ly subordinate to that of subject (matter),
it is not for the reader to dispute with the author on his mode of
rendering, provided that should be accepted as embodying (within the
bounds of grammatical logic) the intention preconceived. The object
of the poet in writing, why he attempts to describe an event as
resulting from this cause or this, or why he assumes such as the
effect; all these considerations the reader is competent to
entertain: any two men may deduce from the same premises, and may
probably arrive at different conclusions: but, these conclusions
reached, what remains is a question of resemblance, which each must
determine for himself, as best conscious of his own intention. To
take an instance. Shakspere's conception of Macbeth as a man capable
of uttering a pompous conceit--

("Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood--")

in a moment, to him, and to all present, of startling purport, may be
a correct or an impressive conception, or it may be the reverse. That
the rendering of the momentary intention is adequate here there is no
reason to doubt. If so, in what respect is the reader called upon to
investigate a matter of style? He must simply return to the question
of whether this point of character be consistent with others imagined
of the same person; this, answered affirmatively, is an
approval,--negatively, a condemnation, of _intention_; the merit of
_style_, in either case, being mere competence, and that admitted
irrespectively of the reader's liking or disliking of the passage
_per se_, or as part of a context. Why, in this same tragedy of
Macbeth, is a drunken porter introduced between a murder and its
discovery? Did Shakspere really intend him to be a sharp-witted man?
These questions are pertinent and necessary. There is no room for
disputing that this scene is purposely a comic scene: and, if this is
certain, the style of the speech is appropriate to the scene, and of
the scene, to the conception of the drama? Is _that conception_
admirable?

We have entered thus at length on the investigation of adequacy and
appropriateness of style, and of the mode by which entire classes of
disputable points, usually judged under that name, may be reduced to
the more essential element of conception; because it will be almost
invariably found, that a mere arbitrary standard of irresponsible
private predilection is then resorted to. Nor can this be well
guarded against. The