Of one thing I am sure, that Savonarola's friend Michael
Angelo would have piled all his own statues one on top of the other,
and burnt them to ashes, if only he had been certain that the glow
transfiguring the sky was the dawn of a younger and wiser world.
THE POSITION OF SIR WALTER SCOTT
Walter Scott is a writer who should just now be re-emerging into his own
high place in letters, for unquestionably the recent, though now
dwindling, schools of severely technical and aesthetic criticism have
been unfavourable to him. He was a chaotic and unequal writer, and if
there is one thing in which artists have improved since his time, it is
in consistency and equality. It would perhaps be unkind to inquire
whether the level of the modern man of letters, as compared with Scott,
is due to the absence of valleys or the absence of mountains. But in any
case, we have learnt in our day to arrange our literary effects
carefully, and the only point in which we fall short of Scott is in the
incidental misfortune that we have nothing particular to arrange.
It is said that Scott is neglected by modern readers; if so, the matter
could be more appropriately described by saying that modern readers are
neglected by Providence. The ground of this neglect, in so far as it
exists, must be found, I suppose, in the general sentiment that, like
the beard of Polonius, he is too long. Yet it is surely a peculiar thing
that in literature alone a house should be despised because it is too
large, or a host impugned because he is too generous.
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