whether Rousseau had really so important a part in bringing the two into relation; and what, after all, is precisely meant by the 'cosmopolitan spirit.' The facts, which M. Texte has collected with great industry, may be quite correctly stated; I at least have no errors to point out; but when one gets beyond the facts, so many doubts spring up that no two people can be expected altogether to agree on the explanation. I will only say enough to suggest the nature of my chief difficulty.
First of all, M. Texte represents one general tendency of which I entirely approve. Critics, like other people nowadays, are anxious to be scientific. They wish to improve upon the old simple-minded criticism which expressed a mere individual liking or disliking. The personal element, indeed, is essential to all good criticism; to the only criticism which can really open our eyes to unrecognised genius; to such criticism, for instance, as that by which Coleridge and Lamb revived an interest in our older authors. But the individual taste now requires to be guided by a wide knowledge of the taste of other ages and countries. The critic should not accept the dogmatic utterances of academical professors
