The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity. The omniscient historian would display the masterpieces, their causes and their inter-relation. The study of literature is hero-worship. It is a refinement, or, if you will, a perversion of that primitive religion.Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance (Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1952; 1910), p. 7.