PREFACE:

ON FLUCTUATIONS OF TASTE


When Voltaire sat down to write a book on Epic Poetry, he dedicated his
first chapter to "Differences of Taste in Nations." A critic of to-day
might well find it necessary, on the threshold of a general inquiry, to
expatiate on "Differences of Taste in Generations." Changes of standard
in the arts are always taking place, but it is only with advancing
years, perhaps, that we begin to be embarrassed by the recurrence of
them. In early youth we fight for the new forms of art, for the new
æsthetic shibboleths, and in that happy ardour of battle we have no time
or inclination to regret the demigods whom we dispossess. But the years
glide on, and, behold! one morning, we wake up to find our own
predilections treated with contempt, and the objects of our own idolatry
consigned to the waste-paper basket. Then the matter becomes serious,
and we must either go on struggling for a cause inevitably lost, or we
must give up the whole matter in indifference. This week I read, over
the signature of a very clever and very popular literary character of
our day, the remark that Wordsworth's was "a genteel mind of the third
rank." I put down the newspaper in which this airy dictum was printed,
and, for the first time, I was glad that poor Mr. Matthew Arnold was no
longer with us. But, of course, the evolutions of taste must go on,
whether they hurt the living and the dead, or no.

Is there, then, no such thing as a permanent element of poetic beauty?
The curious fact is that leading critics in each successive generation
are united in believing that there is, and that the reigning favourite