Excerpt from The Work of John Ruskin: Its Influence Upon Modern Thought and Life

And as regards the critical review of the works Of great men in which an at tempt is made at assigning to each work its position in the general series of similar efiorts, of throwing light upon the origin and surrounding causes of its existence and its form, and finally of pointing out what is good and what is bad, what is ephemeral and what is lasting, what ought to be confirmed and prolonged in its ex istence or refuted and hastened to its descent into oblivion - in one word, the sifting of the literary wheat from the chafi' - the utility Of even this function of liter ary criticism may be questioned. The good and true have in themselves the power of vitality and persistency; whilethe negative character in the bad and the untrue is the weakness at the very heart of such work, and necessarily, from its own nature, leads to annihilation. It may thus be held that time and the general readzhg puélz'c are the surest and fairest judges. And it is further held that no one man in one given period of time can be an adequate substitute for the judgment of the reading public in the course of ages. However many instances may be adduced in support Of this doubt, careful consideration will not confirm it in its absolute form. When we come to con sider what is meant by time and the general reading public, instances abound in which the verdict referred to them cannot be recognized as unquestionably just. Time is a very elastic term; and merit has been known to sleep unac knowledged for centuries, until at last it was brought into recognition by the trum pet of quickening truth and justice. We cannot help realizing that centuries are a very long time; and it must make us shudder in our conscience when we face the possibility that there are many worksand men whose merits at the present lie thus unrecognized, and may be so for ever.* And when we inquire how the trumpet thus awakened them from sleep, we find that it was sounded by one man. In the reading public there is neither.

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