IV
But every convention has a fallacy somewhere at the root; whether
it be useful and operative, as many a legal fiction is operative,
for good; or senile, past service yet tyrannous by custom, and so
pernicious; or merely foolish, as certain artistic conventions
are traceable, when a Ruskin comes to judgment, back to nothing
better than folly: and it becomes men of honest mind, in dealing
with anything recognisable as a convention, to examine its
accepted fallacy, whether it be well understood or ill understood;
beneficent or pernicious or merely foolish or both foolish and
pernicious: and this is often most handily done by tracing its
history.
Now I shall assume that the framers of the Ordinance regulating
the duties of this Chair knew well enough, of their own reading,
that English Literature deals with a vast variety of subjects:
and that, if any piece of writing miss to deal with its
particular subject, so closely that theme and treatment can
scarcely be separated, by so much will it be faulty as literature.
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