hold. The Intellectual will probably never be the most widely popular
for the moment. He who prefers to study in this school must be
prepared for much depreciation, for its greatest excellences, even if
he achieve them, are not the most obvious to the many. In discussing,
for instance, a modern work, we hear it praised, perhaps, for some
striking passage, some prominent character; but when do we ever hear
any comment on its harmony of construction, on its fulness of design,
on its ideal character,--on its essentials, in short, as a work of
art? What we hear most valued in the picture, we often find the most
neglected in the book,--namely, the composition; and this, simply
because in England painting is recognized as an art, and estimated
according to definite theories; but in literature we judge from a
taste never formed, from a thousand prejudices and ignorant
predilections. We do not yet comprehend that the author is an artist,
and that the true rules of art by which he should be tested are
precise and immutable. Hence the singular and fantastic caprices of
the popular opinion,--its exaggerations of praise or censure, its
passion and reaction. At one while, its solemn contempt for
Wordsworth; at another, its absurd idolatry. At one while we are
stunned by the noisy celebrity of Byron, at another we are calmly told
that he can scarcely be called a poet. Each of these variations in
the public is implicitly followed by the vulgar criticism; and as a
few years back our journals vied with each other in ridiculing
Wordsworth for the faults which he did not possess, they vie now with
each other in eulogiums upon the merits which he has never displayed.

These violent fluctuations betray both a public and a criticism
utterly unschooled in the elementary principles of literary art, and
entitle the humblest author to dispute the censure of the hour, while
they ought to render the greatest suspicious of its praise.