Shelley, one is left stranded, or rather floating, in the vague, denial is not easy. One can only wish oneself, as Poins wished his sister, “no worse fortune.”[531] [Sidenote: _Landor._] In the course of this History we have seen not infrequent examples of Criticism divorced from Taste—a severance to which the peculiarities of classical and neo-classical censorship lent but too much encouragement. It must be obvious that the general tendency of the criticism which we are calling Modern inclines towards the divorce of Taste from Criticism— to the admission of the monstrous regiment of mere arbitrary enjoyment and liking, not to say mere caprice. But it is curious that our first very distinguished example of this should be found in a person who, both by practice and in theory, had very distinct “classical” tendencies—who, in fact, with the possible exception of Mr Arnold, was the most classical of at least the English writers of the nineteenth century. [Sidenote: _His lack of judicial quality._] Landor’s[532] critical shortcomings, however, are the obvious and practically inevitable result of certain well-known peculiarities of temperament, moral rather than intellectual, and principles of life rather than of literature. With him, as with King Lear (whom in more ways and points than one he resembled, though, luckily, with the tragedy infinitely softened and almost smoothed away), the dominant is _impotentia_—the increasing and at last absolute incapacity of the intellect and will to govern the emotions and impulses. Now, as criticism is itself an endless process of correcting impressions—or at least of checking and auditing them till we are sure that they are genuine, co-ordinated, and (with the real if not the apparent consistency) consistent—a man who suffers from this _impotentia_ simply cannot be a real critic, though he may occasionally make observations critically sound. [Sidenote: _In regular Criticism._]