straining itself, and overstating its idea, might really be regulated. But they are few who consider so closely, fewer perhaps they who have the heart to cut out their own fine or refined things. Again, our author suggests another criterion. We are, as in Lamb’s phrase, “to write for antiquity,” with the souls of poets dead and gone for our judges. But we are also to write for the future, asking with what feelings posterity will read us—if it reads us at all. This is a good discipline. We know by practice what will hit some contemporary tastes; we know the measure of smartness, say, or the delicate flippancy, or the sentence with “a dying fall.” But one should also know that these are fancies of the hour—these and the touch of archaism, and the spinster-like and artificial precision, which seem to be points in some styles of the moment. Such reflections as our author bids us make, with a little self-respect added, may render our work less popular and effective, and certainly are not likely to carry it down to remote posterity. But all such reflections, and action in accordance with what they teach, are elements of literary self-respect. It is hard to be conscientious, especially hard for him who writes much, and of necessity, and for bread. But conscience is never to be obeyed with ease, though the ease grows with the obedience. The book attributed to Longinus will not have missed
