own times have witnessed, and with it the foundation of a school of naturalisti." This is said of the art of painting, and the insurrection which has recently broken out there against both the doctrine and practice of the last three hundred years. But literature is subject to the action of exactly the same process; and, indeed, our literature is actually undergoing it at present as well as its sister art. Fortunately, in such regions no real harm can ever be done by any amount of this kind of agitation and commotion, however revolutionary or heretical. It is not as in a commonwealth, where usually so many material interests must be rudely disturbed, so much of shelter and solid support shaken or laid in ruins, by even the most necessary reformation. The only question, the only thing to be considered, here is, whether the new views are true. And that time will very speedily and very conclusively determine. For, again, it is not with art as it is with metaphysics. No artistic doctrine or system can stand, or long continue to find acceptance, which does not, like a tree bearing fruit, prove its soundness by what it produces. And nothing really excellent in art can be permanently discredited by any mere violence of denunciation. On the other hand, it is good for every kind of truth to be now and then put upon its defence. A new doctrine may be true, or a new practice right, in part, without being wholly so. It is quite possible, however, that its attraction may lie all in its novelty, which is a quality that will always command a certain amount of temporary attention and admiration. In some things, indeed, novelty is almost all in all; in some, as for instance in a fashionable article of dress, it is at least absolutely indispensable; the coat or bonnet may have all the other recommendations that could be desired, but without novelty, according to our modern notions, it cannot be fashionable. Still even in such matters there are probably some points, both of convenience and of taste, that have always remained the same, and hardly admit of alteration. In literature mere novelty cannot be admitted to have any legitimate attractiveness whatever. What is ever so old may be just as good as what is ever so new. And, although it is true that, quite distinct as they are, art exists only in virtue of its being a reflection of nature, it does not follow that we always get at the original by turning our backs on the reflection. The school of would-be naturalisti may prove to be only a school of fantastici. The history of every department of the 1 Ten Years. By J. A. Symonds, M. D., &c., 1861, p. 38.

artistic is crowded with such ambitious enterprises ending in such ludicrous discomfitures. And in literature at least they have, even when headed by men of true genius, as has often also been the case, more frequently perhaps heralded an age of decadence than one of revival. Not that we are to charge the meteoric outbreak with having brought or made the cold ungenial weather by which it was followed. It was no doubt only an indication. But certainly even so brilliant a writer as Tacitus would be more naturally expected towards the close than at the commencement of a great literary era. The transparency and freshness of Herodotus at the dawn, the full and flowing eloquence of Livy, the perfection at once of nature and of art, at the height of the day, the pyrotechnic blaze of Tacitus when the shadows of evening have begun to gather, that would seem to be the appropriate succession. Then, there are two dangers always attendant upon striking into a new path. First, there is the opportunity constantly presenting itself, of achieving at least a present success by mere trickery. Many things that could not be ventured upon in a style professing to be observant of established models may count securely upon being tolerated and admired as being in the very spirit of one which has thrown off all such restraints. Partly, people are really charmed by the false brilliancy; partly, they are ready to take upon trust from a favorite writer much in which they can hardly perceive either any beauty or sometimes even any meaning. Even a man of true and powerful genius may not always write the better for feeling himself thus left entirely to be a law to himself, or lifted above all law (even such as he might have prescribed to himself) by the huzzas of a mob. Secondly, a manner strongly marked by an original and peculiar character is the kind of manner at once the most unsuited for imitation and the most tempting to imitators. It is the easiest of all manners to imitate, and yet the imitation is almost sure to be in the main an extravagance and an absurdity. It is an absurdity, in fact, and worse, in virtue of the very object which it proposes to itself. A new and peculiar style is as much the property of its inventor, of the writer who has first employed it, as anything else that most belongs to him. It is the expression of his mind, and cannot possibly be also the fit expression of yours. It is, in truth, as has been well said, the man himself. Your assumption of it is a piece of arrant dishonesty. It is a thing that would not be done by any one having the slightest respect either

for himself or for the rights of his neighbor. You might as well go about mimicking another person's voice and manner of speaking, and pretending to be he. This kind of imitation, indeed, can never be, properly speaking, anything but mimicry. And certainly nothing could give us a livelier illustration than some of the specimens we have had of it, in their contrast with what they would emulate, of the difference between a man and an ape.

6. Lastly, if there be not really more of art in our present literature than there is in that of the last age, there is certainly much more of the appearance, we might almost say the ostentation, of it. We have fallen off decidedly in the art of concealing our art. Byron has said of two of his heroines, that the difference between them

"Was such as is between a flower and gem";

but the general difference between the most highly finished poetry of the last and of the present age might rather be compared to that between a natural flower and an artificial one. The latter is possibly a very elaborate and perfect piece of workmanship; there may be an exactness in what is cut in ivory which is never found in nature. But, as Burke has observed, "it is the nature of all greatness not to be exact." The poetry of Virgil is more exact than that of Homer; but the Eneid is not therefore a greater poem than the Iliad. It may be doubted if some of the most remarkable poetry of the last age would have found any acceptance at all if it had been produced in the present. What would have been thought of Crabbe, for instance, with his habitual carelessness both of rhyme and of grammar, and his innumerable passages, not unfrequently of considerable length, which evidently have not received any dressing whatever? Nay, what reception would some of our old poetry have had of far greater renown than his? The steady progress we have been making towards more and more of mere grammatical correctness for more than a century must, indeed, be obvious to every student of our literature; but it may occasion some surprise to find how far we have advanced in that direction in the course of a single generation. Or, if we would measure the change that the lapse of two generations has made, we may compare Burke and Macaulay. The freedom of Burke's style in all his more characteristic writings would be altogether strange and startling in a writer of the present day. It is something that we have either lost or laid aside. We have, in fact,

outgrown it. Whether we have thereby been gainers or losers may be a question. It is common to assume that the greater regularity of our present style is an evidence of our literature having got past its manhood and entered upon its old age. But correctness is not in itself a defect. It has been always the reproach of our English literature with other nations that it has so little, if it have anything at all, to boast of which is at the same time of great excellence and free from great faults. We ourselves may hold, perhaps, that this comparative lawlessness with which our literature is charged is only a thing of the same kind with the spirit of freedom which animates our political institutions. Still it is impossible to found any system either of art or of politics upon the principle of insubordination. Wherever rules exist, they exist to be obeyed, not to be violated or neglected. And strength is always most shown in conforming to law, not in disregarding it. It never can be admitted, therefore, that it is better for any age to write incorrectly than correctly, — although it may be only a declining age that will make correctness its first aim. For it is a kind of excellence the utmost possible degree of which is soon reached; and what alone makes it of any value is its combination with higher things. Our literature was never so generally distinguished by elaborateness of finish as it is at the present day; but the perfection of its workmanship does not look so much a part of itself as in the best specimens of the last age. The secret by which that effect was attained seems to be lost. Even where the faultlessness is as complete in Tennyson as it is in Shelley, the spontaneousness, or semblance of spontaneousness, which charms us in Shelley is wanting. The art, exquisite as it is, is no longer the same true counterpart and wonderful rival of nature.

Such appear to be the chief essential differences. Others that might be noticed are rather of external circumstances; such as the extension of Criticism, of Journalism, and of Anonymous writing. These three things naturally go together, and they had all attained considerable growth in the last age; but they have been much more largely developed in the present. In no preceding time, in our own or in any other country, has Anonymous Periodical Criticism ever acquired nearly the same ascendancy and power. It might be interesting to consider how and in how far, if at all, our literature may be likely to be thereby affected, whether in its actual

state or in its tendencies and prospects. As for the Anonymity, however, which might seem to be the most important of the three combined elements, it is for the greater part only formal. Of writing the authorship of which is really unknown there probably never was less than there is in the present day. And the custom according to which the name of the writer is withheld in certain cases is obviously one of great convenience. More especially, it is indispensable for any free criticism touching living persons in regard to such points as are never discussed with or in the presence of a man himself in ordinary society. Not, indeed, that the necessary boldness and effrontery, or honesty, if you will, might not be forthcoming in abundance under a system which allowed no public writer to assume a mask or a veil ; but that the proceeding would outrage our notions of common decency and common humanity. The only way in which the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth can be spoken in the case supposed is by means of a voice, which is no doubt that of an individual, and may even be perfectly well known to be that of a certain individual, but yet does not offensively proclaim itself as such, nay, rather claims to be taken for that of nobody in particular. The old proverb would have us say nothing but what is good, nothing but what is complimentary, of the dead: De mortuis nil nisi bonum; but in point of fact it is rather of the living that we usually speak under that restriction. Neither, besides, is it easy often to make up one's mind about even the greatest man while he is still running his course. He dazzles you, or he eludes you. Not till the night of death has closed upon him does any calm and clear observation of him become practicable. The stars themselves are invisible in the daytime.