The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1873-05-01
CURIosITIEs OF CRITICISM.
CONCLUDED.

CONCLUDED
who has forgotten the reception With which
Wadsworth was greeted from all quarters on
the publication of his maiden volume? From
John O'Groat's TO Lands End, his Lyrical
BGElads provoked loud roar of laughter !:
he was the butt of small witlings, and the
object of the critics kissing scoyn. His the
DRY of poetry was looked upon as defiance
to all the laws OF criticism, and to his breth~
rem of the tuneful tribe was hardly less
startling than If he had announced some new
and monstrous heresy. The Ednbur1 Re
gieO, especially, QUO Jeffreyed jeffrey in It's
merciless sarcasms 1t not N srely ridiculed
his perversities, his occasional puerility of
theme, and tastelessness Of diction but
scoffed at some OF the finest productions of
his genius. Ruth, Pet Lamb, we Are Seven,
and the immortal Intintattons Of Immortality,
are dismissed with the same flippant and con-
temptuous criticism az Alice Fell. and such
verses as these:
A household tub. like one of those
Which women use TO wash their clothes.
Is 1t not strange that poet who had him
self been the victim OF so merciless and
scornful criticism, should speak in the most
sweepingly de9reciatory terms of some of
his famous contemporaries and predecessors
Yet Dryden's great music-ode, (which rushes
on with a swing and flow like that of Pindar
himself, and has been called the Heroic Sym
phory of Beethoven in words.-he stigma
tizes as "a drunken sonS;' and for some Of
the most glorious poetry of Burns he profess
esa profound contempt. Mrs. Hemans tells us
that the poet and herself were sitting on
bank overlooking Rydal Lake, and talking of
the Scotch bard, when she said tMr. Words
worth. do you not think his war ode, Scots
Wha hea wi Wallace Bled,' has been good
deal Overrated? especially by Mr.. Carlyle,
who calls 1t the noblest lyric in the Ian
guage ~ II am delighted to hear you ask
the question, 4" was the reply; ''overated p
trash stuff miserable inanity without
thought-without an image |" Then he re.
cited the piece in tone of unutterable scorn.
and concluded with dG capO of ''Wretched
stuff ~
1t Is we'll known that neither Wordsworth
nor Coleridge could see any merit in Gray's
Elegy. Fielding thought Richardson solemn
prig, and Richardson could never adequately
express his disgust at Fielding's vulgarity,
Keats regarded the poets of Queen Anne's
time as "a school of dolts, who had no more
than
A pulling infants force
Ihat swayed upon o rocking horse.
ana thought 1t Pegasus.
TIP
VINO has forgotten the fierce attack OF the
quarterly ReVietO on "Jane Eyre" in which
the unknown author, who was clergyman's
daughter, is pronounced ga person who. with
great mental powers, combines a total igno-
rance of society, great coarseness of taste
and heathenish doctrine of religioup'
To conclude, about the rarest thing in the
world, next after work of genius. is a bit
OF genuine criticism. The man of creative
genius is hardly less disqualified than the I'm.
thinking million to decide upon the merit of
an original production. THE very fact that
one has attained to mastery ii some high
walk of art shown that some OF his faculties
nave been developed at the expense of the
rest !; for' as another has we'll said, it is not
given to the human intellect to expand itself
widely in all directions at once and TO be at
the same time gigantic aud well proportion
ed. Zone painter is distinguished by his ex.
qulsite finishing. Tolls day after day to bring
the veins OF ca5bage-leaf the folds of
lace Veli' the wrinkles of an old woman's face
nearer and nearer to perfection. In the time
which ne employs on square foot of can
VasS' a master ofa different order covers the
walls Of palace with gods buryinp piants
under mountains, or makes the cupolas Of
church alive with cherubim and martyrs ,,
VIII either of these artists be likely fully tn
appreciate the other or will the critic
who is charmed by the savageness OF Saliva.
tor and the "corregIosity of Correggio," do
justice to the granduef and lofty imagina ton
of the freseoes of the Sistlne Chanel and To
the cartoons?