There was an ominous prophecy to Charmian. "You shall outlive the lady
whom you serve." She has outlived her in every city in Europe; but only
for the time of setting straight her crown--the last servility. She
could not live but by comparison with the Queen.
THE CENTURY OF MODERATION
After a long literary revolt--one of the recurrences of imperishable
Romance--against the eighteenth-century authors, a reaction was due, and
it has come about roundly. We are guided back to admiration of the
measure and moderation and shapeliness of the Augustan age. And indeed
it is well enough that we should compare--not necessarily check--some of
our habits of thought and verse by the mediocrity of thought and perfect
propriety of diction of Pope's best contemporaries. If this were all!
But the eighteenth century was not content with its sure and certain
genius. Suddenly and repeatedly it aspired to a "noble rage." It is not
to the wild light hearts of the seventeenth century that we must look for
extreme conceits and for extravagance, but to the later age, to the
faultless, to the frigid, dissatisfied with their own propriety. There
were straws, I confess, in the hair of the older poets; the eighteenth-
century men stuck straws in their periwigs.
That time--surpassing and correcting the century then just past in
"taste"--was resolved to make a low leg to no age, antique or modern, in
the chapter of the passions--nay, to show the way, to fire the nations.
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