and power of his work, gathering amplitude and intensity as it plays
across the critic's temperament, is reconstituted in other and
illuminating images which communicate the emotion to us. The
critic has felt more intimately than we the appeal of this poetry, and
he kindles in us something of his own enthusiasm. So we return to
Wordsworth for ourselves, more alert to divine his message, more
susceptible to his spell, that he may work in us the magic of
evocation.

Criticism is of value to us as appreciators in so far as it serves to
recreate in us the experience which the work was designed to
convey. But criticism is not a short cut to enjoyment. We cannot
take our pleasure at second hand. We must first come to the work
freshly and realize our own impression of it; then afterwards we may
turn to the critic for a further revelation. Criticism should not shape
our opinion, but should stimulate appreciation, carrying us farther
than we could go ourselves, but always in the same direction with
our original impression. There is a kind of literary exercise, calling
itself criticism, which takes a picture or a book as its point of
departure and proceeds to create a work of art in its own right,
attaching itself only in name to the work which it purports to
criticise. "Who cares," exclaims a clever maker of epigrams,
"whether Mr. Ruskin's views on Turner are sound or not? What does
it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so
fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate
symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of
word and epithet, is at least as great a work of art as any of those
wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in
England's Gallery." A very good appreciation of Ruskin, this. But
the answer is that such writing as is here attributed to Ruskin is
magnificent: it may be art; but it is not true criticism. A work of art
is not "impressive" merely, but "expressive" too. Criticism in its
relation to the work itself has an objective base, and it must be
steadied and authenticated by constant reference to the original feet.
Criticism is not the source of our enjoyment but a medium of
interpretation.

Before we turn to criticism, therefore, we must first, as Pater
suggests, know our own impression as it really is, discriminate it,
and realize it distinctly. Only so shall we escape becoming the dupe
of some more aggressive personalit