y
age there have been people to sigh: "Ah, yes. Fifty years ago we had
a few great writers. But they are all dead, and no young ones are
arising to take their place." This attitude of mind is deplorable, if
not silly, and is a certain proof of narrow taste. It is a surety that
in 1959 gloomy and egregious persons will be saying: "Ah, yes. At
the beginning of the century there were great poets like Swinburne,
Meredith, Francis Thompson, and Yeats. Great novelists like Hardy and
Conrad. Great historians like Stubbs and Maitland, etc., etc. But they
are all dead now, and whom have we to take their place?" It is not
until an age has receded into history, and all its mediocrity has
dropped away from it, that we can see it as it is--as a group of men
of genius. We forget the immense amount of twaddle that the great
epochs produced. The total amount of fine literature created in a
given period of time differs from epoch to epoch, but it does not
differ much. And we may be perfectly sure that our own age will make a
favourable impression upon that excellent judge, posterity. Therefore,
beware of disparaging the present in your own mind. While temporarily
ignoring it, dwell upon the idea that its chaff contains about as much
wheat as any similar quantity of chaff has contained wheat.

The reason why you must avoid modern works at the beginning is simply
that you are not in a position to choose among modern works. Nobody
at all is quite in a position to choose with certainty among modern
works. To sift the wheat from the chaff is a process that takes an
exceedingly long time. Modern works have to pass before the bar of the
taste of successive generations. Whereas, with classics, which have
been through the ordeal, almost the reverse is the case. _Your taste
has to pass before the bar of the classics_. That is the point. If you
differ with a classic, it is you who are wrong, and not the book. If
you differ with a modern work, you may be wrong or you may be
right, but no judge is authoritative enough to decide. Your taste is
unformed. It needs guidance, and it needs authoritative guidance. Into
the business of forming literary taste faith enters. You probably will
not specially care for a particular classic at first. If you did care
for it at first, your taste, so far as that classic is concerned,
would be formed, and our hypothesis is that your taste is not formed.
How are you to arrive at the stage of caring for it? Chiefly, of