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Nothing is less fatal to true criticism than the popular habit of blindly overvaluing the inferior work of men of genius, unless it be the habit of undervaluing them by looking at their worst instead of at their best. Great men are to be judged by their highest; and it is not of very great consequence if this highest forms a moderate part of the total product.
The schooner's yards and rigging were now black with men, clustered like bees swanning, her square sails were being close furled, her fore and aft sails set, and away she was, close hauled and dead to windward of us. "So much for undervaluing our American friends," grumbled Mr Splinter.
You know, my dear Godfrey, how unlikely it is that an American would ever care to pay you a second visit at the Hall, should he signalise his first by depreciating the character of Washington, or undervaluing the many advantages which his country really enjoys.
Incidentally, the story defends the Scotch against the English in such a pronounced way that Walpole calls it a "part novel"; and there is, moreover, a pleasant love story interwoven with the comedy and burlesque. One feels in leaving this fiction that with all allowance for his defects, there is more danger of undervaluing the author's powers and place in the modern Novel than the reverse.
Much of the noblest work in life is done by ill-dressed, awkward, ungainly persons; but that is no more reason for undervaluing good manners and what we call high-breeding, than the fact that the best part of the sturdy labor of the world is done by men with exceptionable hands is to be urged against the use of Brown Windsor as a preliminary to appearance in cultivated society.
Thus, Cleopatra, undervaluing to Caesar's agent the bijouterie which she has kept back from inventory, and which her treacherous steward had betrayed, describes them as mere trifles "Such gifts as we greet modern friends withal;" where all commentators have felt that modern must form the position, mean, slight, arid inconsiderable, though perplexed to say how it came by such a meaning.
For the present things are peaceable, and all the world is rejoiced at the departure of that good Cardinal." The Prince never committed the error of undervaluing the talents of his great adversary, and he felt the necessity of being on the alert in the present emergency.
I am not undervaluing the part, the important part, played by conservatism, the conservatism that holds on to what has been gained if it is good, that insists on discipline and heed to the plain teaching of experience, that refuses to go into hysterics of enthusiasm over every flighty suggestion, or to follow every leader simply because he proposes something new and strange I do not mean the conservatism that refuses to try anything simply because it is new, and prefers to energetic life the stagnation that inevitably leads to decay.
And the reason why they see so little of it is because they have their understandings darkened. Walk not as those, run not with them: alas, poor souls, they have their understandings darkened, their hearts blinded, and that is the reason they have such undervaluing thoughts of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the salvation of their souls.
But the worst product of this epidemic error is, the fashion of either denying or undervaluing the evidence of a future state and the survival of individual consciousness, derived from the conscience, and the holy instinct of the whole human race.
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