94 LITERARY VALUES 



settle his claim. In literature, the men of the high- 

 est order, to be ■understood, must undoubtedly, in a 

 measure, wait for the growth of the taste of them- 

 selves, or until their own ideals have become at home 

 in men's minds. With every great innovation, in 

 whatever field, every year that passes finds our 

 minds better adjusted to it and more keenly alive to 

 its merits. Contemporary criticism is bound to be 

 contradictory. Men take opposite views of current 

 questions ; they are too near them to see all their 

 bearings. How different the aspect the slavery ques- 

 tion wears at this distance, and the civil war that 

 grew out of it, from the face they wore a generation 

 or two ago ! It is only the few great minds that see 

 to-day what the masses will see to-morrow. They 

 occupy a vantage ground of character and principle 

 that is like an eminence in a landscape, commanding 

 a wide view. Sainte-Beuve certainly did injustice to 

 Balzac, and Sch^rer to B^ranger. Theirs were con- 

 temporary judgments, and personal antipathy played 

 a large part in them. Sainte-Beuve says that when 

 two good intellects pass totally different judgments 

 on the same author, it is because they are not fixing 

 their thoughts, for the moment, on the same object ; 

 they have not the whole of him before their eyes ; 

 their view does not take him in entirely. That is 

 just it : we each look for different values ; we are 

 more keenly alive to some merits than to others ; 

 what one critic misses another sees. We are more 

 or less like chemical elements, that unite eagerly 

 with some of their fellows, and not with others. 



