Criticism without accurate science of the thing criticised can
indeed have no other value than may belong to the genuine record of a
spontaneous impression; but it is not less certain that criticism which
busies itself only with the outer husk or technical shell of a great
artist's work, taking no account of the spirit or the thought which
informs it, cannot have even so much value as this. Without study of his
forms of metre or his scheme of colours we shall certainly fail to
appreciate or even to apprehend the gist or the worth of a painter's or a
poet's design; but to note down the number of special words and cast up
the sum of superfluous syllables used once or twice or twenty times in
the structure of a single poem will help us exactly as much as a naked
catalogue of the colours employed in a particular picture. A tabulated
statement or summary of the precise number of blue or green, red or white
draperies to be found in a precise number of paintings by the same hand
will not of itself afford much enlightenment to any but the youngest of
possible students; nor will a mere list of double or single, masculine or
feminine terminations discoverable in a given amount of verse from the
same quarter prove of much use or benefit to an adult reader of common
intelligence.
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