notable collections of the kind in English, CCXC, a most curious and pretty certainly unconscious echo of Aristotle,[514] is our best gleaning; while the 52d “Commonplace,” on Byron and Wordsworth, and the 12th and 11th “Trifles light as air,” on Fielding and on “modern” critics, play the same part there. [Sidenote: The Spirit of the Age.] On the other hand, _The Spirit of the Age_ (with the exception of some political and philosophical matter) is wholly literary; and may rank with the three sets of _Lectures_ and the _Characters of Shakespeare_ as the main storehouse of Hazlitt’s criticism. Here, too, there is much repetition, and here, at the end of the Scott article, is the almost insane outburst more than once referred to. But the bulk of the book is at Hazlitt’s very best pitch of appreciative grasp. If he is anywhere out of focus, it is in reference to Godwin’s novels—the setting of which in any kind of comparison with Scott’s (though Hazlitt was critic enough from the first to see that Godwin could by no possibility be the “Author of _Waverley_”) is a remarkable instance of the disadvantage of the contemporary, and, to some extent, the sympathiser. But the book certainly goes far to bear out the magnificent eulogy of Hazlitt for which Thackeray[515] took it as text, quite early in his career. [Sidenote: Sketches and Essays.] The _Sketches and Essays_ are again very rich, where they are rich; and advertise the absence of riches most frankly where they are not. “On Reading New Books”; not a little of “Merry England”; the whole of “On Taste” and “Why the Heroes of Romances are insipid” speak for themselves, and do not bewray their claim. “Taste,” especially, contains[516] one of Hazlitt’s own titles to critical supremacy in his fixing on Perdita’s primrose description as itself supreme, when “the scale of fancy, passion, and observation of nature is raised” high enough. [Sidenote: Winterslow.] And as for _Winterslow_, its first and its last papers are “things enskied” in criticism, for the one is “My First Acquaintance with Poets,” and the last “The Farewell to Essay Writing.” [Sidenote: _Hazlitt’s critical virtue,_] These two last, the sentence on “That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty”; and (say) the paper referred to a little above on “Poetical Versatility,” will serve as texts for some more general remarks on Hazlitt’s critical character. We have said at the beginning of this notice everything that need be said by way of deduction or allowance; we have only hinted at the clear critical “balance to credit” which remains; and these essays and passages will help to bring this out.