It was
a Whig ministry which gave Wilson, in 1852, a pension of two hundred
pounds.
Mrs. Gordon has praised her father as "the beau-ideal of what a critic
should be, whose judgments will live as _parts_ of literature, and not
merely _talk_ about it." That these so-called judgments are worthy to
live, and will live, we fully believe; yet we could never think him a
model critic, or even a great one. Though not deficient in analytic
power, he wanted the judicial faculty. He could create, but he could not
weigh coolly and impartially what was created. His whole make forbade
it. He was impatient, passionate, reckless, furious in his likes and
dislikes. His fervid enthusiasm for one author dictated a splendid
tribute to a friend; while an irrational prejudice against another
called out a terrific diatribe against a foe. In either case, there
might be "thoughts that breathe and words that burn"; still, there was
but little of true criticism. The matchless papers on Spenser and Homer
represent one class, and the articles on Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt the
other. While the former exhibit the tender sympathy of a poet and the
enthusiasm of a scholar, the latter reveal the uncompromising partisan,
swinging the hangman's cord, and brandishing the scourge of scorpions.
Of the novelist's three kinds of criticism--"the slash, the tickle, and
the plaster"--he recognized and employed only the two extremes.
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