ally correct. This declares to him that beauty is something absolute and objective—if not an entity, a thing, it at all events lies in expression-in the expression and charm of fitness. Only through a course of mental sophistry will he learn to accept the inverted theory of Véron (otherwise the most constructive of modern French critics), who maintains beauty's subjectivity, i. e., its non-existence except as an impression of the observer. Admit Véron's premise, that beauty is a chimera, and you must consider his treatise on "Esthetics" unimpeachable. It is logical, masterly; but for one I do not think it sound doctrine, and the artistic nature is loath to believe, that "there is no disputing about tastes." I do not admit that Tasteand I use this hackneyed word in its full meaning—is purely the subjective standard of each individual, and that the taste of one is as good as that of another. Beauty everywhere is "a felt conformity to law "-of course to the law of its habitat; hence, again, the expression of the fitness of things, of the Right under the existing conditions. The personal “impressions" of one whose organization does not enable him to perceive that fitness, are no more to us than the visions of the half-blind who see men as trees walking." And if from a material world or system all sentient observers were to be exiled, certain forms and combinations would still be beautiful in themselves, and would be found so by the first sane intelligence that should arrive to contemplate them.

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Taste, therefore, is subjective, because man himself is a microcosm, having the operation of universal

methods in his own being, and discerning what is in harmony therewith. So far as he discerns this, he has taste; so far as he can utilize it in forming new and ideal structures, he is a creative artist.

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The modern effort errs, in its false assumption of freedom, whenever a workman is encouraged to make rules limited to his own capacity. A sane and noble impressionism" is that which reveals to us the individuality, the distinctive genius of an artist; it is his personal nimbus illuminating his work, but the work must express what is scientifically defensible, or it will be wrong and not enduring. One may wear blue glasses, but that does not make the world blue. Nevertheless, standards of fitness vary, justly, according to varying conditions of region, material, race, etc., beauty being always dependent on these conditions. An edifice like the Parthenon, whose proportions are exquisite, because exactly fitted to their special locality in this special world, would be absurd and unlovely, if not impossible, on another planet. A race inhabiting the latter would find beauty only in a structure subordinated to the conditions of weight, material, color, climate, there existing. Such observers, like the structure, would be part of the distinct local system, and their mental and spiritual nature would not be out of correlation.

Inferior race types have a beauty of their own. This, with its rules and standards, the superior race comprehends and admits for what it is worth. Criticism, therefore, is inclusive. Only a narrow and superficial zealot promulgates restrictive dogmas-such, for

etics ugose

instance, as the claim that a striking theme is of no value in art. The general appreciation of an impressive motive or topic, imaginatively presented, and even apart from the technical quality of the work, is something to be recognized by a healthy judgment.

Above all, I conform to the belief that the great and final office of the critic is to distinguish between what is temporary or modish, and what is enduring, in any phase, type, or product, of human work. I have said nothing of the humor, sympathy, insight, personal style, which enhance the strength and constitute the charm of critical writing. The foregoing points are merely a restatement of what seems to me the merest primer of criticism, given with as little sophistication as possible and in the briefest space.

NOW and then a name becomes durably known in

literature through the reputation of a single fugitive poem. Our English lyrical system has, of course, its greater and lesser planets, with their groups of attendant satellites. At irregular periods, some comet flashes into view, lights up the skies for a time, and then disappears beyond the vision. Whether, after the completion of a cycle, it will again attract attention and become an accepted portion of this solar family, or whether, being of a transient though garish presence, it will lessen forever upon its hyperbolic skyway, cannot always be determined by observers. And lastly, at the risk of tearing a metaphor to tatters, I may say that there are scattered through certain intervals of the system, like those fragments between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, the asteroidal poets, each of whom we have recognized by a single and distinctive point of light.

The one effort of an amateur is accepted by the people, or gains favor with compilers who select and preserve whatever is of lasting value. The result is a wide public knowledge of these kinless poems, and 1 The Galaxy, January, 1869.

of the facts which have attended their begetting; so that I shall not hunt for new matter, or reason too curiously upon my theme. Rather let me associate a few of the best-known and even hackneyed pieces of this sort, while the reader considers the philosophy of their production and success.

One is tempted to borrow a title from the British politicians, who, as everybody knows, called a member of Parliament "Single-Speech Hamilton," after his delivery of a sound and persuasive harangue upon the finances, in November, 1775. If the essence of fun be incongruity, then the nickname was not amiss, for it was certainly incongruous and odd that a member, who had dozed through silent terms, should jump up at a crisis and add unexpected strength to his party by the eloquence of a trained rhetorician and a wisdom which none dreamed he could possess. I have no doubt that, before morning, at the clubs, hundreds and fifties were offered against his ever speaking again. If so, he must have become as obnoxious to those who took the odds as were the portly old buffers who darkened coffee-house windows long beyond the dates at which the younger bucks had wagered that apoplexy would seize them; for Hamilton, having once tasted renown, did, it seems, essay more speeches, thereby putting the nicknamers and gamesters to confusion; which leads De Quincey to remark, with a chuckle over the whimsies of humanity, that the generation "had greatly esteemed the man called Single-Speech Hamilton, not at all for the speech (which, though good, very few people had read), but entirely from