| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: my uncle--through a meticulous garden to a big, slovenly Vicarage
with faded Victorian furniture and a faded Victorian wife, who
gave us tea and introduced us to a confusing family dispersed
among a lot of disintegrating basket chairs upon the edge of a
well-used tennis lawn.
These people interested me. They were a common type, no doubt,
but they were new to me. There were two lank sons who had been
playing singles at tennis, red-eared youths growing black
moustaches, and dressed in conscientiously untidy tweeds and
unbuttoned and ungirt Norfolk jackets. There were a number of
ill-nourished-looking daughters, sensible and economical in their
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: itself. I have seen them, Conrade, in the visions
of the night---their sainted eyes shed tears for the
sins and follies of their brethren, and for the foul
and shameful luxury in which they wallow. Beaumanoir,
they say, thou slumberest---awake! There
is a stain in the fabric of the Temple, deep and foul
as that left by the streaks of leprosy on the walls
of the infected houses of old.* The soldiers of the
* See the 13th chapter of Leviticus.
Cross, who should shun the glance of a woman as
the eye of a basilisk, live in open sin, not with the
Ivanhoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: and in certain forms of Art. At first he appealed to the few: now
he has educated the many. He has created in the public both taste
and temperament. The public appreciate his artistic success
immensely. I often wonder, however, whether the public understand
that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not
accept their standard, but realised his own. With their standard
the Lyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth, as some of
the popular theatres in London are at present. Whether they
understand it or not the fact however remains, that taste and
temperament have, to a certain extent been created in the public,
and that the public is capable of developing these qualities. The
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