CEITICISM AND THE MAN 89 



value of it all, will be the contribution of the critic's 

 most private and radical self. 



Every eminent writer has his way of looking at 

 things, gives his own coloring to general truths, 

 and it is this that endears him to us. Is the word 

 he speaks his word, — is it inevitable, the verdict 

 of his character, the outcome of that which is most 

 vital and characteristic in him ? Or is it something 

 he has learned, or the result of fashion, convention, 

 imitation ? 



See how the old elements of the air, soil, water, 

 forever recombine under the touch of that mysteri- 

 ous something we call life, and produce new herb- 

 age, new flowers, new fruit, new men, new women, 

 — forever and yet never the same. So do the forces 

 of man's spirit recombine with the old facts and 

 truisms, and produce new art and new literature. 



Is it not equally true that the value of criticism 

 as a guide to the judgment or the taste, teaching us 

 what to admire and what to condemn, is less than 

 its value as an intellectual pleasure and stimulus, its 

 power to awaken ideas ? Judgment is good, but 

 inspiration is better. How rarely we make the 

 judgments of the greatest critics our own ! We 

 are pleased when they confirm our own, but is 

 not our main interest and profit in what the critic 

 gives us out of himself ? We do not, for instance, 

 care very much for Carlyle's literary judgments, 

 but for Carlyle's quality of mind, his flashes of 



