It is in virtue of the poet latent in him,
that the plain man has the power to become a critic.
Starting then from the question as just stated: Is it within the mind
of the individual poet, or without it, that the standard of judgment
should be sought?--neither Coleridge nor Hazlitt could have any doubt
as to the answer. It is not, they would tell us, in the individual
work but in the nature of poetry--of poetry as written large in the
common instincts of all men no less than in the particular achievement
of exceptional artists--that the test of poetic beauty must be
discovered. The opposite view, doubtless, finds some countenance in
the precepts, if not the example, of Goethe. But, when pressed to
extremes, it is neither more nor less than the impressionist conception
of criticism transferred to the creative faculty; and, like its
counterpart, is liable to the objection that the impression of one
poet, so long as it is sincerely rendered, is as good as the impression
of another. It is the abdication of art, as the other is the abdication
of criticism.
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