o feel what the world thinks I ought to
feel," but even so, one suspects that the philosophical part of
Coleridge was uppermost at the time of this utterance, and that his
obligatory feelings did not flower in a _Christabel_ or a _Kubla Khan_.

The real parting of the ways between the major and minor contingents of
poets comes when certain writers maintain, not merely their freedom from
conventional moral standards, but a perverse inclination to seek what
even they regard as evil. This is, presumably, a logical, if
unconscious, outgrowth of the romantic conception of art as "strangeness
added to beauty." For the decadents conceive that the loveliness of
virtue is an age-worn theme which has grown so obvious as to lose its
aesthetic appeal, whereas the manifold variety of vice contains
unexplored possibilities of fresh, exotic beauty. Hence there has been
on their part an ardent pursuit of hitherto undreamed-of sins, whose
aura of suggestiveness has not been rubbed off by previous artistic
expression.

The decadent's excuse for his vices is that his office is to reflect
life, and that indulgence of the senses quickens his apprehension of it.
He is apt to represent the artist as "a martyr for all mundane moods to
tear," [Footnote: See John Davidson, A Ballad in Blank Verse.] and to
indicate that he is unable to see life steadily and see it whole until
he has experienced the whole gamut of crime.[Footnote: See Oscar Wilde,
Ravenna; John Davidson, A Ballad in Blank Verse on the Making of a Poet,
A Ballad of an Artist's Wife; Arthur Symons, There's No Lust Like to
Poetry.] Such a view has not, of course, been confined to the nineteenth
century. A characteristic renaissance attitude toward life and art was
caught by Browning in a passage of _Sordello_. The hero, in a momentary
reaction from idealism, longs for the keener sensations arising from
vice and exclaims,

Leave untried
Virtue, the creaming honey-wine; quick squeeze
Vice, like a biting serpent, from the lees
Of life! Together let wrath, hatred, lust,
All tyrannies in every shape be thrust
Upon this now.

Naturally Browning does not allow this thirst for evil to be more than a
passing impulse in Sordello's life.

The weakness of this recipe for poetic achievement stands revealed in
the cynicism with which expositions of the frankly immoral poet end. If
the quest of wickedness is a powerful stimulus to the emotions, it is a