enjoy the sense of intelligent and refined companionship. But when a new lode is opened before us, -meanings and graces unguessed before,-aside from our absolute acquisition, how profitable is the sudden discontent with our dull, creeping, inattention! From interesting criticism, too, the desire for first-hand knowledge may be acquired, and convenient, if not at times necessary, guidance in selection.

But the most profitable criticism is that broad and philosophical general discussion which is illustrated by such authors as Coleridge or Arnold. Such passages put us on the track of what we need to recognize, if we are to appreciate the higher literature on both its sympathetic and intellectual sides, without the disadvantage of offering to do our thinking for us in specific application. They call our attention to points which, after we have once noticed them, we find constantly recurring in our reading. Our literary life is made richer by observing them. They suggest topics which it is stimulating to think out. By bringing us in contact with a more theoretical and æsthetic range of ideas, they widen our intellectual and artistic world. They lead our commonplace taste to a just view of what it is right to admire. Nor is it a trifling service that they set before us various phases of the history of literature, one of the most fascinating and profitable of all studies. Yet in reading even the most admirable criticism, we need to keep constantly in view our personal relation to literature.

All aids are only instrumental to our close and loving companionship with authors who will make our lives more agreeable, more thoughtful, more sympathetic. Especially in poetry, it is the aim of all study to enable every reader to be his own critic, and thereby ultimately to be, we may say, his own poet. For the finest thoughts, most newly and perfectly apprehended by a great writer's intellect and emotion, and best expressed, realize their highest mission only when the reader becomes to them the creative artist, and takes them up as Shakspere took the crude work of his predecessors; so that by a personal interpretation and heightening, a noble plagiarism, the poetry of thought, feeling, and style is sung by himself to himself alone, in that inner language which we so rarely employ, yet which we surely have employed whenever a poem has flashed from book to brain and soul, and become a mood, a picture, or an inspiration. Yet the levels of literary pleasure are more usual than the heights, and a considerable part of our interest in books is more reflective than emotional. But never unsympathetic; never, if what we call literature is really so, will it yield its best unless we approach it in a spirit not of fact but of sensibility. It will render us more of itself, as we bring to it more of ourselves. Its great gift is in expanding and satisfying our finer nature, and as we grow in refinement of brain and delicacy of feeling, we shall appreciate how well the effort pays of learning it, instead of learning about it. There is a line of Matthew Arnold's,

regarding life in general, in which for myself I constantly sum up the true art of interpreting literature:

Think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well.

For surely out of an intimacy of mind and heart with those who have drawn most thought, feeling, and beauty out of life, the fruit of a happier and better character can hardly fail to be born.

The selections that follow are designed to serve as an introduction to literary criticism. Care has been taken to illustrate the characteristic expression as well as thought of the authors represented. To avoid the mechanical tendency of arbitrarily applied opinions, as well as for the larger stimulus of philosophical discussion, a choice has been made of passages that mainly develop general principles, even where they may treat directly of specific authors or works. Where time allows, readers or classes will find constant opportunity for following out suggested topics connected with literary history, and it is hoped that these excerpts may lead to a more extended reading of the authors from whom they are taken. For those, however, to whom such an introduction to criticism is principally directed, close and thoughtful acquisition of a few important ideas seems more profitable than hasty wider reading.

If the views that have been presented in the preceding pages are correct, the first and greatest art to be acquired in literary study is "How to read."

A large majority whose tastes and training have not led them to familiarity with books, find nothing more difficult than learning to observe leading points, and to grasp the essential outlines of a poem or essay. I have met with so many genuine cases of this puzzled confusion as to what should be observed and remembered, that I have appended to the text a few pages containing a partial list of topics involved in the different selections, that may serve to focus the attention for some to whom literary studies are as yet vague and perplexing. Among these will be found such brief explanations of the text as seem necessary, and not within the reach of most readers' resources; together with a few critical suggestions, and various hints of associated ideas. that may profitably be followed out.

It has seemed desirable to give rather more extended passages from two or three authors, and for this fuller exposition of their thought I have selected Coleridge and Arnold, as the two whose influence on the literary criticism of the century has been and still is perhaps most significant. I may add that in the formal study of these examples of English prose, attention should constantly be paid to the literary manner, as well as to the ideas; noting traits of style, and the relation of these to the thought and moral qualities of the writer,

For soul is form and doth the body make.

ENGLISH CRITICISM FOR STUDENTS.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

1554-1586.

[From its historical position Sidney's Defense of Poesy is an important work in the development of English criticism. It is one of those inquiries into the nature of poetry that have appealed to philosophical curiosity from classical times down to our own, and that are interesting and suggestive, even if not of the most valuable order. Sidney's work is especially noteworthy as a landmark in the evolution of English prose, and as an indication of the classical spirit of the circle to which he belonged. For he writes more as a student than as an alert contemporary of the men of 1580; he was scholastically blind to the signs of the times. Fortunately Marlowe and Shakspere did not take the essay as a literary guide. Yet for a professed classicist, Sidney is not narrow, as his love for English ballads indicates, and his pure and ideal spirit is shown in the serious ethical conception of poetry that marks his entire work.]

From the Defense of Poesy.

It is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet (no more than a long gown maketh an advocate, who, though he pleaded in armor, should be an advocate and no soldier); but it is that feigning notable