coinage of the purest ore--and stamped with the ineffaceable impress of
genius.--_Noctes Ambrosianae_, April, 1829.


The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
EDMUND BURKE.


We must not underrate him who uses wit for subsistence, and flies from
the ingratitude of the age even to a bookseller for redress.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH.


The critical faculty is a _rara avis_; almost as rare, indeed, as the
phoenix, which appears only once in five hundred years. ARTHUR
SCHOPENHAUER.


The Supreme Critic ... is ... that Unity, that Oversoul, within which
every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other.
R. W. EMERSON.


Criticism's best spiritual work which is to keep man from a
self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarising, to lead him
towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in
itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.