Specimens of the British critics Author:John Wilson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: under the most rigorous discipline in the school of the musicians." What is the motive, the reason of the counsel ? The twofold monitory and hortatory counsel, p... more »roceeds upon a twofold contemplation ; upon the view of the beginning, and upon that of the end. A taste of criticism—the possession of half a dozen rules— the sitting, for a few furtive and perilous instants, upon that august seat of high judgment, before which the great wits of all ages and nations come to receive their award—infatuates the youthful untempered brain with dazzling, bewildering, and blinding self-opinion. Enough to mislead is easily learned. Right dictates of clearest minds—oracles of the old wisdom— crudely misunderstood. Rules of general enunciation made false in the applying, by the inability of perceiving in the instance the differencing conditions which qualify the rule, or suspend it. So, on the other hand, canons of a narrower scope, stretched beyond their true intent. And last, and worst of all, in the ignorance and in the disdain of statutes, and sanctions, and preceding authoritative judgments—the humours and fancies, the likings and the mislikings, the incapable comprehension and the precipitate misapprehensions of an untrained, uninstructed, inexperienced, self-unknowing spirit, howsoever of Nature gifted or ungifted, to be taken for the standard of the worth which the generations of mankind have approved, or which has newly risen up to enlighten the generations of mankind ! Abstain, then, from judging, O Critic that wilt be ! Humble thine understanding in reverence ! Open thy soul to beliefs ! Yield up thy heart, dissolving and overcome, to love ! Cultivate self-suspicion ! and learn ! learn ! learn ! The bountiful years that lift up the oak to maturity, shall rear, and strengthen, and r...« less