Art and Science 



amiable lie, but both are lies, and are known 

 to be so by those who utter them. Talk about 

 catching the tone of a vanished society to un- 

 derstand Rembrandt or Giovanni Bellini ! It 

 is nonsense the folds do not thicken in front 

 of these men ; we understand them as well as 

 those among whom they went about in the 

 flesh, and perhaps better. Homer and Shake- 

 speare speak to us probably far more effectually 

 than they did to the men of their own time, 

 and most likely we have them at their best. I 

 cannot think that Shakespeare talked better 

 than we hear him now in "Hamlet" or "Henry 

 the Fourth " ; like enough he would have been 

 found a very disappointing person in a draw- 

 ing-room. People stamp themselves on their 

 work ; if they have not done so they are 

 naught, if they have we have them ; and for 

 the most part they stamp themselves deeper 

 on their work than on their talk. No doubt 

 Shakespeare and Handel will be one day clean 

 forgotten, as though they had never been 

 born. The world will in the end die ; mor- 

 tality therefore itself is not immortal, and 

 when death dies the life of these men will die 



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