Alas! Is Even Love Too Weak To

The Interpretations Of Science Do Not Give Us This Intimate Sense Of Objects As The Interpretations Of Poetry Give It; They Appeal To A Limited Faculty, And Not To The Whole Man. It Is Not Linnaeus Or Cavendish Or Cuvier Who Gives Us The True Sense Of Animals, Or Water, Or Plants, Who Seizes Their Secret For Us, Who Makes Us Participate In Their Life; It Is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour.

It Does Not Try To Reach Down To The Level Of Inferior Classes; It Does Not Try To Win Them For This Or That Sect Of Its Own, With Ready-made Judgments And Watchwords Of Its Own. It Seeks To Away With Classes, To Make The Best That Has Been Taught And Known In The World Current Everywhere, To Make All Men Live In An Atmosphere Of Sweetness And Light, Where They May Use Ideas, As It Uses Them Itself, Freely--nourished, And Not Bound By Them.

Once Read Thy Own Breast Right, And Thou Hast Done With Fears.

What Actions Are The Most Excellent? Those, Certainly, Which Most Powerfully Appeal To The Great Primary Human Affections: To Those Elementary Feelings Which Subsist Permanently In The Race, And Which Are Independent Of Time. These Feelings Are Permanent And The Same; That Which Interests Them Is Permanent And The Same Also.

I Am Bound By My Own Definition Of Criticism : A Disinterested Endeavour To Learn And Propagate The Best That Is Known And Thought In The World.