Had it not been for the astonishing accuracy with which, as has been said, Vida actually anticipated the dominant critical taste of something like three hundred years, and the creative taste of about half that period, not many more lines than we [Sidenote: _Essential poverty of its theory._] have given pages might have been devoted to him. That the poem as a composition is a sufficiently elegant piece of patchwork may of course be freely granted; and it deserves perhaps less grudging praise for the extreme fidelity and ingenuity with which it illustrates its own doctrines. But those doctrines themselves are, whether we look at them in gross or in detail, some of the poorest and most beggarly things to be found in the whole range of criticism. That the prescriptions are practically limited to those necessary for turning out the epic or “heroic” poem does not so much matter—though it is not entirely without significance. Vida’s idea of poetry is simply and literally shoddy.[40] That fabric—the fact is perhaps not invariably known to those who use the word—differs from others, not as pinchbeck differs from gold, or cotton from silk, but in being exclusively composed of already manufactured and worn textures which are torn up and passed afresh through mill and loom. And this is the process—and practically the sole process—which Vida enjoins on the poet, going so far as to pronounce anathema on any one who dares to pursue any other. ----- Footnote 40: Some would plead for “mosaic.” But the mosaic worker works his tiny cubes _himself_—he does not steal them ready made and arranged. -----