While we should remember that there are at all times intellects whose work is more for posterity than for the present; work which appeals, perhaps, only to the few, that of artists whose work has no purchasers, writers whose books may have publishers but few readers, we must be cautious about accepting the verdict of the dove-cot.  There are many obscure artists and writers whose work, though admired by a select few, remains very properly obscure, and will always remain obscure; it is of no value intellectually; the world should know nothing of its inferior men.  Sometimes, however, it is these inferior men who are able to get temporary places as critics, and inform us in leading articles that ours is an age of Decadence.  Every new drama, every work of art which possesses individuality or gives a fresh point of view or evinces development of any kind, is held up as an instance of Decay. ’L’ecole decadent’ was a phrase invented as a jest in 1886, I believe by Monsieur Bourde, a journalist in Paris.  It was eagerly adopted by the Parisians, and soon floated across the Channel.  Used as a term of reproach, it was accepted by the group of poets it was intended to ridicule.  I need not remind you that the master of that school was Paul Verlaine, the immortal poet who enlarged the scope of French verse—­the poet who achieved for French poetry what I am told the so-called decadent philosopher Nietzsche has done for German prose.  Unfortunately I do not know German, and it seems almost impossible to add to the German language.  But Nietzsche, I am assured by competent authorities, has performed a similar feat to that of Luther on the issue of his Bible.

When, therefore, we hear of decadence in literature or art, even if we accept Mr. Balfour’s definition of its symptom—­’the employment of an over-wrought technique’—­we must remember that Decadence and Decay have now different meanings, though originally they meant the same sort of thing.  An over-wrought technique is characteristic of the decadent school of France, particularly of Mallarme, and some of our own decadents.  Walter Pater and Sir Thomas Browne.  The existence of writers adopting an over-wrought technique, however, is not (and Mr. Balfour would repudiate the idea) a sign of decay as commonplace moralists would have us believe, but of realised perfection.  Pater is the most perfect prose writer we ever produced.  The Euphuists of the sixteenth century were of course decadents, and I think you will admit that they did not herald any decay in our literature.

The truth is that men after a certain age, if not on the crest of the waves themselves, become bored with counting the breakers, and decide that the tide is going out.  You must often have had arguments with friends on this subject when walking by the sea.  The water seems to be receding; you can see that there is an ebb; and then an unusually long wave comes up and wets your feet.  Great writers are guilty of a similar error without any intention of contriving a literary conceit (as I suspect many a past outcry to have been).  Even Pater declared that he would not disturb himself by reading any contemporary literature published by an author who did not exist before 1870.  He never read Stevenson or Kipling.  Now that is a terrible state to be in; it is a symptom of premature old age; not physical but mental old age.