as they
really are, his moral teaching cannot but be good; and the less it
stands out as a special aim, the more effective it will be: but if,
for any purpose, however moral, he goes to representing things
otherwise than as they are, then just so far his moral teaching will
miss its mark: and if he takes, as divers well-meaning persons have
done, to flourishing his ethical robes in our faces, then he must be
content to pass with us for something less or something more than a
poet: we may still read him indeed from a mistaken sense of duty; but
we shall never be drawn to him by an unsophisticated love of the
Beautiful and the True.

* * * * *

So much for what I hold to be the natural relation of Morality to Art.
And I have put the matter thus, on the well-known principle, that the
moral sensibilities are the most delicate part of our constitution;
that as such they require to be touched with the utmost care, or
rather not to be touched directly at all; and that the thrusting of
instruction upon them tends to dull and deaden, not to quicken and
strengthen them. For the true virtue-making power is an inspiration,
not a catechism; and the truly cunning moral teacher is he who, in the
honest and free enthusiasm of moral beauty, steals that inspiration
into us without our knowing it, or before we know it. The author of
_Ecce Homo_ tells us, and truly too, that "no heart is pure that is
not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic." And there
is probably no vainer labour than the going about to make men good by
dint of moral arguments and reasoned convictions of the understanding.
One noble impulse will do more towards ennobling men than a volume of
ethical precepts; and there is no sure way to put down a bad passion
but by planting a good one. Set the soul on fire with moral beauty,
that's the way to burn the devils out of it. So that, for making men
virtuous, there is, as Gervinus says, "no more fruitless branch of
literature than ethical science; except, perhaps, those dramatic
moralities into whose frigid impotence poetry will always sink when it
aims at direct moral teaching."

Now, I do not at all scruple to affirm that Shakespeare's poetry will
stand the test of these principles better than any other writing we
have outside the Bible, His rank in the School of Morals is indeed no
less high than in the School of Art. He is every way as worthy to be
our teacher and guide