Some eminent Victorians: personal recollections in the world of art and letters; . ore 214 REMINISCENCES delicate shades of feeling. The truth is that eachart has its own force, its own refinement, and cannotborrow them of another. What is perfectly achievedin one form remains incomparable, and for that very-reason cannot in its completed form be appropriatedby an art that has other triumphs and is subject toother laws and conditions. And it is here that thenovelist so often breaks down in attempting toemploy his own special methods in the service ofthe stage. Wilde made no such blunder. Bycon
Some eminent Victorians: personal recollections in the world of art and letters; . ore 214 REMINISCENCES delicate shades of feeling. The truth is that eachart has its own force, its own refinement, and cannotborrow them of another. What is perfectly achievedin one form remains incomparable, and for that very-reason cannot in its completed form be appropriatedby an art that has other triumphs and is subject toother laws and conditions. And it is here that thenovelist so often breaks down in attempting toemploy his own special methods in the service ofthe stage. Wilde made no such blunder. Byconstant study as well as by natural gift he knewwell the arena in which he was working when hechose the vehicle of the drama. His wit hasperhaps been over-praised ; his epigrams so loudlyacclaimed at the time bear the taint of modishnessthat seems to render them already his grip of the more serious situations in life, andhis ability to exhibit and interpret them by meansgenuinely inherent in the resources at the disposalof the dramatist, are left beyond ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON From the painting by Sir William Richmond, , the National Portrait Gallery. To/ace page 215. CHAPTER XV A YOUNGER GENERATION During the seventies I got to know many of theyounger men of letters whose fame had not yetcompletely asserted itself My association with theSaturday Review brought me into closer contact withmy old friend, Walter Pollock, whom I had knownfrom a boy, and it was as his guest that I constantlyfound myself at lunch-time at the Savile Club, afavourite haunt of Robert Louis Stevenson whenhe happened to be in London. Those lunches at the Savile, with discussionscarried late into the afternoon and sometimesprolonged to the dinner-hour, remain as a vividand delightful recollection. It was there that I metHenley, a notable individuality, at that time almostwithout recognition in the world of literature ; andCharles Brookfield, who would look in now and t
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