Criticism, understood as the capacity of overcoming one's natural narrow-mindedness by the wideness and many-sidedness of one's sympathies, has been a distinguishing faculty of all the greatest authors of this century. It was from this point of view that Émile Montégut regarded it when he called it the youngest genius, the Cinderella among the intelligences. "Criticism," he wrote, "is the tenth Muse. It was she who was Goethe's mystic bride; it was she who made twenty poets of him. What but criticism is the basis of German literature? What are the English poets of our own day? Inspired critics. What was Italy's noble Leopardi? A fiery critic. Amongst all the modern poets only two, Byron and Lamartine, have not been critics; and for this reason these two have lacked many-sidedness and variety and have become as monotonous as they are." When criticism is taken in a wider sense, in the full meaning of the word, this last limitation falls away. For in its signification of the power of passing judgment on the existing state of things, it was an inspiring force in all the great Romantic lyric writers of the period, Byron as well as Hugo, Lamartine as well as George Sand. From the moment when their poetry ceases to exclude all important contemporary life and thought, from the moment when the Romantic lyric poets transform themselves into the organs of great ideas, criticism becomes an inspiring principle in their works also. It inspired Hugo's _Les Châtiments_; it inspired Byron's _Don Juan_. It is a finger-post on the path of the human mind. It plants hedges and lights torches along that path. It cuts and clears new tracks. For it is criticism which removes mountains--the mountains of belief in authority, of prejudice, of idealess power and dead tradition. [1] The two following sentences from _Port-Royal_ exemplify my meaning. In the first we have him calmly and frankly giving up the attempt to produce resemblance between his character portraits of the same person; in the second we see him determined to include every side of the character: "C'est le M. Saint-Cyran tout-à-fait définitif et mûr que j'envisage désormais; c'est de lui qu'est vrai ce qui va suivre; si quelque chose dans ce qui précède ne cadre plus, qu'on le rejette, comme en avançant il l'a rejeté lui-même."--"Certes on peut tailler dans M. de Saint-Cyran un calviniste, mais c'est à condition d'en retrancher mainte parte vitale." XXXII THE DRAMA: VITET, DUMAS, DE VIGNY, HUGO