that the lecture will be read in the light of the facts as they
were at the time of its delivery.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE 5

THE SUPREME LITERARY GIFT 9

HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM 53

THE PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM, APPLIED
TO TWO SUCCESSORS OF TENNYSON 95

THE MAKING OF A SHAKESPEARE 147

LITERATURE AND LIFE 191

THE FUTURE OF POETRY 219

The Supreme Literary Gift

When we have been reading some transcendent passage in one of the
world's masterpieces we experience that mental sensation which Longinus
declares to be the test of true sublimity, to wit, our mind "undergoes a
kind of proud elation and delight, as if it had itself begotten the
thing we read." We are disposed by such literature very much as we are
disposed by the Sistine Madonna or before the Aphrodite of Melos. Things
like these exert a sort of overmastering power upon us. Our craving for
perfection, for ideal beauty, is for once wholly gratified. Our spirit
glows with an intense and complete satisfaction. It would build itself a
tabernacle on the spot, for it recognizes that it is good to be there.
We do not analyse, we do not criticize, we simply deliver over our souls
to a proud elation and delight. Nay, at the moment when we are in the
midst of such spontaneous and exquisite enjoyment, we should, in all
likelihood, resent any attempt to make us realize exactly _why_ this
particular creation of art so fills up our souls down to the last cranny
of satisfaction while another stops short of that supreme effect.

And yet, afterwards, when we are meditating upon this strange potency of
a poem or a building or a statue, or when we are trying to communicate
to others the feeling of its charm, do we not find ourselves
importunately asking wherein lies the secret of great art? And, in the
case of literature, we think it at such times no desecration of our
delight to put a passage of Shakespeare or of Milton beside a passage of
Homer, of AEschylus, or of Dante, an essay of Lamb beside a chapter of
Heine, a lyric of Burns by one of Shelley, and t