The argument that literary canons reflect power rather than merit is often met with the reply that some works are simply better, and the exchange rarely advances because each side is asserting something the other has not denied. That the process of selection was shaped by who had access to publication, education and leisure is a matter of record. That the works selected include some of extraordinary quality is also a matter of record, and neither observation touches the other. The interesting question is what proportion of the merit we perceive is a product of the attention the canon directed towards these works — the commentary, the teaching, the accumulated apparatus that makes a difficult text rewarding — and that question is genuinely hard, because there is no way to observe a work that received the same attention and did not deserve it.