penetrate the secret of my wishes, verify the justice of my reasonings. I must examine, compare, sift, and winnow; what can bear this ordeal remains to me as pure gold. I cannot pass on till I know what I feel and why. An object that defies my utmost rigor of scrutiny is a new step on the stair I am making to the Olympian tables.
Poet. I think you will not know the gods when you get there, if I may judge from the cold presumption I feel in your version of the great facts of literature.
Critic. Statement of a part always looks like ignorance, when compared with the whole, yet may promise the whole. Consider that a part implies the whole, as the everlasting No the everlasting Yes, and permit to exist the shadow of your light, the register of your inspiration.
As he spake the word he paused, for with it his companion
vanished, and left floating on the cloud a starry banner with the
inscription “Afflatur Numine.” The Critic unfolded one on
whose flag-staff he had been leaning. Its heavy folds of pearly
gray satin slowly unfolding, gave to view the word Notitia, and
Causarum would have followed, when a sudden breeze from the
west caught it, those heavy folds folds fell back round the poor
man, and stifled him probably,—at least he has never since been
heard of.
