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By Root 16097 0

is said to judge ­of a peace or war, etc., as men judge of a picture or a statue, and the words which succeed are intended to explain how men judge of a picture or a statue: — these words should, therefore, run thus: — “by effect produced on their imaginations.” “Produced,” moreover, is neither so exact nor so “English” as “wrought.” In saying that Southey judges of a political party, etc., as men judge of a picture, etc., Southey is quite excluded from the category of “men.” “Other men,” was no doubt originally written, but “other” erased, on account of the “other men” occurring in the sentence below.

Coming to this last, we find that “a chain of associations” is not properly paralleled by “ a chain of reasoning.” We must say either “a chain of association,” to meet the “reasoning “ or “a chain of reasons,” to meet the associations.” The repetition of “what” is awkward and unpleasant. The entire paragraph should be thus remodelled:

With Southey, governing is a fine art. Of a theory or a public measure — of a creed, a political party, a peace or a war — he judges by the imaginative effect; as only such things as pictures or statues are judged of by other men. What to them a chain of reasoning is, to him is a chain of association; and, as to his opinions, they are nothing but his tastes.

The blemishes in the paragraph about Byron are more negative than those in the paragraph about Southey. The first sentence need vivacity. The adjective “opposite” is superfluous: — so is the particle “there.” The second and third sentences are, properly, one. “Some” would fully supply the place of “something of.” The whole phrase “which he possessed over others,” is supererogatory. “Was sprung,” in place of “sprang,” is altogether unjustifiable. The triple repetition of “and,” in the fourth sentence, is awkward. “Notorious crimes and follies,” would express all that is implied in “crimes and follies which had attained a scandalous publicity.” The fifth sentence might be well curtailed; and as it stands, has an unintentional and unpleasant sneer. “Intellect” would do as well as “intellectual powers;” and this (the sixth) sentence might otherwise be shortened advantageously. The whole paragraph, in my opinion, would be better thus expressed: ­

In Lord Byron’s rank, understanding, character — even in his person — we find a strange union of extremes. Whatever men covet and admire, became his by right of birth; yet debasement and misery were mingled with each of his eminent advantages. He sprang from a house, ancient it is true, and noble, but degraded and impoverished by a series of notorious crimes. But for merciful judges, the pauper kinsman whom he succeeded would have been hanged. The young peer had an intellect great, perhaps, yet partially unsound. His heart was generous, but his temper wayward; and while statuaries copied his head, beggars mimicked the deformity of his foot.

In these remarks, my object is not so much to point out inaccuracies in the most accurate stylist of his age, as to hint that our critics might surpass him on his own ground, and yet leave themselves something to learn in the moralities of manner.

Nothing can be plainer than that our position, as a literary colony of Great Britain, leads us into wronging, indirectly, our own authors by exaggerating the merits of those across the water. Our most reliable critics extol — and extol without discrimination — such English compositions as, if written in America, would be either passed over without notice or unscrupulously condemned. Mr. Whipple, for example, whom I have mentioned in this connexion with Mr. Jones, is decidedly one of our most “reliable” critics. His honest I dispute as little as I doubt his courage or his talents — but her is an instance of the want of common discrimination into which he is occasionally hurried, by undue reverence for British intellect and British opinion. In a review of “The Drama of Exile and other Poems,” by Miss Barrett, (now Mrs. Browning,) he speaks of the following passage as “in every respect faultless — sublime:”

Hear the steep