The Henson Journals

[163]

Saturday, April 18th, 1914.

The wonderful weather holds. For the fourth day in succession the sky is cloudless. I woke with the burden of that Shakespeare sermon heavy on my mind. Mine host last night suggested that I might discuss the formula 'art for art's sake', & show from the leading case of Shakespeare that the suggested opposition between art and morality is false. The highest art must needs be truest to Nature: & the foundation of Morality is deep in Nature itself, no artificial convention imposed thereon, but a pervading & inexorable law woven into the very texture thereof. Crime brings disaster: an inordinate ambition or an over passionate love brings its own Nemesis. The way of virtue is the way of happiness. The function of Art is to disclose, interpret, & idealise Nature: and the most indispensable function of the three is the first. It must disclose the truth of Nature, not some alluring simulacrum. But mere photography is not art. The artist must bring out the potencies as well as depict the facts: & those potencies must be the highest rather the lowest, since the very truth of man is spiritual not carnal: & to dwell on the last is finally to present a gross caricature, if not a wholly barbarous grotesque. The Artist, like the philosopher, sees his facts 'sub specie oeternitatis'.

[164]

We brought our pleasant little visit to an end. Leaving Singleton Park at 10.45 a.m. we motored back to Durham via Sedbergh, Kirkby Stephen, Brough, Barnard Castle, & West Auckland, arriving at the Deanery at 3.30 p.m. We lunch at Barnard Castle in the King's Head Hotel, and looked at the parish church.

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