The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1873-05-01
CURIOsITIEs OF CRITICISM.
BY PROF. WILLIAM MATHEWS OF THE UNI
YERsITY OF CHICAGO.

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Rocks that remain to be written, one of
the most piQuant would be u history of
the criticisms with which the most cele>
brated literary productions have been
greeted on their first appearance before
the world. Such a volume if faithfully
written, would probably show that if
works Of genius are rare, just criticisms
of them are rarer still; that if Homer
sometimes mods, Aristarchus is often found
Eapping; and that the oracles OF litera-
ture are just as fallible as all other ora
cles, and never make more egregous or
ludicrous mistakes than when they are
most confident and most degmatic in
their decisions. The circumstances that
may warp the judgment of the critic are
legion. Not only jealousy, envy, bigotry,
self-conceit, and exclusive love for special
kinds OF literature, latent idiosy ncrasy,
may cause an obliquity in mis- judgment,
but he is almost always too easily accessi-
BILE to outside influences to pronounce an
unerring opinion. The mind of almost
ever man is as delicately poised, and as
easily moved, as those scales which are SO
nicely constructed that passing insects
wing will disturb them; and the mental
insects are sometimes very large and nu-
merous and flap their wings most vigor-
ously.
! Who can credit the fact that the poet
who Overtops all the other poets of an
cient or modern times as Mont Blanc over.
tops the other Andes, was denounced by
"a great critic" in the seventeenth centu-
ry as 'raving and rambling in tragedy,
without any conference, any spark of rea-
son 7" Yet such was the judgment of
Rymer, for whom Dryden had profound
reverance. OtheLIo he pronounces "a
bloody farce, without salt or savor," which
can only fill the head with vanity, con-
fusion, ti"tanadrre and jingle jungle $50.
Ne woman bred out Of pigstye could
talk so meanly as Desdemopa" Voltaire
pronounced Shakspeares tragedies "mon-
strous farces;" Mr.. Secretary Pepys, an
inveterats pIay-goer, thought 4 M5d-Sum-
mer Nights Dream the most iusipid, ride
ulous play he had ever witnessed Gold
smith, in his Citizen of the World, declares
the famous ITO be or not to be" soliloquy
a chaos of lncongruous metaphors and
WallaOk, the actor, tells US that when be
attempted to read Nack6eth to French
friend, the latter broke cut in the first
scene with the most violent EXPLANATIONS
of disgust: "Eh 6ien ! now dis is not ma.
ture dis Is not common sense Oh, no
De tree old veetch shall nevare to 90 out
to meet upon de blasted heath with nc
close ON in toudare, lightning, and in
rain. All, no It is not common sense
ma tot, day stay at home! Aha /" By.
ron commended most stoutiy that Pope was
equal, If not superior, to the thousand
souled dramatist. @~#
Rare old Ben Johnson" if we NAV
credit Drummond's notes of his conver.
sation, was anything but just and ina
partial critic. His judgments on contem.
porary poets were ihsolently magisterial
in the very tone Of Sir O.acle. "Spen-
sers stanzas pleased him not, nor his mat
tel" Donne, though the first poet in the
world in some things, for mot keeping of
accent, deserved hanging" Abram
Fraunce, "inhis English hexameters, was a
toole." The facile, melodious Waller. who
never wrote line that touches the heart
saw nothing in Milton but poor blind
OLD schoolmaster, who had written dull
poem remarkable for nothing but it's
length aud even Milton himself nrefer,
red the cold intellectual concerts, the
metaphysical ingenuity, of Cowley to
Dryden's masculine energy and "full-re-
sounding line" Dryden objected to Mil
tons blank verse, to which lie is positive
the author Of Paradise Lost was driven
because rhyme was not has talent y
Locke, of whose Essay on tile Human IN.
dsrstGndsng the acute De Maistrs says that
it is misnomer, and that it should have
been entitled IAN Essay on the Uader-
standing of Locke" declares that, Mil
4 ton excepted. all the other English poets
'lare mere ballad-makers compared with