The younger one gets—the more, that is, one sheds those inevitable, almost instinctive prejudices with which one's civilization, especially if it happens to be an old one, has burdened one almost from birth—the more easily things go right for one when they go wrong for the civilization in general and for the critic in particular. Criticism tends to misfire in proportion as it is civilized, as it instinctively, pre-consciously judges the present in terms of the past: the law of precedent is the death of art—or, if art survives its application, the death of criticism. What is an opera? 1 don't know: it all depends on the next one, not the last one.