[524]. See in particular his admirable review of Godwin’s Chaucer, and his just condemnation of the absurd practice—simply wallowed in since by biographers and historians—of bolstering out a book with what the subject might have seen, done, thought, or suffered.
[525]. The two qualities lauded above—knowledge and judgment—are specially noteworthy here, when we compare the article, not merely with the less fully informed work of Hurd, Percy, and Warton (not to say Ritson), but with more recent compositions by persons who had the originals easily at disposal.
[526]. They will also be found printed together in the two vols. of Biographies, of which they form the larger part.
[527]. Periodical Criticism, vol. ii.
[528]. In connection with Sir Walter, one may pay a note of tribute to the extreme and now too little known critical ability of his “discoverer,” J. L. Adolphus, whose Letters to Heber on the Authorship of Waverley would come in well as an excursus-subject. Examining, as he did, certain known works of an at least hypothetically unknown writer, he was bound to give that attention to the work itself, which was the great thing necessary; and he gave it with remarkable ability, craftsmanship, and knowledge of literature.
[529]. Those who will not take the trouble to search the Specimens themselves will find copious and admirably selected examples in Jeffrey’s article on the book (Essays, 1 vol. ed., p. 359 sq.), one of the best reviews he ever wrote, but for some superfluous, unjust, and, in the context (v. above), specially ungenerous flings at Southey.
[530]. This may be found not merely in the edd. of the Works, but in Prof. Vaughan’s interesting selection of Literary Criticism (London, 1896).
[531]. It is with some misgiving, and after more than one change of mind, that I place Shelley’s great poetical twin (or rather tally) in a note only here. I have already more than once referred (ii. [280], [412]) to Keats’s perhaps one-sided but very vigorous and remarkable verse-formulation of the protest against Neo-classicism; the two prefaces (especially the final one) to Endymion have been generally recognised by the competent as perhaps the most astonishingly just judgments which any poet has ever passed on himself: and the Letters are full of critical or quasi-critical passages of the highest interest. I myself have a sheaf of them duly noted; and some persons of distinction whom I know would admit them to the very Golden Book of Criticism. I hope, however, that my own judgment is not too much sicklied o’er with crotchet in holding that Keats’s criticism of himself and others is somewhat too spontaneous and automatic, somewhat too much of a mere other phase of his creation, to deserve the name of criticism properly so-called. He speaks of Shakespeare admirably, because he has the same quintessentially English cast of poetry that Shakespeare had. When he speaks of poetry in the abstract, as he does admirably and often, it is this poetry speaking of herself, and therefore speaking truly but not critically. Even in the wonderful remark (vol. v. p. 111., ed. Forman, Glasgow, 1901) on himself and Byron, “He describes what he sees: I describe what I imagine” (where he repeats Philostratus without in the least knowing it), the thing is not criticism: it is self-speaking. And beyond this he seldom goes, and is seldomer happy in his rare excursions. He might have become a critic, as he might have become almost anything good; but I do not think he was one.
[532]. My copy is the eight-volume ed. of 1874-76: but the titles of the various pieces will enable them to be found in others.
[533]. See the opening of “Southey and Porson.” It is, of course, not improved by the presence of the Landorian irony, which is an uncertain quality, too often inclining either to horse-play or to peevishness: but this is not fatal.