ed them correctly. He may have suffered, as we suffer, from
critics who, of all the world's literature, know only "the last thing
out," and who take that as a standard for the past, to them unfamiliar,
and for the hidden future. As we are told that excellence is not of the
great past, but of the present, not in the classical masters, but in
modern Muscovites, Portuguese, or American young women, so the author of
the Treatise may have been troubled by Asiatic eloquence, now long
forgotten, by names of which not a shadow survives. He, on the other
hand, has a right to be heard because he has practised a long
familiarity with what is old and good. His mind has ever been in contact
with masterpieces, as the mind of a critic should be, as the mind of a
reviewer seldom is, for the reviewer has to hurry up and down inspecting
new literary adventurers. Not among their experiments will he find a
touchstone of excellence, a test of greatness, and that test will seldom
be applied to contemporary performances. What is the test, after all, of
the Sublime, by which our author means the truly great, the best and
most passionate thoughts, nature's high and rare inspirations, expressed
in the best chosen words? He replies that "a just judgment of style is
the final fruit of long experience." "Much has he travelled in the
realms of gold."

The word "style" has become a weariness to think upon; so much is said,
so much is printed about the art of expression, about methods, tricks,
and turns; so many people, without any long experience, set up to be
judges of style, on the strength of having admired two or three modern
and often rather fantastic writers. About our author, however, we know
that his experience has been long, and of the best, that he does not
speak from a hasty acquaintance with a few contemporary _precieux_ and
_precieuses_. The bad writing of his time he traces, as much of our own
may be traced, to "the pursuit of novelty in thought," or rather in
expression. "It is this that has turned the brain of nearly all our
learned world to-day." "Gardons nous d'ecrire trop bien," he might have
said, "c'est la pire maniere qu'il y'ait d'ecrire."[5]

[Footnote 5: M. Anatole France.]

The Sublime, with which he concerns himself, is "a certain loftiness and
excellence of language," which "takes the reader out of himself.... The
Sublime, acting with an imperious and irresistible force, sways every
reader whether he will or no." In