there is a
great deal else also.

It will be said, if ornate art be as you say, an inferior species or
art, why should it ever be used? If pure art be the best sort of art,
why should it not always be used?

The reason is this: literary art, as we just now explained, is
concerned with literatesque characters in literatesque situations; and
the _best_ art is concerned with the _most_ literatesque characters in
the _most_ literatesque situations. Such are the subjects of pure art;
it embodies with the fewest touches, and under the most select and
choice circumstances, the highest conceptions; but it does not follow
that only the best subjects are to be treated by art, and then only in
the very best way. Human nature could not endure such a critical
commandment as that, and it would be an erroneous criticism which gave
it. _Any_ literatesque character may be described in literature under
_any_ circumstances which exhibit its literatesqueness.

The