percu, and hence satisfying; if you go to all
definitions you have another formula x > x, a destruction, another
apercu, and hence satisfying. Professor Beers goes to the dictionary
(you wouldn't think a college professor would be as reckless as that).
And so he can say that "romantic" is "pertaining to the style of the
Christian and popular literature of the Middle Ages," a Roman Catholic
mode of salvation (not this definition but having a definition). And so
Prof. B. can say that Walter Scott is a romanticist (and Billy Phelps a
classic--sometimes). But for our part Dick Croker is a classic and job
a romanticist. Another professor, Babbitt by name, links up Romanticism
with Rousseau, and charges against it many of man's troubles. He
somehow likes to mix it up with sin. He throws saucers at it, but in a
scholarly, interesting, sincere, and accurate way. He uncovers a
deformed foot, gives it a name, from which we are allowed to infer that
the covered foot is healthy and named classicism. But no Christian
Scientist can prove that Christ never had a stomach-ache. The
Architecture of Humanism [Footnote: Geoffrey Scott (Constable & Co.)]
tells us that "romanticism consists of ... a poetic sensibility towards
the remote, as such." But is Plato a classic or towards the remote? Is
Classicism a poor relation of time--not of man? Is a thing classic or
romantic because it is or is not passed by that biologic--that
indescribable stream-of-change going on in all life? Let us settle the
point for "good," and say that a thing is classic if it is thought of
in terms of the past and romantic if thought of in terms of the
future--and a thing thought of in terms of the present is--well, that
is impossible! Hence, we allow ourselves to say, that Emerson is
neither a classic or romantic but both--and both not only at different
times in one essay, but at the same time in one sentence--in one word.
And must we admit it, so is everyone. If you don't believe it, there
must be some true definition you haven't seen. Chopin shows a few
things that Bach forgot--but he is not eclectic, they say. Brahms shows
many things that Bach did remember, so he is an eclectic, they say.
Leoncavallo writes pretty verses and Palestrina is a priest, and
Confucius inspires Scriabin. A choice is freedom. Natural selection is
but one of Nature's tunes. "All melodious poets shall be hoarse as
street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit
is so