ied. We are afraid that
our grandchildren will look back on us with the smiling superiority
with which we look back on those who raved against Wagner and flung
epithets at Ibsen. Be in no trouble about that. Your grandchildren
will smile at you in any case. Has not the reputation of Matthew
Arnold already sunk lower than that of the reviewers in the daily
papers? Is not even Pater being thrust into a second grave as an
indolent driveller without judgment? There is no phylactery against
the poor opinion of one's grandchildren. Nor need we be greatly in
fear of damning bad art because an occasional Wagner has been
condemned. After all, there were other people condemned besides
Wagner. They were so bad, however, that we have forgotten what the
critics said about them. Pope wrote his _Dunciad_ not against the
Wagners and Ibsens of his day, but against all those fashionable
fellows whose names survive only in his satire. No one would have the
courage to write a _Dunciad_ to-day. We have discovered that there
are no dunces except the people who were the vogue yesterday. Thus we
chorus the season's reputations. We are ready to stab last week's gods
in the back if it happens to be the fashion. We can all say what we
please about Shakespeare now that it no longer requires courage to do
so, but we dare not confess with equal frankness our feelings about
some little wren of a minor poet who came out of the shell a month
ago. The world has become a maze of echoes in which no honest
conversation can be heard for the dull reverberant speech of the
walls.

XX

THE TERRORS OF POLITICS

There is a good deal to be said for Mr Lloyd George's complaint
against the world for its treatment of politicians. In one sense, it
may be better to throw a brick at a politician than to trust him. It
encourages the others. Unhappily, it is a habit that, once acquired,
is by no means easy to discontinue. One throws one's first brick as a
public duty; before one has got through one's first cart-load,
however, one is throwing for the sheer exhilaration of the thing. It
is difficult, for instance, to believe that if Mr Leo Maxse went to
Paradise itself, he would be able to forget his cunning with the words
"swindlers," "rogues," and "cabals"; one feels sure that he would
discover some angels requiring to be denounced for singing "cocoa"
hymns, and some committee of the saints which it was necessary to
arraign as Foozle & Co. The popularity of