We are accustomed to assume that writers’ reputations will change every century or so, even to the extent that the Pantheon itself may, like some refurbished museum, or Madame Tussaud's, face a crisis and choose to clear out some famous figures and install others not previously thought worth exhibiting. We further conclude that the taste of our time is not simply a natural consequence of how we see past literature but that our vision is scientifically accurate, that indeed our valuation is how things truly are, and all opinionmaking before ours was either a preparation for our full judgement or a mistaken assessment in need of our redress. Some artists (I include painters as well as writers since the history of painting presents a clearer outline than does that of literature) have never been questioned as centrally important masters – Titian, Rubens and Watteau, or Shakespeare, Milton and Pope. Others, though, have suffered eclipse after their deaths and then, sometimes centuries later, been restored to the very highest plinth of the Pantheon – Piero della Francesca and John Donne are an effective pairing here. Still others, though never forgotten, have seen their place in the tradition fluctuate like equities on the Stock Exchange. Marvells have continued to rise this century, Blakes are rather flat and Matthew Arnolds have sunk: Raphaels, once the top quotation of all, have lost value seriously, only to come back strongly.

These examples, drawn from the City and from fashion writing, are not as frivolous as they seem. One aspect of the serious study of literature which is seldom acknowledged is the enormous bulk of past achievement which competes for the attention of readers and scholars. Like a note played on a violin which will also sound sympathetic notes which are its harmonics, past writings may appeal over the heads of their immediate inheritors to a presentday sensibility. It doesn't matter too much if the presumption of the modern reader includes misunderstandings of the historical background of the author. It is in this sense that the notion that all art is contemporary may be usefully understood. The revolutionary impact of the Donne revival at the beginning of the twentieth century is an obvious example of the chiming of sensibilities across the years.