How long this
superstition lasted cannot accurately be settled; perhaps it is not
quite extinct even yet; but we know how little the most earnest
students succeeded in surprising the secrets of the universe by reading
Greek treatises, and how much by studying the universe itself.
Advancing Science daily discredits the superstition; yet the advance of
Criticism has not yet wholly discredited the parallel superstition in
Art. The earliest thinkers are no longer considered the wisest, but the
earliest artists are still proclaimed the finest. Even those who do not
believe in this superiority are, for the most part, overawed by
tradition and dare not openly question the supremacy of works which in
their private convictions hold a very subordinate rank. And this
reserve is encouraged by the intemperate scorn of those who question
the supremacy without having the knowledge or the sympathy which could
fairly appreciate the earlier artists. Attacks on the classics by men
ignorant of the classical languages tend to perpetuate the superstition.
But be the merit of the classics, ancient and modern, what it may, no
writer can become a classic by imitating them.
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