fort toward the understanding of the rightness and loveliness
of the lines of the cap and the exquisiteness of the choice of folds,
which the critic has pointed out to him with threatening finger, he
feels that life is a fuller and finer thing to live.

An example of the intellectual estimate, the valuation by formulas,
and the assignment of abstract rank, is this paragraph from Matthew
Arnold's essay on Wordsworth.

Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of
profound truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is
unique. His best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this
balance. I have a warm admiration for "Laodameia" and for the great
"Ode;" but if I am to tell the very truth, I find "Laodameia" not
wholly free from something artificial, and the great "Ode" not
wholly free from something declamatory. If I had to pick out poems
of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I
should rather choose poems such as "Michael," "The Fountain,"
"The Highland Reaper." And poems with the peculiar and unique
beauty which distinguishes these, Wordsworth produced in
considerable number; besides very many other poems of which the
worth, although not so rare as the worth of these, is still exceedingly
high.

Thus does the judicial critic mete out his estimate by scale and
measuring-rod. We are told dogmatically what is good and what is
less good; but of distinctive quality and energizing life-giving
virtues, not a word. The critic does not succeed in communicating to
us anything of Wordsworth's special charm and power. We are
informed, but we are left cold and unresponding.

The didactic critic imposes his standard upon the layman. The
judicial critic measures and awards. The appreciative critic does not
attempt to teach or to judge; he makes possible to his reader an
appreciation of the work of art simply by recreating in his own terms
the complex of his emotions in its presence. Instead of declaring the
work to be beautiful or excellent, he makes it beautiful in the very
telling of what it means to him. As the artist interprets life,
disclosing its depths and harmonies, so the appreciative critic in his
turn interprets art, reconstituting the beauty of it in his own terms.
Through his interpretation, the layman is enabled to enter more fully
into the true spirit of the work and to share its beauty in his own
experience.

In contrast to the passage from Arnold is this para