_Pulito._ “The infallible voice of the million! Phoebus! their words _are_ oracular! It has not been a fact, then, has it, since the stars first sang together, that whatever the _lions_ of the day have done, or written, these infallible judges have followed with their praise? They did not shout ‘_te deum_’ to Cowley, when that worshipper of the ‘dim obscure’ was the star of a voluptuous court, as vicious in taste as it was depraved in morals? Each spectacled ‘mother in Israel’ was not enraptured by Hervey’s magniloquent meditations among the tombs? The horrors of Walpole, and the mysteries of Radcliffe, the sorrows of Porter, with the bravery of her superhuman Wallace, and the streaming eyes of her immaculate Amanda, have not _all_ been worshipped in their day as lords of the ascendant--have not _all_ risen, and shone, and set, in the April sky of popular applause? Why, Quod, I am astonished that you should for a moment adduce the opinion of the rabble as authority.” _Nescio._ “Out, aristocrat! where else _would_ you look for natural and unbiassed feeling? I tell you, that when the voice of a people bursts forth in simultaneous applause, a work _must_ be good.” _Pulito._ “And I tell you, that if at this moment our meretricious press should bring forth the Letters of Junius, and the scribblings of Jack Downing, the people, if left to themselves, would choose the latter to reign over them, because the latter is most like themselves. Besides, upon one of these fashionable novels you do not get the free popular voice. Some giant critic, from prejudice, or false taste, sends forth his _imprimatur_, and the groundlings catch and repeat the cry,--as a mountain shakes the thunder from its cliffs, and the little bills reverberate its voice.” _Apple._ “But the people have no interest to sway their opinion.” _Pulito._ “Neither have they any judgment to guide it.” _Apple._ “To what, then, shall we resort? For criticism has always shifted with the shifting taste of the age, and it may be shown that the learned, and the polished, have fluctuated in their sentiments as much as the ignorant and the coarse. Did not the voices of the educated prefer Cowley and Dryden to Milton, until Addison took Milton on his wing, and bore him far into the heaven of fame? The critics of every age have followed the prevailing style of the writers of their time; and, indeed, they have constituted a large portion of those writers. Every thirty years has a style peculiar to itself--soft or strong, plain or mystical, brief or diffuse, moralizing or descriptive, simple or turgid; and the critics have set up no barrier, and constituted no law.”