wild gestures, and foaming mouth, spouting forth deafening
bombast; and through it all, now breaking out into frenzied
laughter, now sputtering expressions of filthy abuse and
invective, now skipping about in a giddy agile dance, and now
bursting upon the auditors with threatening mien and clenched
fists. So far as any meaning at all can be extracted from the
endless stream of phrases, it shows, as its fundamental
elements, a series of constantly reiterated delirious ideas,
having their source in illusions of sense and diseased organic
processes. Here and there emerges a distinct idea, which, as
is always the case with the insane, assumes the form of an
imperious assertion, a sort of despotic command.
MAX NORDAU.

NOTE

In addition to these brief extracts the student should be encouraged or
required to read a number of complete reviews both in our popular
periodicals and in books of literary criticism, with the view of
determining the critic's temper, culture, judgment, thoroughness, points
of view, etc. The older style of criticism is illustrated in Addison's
articles on Milton in the "Spectator" and Johnson's "Lives of the
Poets." For the elaborate review style the student might read some of
the critical essays of Macaulay, Carlyle, and Lowell. Our principal
reviews, magazines, and other periodicals, as well as recent works on
English literature, will supply abundant material to show the less
elaborate and generally more genial criticism of the present day.

CHAPTER II

THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK

+16. Personality of the Author.+ Every literary work reveals, to a
greater or less degree, the personality of the author. Every literary
production may be regarded as the fruitage of the writer's spirit; and
there is good authority for saying that "men do not gather grapes of
thorns or figs from thistles." A book exhibits not only the attainments,
culture, and literary art of the writer but also his intellectual force,
emotional nature, and moral character. Wide attainments are revealed in
breadth of view and in mastery of large resources. Culture is exhibited
in a general delicacy of thought, feeling, and expression. Literary art
is shown in the choice of words and in their arrangement in sentences
and paragraphs. The artistic sense, without which a finished excellence
is not attainable, reveals itself