Aspects and Impressions by Edmund Gosse

THE fashion of the moment, whether in literature or in art, whether in England or in France, favours what is rough, vivid and undisciplined. A new generation of readers welcomes the lyrical effusions of the cowboy, the lumberman, the tramp, and even the apache. It accepts Bubu de Montparnasse as a hero and does not shrink from overhearing the confidences of a burglar. There is no reason why we should exercise our sarcasm over these _naivetes_ of taste, while indeed, as social beings, we are even entitled to rejoice at them, since, in the language of practical aestheticism, a positive always involves a negative. If this age dotes on the dirtiness of tramps, it is because every one of us is obliged to be occupied and clean; and if the apache is the object of our poetry, it is because, in our extremely settled, confident and comfortable lives, we miss the excitement of being in personal danger.

But let the delicate social balance of our existence be again disturbed, let us become practically accustomed to starvation and outrage and murder, and not another strophe would our poets address to the drunken navvy or the grimy bathchair-man. If London or Paris were to burn, if only for a fortnight, literature and art would hurry back to the study of princesses and to the language of the Golden Age. [1]