for the critic requires only _one_ of the two great talents, which in the poet, ought to exist together, but which may yet exist separately. In the poet, there must be, in the first place, an inventive fancy to bring together thoughts and images which have never been combined before; and with this inventive fancy, a discriminating judgment, which is to measure, by the standard of nature, the products of invention; and to retain them, only if they appear such, as though perhaps never before combined, might yet, in conformity with the natural laws of thought, have occurred to a mind, in the circumstances represented, as truly, as the other thoughts or images, which the works of other poets have rendered more familiar. This latter talent,--the judgment which determines the intrinsic beauty and fidelity to general nature,--is all which is absolutely requisite to the _critic_, who is not, therefore, under the necessity of being himself “the great sublime” which he draws. Yet, though all the elements of excellence in the artist are not absolutely requisite for the judgment of the sage and discriminating admirer of the noble works which that excellence may have produced, some of these elements unquestionably are requisite,--elements, for which the critic may search in vain in all the rules of rhetoricians, and even in the perusal of all the masterpieces of ancient and modern times, unless, to an acquaintance with these, he add an accurate acquaintance with that _intellectual and moral nature of man_, the beautiful conformity to which was the essential charm of all the pathos, and all the eloquence, which he has admired.