V.
SAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC.
A literary critic, a genuine one, should carry in his brain an arsenal
of opposites. He should combine common sense with tact, integrity with
indulgence, breadth with keenness, vigor with delicacy, largeness with
subtlety, knowledge with geniality, inflexibility with sinuousness,
severity with suavity; and, that all these counter qualities be
effective, he will need constant culture and vigilance, besides the
union of reason with warmth, of enthusiasm with self-control, of wit
with philosophy,--but hold: at this rate, in order to fit out the
critic, human nature will have to set apart its highest and best. Dr.
Johnson declared, the poet ought to know everything and to have seen
everything, and the ancients required the like of an orator. Truly,
the supreme poet should have manifold gifts, be humanly indued as
generously and completely as is the bust of Homer, ideally shaped by
the light of the infallible artistic instinct and insight of the
Greeks. The poet, it is true, must be born a poet, and the
critic is the child of culture. But as the poet, to perfect his
birthright, has need of culture, so the man whom culture can shape and
sharpen to the good critic, must be born with many gifts, to be
susceptible of such shaping.
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