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She had not renounced the design of gradually converting him to her own love of literature, and pictured delightful hours during which they would discuss the world's masterpieces together. But he merely hooted amiably and pinched her cheeks when she approached the subject tentatively.
It was the residence of five hundred years of power and of luxury, where masterpieces, worthy of the great Medicis, and executed in their time, alternated with the gewgaws of the eighteenth century and bronzes of the First Empire, with silver trinkets ordered but yesterday in London. Baron Justus could not resist these.
To minimize with many critics Daniel's dependence on his models, or to emphasize with some that of Fletcher, is, it seems to me, wholly to misapprehend the positions they occupy in the history of literature, and to obscure the actual development of the pastoral ideal in this country. The Three Masterpieces
"Susy!" he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured: "You didn't know, then? You hadn't heard of his masterpieces?" In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. "Is Nat your genius?" Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully. Fulmer laughed. "No; I'm Grace's. But Mrs. Melrose has been our Providence, and...." "Providence?" his hostess interrupted.
Of course, it may be urged that there probably did not exist in the world at that date treasures of ancient literature and art. The question is what the Greeks would have done if they had found themselves in a later world, stocked, and even overstocked, with old masterpieces and monuments of human intellect and energy and skill.
What are the qualities common to all the masterpieces of literature, or, let us say, to those that have endured in spite of imperfections and local provincialisms? First of all I should name simplicity, which includes lucidity of expression, the clear thought in fitting, luminous words. And this is true when the thought is profound and the subject is as complex as life itself.
Folks of small account, and fools and ignorant people were not the only ones to be ruined; nearly all the Roman nobles lost their ancient fortunes, their gold and their palaces and their galleries of masterpieces, which they owed to the munificence of the popes.
Franklin, Walter Scott and Dr. Johnson; to peruse with fresh delight the masterpieces of Irving and Goldsmith, and the best essays of Hazlitt, De Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Montaigne; to feel the inspiration of the great poets of all ages, from Homer down to Tennyson; to read Shakespeare a book that is in itself almost a university: is not all this satisfaction enough for human appetite, however craving, solace enough for trouble, however bitter, occupation enough for life, however long?
It is said that in accordance with an old custom of the Ottomans, the sultan is obliged to work with his hands, and, as every one knows, the handiwork of a king is a masterpiece. So he royally distributes his masterpieces among the great lords of the Porte and the price paid is in accordance with the rank of the workman.
Do I mean at all that this earlier work stands on the same level of excellence as the masterpieces of the writer? Clearly not. It were absurd to expect the stripling, half-furtively coming forward, first without a name at all, and then under the pseudonym of Boz, to write with the superb practised ease and mastery of the Charles Dickens who penned "David Copperfield."
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