Oscar Wilde Part 26

Mayhap some enthusiast may, by digging amongst old deeds and papers, light upon some reference to him, but until then his hypothesis can be only regarded as an ingenious, though highly interesting speculation.

Parenthetically it may be mentioned, although the fact is only known to very few, that an artist friend of Oscar Wilde, whose work is the admiration of all connoisseurs, had, under his direction, painted exactly such a panel-portrait as described, employing all the arts of the forger of antiquities in its production, and that a young poet whose recently published volume of verse had caused considerable sensation in literary circles had sat for the likeness.

The points Wilde advances in confirmation of his theory are as follows:--

1. That the young man to whom Shakespeare addresses sonnets must have been someone who was really a vital factor in the development of his dramatic art, and that this could not be said of either Lord Pembroke or Lord Southampton.

2. That the Sonnets, as we learn from Meres, were written before 1598 and that his friends.h.i.+p with W. H. had already lasted three years when Sonnet CIV. was written, which would fix the date of its commencement as 1594, or at latest 1595, that Lord Pembroke was born in 1580 and did not come to London till he was eighteen (_i.e._ 1598) so that Shakespeare could not have met him till after the sonnet had been written; and that Pembroke's father did not die till 1601, whereas W. H.'s father was dead in 1598, as is proved by the line--

"You had a father, let your son say so."

3. That Lord Southampton had early in life become the lover of Elizabeth Vernon, so required no urging to enter the state of matrimony, that he was not dowered with good looks, and that he did not remember his mother as W. H. did. (Thou art thy mother's gla.s.s, and she in thee calls back the lovely April of her prime), and moreover that his Christian name being Henry he could not be the Will to whom the punning sonnets (Cx.x.xV. and CXLIII.) are addressed.

4. That W. H. is none other than the boy actor for whom Shakespeare created the parts of Viola, Imogen, Juliet, Rosalind, Portia, Desdemona and Cleopatra.

5. That the boy's name was Hughes.

These points he proves from the Sonnets themselves. As regards No. 1 he writes: "to look upon him as simply the object of certain love poems is to miss the whole meaning of the poems; for the art of which Shakespeare talks in the Sonnets is not the art of the Sonnets themselves, which indeed were to him but slight and secret things, it is the art of the dramatist to which he is always alluding. He proceeds to quote the lines:

"Thou art all my art and dost advance As high as learning my rude ignorance."

2 and 3 effectually dispose of the pretensions of Pembroke and Surrey.

4. The theory of the very actor he praises by the fine sonnet:--

"'How can my Muse want subject to invent, While thou dost breathe, thou pour'st into my verse Thine own sweet argument, too excellent For every vulgar paper to rehea.r.s.e?

O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me Worthy perusal stand against thy sight: For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, When thou thyself dost give invention light?

Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth Than those old nine, which rhymers invocate; And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth Eternal numbers to outlive long date.'"

The name of the boy he discovers in the eighth line of the 20th sonnet, where W. H. is punningly described as--

"_A man in hew, all Hews in his contrawling_,"

and draws attention to the fact that "In the original edition of the sonnets 'Hews' is printed with a capital H and in italics," and draws corroboration from "these sonnets in which curious puns are made on the words 'use' and 'usury.'"

Another point he touches on is that Will Hughes abandoned Shakespeare's company to enter the service of Chapman, or more probably of Marlowe. He proves this from the lines--

"But when your countenance filled up his line Then lack I matter; that enfeebled mine"--

as also

"Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid My verse alone had all thy gentle grace, But now my gracious numbers are decayed, And my sick nurse does give another place";

and further by

"Every alien pen has got my use And under thee their poesy disperse,"

and draws attention to the "obvious" play upon words (use = Hughes).

Such in brief are the salient points of his argument, the limitations of s.p.a.ce precluding me from amplifying the subject, but I strongly advise all those interested in the subject to read the whole article for themselves.

It is undoubtedly one of the cleverest things Wilde ever did, and as a contribution to controversial English literature no student of letters can afford to overlook it. Some day perhaps the ma.n.u.script of the book will be discovered--in the library of a Transatlantic millionaire maybe--and the author's more matured and expansive investigations be given to the world. May that day come soon!

PART VII

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEAUTY

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEAUTY

The greatest claim that Wilde made for himself was that he was a high priest of aesthetics, that he had a new message concerning the relations of beauty and the wors.h.i.+p of beauty to life and art, to life and to morals to give to the world. This claim was one in which to the last he pathetically believed. He was absolutely certain in his own mind that this was his vocation. He elaborated a sort of philosophy of beauty which not only pleased and satisfied himself, but found very many adherents, and became the dogma of a school.

Even in this last work, "De Profundis," written in the middle of his degradation and misery, he still believes that it is by art that he will be able to regenerate his spirit. He said that he would do such work in the future, would build beautiful things out of his sufferings, that he might cry in triumph--"Yes! This is just where the artistic life leads a man."

We all know where the artistic life did lead Oscar Wilde upon his release from prison. It led him to an obscure quarter of Paris where he dragged out the short remainder of an unhappy life, having written nothing save "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," and becoming more and more lost to finer aspirations.

Yet, nevertheless, this aesthetic philosophy of Wilde's forms one of the most important parts of his writings, and of his att.i.tude towards life.

It must, therefore, be carefully considered in any study of the man and his work.

First of all, let us inquire, what are aesthetics? Do not let anyone who has not given his attention to the subject imagine that the "aestheticism," which became known as the hallmark of a band of people led by Oscar Wilde who committed many whimsical extravagances, and who were caricatured in Mr Gilbert's "Patience," has any relation whatever to the science of aesthetics. Even to Oscar Wilde aestheticism, as it has been popularly called, was only the beginning of an aesthetic philosophy which he summed up finally much later in "Intentions," the "Poems in Prose," and "The Soul of Man under Socialism."

By aesthetics is meant a theory of the beautiful as exhibited in works of art. That is to say, aesthetics considered on its objective side has to investigate, first, a function of art in general as expressing the beautiful, and then the nature of the beauty thus expressed.

Secondly, the special functions of the several arts are investigated by aesthetics and the special aspects of the beautiful with which they are severally concerned. It, therefore, follows that aesthetics has to discuss such topics as the relation of art to nature and life, the distinction of art from nature, the relation of natural to artistic beauty, the conditions and nature of beauty in a work of art, and especially the distinction of beauty from truth, from utility, and from moral goodness.

aesthetics is, therefore, not art criticism. Art criticism deals with this or that particular work or type of art, while the aesthetic theory seeks to formulate the mere abstract and fundamental conceptions, distinctions, and principles which underlie artistic criticism, and alone make it possible. Art criticism is the link between aesthetic science and the ordinary intelligent appreciation of a work of art by an ordinary intelligence. Much more may be said in defining the functions of aesthetics, but this is sufficient before we begin to examine Wilde's own aesthetic theories.

His ideas were promulgated in the three works mentioned above, and also given to the world in lectures which he delivered at various times.

It is true, as Mr Arthur Symons very clearly pointed out some years ago, that Oscar Wilde wrote much that was true, new, and valuable about art and the artist. But in everything that he wrote he wrote from the outside. He said nothing which had not been said before him, or which was not the mere wilful contrary of what had been said before him.

Indeed, it is not too much to say that Oscar Wilde never saw the full face of beauty. He saw it always in profile, always in a limited way.

The pretence of strict logic in Wilde's writing on "Artistic Philosophy"

is only a pretence, and severe and steady thinkers recognise the fallacy.

Let us examine Oscar Wilde's aesthetic teaching.

In one of his lectures given in America he said--

"And now I would point out to you the operation of the artistic spirit in the choice of subject. Like the philosopher of the platonic vision, the poet is the spectator of all time and all existence. For him no form is obsolete, no subject out of date; rather, whatever of life and pa.s.sion the world has known in the desert of Judea or in Arcadian valley, by the ruins of Troy or Damascus, in the crowded and hideous streets of the modern city, or by the pleasant ways of Camelot, all lies before him like an open scroll, all is still instinct with beautiful life. He will take of it what is salutary for his own spirit, choosing some facts and rejecting others, with the calm artistic control of one who is in possession of the secret of beauty. It is to no avail that the muse of poetry be called even by such a clarion note as Whitman's to migrate from Greece and Ionia and to placard 'removed' and 'to let'

on the rocks of the snowy Parna.s.sus. For art, to quote a n.o.ble pa.s.sage of Mr Swinburne's, is very life itself and knows nothing of death. And so it comes that he who seems to stand most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best, because he has stripped life of that mist of familiarity, which, as Sh.e.l.ley used to say, makes life obscure to us.

"Whatever spiritual message an artist brings to his age, it is for us to do naught but accept his teaching. You have most of you seen probably that great masterpiece of Rubens which hangs in the gallery of Brussels, that swift and wonderful pageant of horse and rider, arrested in its most exquisite and fiery moment, when the winds are caught in crimson banner and the air is lit by the gleam of armour and the flash of plume. Well, that is joy in art, though that golden hillside be trodden by the wounded feet of Christ; and it is for the death of the Son of Man that that gorgeous cavalcade is pa.s.sing.

"In the primary aspect a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of Venetian gla.s.s. The channels by which all n.o.ble and imaginative work in painting should touch the soul are not those of the truths of lives. This should be done by a certain inventive and creative handling entirely independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject, something entirely satisfying in itself, which is, as the Greeks would say, in itself an end. So the joy of poetry comes never from the subject, but from an inventive handling of rhythmical language."