or the wretched imitators of Balzac and the jackanapes
phrasemongering of some Osric of the day, who assures us that Scott is
an absolute Philistine.

In speaking with enthusiasm of Scott, as of Homer, or of Shakespeare,
or of Milton, or of any of the accepted masters of the world, I have
no wish to insist dogmatically upon any single name, or two or three
in particular. Our enjoyment and reverence of the great poets of the
world is seriously injured nowadays by the habit we get of singling
out some particular quality, some particular school of art for
intemperate praise or, still worse, for intemperate abuse. Mr. Ruskin,
I suppose, is answerable for the taste for this one-sided and
spasmodic criticism; and every young gentleman who has the trick of a
few adjectives will languidly vow that Marlowe is supreme, or Murillo
foul. It is the mark of rational criticism as well as of healthy
thought to maintain an evenness of mind in judging of great works, to
recognize great qualities in due proportion, to feel that defects are
made up by beauties, and beauties are often balanced by weakness. The
true judgment implies a weighing of each work and each workman as a
whole, in relation to the sum of human cultivation and the gradual
advance of the movement of ages. And in this matter we shall usually
find that the world is right, the world of the modern centuries and
the nations of Europe together. It is unlikely, to say the least of
it, that a young person who has hardly ceased making Latin verses will
be able to reverse the decisions of the civilized world; and it is
even more unlikely that Milton and Moliere, Fielding and Scott, will
ever be displaced by a poet who has unaccountably lain hid for one or
two centuries.

I know that in the style of to-day I ought hardly to venture to
address you about poetry unless I am prepared to unfold to you the
mysterious beauties of some unknown genius who has recently been
unearthed by the Children of Light and Sweetness. I confess I have no
such discovery to announce. I prefer to dwell in Gath and to pitch my
tents in Ashdod; and I doubt the use of the sling as a weapon in
modern war. I decline to go into hyperbolic eccentricities over
unknown geniuses, and a single quality or power is not enough to
arouse my enthusiasm. It is possible that no master ever painted a
buttercup like this one, or the fringe of a robe like that one; that
this poet has a unique subtlety, and that an undefinabl