It would be presumption in the
provincial audience, so slightly trained to good music and dancing, if it
should affect to reverse a judgment ratified in the supreme capital. The
result, therefore, is practically just, if the original verdict was just;
what was right from the first cannot be made wrong by iteration. Yet, even
in such a case, there is something not satisfactory to a delicate sense of
equity; for the artist returns from the tour as if from some new and
independent triumph, whereas, all is but the reverberation of an old one;
it seems a new access of sunlight, whereas it is but a reflex illumination
from satellites.
In literature the corresponding case is worse. An author, passing by means
of translation before a foreign people, ought _de jure_ to find himself
before a new tribunal; but _de facto_, he does not. Like the opera artist,
but not with the same propriety, he comes before a court that never
interferes to disturb a judgment, but only to re-affirm it. And he returns
to his native country, quartering in his armorial bearings these new
trophies, as though won by new trials, when, in fact, they are due to
servile ratifications of old ones. When Sue, or Balzac, Hugo, or George
Sand, comes before an English audience--the opportunity is invariably lost
for estimating them at a new angle of sight. All who dislike them lay them
aside--whilst those only apply themselves seriously to their study, who
are predisposed to the particular key of feeling, through which originally
these authors had prospered.
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