art,
never storm the judgment; but once fairly in possession,
they retain it with unceasing influence."

And Professor Dowden, in the article from which I have just quoted,
says:--

"Approaching a great writer in this spirit of courageous
and affectionate fraternity, we need all our forces and all our craft
for the friendly encounter. If we love ease and lethargy,
let us turn in good time and fly. The interpretation of literature,
like the interpretation of Nature, is no mere record of facts;
it is no catalogue of the items which make up a book--
such catalogues and analyses of contents encumber our histories
of literature with some of their dreariest pages. The interpretation
of literature exhibits no series of dead items, but rather the life
and power of one mind at play upon another mind duly qualified
to receive and manifest these. Hence, one who would interpret
the work of a master must summon up all his powers, and must be alive
at as many points as possible. He who approaches his author
as a whole, bearing upon life as a whole, is himself alive
at the greatest possible number of points, will be the best
and truest interpreter. For he will grasp what is central,
and at the same time will be sensitive to the value of all details,
which details he will perceive not isolated, but in connection with
one another, and with the central life to which they belong
and from which they proceed."

In his poem entitled `Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in distemper',
Mr. Browning turns upon his critics, whom he characterizes as
"the privileged fellows, in the drabs, blues, and yellows"
(alluding to the covers of the leading British Reviews),
and especially upon Alfred Austin, the author of that work
of wholesale condemnation, `The Poetry of the Period', and gives them
a sound and well-deserved drubbing. At the close of the onset
he says:--

"Was it `grammar' wherein you would `coach' me--
You,--pacing in even that paddock
Of language allotted you ad hoc,
With a clog at your fetlocks,--you--scorners
Of me free from all its four corners?
Was it `clearness of words which convey thought?'
Ay, if words never needed enswathe aught
But ignorance, impudence, envy
And malice--what word-swathe would then vie
With yours for a clearness crystalline?
But had you to put in one small line
Some thought big and bouncing--as noddle
Of goose, born to cackle and wad