instinct can be brought to such a pitch of perfection that it will
make its appearance wherever it is not required. Nobody with the
true historical sense ever dreams of blaming Nero, or scolding
Tiberius, or censuring Caesar Borgia. These personages have become
like the puppets of a play. They may fill us with terror, or
horror, or wonder, but they do not harm us. They are not in
immediate relation to us. We have nothing to fear from them. They
have passed into the sphere of art and science, and neither art nor
science knows anything of moral approval or disapproval. And so it
may be some day with Charles Lamb's friend. At present I feel that
he is just a little too modern to be treated in that fine spirit of
disinterested curiosity to which we owe so many charming studies of
the great criminals of the Italian Renaissance from the pens of Mr.
John Addington Symonds, Miss A. Mary F. Robinson, Miss Vernon Lee,
and other distinguished writers. However, Art has not forgotten
him. He is the hero of Dickens's Hunted Down, the Varney of
Bulwer's Lucretia; and it is gratifying to note that fiction has
paid some homage to one who was so powerful with 'pen, pencil and
poison.' To be suggestive for fiction is to be of more importance
than a fact.



THE CRITIC AS ARTIST: WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE IMPORTANCE OF
DOING NOTHING



A DIALOGUE. Part I. Persons: Gilbert and Ernest. Scene: the
library of a house in Piccadilly, overlooking the Green Park.