MR. LE GALLIENNE ON PATER.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1407, 6 April 1912, Page 9

MR. LE GALLIENNE ON PATER.

Mr. Richard Le Gallienne paj-s an eloquent tribute in "The North American Review" to the man whom he credits with being the author of "perhaps the most beautiful book-written in English." The acceptance of Walter Pater, he says, is not merely widening all the time, but it is more,and more becoming -an acceptance such as he himself would, have most valued, an acceptance in accord with the full significance ■of : ;lu.s";,ivpr!c;Tat|!qr than a one-sided appreciation-.of■ some of its "Corinthian" characteristics. He is being read not merely as a "prosateur" of purple patches, or a sophist of honeyed coimscls tragically easy, to misapply, but as "an artist of the interpretative imagination of rare insight and magic, a writer of deep humanity as well as aesthetic beauty, and the teacher of a way of life at once ennobling and exquisite!" Against charges of libertinism and of base Epicureanism, such as have lately been raised, Mr. Le Gallienne feels that Pater needs no defence in the eyes of those who have read him carefullV and iinderstandingly. His books speak for themselves. They involve "something like the austerity of a fastidious Puritanism," and include "a jealous asceticism of the senses," rather than their indulgence. "Slight as wns the burden of positive moral obligation with which ]u> had entered Rome," writes Pater of Jlarius the Epicurean, as on his first evening in Rome the murmur comes to him of "the lively, reckless call of 'plav,' from the sons and daughters of foolishness," "it was to no. wasteful and vagrant affections, such as these, that his Epicureanism had committed him." Such warningi against misunderstanding, comments Mr. Li) Gallienne, Pater is careful to place at, so to say, all the crossroads in his books, so scrupulously concerned is he lest any reader should take tho wrong turning. If in spite of such warnings readers have eone astray, are not "they" rather than Pater, Mr. Lc Gallienne asks, to blame? "If that which was sown a lily comes up a toadstool, there is evidently something wrong with the soil." Tlip argument proceeds: ■

"If it be truo that the application, or rather the misapplication, of Pater's philosophy led Oscar Wilde to Reading Gaol, it is none the less true that another application of it led Marius to something like a Christian martyrdom, and Walter Pater himself along an'ever loftier and ssrener path of spiritual vision. . . . "To make ths most, and to make the best, of life! Those who misinterprefTor Misapply Pater forgot his constant insistence on the second half of that precept. We are to set 'as many pulsations as possible into the given time,' but wo are to be very careful that our use of those pulsations shall be the finest. Whether or not it is 'simply for those moments' sake,' our attempt must be to give 'the highest quality,' remember, to those 'moments as they pass.' And who can Jail to remark the fastidious care with which Pater selects various typical interests which lie deems most worthy of dignifying the moment? Tho senses are, indeed, of natural right, (o have their part; but those interests on which the accent of Pater's pleading most persuasively falls are not so much the 'strange dves, strange colours, an' curious odours,' but rather 'the faco of one's friend.' ending his subtly musical sentence with a characteristic shock of simplicity, almost incongruity—or 'somo mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement,' or 'any contribution to knowledge Hint seems by a lifted horizon to set tha spirit free for a moment.' There is surely a great gulf fixed between this lofty preoccupation with great human emotions and high spiritual and intellectual excitements, and a vulgar gospel of 'eat, drink, for to-morrow wo die,' whether or not both counsels start out from a realisation of 'the awful brevity' of our mortal day. That realisation may prompt certain natures to unbridled sensuality. Doomed to perish as tho beasts, they choo«<?, it would seem with no marked reluctance, to live the life of the beast, n life apnarently not without satisfactions. But it is as stupid as it is infamous to pretend that such natures as these find any warrant for their tragic libertinism in Walter Pater."

There has bran undue preoccupation with Pater's "message." Sir. I,e Gallipnne continues. It is timo to recall that he wa? an artist of remarkable power and fafcinntion, a mnlier of beautiful things which, whatever (heir philo. sophical content, have for our spirits tho refreshment and edification which nil beauty mysteriously brings us, merely because it is beauty. "Marius the Epicurean," for instance, is a great and wonderful book, "not merely on account of its teaching, but because it is simply one of the most 'beautiful' books, perhaps the most beautiful book, written in English." Of (lie many ways in v.iiieh it is beautiful, Mr. 1.0 Gallientic goes on ""It* is beautiful, fust of all, in the uniquely personal finality of .its pto?e, prose which is at once austere and foimi(lUß, simple at once and elaborate, scientifically exact and yet mystically sugscstive, cool and hushed as sanctuary niarblo, sweet-smolling as sauctuarv inooniKs; prow that has at once tho qualities of paiitlnj

and of music, rich in firmly visualised l'K'lm-es, yet moving to subtle, half-sub-merged rhythms, nail expressive with even- delicate accent, and endence; pnw highly wrought, and yi-t singularly surprising om> at times w'ith, m> to say, Middon inaoeencio, artless mid instinctive beneath nil its sedulous ml. It is no longer nmwnry, ».s 1 hinted above, to tight tin- Imltl,. of this |.n>.-«>. Whether it appeal to ono or mil, no critic worth a.-tonti-jii niiy longer disparages it as men- ornate ami perfumed verbiage. Mm elaborate iiin;iiHTisni »f « writer hiding the poverty of his thought bonealh n pretentious raiment of decorated expression. It is understood to Ik- the organic utterance of one with a vision of tho world all his own, striving through words, as he best can, to make tii;>t vision visible to others a< nearly as possible as ho himself seo-i it."

The musical and deeoralive qualities of Paler's prose are illustrated by Mr. 1.0 liallic-iiiu- i;i a series of haunting quotations. Some of his quielent, 'simplest phrases have a wonderful power; "(ho long reign of these quit-l Aiiloninos," for example: "the thuuih-r which had soni'd-i-cl nil day among the hills"; "far into tho night, when heavy raindrops hud driven the Inst lingerers home"; "Flavian was no more. The little marble chest with its du-t and tears lay cold among the faded llowers." What could be simpler, Mr. I.'e (.'intlionnc exclaims, than these brief sentences, ye' how peculiarly suggestive they are; whet immediate pictures they make! And (his magical simplicity is particularly successful in descriptive passages, notably of natural effects, effects caught with an instinctively selected touch or two, an expressive detail, a gray or coloured word. How lightly sketched, ami yet how clearly realised in the imagination, is the ancestral countrv-house of Marins's boyhood, "White Niglits," "that, exquisite fragment of a once large nnil sumptuous villa"—"Two centuries of tho play of tho seawind were in the velvet of the mosses which lay along its inaccessible, ledges and angles." Take ngain this picture:

"The cottagers still lingered at their doors for a few minutes as the shadows grew larger, and went to rest early; though there was still a glow along the road through the shorn cornfields, and die birds were still awake about the crumbling gray heighf.s of ;>.n old temple."

Tho.H , who judge of Pater's writing, adds M.r. Le Galliomie, by a few pnrplo passage such as the famous rhapsody on the "Mona Lisa," conceiving it as always thus heavy with narcotic perfume, know but one side of him, and miss his gift for conveying freshness, his constant happiness in light and air otid par'icularlv running water, "green fields—or children's faces." The article concludes:

"Along with all the other constituents of his work, its sacerdotalism, its subtle reverie, its sensuous colour and perfume, its marmoreal austerity, its honeyed music, its frequent preoccupation with the haunted recesses of thought, there goes an endearing homeliness and simplicity, a deep human tenderness, a gentle friendliness, a something childlike. He lias written of her. 'the presence that roso thus so strangely be-ide- i.he waters,' to whom all experience hnd been 'but as the sound of lyres and flutes,' and he has written of 'The Child in. the House.' Among all 'the strance dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, ami work of the artist's hands,' one never wishes 'tho face of one's friend'; and, in all iis wanderings, the soul never stray? far from the white teninles of the gods and the sound of running water. , "It i- by virtue of this combination of humanity, edification and aesthetic delight that Walter Pater is unique among the great teachers and artists of our time."