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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: while ten thousand reviewers (mala murioi) are engaged in dissecting them?
Young men, like Phaedrus, are enamoured of their own literary clique and
have but a feeble sympathy with the master-minds of former ages. They
recognize 'a POETICAL necessity in the writings of their favourite author,
even when he boldly wrote off just what came in his head.' They are
beginning to think that Art is enough, just at the time when Art is about
to disappear from the world. And would not a great painter, such as
Michael Angelo, or a great poet, such as Shakespeare, returning to earth,
'courteously rebuke' us--would he not say that we are putting 'in the place
of Art the preliminaries of Art,' confusing Art the expression of mind and
truth with Art the composition of colours and forms; and perhaps he might
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