ven greater and better. It is difficult to
conceive by what laws of logic some of the reviewers of the following
Essay have construed its first sentence into a denial of this
principle,--a denial such as their own conventional and shallow criticism
of modern works invariably implies. I have said that "nothing has been
for centuries consecrated by public admiration without possessing in a
_high_ degree _some_ species of sterling excellence." Does it thence
follow that it possesses in the _highest_ degree _every_ species of
sterling excellence? "Yet thus," says the sapient reviewer, "he admits
the fact against which he mainly argues,--namely, the superiority of
these time-honored productions." As if the possession of an abstract
excellence of some kind necessarily implied the possession of an
incomparable excellence of every kind! There are few works of man so
perfect as to admit of no conception of their being excelled,[A]--there
are thousands which have been for centuries, and will be for centuries
more, consecrated by public admiration, which are yet imperfect in many
respects, and have been excelled, and may be excelled again. Do my
opponents mean to assert that nothing good can ever be bettered, and that
what is best of past time is necessarily best of all time? Perugino, I
suppose, possessed some species of sterling excellence, but Perugino was
excelled by Raffaelle; and so Claude possesses some species of sterling
excellence, but it follows not that he may not be excelled by Turner.

The second point on which I would insist is that if a mind _were_ to
arise of such power as to be capable of equalling or excelling some of
the greatest works of past ages, the productions of such a mind would,
in all probability, be totally different in manner and matter from all
former productions; for the more powerful the intellect, the less will
its works resemble those of other men, whether predecessors or
contemporaries. Instead of reasoning, therefore, as we commonly do, in
matters of art, that because such and such a work does not resemble that
which has hitherto been a canon, therefore it _must_ be inferior and
wrong in principle; let us rather admit that there is in its very
dissimilarity an increased chance of its being itself a new, and
perhaps, a higher canon. If any production of modern art can be shown to
have the authority of nature on its side, and to be based on eternal
truths, it is all so much more in its favor, so