Whilst we look at
this, we wonder how any book has been thought worthy to be preserved.
There is somewhat in all life untranslatable into language. He who
keeps his eye on that will write better than others, and think less
of his writing, and of all writing. Every thought has a certain
imprisoning as well as uplifting quality, and, in proportion to its
energy on the will, refuses to become an object of intellectual
contemplation. Thus what is great usually slips through our fingers,
and it seems wonderful how a lifelike word ever comes to be written.
If our Journal share the impulses of the time, it cannot now
prescribe its own course. It cannot foretell in orderly propositions
what it shall attempt. All criticism should be poetic;
unpredictable; superseding, as every new thought does, all foregone
thoughts, and making a new light on the whole world. Its brow is not
wrinkled with circumspection, but serene, cheerful, adoring. It has
all things to say, and no less than all the world for its final
audience.
Our plan embraces much more than criticism; were it not so, our
criticism would be naught.
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