task of
choosing a husband from the wasteful and riotous horde of suitors
assembled in her house during Ulysses' protracted absence. See
Homer's 'Odyssey.'"

FOOTNOTE:

[8] "The Love-Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh." Edited by
Alexander Carlyle. 2 vols. Illustrated. (John Lane.)

"Carlyle's First Love, Margaret Gordon, Lady Bannerman." By Raymond
Clare Archibald. (John Lane.)

THE LYSISTRATA[9]

[Greek: Ahi Charites temenos ti labein hoper ouchi peseitai zetousai
psuchen euron Aristophanous.]
PLATO.

[Sidenote: _Athenaeum Jan. 1912_]

To Plato it seemed that the Graces, seeking an imperishable temple,
discovered the soul of Aristophanes. To the grocers and statesmen of
Queen Victoria it seemed otherwise. Their taste was a good deal nicer
than that of Plato, or of Shakespeare for that matter, or of Dante,
Rabelais, Catullus, Voltaire,[10] Gibbon or Balzac, to say nothing of
St. Chrysostom (who could not sleep without an Aristophanes under his
pillow) or the author of "The Song of Solomon." They did not like
vulgarity and they put a stop to it: also in that age _Punch_ and the
_Times_ flourished. What is decent or indecent, vulgar or refined, is,
of course, a matter of taste; and each age has a taste of its own. The
taste of Athens in her prime, or of Rome in hers, of Italy in the days
of Dante or of Raphael, of the court of Elizabeth, or of
eighteenth-century France was not the taste of Victorian England. And
the strange thing is that, though not only in the arts, but in all the
delicacies of life--in personal relations, in sentiment and wit--the
great poets, artists and critics are admitted to have been more subtle
and fastidious than most curates or tradesmen, in the matter of morals
the curates and tradesmen are allowed to know better. In this one
respect their sensibilities are to be preferred; in all others they
modestly confess themselves inferior to the greatest minds of the ages.
Things that seemed beautiful or interesting or amusing to Shakespeare or
Plato, to Chaucer or Aristophanes, they know, for certain, to be evil.
And since they are evil they are not to be mentioned; discussion of them
even--since they are quite sure that they are evil--is a crime. Now the
prevention of crime is a duty of the state; so very few of the world's
great masterpieces could have been published for the first time in
modern England; and it has been impossible for Mr. Bickley Rogers to
g