Read it through once

Criticism, in the sense in which I use the word, is a form of memory. It is not a memory of facts merely; it is a memory of the feelings appropriate to the facts. A critic must be able to recall the emotions, the associations, the intellectual attitude that belonged to a work in its time. Thus only can he judge what place it has in the development of literature. Criticism is not an act of mere preference; it is the application of a sense of proportion.