THE TEST OF TIME 91 



merely, accumulated and brought down through the 

 ages, but no real appreciation — a husk with nothing 

 inside it. That best judgment which we think we 

 get through time, even where it exists, is too often 

 of the head only, whilst more often still it is nothing 

 at all, a mere assurance received without question — 

 as we take any opinion from anybody, when we 

 neither know nor care anything about the subject of 

 it. How easy to agree that Milton's greatness is 

 more recognised, now, than it was, when we have 

 never yet been able, and never again intend to try, 

 to read the '' Paradise Lost " ! It is the same with 

 our detractions. If all the inappreciative, silly things 

 said about Pope are really meant by the people who 

 say them — as they seem to wish us to believe, and, as 

 for my part, I do not doubt — if they really cannot enjoy 

 " The Rape of the Lock," " The Dunciad," or the 

 various *' Essays," then, in the matter of Pope, what 

 a dull age this must be, compared to that of Queen 

 Anne ! And are we really to believe that Goethe, Scott, 

 Shelley, with the rest of their generation, were mis- 

 taken about Byron, whilst we of to-day are not .^ What 

 was it that Scott's, that Shelley's organism thrilled 

 to, when they read him, with high delight, if some 

 microscopic creature who reads him now is right 

 when he finds him third-rate ? It is very odd, 

 surely, if the most gifted spirits of an age do really 

 " see Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt " in this 

 way. To me it seems less puzzling to suppose that 

 successive generations have, as it were, varying sense 

 organs, which are acted upon by different numbers 

 of vibrations of the ether, so that for one to belittle 

 the idol of another, is as it would be for the ear to 



