make but a lame figure at present. We must
have not only an announcement that 'This is an agreeable or able work';
but we must have it explained at full length, and so as to silence all
cavillers, in what the agreeableness or ability of the work consists:
the author must be reduced to a class, all the living or defunct
examples of which must be characteristically and pointedly _differenced_
from one another; the value of this class of writing must be developed
and ascertained in comparison with others; the principles of taste, the
elements of our sensations, the structure of the human faculties, all
must undergo a strict scrutiny and revision. The modern or metaphysical
system of criticism, in short, supposes the question, _Why?_ to be
repeated at the end of every decision; and the answer gives birth to
interminable arguments and discussion. The former laconic mode was well
adapted to guide those who merely wanted to be informed of the character
and subject of a work in order to read it: the present is more useful
to those whose object is less to read the work than to dispute upon its
merits, and go into company clad in the whole defensive and offensive
armour of criticism.

Neither are we less removed at present from the dry and meagre mode of
dissecting the skeletons of works, instead of transfusing their
living principles, which prevailed in Dryden's Prefaces,(2) and in the
criticisms written on the model of the French school about a century
ago. A genuine criticism should, as I take it, reflect the colours, the
light and shade, the soul and body of a work: here we have nothing but
its superficial plan and elevation, as if a poem were a piece of formal
architecture. We are told something of the plot or fable, of the moral,
and of the observance or violation of the three unities of time, place,
and action; and perhaps a word or two is added on the dignity of the
persons or the baldness of the style; but we no more know, after reading
one of these complacent _tirades,_ what the essence of the work is, what
passion has been touched, or how skilfully, what tone and movement the
author's mind imparts to his subject or receives from it, than if we had
been reading a homily or a gazette. That is, we are left quite in the
dark as to the feelings of pleasure or pain to be derived from the
genius of the performance or the manner in which it appeals to the
imagination: we know to a nicety how it squares with the threadbare
rul