That
art should be pure is quite another matter, and the necessity of
purity in art can be maintained for other than ethical reasons. Art--I
am speaking now of literature--owes a great deal to ethics, but
ethics owes nothing to art. Without morality the art of the novelist
and the dramatist would cease. So we are more deeply interested in the
preservation of public morality than any other class--the clergy, of
course, excepted. To accuse us of indifference in this matter is
absurd. We must do our best to keep up a high standard of public
morality; our living depends upon it--and it would be difficult to
suggest a more powerful reason for our advocacy. Nevertheless, by a
curious irony of fate we must preserve--at least, in our books--a
distinctly impartial attitude on the very subject which most nearly
concerns our pockets.
To remove these serious disabilities should be our serious aim. It
might be possible to enter into some arrangement with the bishops to
allow us access to the pulpits. Mr. So-and so's episcopal style--I
refer not only to this gentleman's writings, but also to his style of
figure, which, on account of the opportunities it offers for a display
of calf, could not fail to win their lordships' admiration--marks him
as the proper head and spokesman of the deputation; and his well-known
sympathies for the pecuniary interests of authors would enable him to
explain that not even their lordships' pockets were so gravely
concerned in the maintenance of public morality as our own.
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