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RE the classics doomed? If we ask this question it is because there is a current of unrest in some quarters which it would be futile to ignore. The modern spirit of enquiry is abroad and no mere sentimental consideration is permitted to arrest its activities. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and many others on whose brows History has set the laurel wreath of wisdom and heroism are subjected to a close scrutiny by those with new ears and new eyes. There is nothing alarming in this. Every reasonable person knows that the verdict of competent criticism is more to be desired than the fulsome flattery of assumption, and the masters will leave the hands of the most rigorous expert with plenty of virtue to their credit. We can understand the man who says in effect, "I have been told Beethoven is a great composer. I am not content with what I have been told. I am going to put the assertion to proof." But we have to face a kind of impatience or dissatisfaction that is manifesting itself at the present time. What are you going to say to the man who tells you that Bach is a bore, Mozart trivial, Schubert sugary, Beethoven tedious? What we must do, I think, is to search for the cause of this sense of dissatisfaction. Is it in the man himself? If it be due to an

T HE following remarks are set down here by way of reflection and suggestion and are not offered in any dogmatic spirit. The whole question being subjective, it is capable of being treated only with the greatest latitude, and it will be evident to those who have given the matter a moment's thought that unusual difficulties lie in the path of the historian who would do full justice to the romantic movement. Not the least of the problems meets us as at the very threshold. Probably no two persons have exactly the same conception of what romanticism is. Very often one discovers the critic engaged in a search for a concise, yet adequate definition. Most people have a vague idea that the word romanticism is employed to indicate a work which is not classical, but it is impossible to proceed far with a negation. We are, therefore, forced to ask with Sainte-Beuve, "What is meant by a classic?" One writer, eschewing this method and satisfied with a grand show of authority, tells us that "classicism is routine, romanticism is liberty;" another, with equal confidence, that "classicism is imitation, romanticism is originality." Stendhal argued that all good art was romantic in its day. "Romanticism," he held, "is the art of presenting to people the literary works which in the actual state of their habits and beliefs are capable of giving them the greatest possible pleasure; classicism, on the contrary, of presenting them with that which gave the greatest possible pleasure to their grandfathers." In these assertions, as in Victor Hugo's contention that "romanticism is liberalism in literature," we seem to detect something of the exuberance which characterised the manifestos of the new creed. Such