Pickwick is the safest saint for us in
our nonage. Flaubert's Temptation of St Anthony is an excellent book
for a man of fifty, perhaps the best within reach as a healthy study of
visionary ecstasy; but for the purposes of a boy of fifteen Ivanhoe and
the Templar make a much better saint and devil. And the boy of
fifteen will find this out for himself if he is allowed to wander in a
well-stocked literary garden, and hear bands and see pictures and spend
his pennies on cinematograph shows. His choice may often be rather
disgusting to his elders when they want him to choose the best before he
is ready for it. The greatest Protestant Manifesto ever written, as
far as I know, is Houston Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century: everybody capable of it should read it. Probably the History of
Maria Monk is at the opposite extreme of merit (this is a guess: I have
never read it); but it is certain that a boy let loose in a library
would go for Maria Monk and have no use whatever for Mr Chamberlain. I
should probably have read Maria Monk myself if I had not had the Arabian
Nights and their like to occupy me better. In art, children, like
adults, will find their level if they are left free to find it, and not
restricted to what adults think good for them. Just at present our
young people are going mad over ragtimes, apparently because syncopated
rhythms are new to them. If they had learnt what can be done with
syncopation from Beethoven's third Leonora overture, they would enjoy
the ragtimes all the more; but they would put them in their proper place
as amusing vulgarities.

Artist Idolatry

But there are more dangerous influences than ragtimes waiting for people
brought up in ignorance of fine art. Nothing is more pitiably ridiculous
than the wild worship of artists by those who have never been seasoned
in youth to the enchantments of art. Tenors and prima donnas, pianists
and violinists, actors and actresses enjoy powers of seduction which in
the middle ages would have exposed them to the risk of being burnt
for sorcery. But as they exercise this power by singing, playing, and
acting, no great harm is done except perhaps to themselves. Far graver
are the powers enjoyed by brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs
in art. The influence they can exercise on young people who have been
brought up in the darkness and wretchedness of a home without art, and
in whom a natural bent towards art has always been baff