Many forms of error, perhaps
most, are better left alone to die of their own weakness, for the
galvanic battery of criticism only helps to perpetuate their ghastly
life. The highest work of the critic, however, must surely be to direct
attention to the true, in whatever form it may have found utterance. But
on this let us hear Mr. Lynch himself in the last of these four lectures
which were delivered by him at the Royal Institution, Manchester, and
are now before us in the form of a book:--
"The kritikos, the discerner, if he is ever saying to us, This is not
gold; and never, This is; is either very humbly useful, or very
perverse, or very unfortunate. This is not gold, he says. Thank you, we
reply, we perceived as much. And this is not, he adds. True, we answer,
but we see gold grains glittering out of its rude, dark mass. Well, at
least, this is not, he proceeds. Perverse man! we retort, are you
seeking what is not gold? We are inquiring for what is, and unfortunate
indeed are we if, born into a world of Nature, and of Spirit once so
rich, we are born but to find that it has spent or has lost all its
wealth. Unhappy man would he be, who, walking his garden, should scent
only the earthy savour of leaves dead or dying, never perceiving, and
that afar off, the heavenly odour of roses fresh to-day from the Maker's
hands.
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