who follow, the Cervantes and Molieres, practical painters of life, indulgent friends who are still the first of benefactors, who laughingly embrace all mankind, turn man’s experience to gaiety, and know the powerful workings of a sensible, hearty, and legitimate joy.  I do not wish to make this description, which if complete would fill a volume, any longer.  In the middle ages, believe me, Dante would occupy the sacred heights:  at the feet of the singer of Paradise all Italy would be spread out like a garden; Boccaccio and Ariosto would there disport themselves, and Tasso would find again the orange groves of Sorrento.  Usually a corner would be reserved for each of the various nations, but the authors would take delight in leaving it, and in their travels would recognise, where we should least expect it, brothers or masters.  Lucretius, for example, would enjoy discussing the origin of the world and the reducing of chaos to order with Milton.  But both arguing from their own point of view, they would only agree as regards divine pictures of poetry and nature.

Such are our classics; each individual imagination may finish the sketch and choose the group preferred.  For it is necessary to make a choice, and the first condition of taste, after obtaining knowledge of all, lies not in continual travel, but in rest and cessation from wandering.  Nothing blunts and destroys taste so much as endless journeyings; the poetic spirit is not the Wandering Jew.  However, when I speak of resting and making choice, my meaning is not that we are to imitate those who charm us most among our masters in the past.  Let us be content to know them, to penetrate them, to admire them; but let us, the late-comers, endeavour to be ourselves.  Let us have the sincerity and naturalness of our own thoughts, of our own feelings; so much is always possible.  To that let us add what is more difficult, elevation, an aim, if possible, towards an exalted goal; and while speaking our own language, and submitting to the conditions of the times in which we live, whence we derive our strength and our defects, let us ask from time to time, our brows lifted towards the heights and our eyes fixed on the group of honoured mortals:  what would that say of us?

But why speak always of authors and writings?  Maybe an age is coming when there will be no more writing.  Happy those who read and read again, those who in their reading can follow their unrestrained inclination!  There comes a time in life when, all our journeys over, our experiences ended, there is no enjoyment more delightful than to study and thoroughly examine the things we know, to take pleasure in what we feel, and in seeing and seeing again the people we love:  the pure joys of our maturity.  Then it is that the word classic takes its true meaning, and is defined for every man of taste by an irresistible choice.  Then taste is formed, it is shaped and definite; then good sense, if we are to possess it