"It was the opening of a new era. Hitherto the art had advanced along
a narrow track. Now the old ways suddenly broadened out. Old methods
were superseded. Fencing was no longer treated as an academical
accomplishment, a graceful exercise in courtly skill and bearing, from
which originality was barred. It had become something more than the
glib repetition of set phrases, that had been got by heart from a book
and carefully rehearsed. The new movement, as it may well be called,
though it abandoned the perfect manner, which had grown too perfect,
brought our elusive art back to regions less celestial, I readily
admit, but at the same time brought it face to face with other than
imaginary difficulties.
"The art received a new impetus. 'Natural fighters,' men equipped with
abundant energy and assurance, who were convinced that all that was
necessary for self-defence was a general athletic training such as they
possessed, called the fencer's skill in question. Regarded as fencing
their style may have been faulty, not to say atrocious, but they
confronted the fencer with this logical dilemma:--'You are a master
of the sword or an accomplished amateur, I, on the other hand, know
nothing about it. Hit me and do not let me hit you. That is all I ask.
I shall fight by the light of nature and do what I can; you will be
strictly scientific and keep to your rules.'
"To my mind the only way to silence an opponent of this sort was to
take sword in hand, and literally demonstrate to him that he was
equally ignorant and incapable. This course, however, did not commend
itself to others, who were content to fight this modern hydra, which
reappeared every day in some new shape, with--contempt.
"The professors gnashed their teeth and swore, though a few of them
kept their temper:--
'Is our Art then,' they declaimed, 'a mere delusion, a fallen idol? Are
we to prostitute and expose it to the barbarous excesses of a brutal
and ignorant mob? Are we to join in an outlandish Babel, where every
one claims to be heard in his own tongue, some jargon which no one can
understand?'
"There certainly was something in this line of argument, however
magisterially it might be stated. But at the same time it was
impossible to deny that there was, wrapped up in these ungainly
eccentricities, a real truth, which could not be entirely neglected.
For among the noisy crowd, who would have liked to set their fads upon
a pinnacle, one found fencers of experience, men who by long training
and the use of scientific method had acquired sound judgment and
thorough workmanship. These men, it is true, had the courage to trample
on the ancient superstitions, and gladly welcomed the widening of the
field, which would give ample room, and scope for every kind of bias.
"It was clearly a revolution, and declared itself by the unmistakable
signs of all revolutions, by its aggressive attitude and by its
onslaught on old ideas and traditions, which till then had been thought
unassailable.
"Molière's famous maxim,--'Hit and don't be hit back,'--asserted itself
triumphantly. Truth and falsehood went hand in hand. The thing to be
done was to winnow the chaff from the corn, and not reject the whole as
worthless.