conceited rubbish) are not, to me, very satisfactory. The critic
seems, in the rather numerous articles which he has devoted to the
"noble Poet," as they used to call him, to have felt his genius unduly
rebuked by that of his subject. He spends a great deal, and surely an
unnecessarily great deal, of time in solemnly, and no doubt quite
sincerely, rebuking Byron's morality; and in doing so he is sometimes
almost absurd. He calls him "not more obscene perhaps than Dryden or
Prior," which is simply ludicrous, because it is very rare that this
particular word can be applied to Byron at all, while even his
staunchest champion must admit that it applies to glorious John and to
dear Mat Prior. He helps, unconsciously no doubt, to spread the very
contagion which he denounces, by talking about Byron's demoniacal power,
going so far as actually to contrast _Manfred_ with Marlowe to the
advantage of the former. And he is so completely overcome by what he
calls the "dreadful tone of sincerity" of this "puissant spirit," that
he never seems to have had leisure or courage to apply the critical
tests and solvents of which few men have had a greater command. Had he
done so, it is impossible not to believe that, whether he did or did not
pronounce Byron's sentiment to be as theatrical, as vulgar, and as false
as it seems to some later critics, he would at any rate have substituted
for his edifying but rather irrelevant moral denunciations some exposure
of those gross faults in style and metre, in phrase and form, which now
disgust us.

There are many essays remaining on which I should like to comment if
there were room enough. But I have only space for a few more general
remarks on his general characteristics, and especially those which, as
Sainte-Beuve said to the altered Jeffrey of our altered days, are
"important to us." Let me repeat then that the peculiar value of Jeffrey
is not, as is that of Coleridge, of Hazlitt, or of Lamb, in very subtle,
very profound, or very original views of his subjects. He is neither a
critical Columbus nor a critical Socrates; he neither opens up
undiscovered countries, nor provokes and stimulates to the discovery of
them. His strength lies in the combination of a fairly wide range of
sympathy with an extraordinary shrewdness and good sense in applying
that sympathy. Tested for range alone, or for subtlety alone, he will
frequently be found wanting; but he almost invariably catches up those
who have th