the feelings of this perfervid Scot that he was forced to cry out
triumphantly: "Whaur's your Wully Shakspere noo?"

And yet this Scottish masterpiece failed to establish itself finally on
the stage; and it has long since past out of men's memories, leaving
behind it only a quotation or two and a speech for boys to spout. So in
every age the disinterested observer can take note of the rise and fall
of some unlucky author or artist, painter or poet, widely and loudly
proclaimed as a genius, only to be soon forgotten, often in his own
generation. He may have soared aloft for a brief moment with starry
scintillations, like a rocket, only at last to come down like the stick,
empty and unnoticed.

The echoes of the old battle of the Ancients and Moderns have not died
away, even yet; and there is never a time when some ardent disciple is
not insisting that his immediate master must be admitted as one of the
immortals, and when some shrill youth is not ready to make room for the
new-comer by ousting any number of the consecrated chiefs of art. Now
and again, of course, the claim is allowed; the late arrival is made
welcome in the Pantheon; and there is a new planet on high. But most of
those who are urged for this celestial promotion prove to be mere
shooting-stars at best, vanishing into space before there is opportunity
to examine their spectrum and to compare it with that of the older orbs
which have made the sky glorious thru the long centuries.

It is only by comparison with these fixt stars that we can measure the
light of any new luminary which aspires to their lofty elevation. It is
only by keeping our gaze full upon them that we may hope to come to an
understanding of their immeasurable preëminence. Taine has told us that
"there are four men in the world of art and of literature exalted above