But first it would be well to look a little closely at that word
"appreciation," and to examine frankly the considerations which make up
a literary judgment. I am induced to take this course after a somewhat
amused survey of a series of criticisms which have been passed upon the
two poets who are our immediate subject. One writer, for instance,
speaks of Mr. Davidson's works as "marked from end to end by the
careless fecundity of power," while the next tells us of the self-same
verses that they have "the severe restraint and very deliberately willed
simplicity of M. Guy de Maupassant." Careless fecundity and deliberate
restraint are sufficiently irreconcilable terms to apply to the same
creations. Another critic tells us of Mr. Watson that "it is of
'Collins' lonely vesper-chime' and 'the frugal note of Gray' that we
think as we read the choicely worded, well-turned quatrains that succeed
each other like the strong unbroken waves of a full tide," and I cannot
but wonder how a full tide of strong waves can suggest anything either
"frugal" or "well-chosen." It is turbid judgments such as these, and an
intellectual slovenliness which is content to accept words and phrases
without attaching definite notions to them, that discredit the average
English criticism, when set beside the lucid Greek appreciation of
Aristotle and Longinus, or of those Frenchmen like Taine or Ste. Beuve
who know exactly what they look for and why they look for it. We still
require a few Matthew Arnolds to drill us in the first steps in
criticism. It seems almost as if we had accepted for literature the
ultra-democratic maxim that every man has as much right as every other
man to judge a poem--if not a good deal more right.

The appreciation of a poet means the estimation of his rank, the
separation of his precious metal from his dross, to the end that we may
get the utmost enjoyment out of his beauties, while we feel the
intellectual satisfaction which comes of a reasoned opinion at first
hand. We appreciate the poet at his true value when we set his
particular contribution to the literary joys of life neither too high
nor too low. We fully appreciate him when we derive from him the keenest
delight which he is capable of affording. And I know of no other process
for the attainment of this end than the one which I am about to
propound. It is, I think, a method which is analytical without being
mechanical, and judicial without being cold.

The ex