settled manner and a fixed reputation--but how rarely do we see even a
glimmering recognition of the necessity of a unified æsthetic
impression! The modern method is to assume that all that is, or has
been, present to consciousness is _ipso facto_ unified æsthetically. The
result of such an assumption is an obvious disintegration both of
language and artistic effort, a mere retrogression from the classical
method.

The classical method consisted, essentially, in achieving æsthetic unity
by a process of rigorous exclusion of all that was not germane to an
arbitrary (because non-æsthetic) argument. This argument was let down
like a string into the saturated solution of the consciousness until a
unified crystalline structure congregated about it. Of all great artists
of the past Shakespeare is the richest in his departures from this
method. How much deliberate artistic purpose there was in his
employment of songs and madmen and fools (an employment fundamentally
different from that made by his contemporaries) is a subject far too big
for a parenthesis. But he, too, is at bottom a classic artist. The
modern problem--it has not yet been sufficiently solved for us to speak
of a modern method--arises from a sense that the classical method
produces over-simplification. It does not permit of a sufficient sense
of multiplicity. One can think of a dozen semi-treatments of the problem
from Balzac to Dostoevsky, but they were all on the old lines. They
might be called Shakespearean modifications of the classical method.

Tchehov, we believe, attempted a treatment radically new. To make use
again of our former image in his maturer writing, he chose a different
string to let down into the saturated solution of consciousness. In a
sense he began at the other end. He had decided on the quality of
æsthetic impression he wished to produce, not by an arbitrary decision,