There is no great harm in the air of patronage with which our times, in their self-satisfied enlightenment, address the great who were of old; but we do use droll adjectives! (A)If these great ancients show the simplicity of perfect art, we call them naive, particularly when their irony eludes us; if they tickle our fancy, they are quaint; if we find them altogether satisfactory, both in form and substance, we adorn them with the epithet modern, which we somehow think is a superlative of eminence. Naive, quaint, modern. -a singular vocabulary! Add convincing, and the critic has done his best, or his worst.

(B)それというのも、素朴なのはわれわれのほうだからである。風変わりであることと技巧的であることとは、両立しえないものである。And as for modernity, what we mistake for that, is the everlasting truth, the enduring quality that consists in conformity to changeless human nature. "The ancients," said a wise man, “never understood that they were ancients.”