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Page 41
It is the fashion nowadays to harp upon the degeneracy of
humanity; to insist that taste is corrupted, and that the faculty
of appreciation is dead. We seem incapable of realizing that
this is the golden age of authors, if not the golden age of
authorship.
In the good old days authors were in fact a despised and
neglected class. The Greeks put them to death, as the humor
seized them. For a hundred years after his death Shakespeare was
practically unknown to his countrymen, except Suckling and his
coterie: during his life he was roundly assailed by his
contemporaries, one of the latter going to the extreme of
denouncing him as a daw that strutted in borrowed plumage.
Milton was accused of plagiarism, and one of his critics devoted
many years to compiling from every quarter passages in ancient
works which bore a similarity to the blind poet's verses. Even
Samuel Johnson's satire of ``London'' was pronounced a
plagiarism.
The good old days were the days, seemingly, when the critics had
their way and ran things with a high hand; they made or unmade
books and authors. They killed Chatterton, just as, some years
later, they hastened the death of Keats. For a time they were
all-powerful. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century
that these professional tyrants began to lose their grip, and
when Byron took up the lance against them their doom was
practically sealed.
Who would care a picayune in these degenerate days what Dr.
Warburton said pro or con a book? It was Warburton (then Bishop
of Gloucester) who remarked of Granger's ``Biographical History
of England'' that it was ``an odd one.'' This was as high a
compliment as he ever paid a book; those which he did not like he
called sad books, and those which he fancied he called odd ones.
The truth seems to be that through the diffusion of knowledge
and the multiplicity and cheapness of books people generally have
reached the point in intelligence where they feel warranted in
asserting their ability to judge for themselves. So the
occupation of the critic, as interpreted and practised of old, is
gone.
Reverting to the practice of lamenting the degeneracy of
humanity, I should say that the fashion is by no means a new one.
Search the records of the ancients and you will find the same
harping upon the one string of present decay and former virtue.
Herodotus, Sallust, Caesar, Cicero, and Pliny take up and repeat
the lugubrious tale in turn.
Upon earth there are three distinct classes of men: Those who
contemplate the past, those who contemplate the present, those
who contemplate the future. I am of those who believe that
humanity progresses, and it is my theory that the best works of
the past have survived and come down to us in these books which
are our dearest legacies, our proudest possessions, and our
best-beloved companions.
XV
A BOOK THAT BRINGS SOLACE AND CHEER
One of my friends had a mania for Bunyan once upon a time, and,
although he has now abandoned that fad for the more fashionable
passion of Napoleonana, he still exhibits with evident pride the
many editions of the ``Pilgrim's Progress'' he gathered together
years ago. I have frequently besought him to give me one of his
copies, which has a curious frontispiece illustrating the dangers
besetting the traveller from the City of Destruction to the
Celestial City. This frontispiece, which is prettily
illuminated, occurs in Virtue's edition of the ``Pilgrim's
Progress''; the book itself is not rare, but it is hardly
procurable in perfect condition, for the reason that the colored
plate is so pleasing to the eye that few have been able to resist
the temptation to make away with it.
For similar reasons it is seldom that we meet with a perfect
edition of Quarles' ``Emblems''; indeed, an ``Emblems'' of early
publication that does not lack the title-page is a great rarity.
In the ``good old days,'' when juvenile books were few, the works
of Bunyan and of Quarles were vastly popular with the little
folk, and little fingers wrought sad havoc with the title-pages
and the pictures that with their extravagant and vivid
suggestions appealed so directly and powerfully to the youthful
fancy.
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