en
pronounced as "in his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and
finest spirits breathing."[34]

II

The discovery in the seventeenth century of the Greek treatise "On the
Sublime," attributed to Longinus, with its inspired appreciation of the
great passages in Greek literature so different from the analytic manner
of Aristotle, gave a decided impulse to English criticism. It was at the
same time that English prose, under the influence of French models, was
developing a more familiar tone than it had hitherto been acquainted with.
The union of the enthusiasm of Longinus with this moderated French prose
resulted in the graceful prefaces of Dryden, which remained unmatched for
more than a century. The Longinian fire, breathed upon too by the genius
of Shakespeare, preserved the eighteenth century from congealing into the
utter formalism of pseudo-Aristotelian authority. Though they did not
produce an even warmth over the whole surface, the flames are observed
darting through the crust even where the crust seems thickest. It is
significant that Dr. Johnson should exclaim with admiration at the
criticism of Dryden, not because Dryden judged according to rules but
because his was the criticism of a poet. And he singles out as the best
example of such criticism the well-known appreciation of Shakespeare, the
very passage which Hazlitt later quoted as "the best character of
Shakespeare that has ever been written."[35] The high-priest of classicism
wavered frequently in his allegiance to some of the sacred fetishes of his
cult, and had enough grace, once at least, to speak with scorn of the
"cant of those who judged by principles rather than by perception."[36]

But to judge by perception is a comparatively rare accomplishment, and so
most critics continued to employ the foot-rule as if they were measuring
flat surfaces, while occasionally going so far as to recognize the
existence of certain mountain-peaks as "irregular beauties." In a more or
less conscious distinction from the criticism of external rules there
developed also during the eighteenth century what its representatives were
pleased to call metaphysical criticism, to which we should now probably
apply the term psychological. This consisted in explaining poetic effects
by reference to strictly mental processes in a tone of calm analysis
eminently suited to the rationalistic temper of the age. It methodically
traced the sources of grandeur or of pathos or