been so severely handled
(and, it must be owned, not without some justice) for its affectations,
should have been so genuine (although always generous) in his
criticisms. It was nothing to him whether an author was old or new; nor
did he shrink from any literary comparison between two writers when he
thought it appropriate (and he was generally right), notwithstanding all
the age and authority that might be at the back of one of them.
Thackeray, by the way, a very different writer and thinker, had this
same outspoken honesty in the expression of his literary taste. In
speaking of the hero of Cooper's five good novels--Leather-Stocking,
Hawkeye, etc.--he remarks with quite a noble simplicity: 'I think he is
better than any of Scott's lot.'

It is a 'far cry' from the 'Faery Queen' to 'Childe Harold,' which,
reckoning by years, is still a modern poem; yet I wonder how many
persons under thirty--even of those who term it 'magnificent'--have ever
read 'Childe Harold.' At one time it was only people under thirty who
_had_ read it; for poetry to the ordinary reader is the poetry that was
popular in his youth--'no other is genuine.'

'A dreary, weary poem called the _Excursion_,
Written in a manner which is my aversion,'

is a couplet the frankness of which has always recommended itself to me
(though I like the 'Excursion'); but, except for the rhyme, it has a
fatal facility of application to other long poems. Heaven forbid that I
should 'with shadowed hint confuse' the faith in a British classic; but,
ye gods, how men have gaped (in private) over 'Childe Harold!'

'Gil Blas,' though not a native classic, is included in the articles of
the British literary faith; not as a matter of pious opinion, but _de
fide_; a necessity of intellectual salvation. I remember an interview I
once had with a boy of letters concerning this immortal work; he is a
well-known writer now, but at the time I speak of he was only budding
and sprouting in the magazines--a lad of promise, no doubt, but given,
if not to kick against authority, to question it, and, what was worse,
to question _me_ about it, in an embarrassing manner. The natural
affability of my disposition had caused him, I suppose, to treat me as
his Father Confessor in literature; and one of the sins of omission he
confided to me was in connection with the divine Le Sage.

'I say--about "Gil Blas," you know--Bias [a great critic of that day]
was saying last night that if h