their opinions accordingly but in literary business they lay aside even as a garment that wisdom humble and and go by intelligent conjecture founded on vague but current notions but this is to be shallow in proportion as the subject mat ter is profound it is to build their huts on the rock and their palace on the sand in sober truth this is to apply to and etc the method t e observation and but to literary the method of the which kept the world dark for ages now that false system though it has lost its wide has not lost its nature nor its absolute power over its contracted territory it sends hundreds of to every year and it can still reduce to utter darkness any stray subject on which it settles a d and unfortunately one of the relics of that old kingdom of darkness is a little province called literary criticism a science at present one of whose positions is that in matters of art a man may attain to truth by searching the depths of his inner consciousness this is a german phrase and there are not above six men in this island who thoroughly understand it let me have the honour of adding your name to that list in and and in the fine arts and in every subject matter whatever the depths of a man s inner con � are the of his ignorance with the rock of his vanity peeping through the foam and nothing in man is an inch deep but knowledge painfully acquired partly by personal observation partly from the testimony of other eye witnesses nothing in man is a foot deep but knowledge acquired by the science of that science sneered at by is the � principle worked by a vast machinery of eyes and hands it is what call solomon a f a lord bacon observation bat was a feeble observer solomon did not talk it but did it and that is the man for my money the eighth out of literature then our base upon this science of but in literature they reason a or else don t reason at all but resign their own excellent judgment to the cant and that are current in society and sometimes to and monthly critics so called but these are all more or less with thomas his stick they fiddle well but they can t see and a blind er is no better a guide than a blind i can think at present of no better way of men of intelligence from that system of reasoning in literary matters than to give them a glimpse of it at work blinding the ingenious persons that use it and the learned to example when lord first brought out his history of england it was a great chance for criticism for the of that science are not phrases but judgments that posterity your humble servant s judgment of sir to wit and it is not once in years that so great an author as comes up for such judgment what was the general tenor of that most amazing verdict that was a charming and writer but an one it is not the history of england � said the times and nine out of ten english critics arrived at the same conclusion and on the same grounds i will state their reasoning shortly but fairly we grant his dazzling parts and his profound industry and his mastery of english but he largely the colours of fiction and with history therefore his history popular for a time will not be immortal apply the the is a though not the instrument of reasoning mr mill will grant me that major no historian who the colours of fiction and with history immortality minor the colours of fiction etc with history will not achieve immortality the eighth now where do they get their m or or general principle why out of the depths of their inner consciousness it is an impression and a rational one most error is rational apply the principle this begins at the other it first and afterwards instead of deciding first and inquiring never the first immortal historian was on his work we find it composed of three main elements st a number of exact truths the result of investigation as enthusiastic honest and laborious as s and even more because accompanied with bodily and the dangers of travelling in rude times and foreign lands nd a number of and romantic traditions om oriental priests and such like a number of speeches put by the historian into the mouths of his characters not one word of which any of them ever uttered the first history then is one part truth and two parts fiction the next immortal is dealing with events that happened in a few years and on a singularly small this historian could record facts with an accuracy by or indeed by most writers he is believed to have done so i should feel sure of it if he had not opened with an and a needless of a greater man than himself well this immortal has coloured his narrative and it with from the dramatic poets of his country and a huge river of pure fiction runs right through it the speeches are more numerous and far more than in and they are just as pure fiction as the speeches in the school for scandal or twist or as the imaginary conversations of ml or of or the dialogue in the of and lee or the speeches in s or s and � the single difference is that the fiction in the historian is more crude and than in the best poets in as in all great modem artists the characters utter not the writer but themselves talks but in the eighth and all the talk and it is prime and second rate fiction next in eminence comes he starts by 