But Meinhold belongs to a bygone generation.  This other author, in whom I find a new note, and one of great power, is Merejkowski, who is, if I mistake not, young and with his career still before him.  “The Forerunner” and “The Death of the Gods” are the only two books of his which I have been able to obtain, but the pictures of Renaissance Italy in the one, and of declining Rome in the other, are in my opinion among the masterpieces of fiction.  I confess that as I read them I was pleased to find how open my mind was to new impressions, for one of the greatest mental dangers which comes upon a man as he grows older is that he should become so attached to old favourites that he has no room for the new-comer, and persuades himself that the days of great things are at an end because his own poor brain is getting ossified.  You have but to open any critical paper to see how common is the disease, but a knowledge of literary history assures us that it has always been the same, and that if the young writer is discouraged by adverse comparisons it has been the common lot from the beginning.  He has but one resource, which is to pay no heed to criticism, but to try to satisfy his own highest standard and leave the rest to time and the public.  Here is a little bit of doggerel, pinned, as you see, beside my bookcase, which may in a ruffled hour bring peace and guidance to some younger brother—­

   “Critics kind—­never mind! 
    Critics flatter—­no matter! 
    Critics blame—­all the same! 
    Critics curse—­none the worse! 
    Do your best—­ ——­ the rest!”

XI.

I have been talking in the past tense of heroes and of knight-errants, but surely their day is not yet passed.  When the earth has all been explored, when the last savage has been tamed, when the final cannon has been scrapped, and the world has settled down into unbroken virtue and unutterable dulness, men will cast their thoughts back to our age, and will idealize our romance and—­our courage, even as we do that of our distant forbears.  “It is wonderful what these people did with their rude implements and their limited appliances!” That is what they will say when they read of our explorations, our voyages, and our wars.

Now, take that first book on my travel shelf.  It is Knight’s “Cruise of the Falcon.”  Nature was guilty of the pun which put this soul into a body so named.  Read this simple record and tell me if there is anything in Hakluyt more wonderful.  Two landsmen—­solicitors, if I remember right—­go down to Southampton Quay.  They pick up a long-shore youth, and they embark in a tiny boat in which they put to sea.  Where do they turn up?  At Buenos Ayres.  Thence they penetrate to Paraquay, return to the West Indies, sell their little boat there, and so home.  What could the Elizabethan mariners have done more?  There are no Spanish galleons now to vary the monotony of such a voyage, but had there been I am very certain our adventurers would have had their share of the doubloons.  But surely it was the nobler when done out of the pure lust of adventure and in answer to the call of the sea, with no golden bait to draw them on.  The old spirit still lives, disguise it as you will with top hats, frock coats, and all prosaic settings.  Perhaps even they also will seem romantic when centuries have blurred them.