atch with
exquisite pleasure the artist handling that crude material, and
refashioning and refining it, and breathing into it the breath of a
higher life. Even the minutest difference of text between an author's
earlier and later draft, or a first and second edition, has now become
a point not for dull commentatorship, but a point of life, at which he
may touch with his finger the pulse of the creator in his fervor of
creation.

From each single work of a great author we advance to his total work,
and thence to the man himself,--to the heart and brain from which all
this manifold world of wisdom and wit and passion and beauty has
proceeded. Here again, before we address ourselves to the
interpretation of the author's mind, we patiently submit ourselves to
a vast series of impressions. And in accordance with Bacon's maxim
that a prudent interrogation is the half of knowledge, it is right to
provide ourselves with a number of well-considered questions which we
may address to our author. Let us cross-examine him as students of
mental and moral science, and find replies in his written words. Are
his senses vigorous and fine? Does he see color as well as form? Does
he delight in all that appeals to the sense of hearing--the voices of
nature, and the melody and harmonies of the art of man? Thus
Wordsworth, exquisitely organized for enjoying and interpreting all
natural, and if we may so say, homeless and primitive sounds, had but
little feeling for the delights of music. Can he enrich his poetry by
gifts from the sense of smell, as did Keats; or is his nose like
Wordsworth's, an idle promontory projecting into a desert air? Has he
like Browning a vigorous pleasure in all strenuous muscular movements;
or does he like Shelley live rapturously in the finest nervous
thrills? How does he experience and interpret the feeling of sex, and
in what parts of his entire nature does that feeling find its
elevating connections and associations? What are his special
intellectual powers? Is his intellect combative or contemplative? What
are the laws which chiefly preside over the associations of his ideas?
What are the emotions which he feels most strongly? and how do his
emotions coalesce with one another? Wonder, terror, awe, love, grief,
hope, despondency, the benevolent affections, admiration, the
religious sentiment, the moral sentiment, the emotion of power,
irascible emotion, ideal emotion--how do these make themselves felt in
and t