Coasting Bohemia

The papers which compose this volume make no claim to any sort of ordered plan in their composition. They reflect in some measure the varied activities of a life that has been passed in close association with more than one of the arts, and therein lies their sole title to so much of coherence as they may be found to possess.

I read the other day a confident pronouncement made by one of the apostles of the more modern spirit which gave me the measure of the revolution that has been effected in all that concerns our judgment upon matters of art. “Art,” declared this authority, “cannot stop: the moment it rests and repeats itself, or imitates the past, it dies.” There is here no faltering or uncertainty in the assertion of those principles of faith and criticism which are embodied in the newer gospel, and it took me a little time to steady myself in the face of a declaration which seemed to overturn the settled convictions of a lifetime.