90 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



and may be better understood as time goes by. But 

 this better understanding belongs to the elite of 

 many ages, not to each succeeding age as a whole. 

 And what, too, is understanding, without feeling ? 

 Must not the one be in proportion to the other 

 — in all things, at least, into which feeling enters ? 

 But if an age sinks, it sinks altogether, both heart 

 and head. We know how Shakespeare fared in the 

 age of Charles the Second, when time had run some 

 fifty years. It would be very interesting, I think, if 

 we could compare an Elizabethan audience with one 

 of our own — full of languid press critics — at a 

 Shakespearean play — King Lear, for instance. Should 

 we not have to confess that the age which produced 

 the thing responded to it — that is, understood it — 

 best .? And this, indeed, we might expect — it was in 

 Moliere's own day, and he himself was on the stage, 

 when that cry from the pit arose : " Bravo Moliere ! 

 Voila la bonne comedie ! " But all Shakespeare's 

 excellences — Moliere's as well — were of the per- 

 manent order, the high undying kind, so that it was 

 of this that his age had to judge, and judged, there 

 can be little doubt — for King Lear, as he wrote it^ 

 was a popular play — much better than our later one. 

 If we will not confess this with Shakespeare, take 

 Spenser, the delight of his age, whose glorious 

 merits none will deny, though few, now, know any- 

 thing about them. Why, then, must we think that 

 time is the best judge of men's work, or dwell only 

 on the truth contained in this proposition } There 

 is a heavy per contra against it. At the time when a 

 man's reputation is most established, his work may 

 be quite neglected, showing that there is knowledge, 



