everything base and detestable in human nature; and the _Orlando_, a paradise of love, beauty, and delight. Dante, the sublime poet, but inexorable bigot, meets with little tolerance from Leigh Hunt; while Ariosto, exhaustless in his wealth, ardent and exulting--full of the same excess of life which in youth sends the blood dancing and boiling through the veins--has his warmest sympathy. This kind of criticism is but a new form of the error we have pointed out; for both poets receive his homage--the one praised in the spontaneous outpourings of his heart, the other served with the rites of devil-worship. When we talk of the great authors of one generation pressing forward to claim the sympathy of the _maturer_ genius of the next, we mean precisely what we say. We are well aware that some of the great writers we have casually mentioned have no equals in the present world; yet the present world is more mature in point of taste than their own. That is the reason why they _are_ great authors now. Some books last for a season, some for a generation, some for an age, or two, or more; always dropping off when the time they reach outstrips them. One of these lost treasures is sometimes reprinted; but if this is done in the hope of a renewed popularity, the speculation is sure to fail. Curious and studious men, it is true, are gratified by the reproduction; but the general reader would prefer a book of his own generation, using the former as materials, and separating its immortal part from its perishing body.