this occasion, Sully-Prudhomme whom we are considering, but his critics.
If Théophile Gautier was right in 1867, Rémy de Gourmont must have been
wrong in 1907; yet they both were honourable men in the world of
criticism. Nor is it merely the dictum of a single man, which, however
ingenious, may be paradoxical. It is worse than that; it is the fact
that one whole generation seems to have agreed with Gautier, and that
another whole generation is of the same mind as Rémy de Gourmont.

Then it is that Mr. Balfour, like Galuppi with his "cold music," comes
in and tells us that this is precisely what we have to expect. All
beauty consists in the possession of certain relations, which being
withdrawn, beauty disappears from the object that seemed to possess it.
There is no permanent element in poetic excellence. We are not to demand
any settled opinion about poetry. So Mr. Balfour seems to creak it, and
we want the heart to scold. But is it quite so certain that there is no
fixed norm of beauty imaginable? Is it the fact that poetic pleasure
cannot "be supposed to last any longer than the transient reaction
between it" and the temporary prejudice of our senses? If this be true,
then are critics of all men most miserable.

Yet, deeply dejected as it leaves me to know that very clever people
despise the "genteel third-rate mind" of Wordsworth, I am not quite
certain that I yield to Mr. Balfour's brilliant and paralysing logic.
That eminent philosopher seems to say "you find the poets, whom you
revered in your youth, treated with contempt in your old age. Well! It
is very sad, and perhaps it would annoy me too, if I were not a
philosopher. But it only shows how right I was to tell, you not to
expect permanent relations behind the feeling of beauty, since all is
illusion, and there is no such thing as a principle of taste, but only
a variation of fashion."