I should be the last to invite you not to discriminate about the present.
We must be cautious in estimating the very popular writers or painters of
our time; but we must not dismiss them because they are popular. We
should be tall enough to worship in a crowd. Let our criticism be
aristocratic, our taste fastidious, and let our sympathies be democratic
and catholic. Dickens, I suppose, is one of the most popular writers who
ever lived, and yet he is part of the structure of our literature; but as
Dickens is dead, I prefer to mention the names of three living writers,
who are also popular, and have become corner-stones of the same
building--Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. H. G. Wells. 'There
are at all times,' says Schopenhauer, 'two literatures in progress
running side by side, but little known to each other; the one real, the
other only apparent. The former grows into permanent literature: it is
pursued by those who live _for_ science or poetry. The other is pursued
by those who live _on_ science or poetry; but after a few years one asks
where are they? where is the glory that came so soon and made so much
clamour?' We are happy if we can discriminate between those two
literatures.

While we should remember that there are at all times intellects whose
work is more for posterity than for the present; work which appeals,
perhaps, only to the few, that of artists whose work has no purchasers,
writers whose books may have publishers but few readers, we must be
cautious about accepting the verdict of the dove-cot. There are many
obscure artists and writers whose work, though admired by a select few,
remains very properly obscure, and will always remain obscure; it is of
no value intellectually; the world should know nothing of its inferior
men. Sometimes, however, it is these inferior men who are able to get
temporary places as critics, and inform us in leading articles that ours
is an age _of Decadence_. Every new drama, every work of art which
possesses individuality or gives a fresh point of view or evinces
development of any kind, is held up as an instance of Decay. '_L'ecole
decadent_' was a phrase invented as a jest in 1886, I believe by Monsieur
Bourde, a journalist in Paris. It was eagerly adopted by the Parisians,
and soon floated across the Channel. Used as a term of reproach, it was
accepted by the group of poets it was intended to ridicule. I need not
remind you that the master of tha