Inquiries and Opinions | Page 8

Scot that he was forced to cry out
triumphantly: "Whaur's your Wully Shakspere noo?"
And yet this Scottish masterpiece failed to establish itself finally on the
stage; and it has long since past out of men's memories, leaving behind

it only a quotation or two and a speech for boys to spout. So in every
age the disinterested observer can take note of the rise and fall of some
unlucky author or artist, painter or poet, widely and loudly proclaimed
as a genius, only to be soon forgotten, often in his own generation. He
may have soared aloft for a brief moment with starry scintillations, like
a rocket, only at last to come down like the stick, empty and unnoticed.
The echoes of the old battle of the Ancients and Moderns have not died
away, even yet; and there is never a time when some ardent disciple is
not insisting that his immediate master must be admitted as one of the
immortals, and when some shrill youth is not ready to make room for
the new-comer by ousting any number of the consecrated chiefs of art.
Now and again, of course, the claim is allowed; the late arrival is made
welcome in the Pantheon; and there is a new planet on high. But most
of those who are urged for this celestial promotion prove to be mere
shooting-stars at best, vanishing into space before there is opportunity
to examine their spectrum and to compare it with that of the older orbs
which have made the sky glorious thru the long centuries.
It is only by comparison with these fixt stars that we can measure the
light of any new luminary which aspires to their lofty elevation. It is
only by keeping our gaze full upon them that we may hope to come to
an understanding of their immeasurable preëminence. Taine has told us
that "there are four men in the world of art and of literature exalted
above all others, and to such a degree as to seem to belong to another
race--namely, Dante, Shakspere, Beethoven, and Michelangelo. No
profound knowledge, no full possession of all the resources of art, no
fertility of imagination, no originality of intellect, sufficed to secure
them this position, for these they all had. These, moreover, are of
secondary importance; that which elevated them to this rank is their
soul."
Here we have four great lights for us to steer by when we are
storm-driven on the changing sea of contemporary opinion and
contemporary prejudice; and by their aid we may hope to win safety in
a harbor of refuge.
Perhaps it is a praiseworthy striving for a permanent standard of value

which accounts for the many attempts to draw up lists of the Hundred
Best Books and of the Hundred Best Pictures. It may be admitted at
once that these lists, however inadequate they must be, and however
unsatisfactory in themselves, may have a humble utility of their own as
a first aid to the ignorant. At least, they may serve to remind a man lost
in a maze amid the clatter and the clutter of our own time, that after all
this century of ours is the heir of the ages, and that it is for us to profit
by the best that the past has bequeathed to us. Even the most expertly
selected list could do little more than this.
Nevertheless these attempts, after all, cannot fail to be more or less
misleading, since the best books and the best pictures do not number
exactly a hundred. Nor can there be any assured certainty in the
selection, since no two of those most competent to make the choice
would be likely to agree on more than half of the masterpieces they
would include.
The final and fatal defect in all these lists is that they seek to single out
an arbitrary number of works of the highest distinction, instead of
trying to find out the few men of supreme genius who were actually the
makers of acknowledged masterpieces. It is of no consequence whether
we hold that 'Hamlet' or 'Macbeth' is the most splendid example of
Shakspere's surpassing endowment, or whether we consider the 'Fourth
Symphony' or the 'Seventh' the completest expression of Beethoven's
mastery of music. What it is of consequence for us to recognize and to
grasp effectually is that Shakspere and Beethoven are two of the
indisputable chiefs, each in his own sphere. What it imports us to
realize is that there is in every art a little group of supreme leaders; they
may be two or three only; they may be half a dozen, or, at the most,
half a score; but they stand in the forefront, and their supremacy is
inexpugnable for all time.
Every one recognizes to-day that