h seem to exist
merely for the sake of single lines and passages; not for the sake of
producing any total impression. We have critics who seem to direct
their attention merely to detached expressions, to the language about
the action, not to the action itself. I verily think that the
majority of them do not in their hearts believe that there is such a
thing as a total-impression to be derived from a poem at all, or to be
demanded from a poet; they think the term a commonplace of
metaphysical criticism. They will permit the Poet to select any action
he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he
gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing, and with a
shower of isolated thoughts and images. That is, they permit him to
leave their poetical sense ungratified, provided that he gratifies
their rhetorical sense and their curiosity. Of his neglecting to
gratify these, there is little danger; he needs rather to be warned
against the danger of attempting to gratify these alone; he needs
rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to everything
else; so to treat this, as to permit its inherent excellences to
develop themselves, without interruption from the intrusion of his
personal peculiarities: most fortunate when he most entirely succeeds
in effacing himself, and in enabling a noble action to subsist as it
did in nature.

But the modern critic not only permits a false practice; he absolutely
prescribes false aims.--'A true allegory of the state of one's own
mind in a representative history,' the Poet is told, 'is perhaps the
highest thing that one can attempt in the way of poetry.'--And
accordingly he attempts it. An allegory of the state of one's own
mind, the highest problem of an art which imitates actions! No
assuredly, it is not, it never can be so: no great poetical work has
ever been produced with such an aim. _Faust_ itself, in which
something of the kind is attempted, wonderful passages as it contains,
and in spite of the unsurpassed beauty of the scenes which relate to
Margaret, _Faust_ itself, judged as a whole, and judged strictly as a
poetical work, is defective: its illustrious author, the greatest poet
of modern times, the greatest critic of all times, would have been the
first to acknowledge it; he only defended his work, indeed, by
asserting it to be 'something incommensurable'.

The confusion of the present times is great, the multitude of voices
counselling differ