in an universal straining and
hankering after the Impossible; it is grand to see the arts writhing and
shivering to atoms, like caged vipers, in their impotence to do what
they cannot. Only it would be simpler to let those do it who can; and my
system is the only one which can work. Despair is fine, and Nirvana is
fine; but successful and useful activity is a good deal finer. Wherefore
I shall always say--'Each in his place and to his work;' and you,
therefore, my dear Cyril, to yours, which is poetry."

"I think your philosophy is quite right, Baldwin, only--only, somehow, I
can't get it to suit my moral condition," answered Cyril. "I do feel
quite persuaded that sculptors must not try to be painters, nor
musicians try to be poets, nor any of them try to be anything beyond
what they are. It is all quite rational, and right, and moral, but still
I am not satisfied about poetry. You see a poet is not quite in the same
case as any other sort of artist. The musician, inasmuch as musician,
knows only notes, has power only over sounds; and the painter similarly
as to form and colours; if either be something more, it is inasmuch as
he is a mere man, not an artist. But a poet, inasmuch as he is a poet,
knows, sees, feels a great many things which have a practical and moral
meaning: just because he is a poet, he knows that there is something
beyond poetry; he knows that there are in the world such things as
justice and injustice, good and evil, purity and foulness: he knows all
this, which the mere musician, the mere painter, does not--and knowing
it, perceiving, feeling, understanding it, with more intensity than
other men, is he to sweep it all out of his sight? is he to say to
justice and injustice, good and evil, purity and foulness, 'I know you,
but my work lies not with you?' Is he to do this? Oh, Baldwin, if he be
a man and an honest one, he surely cannot: he cannot set aside these
ideas and devote himself to his art for its own sake."

Baldwin listened attentively to the passionate words of his companion,
and twitching at a sprig of olive as a branch swept across their heads
in their rapid movement through the wood, he answered quietly:

"He will not set aside the ideas of justice and injustice, of good and
evil, of purity and impurity, Cyril. He will make use of them even as
the musician uses his sounds, or the painter uses his colours. Such
ideas are at least one-half of the poet's material, of the stuff out of
whi