critics are baited with the most ensnaring devices. It is not the great writers of the world who have the largest following of sham admirers, but rather that handful of choice spirits who, we are given to understand, appeal only to a small and chosen band. Few of us find it worth our while to pretend a passionate devotion for Shakespeare, or Milton, or Dante. On the contrary, nothing is more common than to hear people complain that the "Inferno" is unpleasant, and "Paradise Lost" dreadfully long, neither of which charges is easily refutable in terms. But when we read in a high-class review that "just as Spenser is the poet's poet, so Peacock is the delight of critics and of wits;" or that "George Meredith, writing as he does for an essentially cultivated and esoteric audience, has won but a limited recognition for his brilliant group of novels;" or that "the subtle and far-reaching excellence of Ibsen's dramatic work is a quality absolutely undecipherable to the groundlings," who can resist tendering his allegiance on the spot? It is not in the heart of man to harden itself against the allurements of that magic word "esoteric," nor to be indifferent to the
