His Views and Principles
persons have chosen to reveal their genius to the world, I say that having chosen that medium for themselves, they cannot rightly ignore certain responsibilities which the choice imposes on them. The field of art is a very spacious pleasure-ground indeed, and you may legitimately lay out in it almost any sort of garden plot or plantation, and may erect in it almost any sort of palace or cottage or mansion. As in Battersea Park, there are wide spaces in this field of art, and within the limits of reason and decency you may play whatever games you choose. But it is an open space, and it is dedicated to the delectation of the public. The operating theatre, the dissecting room, and the precincts of the divorce court are out of place there, and most out of place of all possible exhibitions is the exhibition of man's lust and woman's temptation. We referred a little while ago to the mediæval carvers of grotesque obscenities; and I would say here once for all that I do not recognise the right of any maker of such things first to carve revolting shapes,
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