I have seen it urged, again, in querulous accents, that the so-
called immortality even of the most immortal is not for ever. I see
a passage to this effect in a book that is making a stir as I write.
I will quote it. The writer says:--
"So, it seems to me, is the immortality we so glibly predicate of
departed artists. If they survive at all, it is but a shadowy
life they live, moving on through the gradations of slow decay to
distant but inevitable death. They can no longer, as heretofore,
speak directly to the hearts of their fellow-men, evoking their
tears or laughter, and all the pleasures, be they sad or merry,
of which imagination holds the secret. Driven from the market-
place they become first the companions of the student, then the
victims of the specialist. He who would still hold familiar
intercourse with them must train himself to penetrate the veil
which in ever-thickening folds conceals them from the ordinary
gaze; he must catch the tone of a vanished society, he must move
in a circle of alien associations, he must think in a language
not his own.
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