" [Footnote: Miscellanies, i. 60, 61
(1827).] And, a few pages later: "As an instance we might refer to
Goethe's criticism of Hamlet.... This truly is what may be called the
poetry of criticism: for it is in some sort also a creative art; aiming,
at least, to reproduce under a different shape the existing product
of the poet; painting to the intellect what already lay painted to the
heart and the imagination." [Footnote: Ib. p. 72.]
Instances of criticism, conceived in this spirit, are unhappily still
rare. But some of Coleridge's on Shakespeare, and some of Lamb's on
the Plays of the Elizabethan Dramatists--in particular _The Duchess
of Malfi_ and _The Broken Heart_--may fairly be ranked among them. So,
and with still less of hesitation, may Mr. Ruskin's rendering of the
_Last Judgment_ of Tintoret, and Mr. Pater's studies on Lionardo,
Michaelangelo, and Giorgione. Of these, Mr. Pater's achievement is
probably the most memorable; for it is an attempt, and an attempt of
surprising power and subtlety, to reproduce not merely the effect of
a single poem or picture, but the imaginative atmosphere, the spiritual
individuality, of the artist.
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