  Has the ten-year old quest for the optical superlens, based on Veselago's
hypothesis of negative refraction, been a chimera? We argue that Pendry's
alternative prescription of the silver superlens is nothing more than an
application of the natural phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance that occurs
in the noble metal films. This phenomenon does not predict the reality of
Veselago's negative refractive index materials. We give a simple explanation of
how this resonance achieves a field intensity enhancement at the interface of
silver and air without involving the concept of negative refraction.
