gathering thunders of the organ. My clay seems to have a sympathy with the mother earth whence it was taken, to have a memory of all that our orb has ever witnessed of great and noble, of sorrowful and glad. With the wise Samian, I can touch the mouldering buckler of Euphorbus and claim an interest in it deeper that that of its antiquity. I have been the bosom friend of Leander and of Romeo. I seem to go behind Musæus and Shakspeare, and to get my intelligence at first hand. Sometimes, in my sorrow, a line from Spenser steals in upon my memory as if by some vitality and external volition of its own, like a blast from the distant trump of a knight pricking toward the court of Faërie, and I am straightway lifted out of that sadness and shadow into the sunshine of a previous and longagone experience. Often, too, this seemingly lawless species of association overcomes me with a sense of sadness. Seeing a waterfall or a forest for the first time, I have a feeling of something gone, a vague regret, that, in some former state, I have drank up the wine of their beauty, and left to the defrauded present only the muddy lees. Yet, again, what divine over-compensation, when the same memory (shall I call it ?), or phantasy, lets fall a drop of its invisible elixir into my cup, and I behold to-day, which before showed but forlorn and beggared, clothed in the royal purple, and with the golden sceptre of a line of majestical ancestry!

JOHN.

If I do not understand all that you say, I can at least prove my superiority to vulgar prejudice by believing in your sincerity. A base mind always takes that for cant in another, which would be such in itself, and is apt to blame any innocent assertion of peculiarity for assumption. Yet, in fact, what is peculiar to any one is not only all that is of worth in him, but is also the most likely to be showing itself on all occasions. Poetry does not convey the same impressions to my mind as to yours, but other things have sometimes given me a feeling akin to what you describe.

PHILIP.

When you speak thus of poetry, you restrict it to what has been written by the poets, which is but a small part of it yet. In attributing a certain mystical influence to peculiar associations, I said more than I meant to have done. But it is better to say more than less, and, if I err, may it always be rather upon the side of confidence than of suspicion. I intended to imply, that our tastes are so arbitrary, as entirely to forbid the establishment of a code of criticism. I doubt if any better reasoning can be given for our likings, than the Latin poet gave for his dislikes. We can assert them, but, when we strive to explain and apologize for them, we are quite likely to lose ourselves in a mire of

cant and conventionality. It may be said, that it is truth in every case that delights us; but the next question is Pilate's, "What is truth?" It is a different thing (let me rather say it assumes a different aspect) to each of us, and thus is equally amiable to all. How shall we explain it ? Here is a man who is a scholar and an artist, who knows precisely how every effect has been produced by every great writer that ever lived, and who is resolved to reproduce them. But the heart passes by his pitfalls and traps and carefully planned springes, to be taken captive by some simple fellow, who expected the event as little as did his prisoner. The critics fix upon one writer as a standard, and content themselves for a century or two with measuring everybody else by him. They justly enough consider that criticism should be conservative; but their idea of conservatism is that of a Fakir, who deems it religion to stand upon one leg till all its muscles become palsied and useless. In the course of time, their system, if it ever had vitality, becomes effete. If they commend Hercules, it is for his skill at Omphale's distaff, till the delightful impropriety of their criticism gets them laughed off the stage. The truth is, that the only safe method is, to point out what parts of a poem please the critic, and to let the rest go. Posterity will reverse our judgments ninety-nine times in the hundred, and it is certainly better to be censured for kindness than for severity. If the poets have not been dull, they

have at least been the causes of a lavish prodigality of dulness in other men. Taste is the next gift to genius. They are the Eros and Anteros of Art. Without his brother, the first must remain but a child still. Poets are vulgarly considered deficient in the reasoning faculty; whereas none was ever a great poet, without having it in excess, and, after a century or two, men become convinced of it. They jump the middle terms of their syllogisms, it is true, and assume premises to which the world has not yet arrived; but time stamps their deductions as invincible. Taste is that faculty which at once perceives, and hails as true, ideas which yet it has not the gift of discovering itself. It is not something to be educated and fostered, but is as truly innate as the creative faculty itself. A man with what is blunderingly called an educated taste is incapable of aught but the classic; that is, he recognizes in a new work that which makes the charm of an old one, and pronounces it worthy of admiration accordingly. Put the right foot of the Apollo forward instead of the left, and call it Philip of Pokanoket, and he is in ecstasies over a work at once so truly national and classic. He would have stood dumb, and with an untouched heart, before the Apollo fresh from the chisel of the sculptor.

JOHN.

Very likely. This faculty of taste, which I agree with you in thinking innate, is the first great requi

site of a critic. Learning, ingenuity, and boldness are merely its handmaidens. Our critics have been interesting in one regard; they have experimentally demonstrated how long a man will live after the brains are out. This aspect, however, is for the physiologists. No critic that ever lived would have the hardihood to foretell the precise hues of to-morrow's sunset, and then to complain if it gave him an acre of purple and gold more or less. the same man would confidently reduce Art to a chessboard, upon which all the combinations are mathematically calculable and exhaustible, and compel genius, whose very essence is freedom, to confine itself to these little arbitrary squares of black and white.

Yet

PHILIP.

And yet the next development of Genius is as unpredictable as the glory of the next sunset. The critics tell us the day for epics has gone by. Wait till the master comes, and see. Everything is impossible till it is done; and when the man has come and accomplished his work, the world says, Am I thousands of years old, to be gravelled in my hornbook? The world has been to blame in this matter. It has allowed those to be critics who were unfit for anything else. Criticism has been the manor and glebe of those who had no other inheritance, as the church used to be to the younger sons of the aristocracy in England. And the lion's