compare the pure naturalism of the wonderful
Egyptian scribe of the Louvre, belonging, I am told, to the fifth or
sixth dynasty, with the hieratic and conventional art of the twelfth
dynasty; while in the eighteenth dynasty you get a reversion to realism,
which critics have the audacity to call a 'revival of art.' But you
might just as well call it decayed, as indeed they do call some of the
most magnificent Ptolemaean remains, simply because they happen to belong
to a certain date which, by Egyptian reckoning, may be regarded as very
recent. Just now we very foolishly talk in accents of scorn about the
early Victorian art, of which I venture to remind you Turner was not the
least ornament. Of course commercial and political events often
interrupt the gestation of the arts, or break our idols in pieces.
Another generation picks up the fragments and puts them together in the
wrong way, and that is why it is so confusing and interesting; but there
is no reason to be depressed about it. Only iconoclasm need annoy us. In
histories of English literature too often you find the same attitude when
the writer comes to a period which he dislikes. Restoration Comedy is
often said to be a period of debasement, and with Tennyson the young
student is given to understand that English literature ceased altogether.
But perhaps there are more modern text-books where the outlook is less
gloomy. If, instead of reading the history of literature, you read the
literature itself, you will find plenty of instances of writers at the
most brilliant periods complaining of decay.

George Putman, in the _Art of English Poesy_, published in 1589, when
English poetry was starting on a particularly glorious period, says, 'In
these days all poets and poesy are despised, they are subject to scorn
and derision,' and 'this proceeds through the barbarous ignorance of the
time--in _other ages it was not so_.' Then Jonson, in his 'Discoveries,'
lamenting the decline of literature, says, 'It is the disease of the age,
and no wonder if the world, growing old, begins to be infirm.' There are
hundreds of others which will immediately occur to you, from Chaucer to
Tennyson, though Pope made noble protests on behalf of his
contemporaries. You have only got to compare these lachrymose
observations with the summary of the year's literature in any
newspaper--'literary output' is the detestable expression always used--and
you will find the same note of depres