"--Shelley, _Defence of Poetry_,
p. 33.] But it is again to Carlyle that we must turn for the explicit
application of these ideas to criticism:--
"Criticism has assumed a new form...; it proceeds on other principles,
and proposes to itself a higher aim. The grand question is not now a
question concerning the qualities of diction, the coherence of
metaphors, the fitness of sentiments, the general logical truth, in
a work of art, as it was some half-century ago among most critics;
neither is it a question mainly of a psychological sort, to be answered
by discovering and delineating the peculiar nature of the poet from
his poetry, as is usual with the best of our own critics at present:
[Footnote: A striking example of this method, the blending of criticism
with biography, is to be found in Carlyle's own Essay on Burns. The
significance of the method, in such hands as those of Carlyle, is that
it lays stress on the reality, the living force, of the poetry with
which it deals. It was the characteristic method of Sainte-Beuve; and
it may be questioned whether it did not often lead him far enough from
what can properly be called criticism;--into psychological studies,
spiced with scandal, or what a distinguished admirer is kind enough
to call "indiscretions".
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