that sentence
of Carlyle is inevitably and irreversibly true:--"Day after day, looking
at the high destinies which yet await literature, which literature will
ere long address herself with more decisiveness than ever to fulfill, it
grows clearer to us that the proper task of literature lies in the
domain of BELIEF, within which, poetic fiction, as it is charitably
named, will have to take a quite new figure, if allowed a settlement
there. Whereby were it not reasonable to prophesy that this exceeding
great multitude of novel writers and such like, must, in a new
generation, gradually do one of two things, either retire into
nurseries, and work for children, minors, and semifatuous persons of
both sexes, or else, what were far better, sweep their novel fabric into
the dust cart, and betake them, with such faculty as they have, _to
understand and record what is true_, of which surely there is and
forever will be a whole infinitude unknown to us, of infinite importance
to us? Poetry will more and more come to be understood as nothing but
higher knowledge, and the only genuine Romance for grown persons,
Reality."

141. As I was copying this sentence, a pamphlet was put into my hand,
written by a clergyman, denouncing "Woe, woe, woe! to exceedingly young
men of stubborn instincts, calling themselves Pre-Raphaelites."[40]

[Footnote 40: Art, its Constitution and Capacities, etc. By the Rev.
Edward Young, M.A. The phrase "exceedingly young men of stubborn
instincts," being twice quoted (carefully excluding the context) from my
pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism.]

I thank God that the Pre-Raphaelites _are_ young, and that strength is
still with them, and life, with all the war of it, still in front of
them. Yet Everett Millais is this year of the exact age at which
Raphael painted the "Disputa," his greatest work; Rossetti and Hunt are
both of them older still--nor is there one member of the body so young
as Giotto, when he was chosen from among the painters of Italy to
decorate the Vatican. But Italy, in her great period, knew her great
men, and did not "despise their youth." It is reserved for England to
insult the strength of her noblest children--to wither their warm
enthusiasm early into the bitterness of patient battle, and leave to
those whom she should have cherished and aided, no hope but in
resolution, no refuge but in disdain.

142. Indeed it is woful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the
wisdom, of the age