In his opinion, the reviewer, being guided exclusively by a set of obsolete and worthless rules, is necessarily incapable of recognizing genius under any new development: "He usually is as little fitted to deal with the tasks he sets himself as a manikin is to growl about the anatomy of a star, setting forth at the same time his own thoughts as to how it should be formed." Vanity is the mainspring of his actions: "He fears to be thought beneath his author, and so doles out a limited number of praises and an unlimited quantity of slur." Like the Welshman, he strikes in the dark, thus escaping just retribution; and in his stupid ignorance he seeks to "rein in the wingèd steed," from having no conception of its aerial powers.
Now this is a formidable indictment, and some of the charges may be not without foundation; but if, as too often happens, the "wingèd steed" is merely a donkey standing ambitiously on its hind legs, who but the critic can compel it to resume its quadrupedal attitude? If, as Mr. Walter Bagehot warned us some years ago, "reading is about to become a series of collisions against aggra-
