But even then the new book has got to stand up against convictions and prejudices, conventions and dogmas. The public at large--and incidentally the professional critic--wants more of "the same thing," more like that of its earlier loves and admirations. Figures of previous experience rise in the readers' minds with malicious menaces against the upstart--Dickens, Austen or Trollope; Ward, Sinclair or Tarkington; perhaps Fielding or Goldsmith--figures moribund or vigorous still, all are alert to impose "has been" upon "to be." Let the new book differ at its peril; it becomes easily "revolutionary," "decadent," "not art"--is damned, in short, unless, by a curious freak of the moment, it takes the world by storm through its very "freshness." And even then Kipling joins the ring, and henceforth struggles to impose the Kiplingesque. Such dangers, such threats--mostly unreal when brought to the proof--the new book must live through. The vigorous and vital book will be unabashed, for its claims to long life must rest on stronger virtues than conformity or non-conformity. The ages confirm with Jovian nod the trite fact that every period has a general cast of opinion about any literary work. San Francisco may not accept the same order among "the best sellers" as New York, nor New York as London; yet we accept the unity of age in our use of older epithets, such as "Elizabethan" and "Victorian," even while we overlook it in the hurlyburly of the present. It is a complicated and, perhaps, ultimately, an inexplicable phenomenon; but strong leadership plays its part in clarifying and fixing the momentary appraisement. Let Dr. Johnson or the _Edinburgh Review_ utter a critical judgment, and society follows like the traditional flock of sheep. If such notorious dictatorship is rare in our larger world, there are yet many smaller Judges and Prophets scattered abroad, apparent mouthpieces of the _Zeitgeist_. We are all familiar with the small theatre party. One or two members have definite ideas about the play and its presentation, and the rest experience all the sensations but are more or less neutral. The neutrals inevitably fall in behind the leaders, and the whole party is easily unanimous. Such in miniature is the working of the critical leadership at large. The only requirement is, that the leader must not be too far ahead or behind his time. Thus it would have taken more than Dryden to make Whitman a success in the days of the Restoration; and we can hardly fancy Jeffreys forcing _The Widow in the Bye Street_ upon the Edinburgh subscribers. But as all real leadership is moderate, neat unity seems to be fairly easy to the backward look.