The close of the Victorian age was marked by a deep and significant unrest amongst those painters and writers who, escaping from the prevailing smugness and weak hypocrisy of that time, had clung firmly to what they looked upon as the true and vital principles of their art. Heralded by the Pre-Raphaelites, and by Ruskin, a period of revolt was approaching which was to pass from one hideous negative extreme to another extreme, so assertive as to lose all semblance of order, that necessary attribute of beauty. To-day, this lack of restraint, this utter impatience of rules still finds ardent support amongst such poets as Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden. By taking the work of so entirely individualistic a poet as Gerard Manley Hopkins as their model, they are condemned at once, on their own showing. They are as rash as the painter who might seek to model himself upon Parmigiano or upon Blake. It is true that the value and deep intrinsic meaning of the work of the artist had been almost entirely discounted by the Victorians. Nowadays, it would be readily admitted by all that any true art is essentially the product of the life of its time, reflecting the thoughts and whole tendency of that particular age.