He is equally alive to subtle resemblances and to subtle
differences, and art is to him not merely an intellectual enjoyment,
but something which is to be taken into the spirit of a man and to
become part of his life. Of the _history_ of literature, and the
problems that rise out of it, he takes but small account. But for the
other function assigned by Carlyle to criticism, for criticism as a
"creative art, aiming to reproduce under a different shape the existing
product of the artist, and painting to the intellect what already lay
painted to the heart and the imagination"--for this no man has done
more than Mr. Pater. With wider knowledge and a clearer consciousness
of the deeper issues involved, he may be said to have taken up the
work of Lamb and to have carried it forward in a spirit which those
who best love Lamb will be the most ready to admire.
Of Mr. Pater's literary criticisms, those on Wordsworth and Coleridge
are perhaps the most striking. But he was probably still more at home
in interpreting the work of the great painters.
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