there is Iphigenia, the best r modern literature of the col classic drama; there is To embodying the intellectual struggle of the Renaissance mont, a wonderful medley o and exalted patriotism; ther und Dorothea, the most p since the time of Theocritus gics; there are Goethe's scier his forecast of the great doct tion, his theories of color a curate perhaps, but still a many-sidedness; and, finally, the only great dramatic po or modern times worthy to masterpieces of Shakespeare.

The secret of much of G was that he drew the sources work from his own experi perience so variegated and in that it becomes to us, through his genius, the experience of h

ON THE FRAILTIES OF LITERARY

THE

CRITICISM

'HE world pays more reverence to criticism than criticism deserves. I think this comes partly from the fact that, oftener than we think, we take men at their own estimate of themselves, and there is in the very fact of censure an implied superiority over the thing censured. As the judge outranks the litigant, so the critic rises in our imagination above the author, especially if he handle the latter without gloves. For it is unfavorable criticism which is most impressive. We know that any fool can applaud, but we think it requires discrimination to find fault. Hence the great reputation acquired by Voltaire's Pococurante, who disdained Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Milton, the man of science-everybody, until an enraptured community exclaimed: "What a prodigious genius is

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Literary Critics

this Pococurante!

him!"

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Nothing can please

In the simplicity of inexperience I, too, used to believe in critics. I did not like to make up my mind on the merits of a book until I heard what these gifted creatures had said of it. I was particularly humble in the presence of those who, like one of the editors of Shakespeare, had said that common readers "must perforce either take the results of deep scholarship on trust or else not have them at all," in other words, that we were incapable of forming any just opinions of our own. Scholars of such inaccessible attainments awakened my awe.

But now I know them! After a writer has read the reviews of his own works, he is qualified to "swear at the court" with unction, if not with impartiality. Nay, he has even a better remedy than the litigant. For he may constitute himself a court of appeals, review the decisions he does not like, and even convict and pronounce sentence against his accusers.

This is possible because of the peculiar constitution of the tribunals by which art and literature are judged.

When the Pope dies and the Holy See

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becomes vacant, the Spirit descends upon the entire College of Cardinals, or at least upon the "odd man," in selecting the successor who is to fill it. When a Grand Lama dies, his coadjutor selects from a list of new-born babes three names, and from these the abbots, after a week of prayer, single out by lot the successor of the dead potentate. Thus the Divinity makes known its will and points out the little body in which is to reside the reincarnated soul of wisdom and philosophy.

Our method of choosing the arbiters of art and literature is more simple. There is no need for death to leave a vacancy, nor for any convocation to await the illumination of the Spirit. The inspiration is strictly personal. Each candidate, after contemplation of his own transcendent qualifications, selects himself and crowns his own head with the tiara of infallible judgment.

And so I here propose to crown myself. Luckily no preliminary training is required.

"A man must serve his time to every trade

Save censure. Critics all are ready made."

Dean Swift indeed proposes some qualifications. "Sleeping, talking, and laugh

Being called therefore, as to be, to review my review bound to a higher pinnacle they occupy. If the critic dwells on loftier heights dramatist, how supremely be the station of him who the merits of criticism its to stand on the apex of the

Come then, ye arbiters of and let me see of what stuf posed. For now am I the you must stand before me v me with vigor and apply th delinquent!

And there a

enow, and of many kinds. ate. First:

THE INDOLENT CE

"O ye chorus of indolent Irresponsible, indolent re

Why Tennyson should c indeed, I know not, for