A little later, after a few days or months, how much is
really left of it? A cluster of impressions, some clear points
emerging from a mist of uncertainty, this is all we can hope to
possess, generally speaking, in the name of a book. The experience of
reading it has left something behind, and these relics we call by the
book's name; but how can they be considered to give us the material
for judging and appraising the book? Nobody would venture to criticize
a building, a statue, a picture, with nothing before him but the
memory of a single glimpse caught in passing; yet the critic of
literature, on the whole, has to found his opinion upon little more.
Sometimes it is possible to return to the book and renew the
impression; to a few books we may come back again and again, till they
do in the end become familiar sights. But of the hundreds and hundreds
of books that a critic would wish to range in his memory, in order to
scrutinize and compare them reflectively, how many can he expect to
bring into a state of reasonable stability? Few indeed, at the best;
as for the others, he must be content with the shapeless, incoherent
visions that respond when the recollection of them is invoked.
It is scarcely to be wondered at if criticism is not very precise, not
very exact in the use of its terms, when it has to work at such a
disadvantage. Since we can never speak of a book with our eye on the
object, never handle a book--the real book, which is to the volume as
the symphony to the score--our phrases find nothing to check them,
immediately and unmistakably, while they are formed.
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