So to our critic knowledge and learning are of equal unimportance--nay, equally contemptible--and all that is needed to take the measure of Plato and Wordsworth is, in his own words, “the capacity for appreciation.” With this very slender outfit he sits down to the work of criticism, to enlighten the world _de omni scibili_ in literature, from the lyrics of _Sappho_, “the singer, a single petal of whose rose is more than the whole rose-garden of later women singers,” to “the statesmanlike reach and grasp” of Mr. E. Gosse’s essays. To discuss seriously the opinions or impressions of a writer of this kind would be as absurd as to attempt to fight gnats with a sword, and we shall merely content ourselves with transcribing, without comment, a few of the aphorisms with which these volumes are studded. “Criticism is the art of praise.” “Shakespeare is the greatest English poet, not because he created Hamlet and Lear, but because he could write that speech about Perdita’s flowers and Claudio’s speech on death in _Measure for Measure_.” “The perfection of prose is the essay, of poetry the lyric, and the most beautiful book is that which contains the most beautiful words.” These specimens will probably suffice. Mr. Le Gallienne is also of opinion that “culture is mainly a matter of temperament”--that “a man is born cultured,” that mere education and study are to such a one not simply superfluities, but impertinences. “What matters it,” he eloquently asks, “that one does not remember or even has never read great writers? Our one concern is to possess an organization open to great and refined impressions.” A paltry scholar, for example, may be able to construe Sappho, but it is only “an organization open to great and refined impressions” which can discern (in a crib) “the pathos of eternity in some twenty words” of “this passionate singer of Lesbos.” Plato may be studied by poor pedants, but to an organization of this kind the binding of a volume is sufficient enlightenment; “to merely hold in the hand and turn over its pages is a counsel in style,” for do not “the temperate beauty, the dry beauty beloved of Plato, find expression in the sweet and stately volume itself” [he is “reviewing” the late Mr. Pater’s lectures on Plato], “with its smooth night-blue binding, its rose-leaf yellow pages, its soft and yet grave type”? The value of Mr. Le Gallienne’s judgments, of his praise, and of his censure, which, ludicrous to relate, are quoted by some publishers as recommendations, or “opinions of the press,” may be estimated by these dicta, and by this theory of a critical education.