ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about Carlyle, inculcated that the Fine Arts are sent here not to fib and dance, but to speak and work, so Ruskin had tirelessly insisted on the morality of art: The duty of a painter is the same as that of preacher; it is the moral part of us to which Beauty addresses itself; and so forth. To all of which Swinburne, with his own message and more of the moral rebel in him than his friends had, but still as their spokesman, retorted vigorously in the great book on William Blake: Philistia had far better crush art at once, hang it or burn it out of way, than think of plucking out its eyes and setting it to grind moral corn in the Philistine mills. The really dangerous enemy is the middle-man with some admirable self- sufficient theory of reconciliation, which clamours for art even more loudly than the artist, but will have it on conditions.
