Even those other nations which directly contributed little or nothing[348] to criticism during the time, contributed, as we have seen, something also under this head by examination of their own literatures, and something more by their adoption and following of English, or of French, or (towards the end) of German also. Towards any wide comparative study of literature, indeed, this period made but a far-off approach: that could not come till later, though it is the glory of Germany, in the second division of the time, with which we shall deal presently, to have begun the attack itself, and made it something more. But the study of the individual literature at different periods has very much the same kind of widening and altering power as the study of different literatures, and this at least was vigorously pursued. For after all it is History which is at the root of the critical—as of almost every other—matter. To judge you must know,—must know not merely the so-called best that has been thought and done and written (for how are you to know the best till you know the rest?), but to know all, or something of all, that has been written, and done, and thought by the undulating and diverse animal called Man. His undulation and his diversity will play you tricks still, know you never so widely; but the margin of error will be narrower, the more widely you know. The most perfect critical work that we have—that of Aristotle and that of Longinus—is due in its goodness to the thoroughness of the writers’ knowledge of what was open to them, in its occasional badness and lack of perfection to the fact that everything was not open to them to know. “The goodness of _our_ goodness when we’re good” is due to our knowing a little more, and the more frequent badness of our badness when we are bad to our not taking the trouble to know it thoroughly. BOOK VIII THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CRITICISM “_To the young I would remark that it is always unwise to judge of anything by its defects; the first attempt ought to be to discover its excellences._”—COLERIDGE. “_Il ne savait pas de quoi étaient faites les_ limites de l’art.”— VICTOR HUGO. “_Savoir bien lire un livre en le jugeant chemin faisant, et sans cesser de le goûter, c’est presque tout l’art du critique._”— SAINTE-BEUVE. CHAPTER I. WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE: THEIR COMPANIONS AND ADVERSARIES.