The term “Modern” has, moreover,—so long as it is dissociated from any such futile belittling of “Ancient” as was implied in its use during the Quarrel,—the great advantage of keeping a secondary, but very convenient and in no way objectionable, opposition to “Ancient” itself. We have seen that, with much intelligent and judicious, there was more unintelligent and corrupt, following of the ancients during the period which we surveyed in the last volume: and that there was a still more dangerous and hurtful tendency to disfranchise modern literature as an equal source with ancient for the discovery of critical truths. Now, if there is a point wholly to be counted for righteousness, to at least the better part of the criticism which has prevailed for the last hundred years, and was a militant force for at least fifty years earlier, it is this taking into consideration of “Modern” literature, not to the exclusion of “Ancient,” but on even terms with it. It is no doubt much easier to say _nullo discrimine habebo_[3] than to carry it out, especially as a man grows older. But it is the cardinal principle of “Modern” criticism that the most modern of works is to be judged, not by adjustment to anything else, but on its own merits—that the critic must always behave as if the book he takes from its wrapper might be a new _Hamlet_ or a new _Waverley_,—or something as good as either, but more absolutely novel in kind than even _Waverley_,—however shrewdly he may suspect that it is very unlikely to be any such thing. [Sidenote: _The origins._] The actual investigation of the last volume brought us down to (and in La Harpe’s case a little beyond) the close of the eighteenth century itself, and showed us the final stages of the Neo-Classic dynasty, which still, in all European countries except Germany, reigned, and even appeared to govern; but which, not merely in Germany but to some extent also in England, was on the point of having the sceptre wrenched out of its hands. We had traced this critical system from its construction or reconstruction by the Italians of the sixteenth century onwards; we saw its merits and its defects. And we saw likewise that, in the usual general, gradual, incalculable way, opposition to it, conscious or unconscious, began to grow up at different times and in different places. This opposition was a plant of early but slow and fitful growth in England, rather later but more vigorous and rapid in Germany; while in the Southern countries it hardly grew at all, and in France was cruelly attacked and kept down, if not exactly extirpated, by the weeding-hook of authority. [Sidenote: _Need of caution here._]