and appreciate his predictions.




SCRAPS FOR AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM

Flowers must be sown and tended with care, like children, to grow up
to maturity, but weeds grow of themselves and multiply without any
attention, choking up those flowers that require it; and lies are
propagated as easily as weeds, and choke up the blossoms of truth in
the same manner. But the evils and misrepresentations of false
criticism, though great and many, are not lasting.

* * * * *

Upon its principles fashion and flattery have made many Shakespeares,
and these false prophets have flourished and will flourish for a
season, for truth, when she cannot be heard by the opposition of
falsehood, remains silent and leaves time to decide the difference,
who cometh quietly and impartially to her assistance, hurling without
ceremony, century after century, usurper after usurper from the
throne of the mighty, and erasing their names from his altar as
suddenly and as perfectly as the sunbeam passes over and washes away
the stains of a shadow on the wall. Fame hath weighed the false
criticisms and pretensions of centuries already, and found nothing as
yet but dust in the balance. Shadows of Shakespeare are cast away as
profane idols, and reality hath fallen short of even a trinity. She
acknowledges as sacred but one, and I fear that when she shall
calculate the claims of ten centuries she will find the number of the