But decivilised man is not peculiar to new soil. The English town, too,
knows him in all his dailiness. In England, too, he has a literature, an
art, a music, all his own--derived from many and various things of price.
Trash, in the fulness of its in simplicity and cheapness, is impossible
without a beautiful past. Its chief characteristic--which is futility,
not failure--could not be achieved but by the long abuse, the rotatory
reproduction, the quotidian disgrace, of the utterances of Art,
especially the utterance by words. Gaiety, vigour, vitality, the organic
quality, purity, simplicity, precision--all these are among the
antecedents of trash. It is after them; it is also, alas, because of
them. And nothing can be much sadder than such a proof of what may
possibly be the failure of derivation.
Evidently we cannot choose our posterity. Reversing the steps of time,
we may, indeed, choose backwards. We may give our thoughts noble
forefathers. Well begotten, well born our fancies must be; they shall be
also well derived. We have a voice in decreeing our inheritance, and not
our inheritance only, but our heredity. Our minds may trace upwards and
follow their ways to the best well-heads of the arts. The very habit of
our thoughts may be persuaded one way unawares by their antenatal
history.
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