frequently they agree but to differ.

"Nothing,"

said a critical review not long since, "could be finer than this novel for descriptive power, vigorous portrayal of character, penetrating insight into the minds of men, and a kindly and profound philosophy." A few days later, another critical review as authoritatively declared that the very same work was "dull and trivial," "commonplace in its descriptive passages," unequal in its delineations of character," and "utterly beneath contempt if we regard the shallow commentary with which it is interlarded."

The "Satirist," scurrilous and libellous though it was, had one amusing feature-a column of Comparative Criticism," in which the contradictory judgments of the reviewers were set forth in satirical juxtaposition. The diversity of opinion was often whimsically ludicrous. Jerdan tells us that he took up the sport, and adds that, but for the trouble of comparing so many organs, it would be a capital hit for any journal to revive the contrast, "and show how very little the judgment of readers ought to depend on the dicta of newspapers and magazines."

Some of these differences arise no doubt from ignorance, some from the bias of particular schools,

and some from the natural diversities of opinion. There is certainly not very much instruction to be got from views so conflicting. It needs a mind of a very receptive character to be able to accommodate two contradictory opinions at one and the same time. That is a unique intelligence which can admit of two simultaneous currents of opinion -a positive current and a negative currentwithout experiencing any inconvenience in the process.

The bias or the prejudice of critics has led to many notable instances of faulty and blundering judgment. In the "Curiosities of Literature," an interesting section is devoted to illustrations of faulty criticism on ancient writers. "It was given out that Homer had stolen from anterior poets whatever was most remarkable in the 'Iliad' and the Odyssey;' Sophocles was brought to trial by his children as a lunatic; and some, who censured the inequalities of the poet, have also condemned the vanity of Pindar, the rough verses of Eschylus, and Euripides for the conduct of his plots. Socrates, considered as the wisest and most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenæus as illiterate. Aristotle has not been spared by the critics. Diogenes

Laertius, Cicero, and Plutarch. have forgotten nothing that can tend to show his ignorance, his ambition, and his vanity. It has been said that Plato was so envious of the celebrity of Democritus that he proposed burning all his works; and Aristotle was agitated by the same passion against all the philosophers his predecessors. Virgil is destitute of invention, if we are to give credit to Pliny, Carbilius, and Seneca. Caligula has even denied him mediocrity. Horace censures the coarse humour of Plautus; and Horace in his turn has been blamed for the free use he made of the Greek minor poets. The majority of the critics regard Pliny's 'Natural History' only as a heap of fable. Pliny cannot bear with Diodorus and Vopiscus, and in one comprehensive criticism treats all the historians as narrators of fables. Dionysius of Halicarnassus severely criticises the style of Xenophon. Some have said of Cicero that he was cold in his extemporaneous effusions, artificial in his exordiums, trifling in his strained raillery, and tiresome in his digressions. Quintilian does not spare Seneca; and Demosthenes has, according to Hermippus, more of art than of nature. To Demades his orations appear too much laboured; others have thought him too

dry; and, if we may trust Æschines, his language is by no means pure."

Leaving the ancients, we may cull some farther curiosities from a later literature. Robert Greene, one of the early English dramatists, wrote of Shakspeare, "Here is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the rest of you, and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only shake-scene in the country." Thomas Rymer says of the scene between Brutus and Cassius in Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar," "They are put there to play the bully and the buffoon, to show their activity of face and muscles. They are to play a prize, a trial of skill and hugging and swaggering, like two drunken Hectors for a twopenny reckoning." Dennis says of Shakespeare that "his lines are utterly void of celestial fire;" and even Shaftesbury speaks of his "rude unpolished style and antiquated phrase and wit." All this is, perhaps, not surprising when it is remembered that so great a scholar as Voltaire criticised Shakespeare with an almost savage contempt. Waller wrote of "Paradise Lost," "The blind old schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published

a tedious poem on the fall of man; if its length be not considered a merit, it hath no other." William Winstanley, the author of "Lives of the Most Famous English Poets," says, too, of John Milton, that "his fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff, and his memory will always stink, which might have ever lived in honourable repute, had he not been a notorious traitor, and most impiously and villanously bely'd that blessed martyr king, Charles the First." A remarkable instance of want of appreciation of some of Milton's most exquisite work is found in Dr. Johnson's criticism on "Lycidas," wherein he says, "The diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing. . . In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can supply are long ago exhausted, and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind. Surely no man could have fancied that he read 'Lycidas' with pleasure had he not known the author." Cowper very truly says of this, that "in his review of Lycidas' Johnson has stamped some of the finest feathers of the Muse's wing under