he style of an experienced leader, with forces
judiciously disposed, and showing a resolute front every way of defence
and offence. You do not curiously enquire into the novelty of his
doctrines. He has done well if, in small compass, he has brought together,
and vigorously compacted and expressed with animation, poignancy, and
effect, the best precepts. Such writing is beneficial, not simply by the
truths which it newly propounds, or more luminously than heretofore
unfolds, but by the authority which it vindicates to true art--by the
rallying-point which it affords to the loyal adherents of the high and
pure muses--by the sympathy which its wins, or confirms, to good
letters--by its influence in dispersing pestilent vapours, and rendering
the atmosphere wholesome.

In perusing the "Essay on Criticism," the reader is occasionally tempted
to ask himself "whether he has under his eyes an art of criticism or an
art of poetry." 'Tis no wonder; since, in some sort, the two arts are one
and the same. They coincide largely; criticism being nothing else than the
reasoned intelligence of poetry. Just the same spirit, power, precision,
delicacy, and accomplishment of understanding, which reign in the soul of
the great poet creating, rule in that of the good critic judging. The
poet, creating, criticizes his own work; he is poet and critic both. The
critic is a poet without the creation. As Apelles is eye and hand, both;
the critic of Apelles is eye only. This identification, so far as it goes,
has been variously grounded and viewed. Of old, it was urged that only the
poet is the judge of poetry, the painter of painting, the musician of
music, and so on. Such positions proceed upon a high and reverential
estimation of art. To judge requires the depth and sharpness of
sensibility, the vivid and pathetic imagination, which characterize the
artist. It asks more. To see the picture as it should be gazed upon, to
hear the poem as it would be listened to, laborious preparation is
needed--study, strenuous and exact, learned and searching--that ardent and
lover-like communing with nature, the original of arts, and that
experience in the powers, the difficulties, and the significancy of art,
which only the dedication of the votary to the service of an art can
easily be supposed to induce. There is, in practice, a verity and an
intimacy of knowledge, without which theoretical criticism wants both
light and life. So Pope contends--

"Let