often sown; their harvests dwindle; until in the fullness of time a new vegetation, drawing upon fresh sources of nourishment, springs suddenly into vigorous and aggressive life.
Now, in looking back, either on revolutions like these, or on other less abrupt but equally important changes, of which the history of Literature and Art shows so many examples, we must not, for the purposes of the present argument, take up the position of the eclectic critic who, calmly appreciative and coldly just, sees merits in every school and is impassioned over none. All that my argument requires is proof that the judgements of great writers and artists, especially when they are untamed by the orthodoxies of tradition, show none of that agreement of which we are in search. Wordsworth on the eighteenth century, Boileau on the sixteenth, Voltaire on Shakespeare, the French romantics on the French classics, the Renaissance on the Middle Ages, are familiar illustrations of the point. And if further evidence be required, note how rarely eminent critics endeavour to lead opinion upon new artistic developments, and how rarely, when they do, they succeed in anticipating the verdict of posterity—so hesitating is their tread, so wandering their course, when they cannot lean on a tried tradition.
