Critics, such as Hazlitt, _too_ well qualified to speak of the errors of the genius which they criticised, were not content to palliate those by circumstances, but defended them on the dangerous principle of necessary connection. The powers of high intellect were magnified--its errors excused--and its solemn duties and responsibilities passed over in silence. The text, "Where much is given, much also shall be required," was seldom quoted. Genius was regarded as a chartered libertine--not as a child of divine law--guided, indeed, rather by the spirit than the letter, but still in accordance with law, as well as with liberty--as a capricious comet, not a planet, brighter and swifter than its fellows. Now, we think all this is changing, and that the true judges and friends of the poet, while admitting his fallibility, condemning his faults, and forewarning him of his dangers, are ever ready to contend that his gift is moral, that his power is conferred for holy purposes, that he is a missionary of God, in a lower yet lofty sense--and that if he desecrate his powers, he is a traitor to their original purposes, and shall share in the condemnation of that servant who "was beaten with many stripes." But must not the long--the written--the sung, the enacted prevalence of a contrary opinion--of a false and low idea of genius, as a mere minister of enjoyment, or child of impulse, irresponsible as the wind, have tended to perpetuate the evils it extenuated, and to render the gifted an easier prey to the temptations by which they were begirt, and infinitely less sensible to the mischiefs which their careless or vicious neglect of their high stewardship was certain to produce? Must THEY bear the whole blame? Must not a large portion of it accrue to the age in which they lived, and to that public opinion which they breathed like an atmosphere? We attribute the higher and purer efforts which genius is _beginning_ to make, both in art and in life, to the growing prevalence of a purer opinion, and of a more severe, yet charitable criticism. The _public_, indeed, has, as we have intimated above, much to learn yet, in its treatment of its gifted children; but the wiser and better among the critics have certainly been taught a lesson by the past. Into the judgment of literary works the consideration of their moral purpose has now entered as an irresistible element. And the same measure is also fast being applied, mercifully, yet sternly, to our literary men.