We do not and cannot all have the same measure of appreciation of Emerson, or Wordsworth, or Ruskin, or Whitman, or Browning. To enjoy these men “sincerely and without weariness is a quality and almost a peculiarity of certain minds, which may serve to define them.” Sainte-Beuve himself was chiefly interested in an author’s character,--“in what was most individual in his personality.” He had no arbitrary rules, touchstones, or systems, but pressed each new work gently, almost caressingly, till it gave up its characteristic quality and flavor. But the objective consideration of the merits of a man’s work does not and cannot preclude or measure the subjective attraction or repulsion or indifference which we do or do not feel toward that work. Something deeper and more potent than reason is at work here. Back of the most impartial literary judgment lies the fact that the critic is a person; that he is of a certain race, family, temperament, environment; that he is naturally cold or sympathetic, liberal or reactionary, tolerant or intolerant, and therefore has his individual likes and dislikes; that certain types attract him more than others; that, of two poets of equal power, the voice of one moves him more than that of the other. Something as subtle and vital and hard to analyze as the flavor of a fruit, and analogous to it, makes him prefer this poet to that. One may see clearly the superiority of Milton over Wordsworth, and yet cleave to the latter. How beautiful is “Lycidas,” yet it left Dr. Johnson cold and critical. There is much more of a cry--a real cry of the heart--in Arnold’s “Thyrsis.” One feels that the passion is real in one, and assumed in the other. Is “Lycidas” therefore less a creative work? The affirmative side of the question is not without support. Johnson undervalued some of Gray’s best work; the touch of sympathy was lacking. This touch of sympathy does not wait upon the critical judgment, but often underruns and outruns it. It is said that Miss Martineau found “Tom Jones” dull reading, that Charlotte Brontë cared not for Jane Austen, and that Thackeray placed Cooper above Scott,--all, no doubt, from a lack of the quickening touch of sympathy. As a rule, we have more sympathy with the authors of our own country than with those of another. Few Englishmen can do justice to Victor Hugo, and even to some Frenchmen he is a “gigantic blusterer.” It is equally hard for a Frenchman to appreciate Carlyle, and how absurd seems Voltaire’s verdict upon Shakespeare,--“a drunken savage”!