will bring you something besides this, something that is
the knowledge of real strength in art: not that you should imitate the
works of these men; but their artistic spirit, their artistic attitude, I
think you should absorb that.

For in nations, as in individuals, if the passion for creation be not
accompanied by the critical, the aesthetic faculty also, it will be sure
to waste its strength aimlessly, failing perhaps in the artistic spirit
of choice, or in the mistaking of feeling for form, or in the following
of false ideals.

For the various spiritual forms of the imagination have a natural
affinity with certain sensuous forms of art--and to discern the qualities
of each art, to intensify as well its limitations as its powers of
expression, is one of the aims that culture sets before us. It is not an
increased moral sense, an increased moral supervision that your
literature needs. Indeed, one should never talk of a moral or an immoral
poem--poems are either well written or badly written, that is all. And,
indeed, any element of morals or implied reference to a standard of good
or evil in art is often a sign of a certain incompleteness of vision,
often a note of discord in the harmony of an imaginative creation; for
all good work aims at a purely artistic effect. 'We must be careful,'
said Goethe, 'not to be always looking for culture merely in what is
obviously moral. Everything that is great promotes civilisation as soon
as we are aware of it.'

But, as in your cities so in your literature, it is a permanent canon and
standard of taste, an increased sensibility to beauty (if I may say so)
that is lacking. All noble work is not national merely, but universal.
The political independence of a nation must not be confused with any
intellectual isolation. The spiritual freedom, indeed, your own generous
lives and liberal air will give you. From us you will learn the
classical restraint of form.

For all great art is delicate art, roughness having very little to do
with strength, and harshness very little to do with power. 'The artist,'
as Mr. Swinburne says, 'must be perfectly articulate.'

This limitation is for the artist perfect freedom: it is at once the
origin and the sign of his strength. So that all the supreme masters of
style--Dante, Sophocles, Shakespeare--are the supreme masters of
spiritual and intellectual vision also.

Love art for its own sake, and then all things that you need will be
a