Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/87

Rh I may also observe that no great artist as a great artist can resent the most microscopic criticism of his work, however much he may contemn the microscopic critics, who give themselves altogether to the examination of minute points because they are incapable of large views of the grandeur of the whole. No doubt that laziest and haziest of human animals, the "general reader,"—so termed we may suppose because he studies nothing in particular and rests content with the vaguest views of things in general,—is simply wearied and disgusted by any detailed analysis; but

and the said "general reader" has, in truth, no definite perception or conception either of the atoms or the sphere. The genuine artist welcomes from others that scrupulous criticism both of the parts and the whole which is but the exterior continuation of his own interior self-criticism; and no multiplicity of minutest details can be wearisome or insignificant in any realm of art to such as are native to that realm, whether active producers or only passive inheritors of its priceless treasures.

And finally I urge for myself in this case the plea whose efficacy I willingly allow when urged by or for any other in like case, the plea indicated by Mr. Swinburne in his valuable "Notes on the Text of Shelley":—"Were it for me to pass sentence, I would say of the very rashest of possible commentators that his errors, though they were many, should be forgiven, if he loved much." Whatever my rashness and errors, certainly I love and have loved much, from the earliest study of my youth