No. It's an impudent falsehood. Men did not <br />Invariably think the newer way Prosaic <br />mad, inelegant, or what not. <br /> <br />Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot <br />Upon the church? Did anybody say How <br />modern and how ugly? They did not. <br /> <br />Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot <br />With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay, <br />Were these at first a horror? They were not. <br /> <br />If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food <br />All set us hankering after yesterday, <br />Need this be only an archaising mood? <br /> <br />Why, any man whose purse has been let blood <br />By sharpers, when he finds all drained away <br />Must compare how he stands with how he stood. <br /> <br />If a quack doctor's breezy ineptitude <br />Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightway <br />All that I can't do now, all that I could? <br /> <br />So, when our guides unanimously decry <br />The backward glance, I think we can guess why.<br /><br />Clive Staples Lewis<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-a-vulgar-error/
