ing absurdity, the vitality of the precepts; various causes may conspire to fix our attention and increase our interest. The wars with the Moors was a perpetual source of interest among the Spaniards; and a wonderful sympathy with robbers and freebooters was a source of perpetual preservation of certain homely narratives among the English. The laws of comparison often operate. The sparks of genius in the gloomy night of darkness and ignorance would be likely to attract attention. Every nation, in its deepest depression, would have its BEST. In a flat country, a mound passes for a mountain.

Eleventhly, the question may be started whether religion helps or hinders the acceptance of the author who makes it his chosen theme. Was Dr. Watts, for example, helped to reputation by his writing on devotional poetry? Would any other subject have made him more popular? Much may be said both ways. Our own decision would be, that religion helps mediocrity, but is the hardest theme for the highest invention. Dr. Blair did well to write sermons; Dr. Watts, in composing his devotional hymns, conquered great difficulties.

Twelfthly, there are always some that will have a host of imitators; as Cicero says: sic semper fuisse aliquem, cujus se similes plerique esse vellent (De Oratore, Lib. ii. sect. 23). But this imitated object is not always the greatest genius or the best pattern. Our Webster was not much imitated. Mr. Everett, on his first appearance, set all Cambridge imitating his tones. Dr. Griffin, when at Andover, was greatly imitated; Professor Stuart, though far more natural, and of course a better model, was not much imitated. Pope was greatly imitated. "Every warbler," as Cowper says, "has his song by heart." Milton and Shakspeare are not often imitated, nor with much success. For half a century Dr.

The fact was, the regular form of civil society was so unequal and oppressive, the yoke was so heavy, and the Barons so brutal, and some of the robbers. Little John and Robin Hood, were so much more just than the legal robbers whom they pilfered, that the sympathy of the common people was with the fessional freebooter. A very significant fact!

pro

Johnson was generally imitated by the English nation; and he shall be our exponent. When an author, with a very considerable merit, has a narrow mannerism, which it is easy to copy and which reminds you of something higher which you cannot copy, such a writer will be imitated. They hope to reach his gait by stealing his slippers.

Thirteenthly, our admiration completes what nature begins in the rating of literary excellence. The inequality of talent is great, but not so great as we suppose. There is a tree near Exeter, N. H., which towers above the trees around it, but not so much as it seems to, to the vessels at sea, who use it as a landmark. We are great idolaters. Our admiration turns the great men into giants. I am a great believer in a literary nobility, but have no devotion to pay at the throne of the emperor. He is an usurper. No doubt there are classes of ability, and no doubt the first class is the smallest in number; but out of this class our exaggerating fancy selects one and turns him into a sample of perfection. It is thus in other things. The first man always stands higher than his proper grade. Greece and Persia out of some strong man made a Hercules and Rustan. In such cases, there is always some merit and always some exaggeration. A great ship may loom up as well as a small one, and it is a deception which lasts, because no one wishes to rectify it.

Fourteenthly, it is a law of literature that language, through all its first progressions, tends to a stand-point, though what fixes it at last it may be hard to say; certainly it is not perfection; for all languages have stopped short of even an attainable perfection. In Dryden's Dialogue on the Drama, "written when he was yet a trembling candidate for reputation," 1668, he says: "Shakspeare's language is a little obsolete." Shakspeare's works were then about half a century old; Dryden's Dialogue, the very dialogue in

By a stand-point we of course do not mean a point which admits no additional words. All languages are constantly increasing their vocabularies. A stand-point is that permanency in fundamental structure which, after it is fixed, never afterwards becomes obsolete.

which he complains of this obsoleteness, is now nearly two centuries old and scarcely a tinge of obsoleteness is thrown over its language. It might have been written yesterday for one of our periodicals. What a difference in the degree of innovation in half a century before Dryden and two centu ries after him! The same remark is true of the Latin language, half a century before Cicero, and all the innovations which succeeded him. The law by which a language progresses and stops, we cannot stay to discuss.

Fifteenthly, it is a law of literature which seems very much like a caprice, that we should be very much under the influence of traditionary criticism. We are most of us great admirers of pointed-out beauties. Indeed this sort of literary popery has been claimed and analyzed by the critics. Modeste et circumspecto judicio de tantis viris pronunciandum est, ne (quod plerisque accidit) damnent quod non intelligunt. Mr. Addison, though a friend to civil liberty, lays down the same law: "If a man would know whether he is possessed of this faculty, I would have him read over the celebrated works of antiquity, which have stood the test of the politer part of our contemporaries. If upon the perusal of such writings, he does not find himself delighted in an extraordinary manner, or if in reading the admired passages in such authors, he finds a coldness and indifference in his thoughts, he ought to conclude, not (as is too usual among tasteless readers) that the author wants the perfections admired in him, but that he himself wants the faculty of discovering them."2 Such lessons teach abundance of humility, but very little individualism. To be men of taste, we must echo the public sentiment.

No doubt, in some of the departments of taste, there is much truth in similar injunctions. Sir Joshua Reynolds informs us that he saw the works of the first painters in Italy with a feeling of disappointment. It was only by following tradition that he got at nature. Painting and music are eminently recondite departments and demand a taste to

1 Quinctilian's Institutes.

2 Spectator, No. 469.

which we must be educated. But in eloquence and popular poetry you must be right at first sight, or never. Our no. blest pleasure is the surprise of an instant inspiration.

Sixteenthly, how may we know whether, in our admiration and censures, we are under the influence of a traditionary criticism? We are all under this influence to a certain degree. But one does not like to be wholly a factitious being. An absurd criticism is better than an everlasting echo. One is a little surprised at the rank given to Æsop's Fables by Luther. But the great reformer showed his independence by his criticism. He showed the character of his mind and taste. He ventured to say (what no doubt was true): "I find more pleasure in reading Æsop's fables than in perusing the Iliad." He had a right to his opinion; and we, no doubt, have a right to say, he was very singular in it. Taste in general is not wholly factitious, nor wholly natural. Your attention has been turned to a particular direction; its slumbering admiration has been called forth, by hearing others admire; and yet it may be a real beauty which you would have found and relished with somewhat less intensity and exclusion. Suppose a rose and lily to grow side by side in the same garden. Both have intrinsic excellence. But your attention has been more devoted to the rose than to the lily; you have seen it oftener, and examined it more. It would not be wonderful if you should exalt the one and depreciate the other; and yet had the rival plant been a homely weed, the comparison would have been clearer and your admiration could not have been so clearly turned from the one to the other. You have a natural taste diverted, while you thought you were improving it.

Would you know whether your taste is factitious or not? There is an easy rule, and an obvious way of applying it. Just ask yourself, how you were affected by certain authors before you knew there was such a thing as criticism. Did Pilgrim's Progress turn every road into a pathway to the celestial city? Did Robinson Crusoe set you to making a cave and building a boat? Did Don Quixote mount you on a Rosinante and make you twist your felt hat into an

helmet? Did these inebriating volumes shorten your summer days and steal away your winter nights? Did you meet some stray quotation from Shakspeare, music to your boyish ears, and did it chain you to the volume as soon as you could find it, and did you grieve that all was not as good as the first gem that was stolen from its setting? Did you ever read the Spectator, turning over half the numbers and fixing on the Vision of Mirza, as the most thrilling peep into the mystic world you were ever favored with? Particularly were you struck with the close, and did you wonder what became of the Genius with the musical instrument in his hand, and the vision of the arched bridge and the rolling waters? "I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found he left me; I then turned again to the vision which I had so long been contemplating; but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy Islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the side of it." Was there ever such a close? So transcendently beautiful! So mystic! So thrilling! In order to feel its utmost power, you must be an imaginative boy; you must read it, for the first time, when about twelve years old, in order to realize the sweet, visionary world, which the transporting author has presented to your fancy. At any rate, you may be assured that your taste, whatever its erratics may be, is not wholly under the influence of traditionary criticism.1

There is in Miss Burney's Memoirs an amusing instance in a monarch, giving his own impressions, and yet trembling before the authority of traditional criticism. His Majesty, George the Third, is represented as saying, in a whisper perhaps: "There is sad stuff in that Shakspeare, though it wout do to say it aloud." The royal critic in giving his individual impressions is, after all, more respectable than Lamb, Coleridge, and Hazlitt, with all their mingled blindness and penetration; blindness which cannot see the surface, and penetration which discovers what none but servile followers can recognize. There is a story in Dr. Moor's travels in Italy, about artificial rapture in criticism, which is pat to our point. "Very early in life," says he, "I resided about a year in Paris, and happened one day to accompany five or six of our countrymen to view the pictures of the Palais Royal. A gentleman who affected an enthusiastic passion for the fine arts, particularly that of painting, and who had the greatest desire to