on the Great Exhibition of 1851. 353 
rather be likened to the criticism which comes after the:drama. 
: ou know, criticism does come after poetry; the age of 
criticism after the age of poetry; Aristotle after Sophocles, Lon- 
ginus after Homer. And the reason of this has been well pointed 
out in our time :—that words, that human Janguage, appear in 
the form in which the poet utters them, and works with them 
for his purposes, before they appear in ‘the form in which the 
critic must use them: language is picturesque and affecting, first; 
it is philosophical ‘and critical afterwards :—it is first concrete, 
tract :—it acts first, it analyzes afterwards. And this is 
the case, not with words only, but also with works. poet, 
as the Greeks called him, was the maker, as our English fathers, 
agery; but in those material works which supply the aS oa 
e jus 
been compelled to use: in the textures of soft wool, or fine linen, 
ports itself in wreaths of visi- 
dust to its appointed place; in the images which express to the. 
eye beanty and dignity, as the poet’s verse does to the mind; so 
and of other lands. 'The Crystal Palace was the cabinet in which 
Were contained a vast multitude of compositions—not of words, 
but of things, which we who wandered along its corridors and gal- 
leries might con, day by day, so as to possess ourselves, in some 
measure, and according to our ability, of their meaning, sant i 
ea ection 
must now consider what it is that we have-admired, an why; 
must try to analyze the works which we have thus gazed upon, 
and to discover the principles of their exce As the enitic 
Srcoxp Series, Vol. XIII, No. 39.—May, 1852. 
