Yet his poetry has exactly the same
characteristics now that it had then; and Tennyson has gone up to his
place among English poets. It is not "Blackwood," nor any quarterly
review or monthly magazine, (except, of course, the "North American" and
the "Atlantic,") which can decree or deny fame. While the critics are
busily proving that an author is a plagiarist or a pretender, the world
is crowning him,--as the first ocean-steamer from England brought Dr.
Lardner's essay to prove that steamers could not cross the ocean.
Literary criticism, indeed, is a lost art, if it ever were an art. For
there are no permanent acknowledged canons of literary excellence; and
if there were any, there are none who can apply them. What critic shall
decide if the song of a new singer be poetry, or the bard himself a
poet? Consequently, modern criticism wisely contents itself with
pointing out errors of fact or of inference, or the difference between
the critic's and the author's philosophic or aesthetic view, and bitterly
assaults or foolishly praises him. When Horace Binney Wallace, one of
the most accomplished and subtile-minded of our writers, says of General
Morris that he is "a great poet," and that "he who can understand Mr.
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