Said Tennyson, in bitter answer to criticism that began to depreciate him because of the glibness of his imitators:
All can grow the flower now, For all have got the seed.
And certainly, as I have already said, the art of literary impersonation is carried to a pitch today that almost amounts to genius. Yet you have only to compare the real flower with the imitation, and you will soon understand the difference.
Take Walter Scott. It is a commonplace to say how much better we do the historical novel nowadays than he did. At first sight, we may seem to; in certain particulars, no doubt we do; but read him again, read _Rob Roy_ or _Quentin Durward_ again, and you will not be quite so sure. You will realize what an immortal difference there is, after all, between the pen with a man behind it, and the most brilliant literary machine.
Yes, "the mob of gentlemen that write with ease" is once more with us, but no real book was ever yet written with ease, and no book has ever survived, or ever can, in which we do not feel the presence of the fighting, dreaming, or merely enjoying soul of a man.
There are some people of great value and importance in their own spheres, who, on the strength of the distinction gained there, are apt to intrude on other spheres of which they have no knowledge, where in fact they are irrelevant, and often indeed ridiculously out of place. This, however, does not prevent their trying to assert an authority gained in their own sphere in those other spheres where they simply do not belong; and such is the power of a name that is won for any one thing that the multitude, unaccustomed to make distinctions, accepts them as authorities on the hundred other things of which they know nothing. Thus, to take a crude example, the New York Police, which is, without doubt, learned in its own world, and well-adapted and equipped for asserting its authority there, sometimes intrudes, with its well-known _bonhomie_, into the worlds of drama and sculpture, and, because it is an acknowledged judge of crooks and grafters, presumes to be a judge and censor also of new plays and nude statues.
Of course, the New York Police is absurd in such a character, absurd as a bull in a china-shop is absurd; yet, as in the case of the bull with the china, it is capable of doing quite a lot of damage.