Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To
follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those
elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which,
superficially and at first thought, one is insensitive, is to dispense
one's self from a great deal of particularly disagreeable industry, but
the result is only transitorily agreeable to the sincere intelligence.
It is in criticism, I think, though no doubt in criticism alone,
preferable to lose one's self in a maze of perplexity--distressing as
this is to the critic who appreciates the indispensability of
clairvoyance in criticism--rather than to reach swiftly and simply a
conclusion which candor would have foreseen as the inevitable and
unjudicial result of following one's own likes and whims, and one's
contentment with which must be alloyed with a haunting sense of
insecurity. In criticism it is perhaps better to keep balancing
counter-considerations than to determine brutally by excluding a whole
set of them because of the difficulty of assigning them their true
weight.
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