his opinion of Perugino is of record.

Not all of us would consider even Michelangelo's arrogance entirely
justified, but it is not only the Michelangelos who have had this belief
in themselves. Apparently the confidence of progress has been as great
in times that now seem to us decadent as in times that we think of as
truly progressive. The past, or at least the immediate past, has always
seemed "out of date," and each generation, as it made its entrance on
the stage, has plumed itself upon its superiority to that which was
leaving it. The architect of the most debased baroque grafted his
"improvements" upon the buildings of the high Renaissance with an
assurance not less than that with which David and his contemporaries
banished the whole charming art of the eighteenth century. Van Orley and
Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish
painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have
been of his advance upon them.

We can see plainly enough that in at least some of these cases the sense
of progress was an illusion. There was movement, but it was not always
forward movement. And if progress was illusory in some instances, may it
not, possibly, have been so in all? It is at least worth inquiry how far
the fine arts have ever been in a state of true progress, going forward
regularly from good to better, each generation building on the work of
its predecessors and surpassing that work, in the way in which science
has normally progressed when material conditions were favorable.

If, with a view to answering this question, we examine, however
cursorily, the history of the five great arts, we shall find a somewhat
different state of affairs in the case of each. In the end it may be
possible to formulate something like a general rule that shall accord
with all the facts. Let us begin with the greatest and simplest of the
arts, the art of poetry.

In the history of poetry we shall find less evidence of progress than
anywhere else, for it will be seen that its acknowledged masterpieces
are almost invariably near the beginning of a series rather than near
the end. Almost as soon as a clear and flexible language has been formed
by any people, a great poem has been composed in that language, which
has remained not only unsurpassed, but unequalled, by any subsequent
work. Homer is for us, as he was for the Greeks, the greatest of their
poets; and if the opinion could be taken of all cu