cellence of the poems of Tennyson has been placed beyond doubt by
a consensus of the best judgment, when there some day swim into our ken
first one and then another small volume bearing the name of William
Watson or John Davidson. We perhaps read these volumes receptively
enough, and form some sort of impression concerning them. But we are not
sure of ourselves; we wait to hear what other people have to say. If we
hear praise, we feel encouraged to join in it; if we hear disparagement,
we grow suspicious of our own more favourable judgment. Perhaps, on the
other hand, with that half-resentment which we are always apt to feel at
new claims to poetic eminence, and for which a large measure of excuse
is to be found in the fact that ambitious but futile rhymesters are a
veritable plague of flies to publisher and public--in this spirit of
half-resentment we ask, "Who is this Watson?" "Who is this Davidson?"
and incontinently proceed to examine them in a cold and carping spirit,
with a keen eye to their faults of detail, and with a sort of illogical
assumption that if they had been of much account we should somehow have
heard of them before.

It is but rarely that an accomplished judge of literature will speak out
boldly and unequivocally, without "hedging," so to speak, and not only
declare that such-and-such a work reveals a rising genius, but give his
reasons why he declares it, distinguishing the poetical elements in
which the genius is shown. The critic should frankly analyse; but mostly
he does not. He tells us, for instance, that Walt Whitman is the "Adam
of a new poetical era," or else that he is "a dunce of inconceivable
incoherence and incompetence"; but usually he does not show us the
precise data upon which either conclusion is based. Cannot profundity of
thought, ardour of emotion, power and charm of expression, be actually
demonstrated as present or absent in a poet, when the critic is
addressing himself to his natural readers, to wit, persons in whom are
pre-supposed a certain amount of brains and heart, and cultivation of
both? If they cannot, has criticism any real existence?

To begin with, each reader is bound to recognise how far he is himself
at any time capable of appreciating particular kinds of poetry. Out of
epic, lyric, dramatic, and descriptive poetry there is usually some one
kind with which we have no natural sympathy. It follows not that,
because a man is fond of peaches, pears, and grapes, he is