these composers are inclined to regard as a symptom of progress?
I am told that a similar illustration might be drawn from the modern
history of painting; that, however noble the conceptions of the great
painters of the present century, there are none who have gained such a
complete mastery over the technicalities of drawing and the handling of
the brush as was required in the times of Raphael, Titian, and Rubens.
But on this point I can only speak from hearsay, and am quite willing
to end here my series of illustrations, fearing that I may already
have been wrongly set down as a lavulator temporis acti. Not the idle
praising of times gone by, but the getting a lesson from them which may
be of use to us, has been my object. And I believe enough has been said
to show that the great complexity of modern life, with its multiplicity
of demands upon our energy, has got us into a state of chronic hurry,
the results of which are everywhere to be seen in the shape of less
thorough workmanship and less rounded culture.
For one moment let me stop to note a further source of the relative
imperfection of modern culture, which is best illustrated in the case of
literature. I allude to the immense, unorganized mass of literature in
all departments, representing the accumulated acquisitions of past ages,
which must form the basis of our own achievement, but with which our
present methods of education seem inadequate to deal properly. Speaking
roughly, modern literature may be said to be getting into the state
which Roman jurisprudence was in before it was reformed by Justinian.
Philosophic criticism has not yet reached the point at which it may
serve as a natural codifier. We must read laboriously and expend a
disproportionate amount of time and pains in winnowing the chaff from
the wheat. This tends to make us "digs" or literary drudges; but I
doubt if the "dig" is a thoroughly developed man. Goethe, with all his
boundless knowledge, his universal curiosity, and his admirable capacity
for work, was not a "dig." But this matter can only be hinted at: it is
too large to be well discussed at the fag end of an essay while other
points are pressing for consideration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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