The ingenuity of critical malice would often be laughable but for the disgust, which, even in the most perverted spirits, injustice never fails to excite. A common _trick_ is that of decrying, impliedly, the higher, by insisting upon the lower, merits of an author. Macaulay, for example, deeply feeling how much critical acumen is enforced by cautious attention to the mere “rhetoric” which is its vehicle, has at length become the best of modern rhetoricians. His _brother_ reviewers—anonymous, of course, and likely to remain so forever—extol “the acumen of Carlyle, the analysis of Schlegel, _and_ the style of Macaulay.” Bancroft is a philosophical historian; but no amount of philosophy has yet taught him to despise a minute accuracy in point of fact. His _brother_ historians talk of “the grace of Prescott, the erudition of Gibbon, _and_ the pains-taking precision of Bancroft.” Tennyson, perceiving how vividly an imaginative effect is aided, now and then, by a certain quaintness judiciously introduced, brings this latter, at times, in support of his most glorious and most delicate imagination:—whereupon his _brother_ poets hasten to laud the imagination of Mr. Somebody, whom nobody imagined to have any, “_and_ the somewhat affected quaintness of Tennyson.”—Let the noblest poet add to his other excellences—if he dares—that of faultless versification and scrupulous attention to grammar. He is damned at once. His rivals have it in their power to discourse of “A. the true poet, _and_ B. the versifier and disciple of Lindley Murray.” 34. That a cause leads to an effect, is scarcely more certain than that, so far as Morals are concerned, a repetition of effect tends to the generation of cause. Herein lies the principle of what we so vaguely term “Habit.” 35. With the exception of Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall,” I have never read a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion with so much of the most delicate imagination, as the “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” of Miss Barrett. I am forced to admit, however, that the latter work _is_ a palpable imitation of the former, which it surpasses in thesis as much as it falls below it in a certain calm energy, lustrous and indomitable—such as we might imagine in a broad river of molten gold. 36. What has become of the inferior planet which Decuppis, about nine years ago, declared he saw traversing the disc of the sun? 37. “Ignorance _is_ bliss”—but, that the bliss be real, the ignorance must be so profound as not to suspect itself ignorant. With this understanding, Boileau’s line may be read thus: “Le plus fou _toujours_ est le plus satisfait,” —“_toujours_” in place of “_souvent_.” 38.