Chapter 21 - Page 2

stanza from
'The Divine Comedy,' and from Don Quixote's meeting with some
common man that sang Ariosto. Morris had never seemed to care for
any poet later than Chaucer; and though I preferred Shakespeare to
Chaucer I begrudged my own preference. Had not Europe shared one
mind and heart, until both mind and heart began to break into
fragments a little before Shakespeare's birth? Music and verse
began to fall apart when Chaucer robbed verse of its speed that he
might give it greater meditation, though for another generation or
so minstrels were to sing his long elaborated 'Troilus and
Cressida;' painting parted from religion in the later Renaissance
that it might study effects of tangibility undisturbed; while,
that it might characterise, where it had once personified, it
renounced, in our own age, all that inherited subject matter which
we have named poetry. Presently I was indeed to number character
itself among the abstractions, encouraged by Congreve's saying
that 'passions are too powerful in the fair sex to let humour,' or
as we say character, 'have its course.' Nor have we fared better
under the common daylight, for pure reason has notoriously made
but light of practical reason, and has been made but light of in
its turn, from that morning when Descartes discovered that he
could think better in his bed than out of it; nor needed I
original thought to discover, being so late of the school of
Morris, that machinery had not separated from handicraft wholly
for the world's good; nor to notice that the distinction of
classes had become their isolation. If the London merchants of our
day competed together in writing lyrics they would not, like the
Tudor merchants, dance in the open street before the house of the
victor; nor do the great ladies of London finish their balls on
the pavement before their doors as did the great Venetian ladies
even in the eighteenth century, conscious of an all enfolding
sympathy. Doubtless because fragments broke into even smaller
fragments we saw one another in a light of bitter comedy, and in
the arts, where now one technical element reigned and now another,
generation hated generation, and accomplished beauty was snatched
away when it had most engaged our affections. One thing I did not
foresee, not having the courage of my own thought--the growing
murderousness of the world.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate