It is addressing a young, stern, vigorous generation, which does not understand it.

The train of the eighteenth century is still dragging in the nineteenth; but we, we young men who have seen Bonaparte, are not the ones who will carry it.
We are approaching, then, the moment when we shall see the new criticism prevail, firmly established upon a broad and deep foundation.

People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments.
The sound judgment of all men will be ashamed of the criticism which broke Pierre Corneille on the wheel, gagged Jean Racine, and which ridiculously rehabilitated John Milton only by virtue of the epic code of Pere le Bossu.

People will consent to place themselves at the author's standpoint, to view the subject with his eyes, in order to judge a work intelligently.

They will lay aside--and it is M.de Chateaubriand who speaks--"the paltry criticism of defects for the noble and fruitful criticism of beauties." It is time that all acute minds should grasp the thread that frequently connects what we, following our special whim, call "defects" with what we call "beauty." Defects--at all events those which we call by that name--are often the inborn, necessary, inevitable conditions of good qualities.
Scit genius, natale comes qul temperat astrum.
Who ever saw a medal without its reverse?
a talent that had not some shadow with its brilliancy, some smoke with its flame?
Such a blemish can be only the inseparable consequence of such beauty.