UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
vate shelves of his cabinet. Among these more presentable classes there is considerable diversity of kind to be traced by the discerning eye, though many signs and symptoms be in almost all cases identical. There is the critic who believes that no good thing can come out of such a Nazarene generation as the men of his own time; and there is the critic who believes first in himself alone, and through himself in the gods or godlings of his worship and the eggs or nestlings hatched or addled under the incubation of his patronage. Between these two kinds there rages a natural warfare as worthy of a burlesque poet as any batrachomyomachy that ever was fought out. It is no bad sport to watch through a magnifying glass the reciprocal attack and defence of their little lines of battle and posts of vantage—
"Et, dans la goutte d'eau, les guerres du volvoce
Avec le vibrion."
In all times there have been men in plenty convinced of the decadence of their own age; of which they have not usually been classed among the more distinguished children. We are happy in having among us a critic of some culture and of much noisy pertinacity who will serve well enough to represent the tribe. I distinguish his book on "The Poetry of the Period," supplemented as I take it to be by further essays in criticism thrown out in the same line, not for any controversial purpose,
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