ey
are never satisfied with the past. They look to youth and its
enthusiasms for realising their own dreams and developing their own
hypotheses. And as there are great men of science to-day, so, too, there
are great men of letters, great poets, and great painters, some of whose
names you may not have heard. But when you do hear of them I beg of you
not to regard any of them as symptoms of decay, even if their technique
is elaborate and over-wrought. The _early_ work of every modern painter
is over-elaborate and over-wrought, just as all the work of early
painters is over-elaborate and over-wrought. Do not greet the dawn as
though it were a lowering sunset. Listen, and, with William Blake, you
may hear the sons of God shouting for joy. If your mind is bent on
decay, read that neglected poet, Byron. He thought the romantic
movement, of which he became the accidental centre, a symptom of decay.
Read any period of history and its literature, and you will find the same
cry reiterated. When you have read an old book go out and buy a new one.
When you have sold your old masters, go out and buy new masters.
Aladdin's maid is one of the wronged characters of legend. . . . Of the
Pierian spring there are many fountains. Yet it is a spring which never
runs dry; though it flows with greater freedom at one season than at
another, with greater volume from one fountain than some other. In the
glens of Parnassus there are hidden flowers always blooming; though, to
the binoculars of the tourist, the mountain seems unusually barren. You
will find that youth does not vanish with the rose, that you need never
close the sweet-scented manuscript of love, science, art or literature.
In them youth returns like daffodils that come before the swallow dares,
and take the winds of March with beauty: or like the snapdragons which
Cardinal Newman saw blossoming on the wall at Oxford, and which became
for him the symbol of hope. For us they may stand as the symbol of
realisation and the immortality of the human intellect, in which there
has been no decay since the days of Tubal Cain.

_To_ J. G. LEGGE, ESQ.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASQUES & PHASES***

******* This file should be named 17601.txt or 17601.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/0/17601

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.