has been moved afresh, and put upon the roll for a
re-hearing. It is no mystery to those who are in the secret, and who
can lay A and B together, why it should have happened that the most
interesting of all literary questions, and the most comprehensive
(for it includes most others, and some special to itself), has, in
the first place, never been pleaded in a style of dignity, of
philosophic precision, of feeling, or of research, proportioned to its
own merits, and to the numerous 'issues' (forensically speaking)
depending upon it; nor, in the second place, has ever received such an
adjudication as was satisfactory _even at the moment_. For, be it
remembered, after all, that any provisional adjudication--one growing
out of the fashion or taste of a single era--could not, at any rate,
be binding for a different era. A judgment which met the approbation
of Spenser could hardly have satisfied Dryden; nor another which
satisfied Pope, have been recognised as authentic by us of the year
1838. It is the normal or exemplary condition of the human mind, its
ideal condition, not its abnormal condition, as seen in the transitory
modes and fashions of its taste or its opinions, which only

'Can lay great bases for eternity,'

or give even a colourable permanence to any decision in a matter so
large, so perplexed, so profound, as this great pending suit between
antiquity and ourselves--between the junior men of this earth and
ourselves, the seniors, as Lord Bacon reasonably calls us. Appeals
will be brought _ad infinitum_--we ourselves shall bring appeals, to
set aside any judgment that may be given, until something more is
consulted than individual taste; better evidence brought forward than
the result of individual reading; something higher laid down as the
_grounds_ of judgment, as the very principles of the jurisprudence
which controls the court, than those vague _responsa prudentum_,
countersigned by the great name, perhaps, of Aristotle, but still too
often mere products of local convenience, of inexperience, of
experience too limited and exclusively Grecian, or of absolute
caprice--rules, in short, which are themselves not less truly _sub
judice_ and liable to appeal than that very appeal cause to which they
are applied as decisive.

We have remarked, that it is no mystery why the decision should have
gone pretty uniformly in favour of the ancients; for here is the
dilemma:--A man, attempting this problem, _is_ or _i