Note 745 — INTERCHAPTER VI.

One word to guard against a possible supposition that the writer supposes Classicism dead. Nothing in literature dies: things only wane and wax, retire and come forward again. At this very moment there is even a sort of Classical reaction, which has shown itself in France for a long time and is showing itself in England now. When people are asking, not whether Old Mortality, and Vingt Ans Après, and Esmond, and Westward Ho! are good books, but whether the Historical novel is a good Kind,—when they argue, not that a play is decent, or sensible, or brilliant as literature, but that it is a “problem”-play, and therefore sacred—John Barleycorn is going to get up again, not to the surprise at all of historical students.