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 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Biake R. Nevius
 
 CRITICISM
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 BY 
 
 W. C. BROWNELL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1914
 
 Copyright, 1914, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published September, 1914
 
 SS\<L 
 
 TO BRANDER MATTHEWS
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 CRITICISM itself is much criti- 
 cized, — which logically establishes 
 its title. No form of mental activity is 
 commoner, and, where the practice of 
 anything is all but universal, protest 
 against it is as idle as apology for it 
 should be superfluous. The essentially 
 critical character of formularies alleging 
 the inferiority to books of the books 
 about books that Lamb preferred, find- 
 ing the genesis of criticism in creative 
 failure, and so on, should of itself dem- 
 onstrate that whatever objection may 
 be made to it in practice there can be 
 
 none in theory. In which case the only 
 
 I
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 sensible view is that its practice should 
 be perfected rather than abandoned. 
 However, it is probably only in — may 
 one say? — 'uncritical circles,' notori- 
 ously as skeptical about logic as about 
 criticism, that it encounters this fun- 
 damental , censure. * Nobody here/ 
 Lord Morley remarked, addressing the 
 English Association, 'will undervalue 
 criticism or fall into the gross blunder 
 of regarding it as a mere parasite of 
 creative work.' And, indeed, it would 
 be slighting just proportion and intel- 
 lectual decorum to lay any particular 
 stress on the aspersions of the sprightly 
 sciolists of the studios, such as, for ex- 
 ample, the late Mr. Whistler, and of 
 brilliant literary adventurers, such as, 
 for another instance, the late Lord 
 Beaconsfield. 
 
 As a matter of fact these two rather 
 celebrated disparagers of criticism were 
 greatly indebted to the critical faculty.
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 very marked in each of them. It is 
 now becoming quite generally appreci- 
 ated, I imagine, — thanks to criticism, 
 — that Degas's admonition to Whis- 
 tler about his conduct cheapening his 
 talent, which every one will remem- 
 ber, embodied a slight misconception. 
 Whistler's achievements in painting, 
 however incontestable their merits, 
 would certainly have enjoyed less of 
 the vogue he so greatly prized had his 
 prescription that work should be 're- 
 ceived in silence' been followed in his 
 own case by himself. And it was cer- 
 tainly the critical rather than the cre- 
 ative element in Disraeli's more serious 
 substance that gave it the interest it 
 had for his contemporaries, and has 
 now altogether lost. 
 
 More worth while recalling than 
 Disraeli's inconsistency, however, is the 
 fact that in plagiarizing he distorted 
 Coleridge's remark, substituting *crit- 
 
 3
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 ics* for * reviewers' as those who had 
 failed in creative fields. The substitu- 
 tion is venial in so far as in the En- 
 gland of that day the critics were the 
 reviewers. But this is what is espe- 
 cially noteworthy in considering the 
 whole subject : namely, that in England, 
 as with ourselves, the art of criticism is 
 so largely the business of reviewing as 
 to make the two, in popular estimation 
 at least, interconvertible terms. They 
 order the matter differently In France. 
 Every one must have been struck at 
 first by the comparative slightness of 
 the reviewing in French journalism. 
 One's impression at first is that they 
 take the business much less seriously 
 than one would expect in a country 
 with such an active interest in art and 
 letters. The papers, even the reviews, 
 concern themselves with the current 
 product chiefly in the * notice' or the 
 compte renduy which aims merely to 
 
 4
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 inform the reader as to the contents of 
 the book or the contributions to the 
 exposition, whatever it may be, with 
 but a meagre addition of comment 
 either courteous or curt. The current 
 art criticism even of Gautier, even of 
 Diderot for that matter, is largely de- 
 scriptive. In the literary revues what 
 we should call the reviewing is apt to 
 be consigned to a few back pages of 
 running chronique, or a supplementary 
 leaflet. 
 
 Of course one explanation Is that the 
 French public reads and sees for itself 
 too generally to need or savor extensive 
 treatment of the essentially undiffer- 
 entiated. The practice of reviewing 
 scrupulously all the output of the novel 
 factories, exemplified by such period- 
 icals as even the admirable Jthenauniy 
 would seem singular to it. But with 
 us, even when the literature reviewed 
 is eminent and serious, it is estimated, 
 
 S
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 when it is reviewed with competence, 
 by the anonymous expert, who con- 
 fines himself to the matter in hand and 
 dehvers a kind of bench decision in a 
 circumscribed case. And in France this 
 is left to subsequent books or more 
 general articles, with the result of re- 
 leasing the critic for more personal 
 work of larger scope. Hence, there are 
 a score of French critics of personal 
 quality for one English or American. 
 Even current criticism becomes a prov- 
 ince of literature instead of being a 
 department of routine. Our own cur- 
 rent criticism, anonymous or other, 
 is, I need not say, largely of this rou- 
 tine character, when it has character, 
 varied by the specific expert decision 
 in a very few quarters, and only occa- 
 sionally by a magazine article de fond 
 of a real synthetic value. This last 
 I should myself like to see the Acad- 
 emy, whose function must be mainly
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 critical, encourage by every means open 
 to it, by way of giving more standing 
 to our criticism, which is what I think 
 it needs first of all. 
 
 For the antipathy to criticism I im- 
 agine springs largely from confound- 
 ing it with the reviewing — which I 
 do not desire to depreciate, but to 
 distinguish from criticism of a more 
 personal order and a more permanent 
 appeal. The tradition of English re- 
 viewing is impressive, and it is natural 
 that Coleridge should have spoken of 
 reviewers as a class, and that Mr. 
 Birrell should have them exclusively 
 in mind in defining the traits of the 
 ideal critic. And we ourselves are not 
 without journals which review with 
 obvious resources of scholarship and 
 skill, and deliver judgments with the 
 tone, if not always with the effect, of 
 finality. But of course, taking the 
 country as a whole, reviewing is the 
 
 7
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 least serious concern of the journalism 
 that seems to take so many things 
 lightly. And it is this reviewing that 
 I fancy the authors and artists have in 
 mind when they disparage criticism. 
 They disparage it in the main, how- 
 ever, as insufficiently expert, but though 
 I dare say this is often just, the objec- 
 tion to it which is apparently not con- 
 sidered, but which I should think even 
 more considerable, is its tendency to 
 monopolize the critical field and estab- 
 lish this very ideal of specific expert- 
 ness, which its practice so frequently 
 fails to realize, as the ideal of criticism 
 in general. This involves, I think, a 
 restricted view of the true critic's field, 
 and an erroneous view of his function. 
 Virtually it confines his own field to 
 that of the practice he criticizes; and 
 his function to that of estimating any 
 practice with reference to its technical 
 
 standards. In a word, expert criticism 
 
 8
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 is necessarily technical criticism, and, 
 not illogically, those whose ideal it is 
 insist that the practitioner himself is 
 the only proper critic of his order of 
 practice. 
 
 This was eminently the view of the 
 late Russell Sturgis, who had an inex- 
 haustible interest in technic of all kinds 
 and maintained stoutly that only art- 
 ists should write about art. And 
 though his own practice negatived his 
 principle so far as painting and sculp- 
 ture are concerned, that was perhaps 
 because the painters and sculptors were 
 themselves so remiss in lending a hand 
 to the work he deemed it important to 
 have done. They were surely excus- 
 able, in many cases, since they could 
 allege preoccupation with what they 
 could do even better, in proportion as 
 they were either satisfactorily good at 
 it or successful with it. Sturgis's the- 
 ory was that art should be interpreted 
 
 9
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 from the artist's point of view, assum- 
 ing of course the existence of such a 
 point of view. As a matter of fact 
 there is none, and when it is sought 
 what is found is either an artist's point 
 of view, which is personal and not pro- 
 fessional, or else it is that of every one 
 else sufficiently educated in the results 
 which artists could hardly have pro- 
 duced for centuries without, sooner or 
 later, at least betraying what it is their 
 definite aim distinctly to express. The 
 esoteric in their work is a matter, not 
 of art, — the universal language in 
 which they communicate, — but of sci- 
 ence; it does not reside in the point of 
 view, but in the process. 
 
 All artistic accomplishment divides 
 itself naturally, easily, and satisfacto- 
 rily, however loosely, into the two cate- 
 gories, moral and material. The two 
 certainly overlap, and this is particu- 
 larly true of the plastic arts, whose 
 
 lO
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 peculiarity — or whose distinction, if 
 you choose — is to appeal to the senses 
 as well as to the mind. A certain tech- 
 nic therefore — that is to say, the sci- 
 ence of their material side — is always 
 to be borne in mind. But a far less 
 elaborate acquaintance with this than 
 is vital to the practitioner is ample for 
 the critic, w^ho may in fact easily have 
 too much of it if he have any inclina- 
 tion to exploit rather than to subor- 
 dinate it. He may quite conceivably 
 profit by Arnold's caution: 'To handle 
 these matters properly, there is needed 
 a poise so perfect that the least over- 
 weight in any direction tends to destroy 
 the balance . . . even erudition may 
 destroy it. Little as I know therefore, 
 I am always apprehensive, in dealing 
 with poetry, lest even that little should 
 [quoting a remark by the Duke of 
 Wellington] ** prove too much for my 
 
 abilities."' 
 
 II
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 The artist who exacts more technical 
 expertness from the critic than he finds 
 is frequently looking in criticism for 
 what it is the province of the studio to 
 provide; he requires of it the educa- 
 tional character proper to the class- 
 room, or the qualifications pertinent 
 to the hanging committee. Now, even 
 confined within its proper limits, this 
 esoteric criticism suffers from its in- 
 herent concentration on technic. Ar- 
 tistic innovation meets nowhere with 
 such illiberal hostility as it encounters 
 in its own hierarchy, and less on tem- 
 peramental than on technical grounds. 
 On the other hand, a painter like Bou- 
 guereau may systematically invert the 
 true relations of conception and execu- 
 tion, employing the most insipid con- 
 ventionalities to express his exquisite 
 drawing, and remain for a generation 
 the head of the professional corner in 
 a school edifice where the critical fac- 
 
 12
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 ulty seems sometimes paralyzed by the 
 technical criterion. And of course in 
 technical circles such a criterion tends 
 to establish itself. Millet, who refused 
 to write about a fellow painter's work 
 for the precise reason that he was a 
 painter himself and therefore partial to 
 his own different way of handling the 
 subject, was a practitioner of excep- 
 tional breadth of view, and would per- 
 haps have agreed with Aristotle, who, 
 as Montaigne says, 'will still have a 
 hand in everything,' and who asserts 
 that the proper judge of the tiller is 
 not the carpenter but the helmsman. 
 Indeed, 'The wearer knows where the 
 shoe pinches* is as sound a maxim as 
 *Ne sutor ultra crepidam'; and the au- 
 thority of the latter itself may be in- 
 voked in favor of leaving criticism to 
 critics. The classics of aesthetic criti- 
 cism constitute an impressive body of 
 literature, which has been of immense 
 
 13
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 interpretative service to art, and to 
 which the only practising contributor of 
 signal importance, it is worth bearing in 
 mind, was himself a litterateur — even a 
 novelist and a poet. Nor does it seem 
 singular that, as a rule and in propor- 
 tion to his seriousness, the practitioner 
 should be engrossed by practice. 
 
 It is true that we have in America — 
 possibly in virtue of our inevitable ec- 
 lecticism — a considerable number of 
 practising artists who also write distin- 
 guished criticism. But to ascribe its 
 excellence to their technical expertness, 
 rather than to their critical faculty and 
 literary ability, would really be doing 
 an injustice to the felicity with which 
 they subordinate in their criticism all 
 technical parade beyond that which is 
 certainly too elementary to be consid- 
 ered esoteric. Certainly some of them 
 would be indisposed to measure work by 
 their own practice, and in that case what 
 
 H
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 critical title does this practice in itself 
 confer? As a rule indeed, I think, they 
 rather help than hinder the contention 
 that criticism is a special province of 
 literature with, in fact, a technic of its 
 own in which they show real expert- 
 ness, instead of a literary adjunct of 
 the special art with which it is vari- 
 ously called upon to concern itself. 
 And in this special province, material 
 data are far less considerable than 
 moral — with which latter, accordingly, 
 it is the special function of criticism to 
 deal. Every one is familiar with plastic 
 works of a perfection that all the tech- 
 nical talk in the world would not ex- 
 plain, as no amount of technical ex- 
 pertness could compass it. However 
 young the artist might have begun to 
 draw, or model, or design, whatever 
 masters he might have had, however 
 long he might have practised his art, 
 whatever his skill, native or acquired, 
 
 IS
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 whatever his professional expertness, in 
 a word, no artist could have achieved 
 the particular result in question without 
 those qualities which have controlled 
 the result, and which it is the function of 
 criticism to signalize, as it is the weak- 
 ness of expert evaluation to neglect. 
 
 Criticism, thus, may not inexactly 
 be described as the statement of the 
 concrete in terms of the abstract. It is 
 its function to discern and characterize 
 the abstract qualities informing the con- 
 crete expression of the artist. Every 
 important piece of literature, as every 
 important work of plastic art, is the 
 expression of a personality, and it is 
 not the material of it, but the mind be- 
 hind it, that invites critical interpreta- 
 tion. Materially speaking, it is its own 
 interpretation. The concrete absorbs 
 the constructive artist whose endeavor 
 is to give substance to his idea, which 
 
 until expressed is an abstraction. The 
 
 i6
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 concern of criticism is to measure his 
 success by the correspondence of his 
 expression to the idea it suggests and 
 by the value of the idea itself. The 
 critic's own language, therefore, into 
 which he is to translate the concrete 
 work he is considering, is the language 
 of the abstract; and as in translation 
 what is needed is appreciation of the 
 foreign tongue and expertness in one's 
 own, it is this language that it behooves 
 him especially to cultivate. 
 
 As it is the qualities of the writer, 
 painter, sculptor, and not the proper- 
 ties of their productions, that are his 
 central concern, as his function is to 
 disengage the moral value from its 
 material expression, — I do not mean 
 of course in merely major matters, 
 but in minutiae as well, such as even 
 the lilt of a verse or the drawing of a 
 wrist, the distinction being one of kind, 
 not of rank, — qualities, not proper- 
 
 17
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 ties, are the very substance and not 
 merely the subject of the critic's own 
 expression. The true objects of his 
 contemplation are the multifarious ele- 
 ments of truth, beauty, goodness, and 
 their approximations and antipodes, 
 underlying the various phenomena 
 which express them, rather than the 
 laws and rules peculiar to each form of 
 phenomenal expression; which, beyond 
 acquiring the familiarity needful for 
 adequate appreciation, he may leave 
 to the professional didacticism of each. 
 And in thus confining itself to the art 
 and eschewing the science of whatever 
 forms its subject — mindful mainly of 
 no science, indeed, except its own — 
 criticism is enabled to extend its field 
 while restricting its function, and to 
 form a distinct province of literature, 
 while relinquishing encroachments upon 
 the territory of more exclusively con- 
 structive art. 
 
 i8
 
 FIELD AND FUNCTION 
 
 Of course thus individualizing the 
 field and the function of criticism 
 neither predicates universal capacity 
 in nor prescribes universal practice to 
 the individual critic, who however will 
 specialize all the more usefully for 
 realizing that both his field and his 
 function are themselves as special as 
 his faculty is universally acknowledged 
 to be. 
 
 19
 
 II 
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 THE critic's equipment consequently 
 should be at least commensurate 
 with the field implied by this view 
 of his function. But it should really 
 even exceed it, on the well-known prin- 
 ciple that no one knows his subject who 
 knows his subject alone. And this im- 
 plies for criticism the possession of that 
 cognate culture without which specific 
 erudition produces a rather lean result. 
 If, which is doubtful, it achieves rec- 
 titude, it misses richness. The mere 
 function of examining and estimation 
 can hardly be correctly conducted 
 without illumination from the side- 
 lights of culture. But certainly if crit- 
 icism is to have itself any opulence 
 
 and amplitude, any body and energy, 
 
 20
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 it must bring to its specific business a 
 supplementary fund of its own. If lit- 
 erature — or art as well for that mat- 
 ter — is a criticism of life, criticism in 
 a similar sense and in the same degree 
 determines the relations of the two, 
 and thus needs as close touch with life 
 as with art and letters. Thus, what- 
 ever the subject, the critical equipment 
 calls for a knowledge of life, and in 
 proportion to its depth and fullness, 
 a philosophy of life. In no other way, 
 indeed, can the critic's individuality 
 achieve outline, and the body of his 
 work attain coherence. 
 
 Obviously, therefore, that general 
 culture which is a prerequisite to any 
 philosophy of life is a necessity of his 
 equipment, without which he can nei- 
 ther estimate his subject aright nor sig- 
 nificantly enrich his treatment to the 
 end of producing what constitutes lit- 
 erature in its turn — an ideal which, as 
 
 21
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 I have already intimated, exhibits the 
 insufficiency of what is known as ex- 
 pert criticism. And of this general cul- 
 ture, I should call the chief constitu- 
 ents history, aesthetics, and philosophy. 
 'The most profitable thing in the world 
 for the institution of human life is his- 
 tory,' says Froissart; and the impor- 
 tance of history to any criticism which 
 envisages life as well as art and let- 
 ters, would need no more than mention 
 were it not in fact so frequently and so 
 generally overlooked by those who un- 
 consciously or explicitly take the bel- 
 letristic or purely aesthetic view of 
 criticism. Since Taine such a view 
 seems curiously antiquated. Evidently 
 however it underlies much current prac- 
 tice, which appears to assume that cur- 
 rent critical material is the product of 
 spontaneous generation and that, ac- 
 cordingly, even its direct ancestry, as 
 well as its ancestral influences, is negli- 
 
 22
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 gible. And the same view is apparently 
 held, not only in the class-room, but in 
 what we may call professional circles, 
 where both reasoning and research are 
 so often strictly confined within the 
 rigid limits of the special branch of 
 study pursued or expounded. 
 
 Art and letters are nevertheless 
 neither fortuitous phenomena, on the 
 one hand, to be savored and tested 
 merely by the sharp senses of the im- 
 pressionist, nor, on the other, technical 
 variants of an isolated evolution. Po- 
 etry for instance is neither pure music 
 nor pure prosody. Even that of Blake 
 or Whitman cannot be correctly judged 
 • by the senses unilluminated by the light 
 that history sheds on its conformity to 
 or deflection from the ideal laws to 
 which legitimately it is responsible; a 
 fortiori, of course, in the case of poetry 
 that is truly expressive instead of melo- 
 diously or otherwise explosive. But in 
 
 23
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 general the criticism that either cor- 
 rectly estimates or successfully contrib- 
 utes to art or letters rests firmly on 
 that large and luminous view of life and 
 the world which alone furnishes an ad- 
 equately flexible standard for measuring 
 whatever relates to life and the world, 
 and which is itself furnished by history 
 alone. Of course no one would pre- 
 scribe a minute knowledge of the Car- 
 thaginian constitution any more than 
 of the reasons for the disappearance of 
 the digamma as a necessity of critical 
 equipment, but a lack of interest in the 
 distinctly cultural chapters of the book 
 of human life witnesses, one would 
 think, a lack of even that spirit of cu- 
 riosity characteristic of the dilettante 
 himself and naturally leading him be- 
 yond the strict confines of belles-lettres 
 and pure aesthetics. 
 
 ^Esthetics, however, in their broader 
 
 aspect may be commended to even the 
 
 24
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 purely literary critic as an important 
 element of his ideal equipment at the 
 present day. They constitute an ele- 
 ment of cognate culture which imposes 
 itself more and more, and literary crit- 
 ics who deem them negligible are no 
 doubt becoming fewer and fewer. No 
 one could maintain their parity with 
 history as such an element, I think, 
 for the reason that they deal with a 
 more restricted field. On the other 
 hand, the extent rather than the par- 
 ticularity of this field is now increas- 
 ingly perceived, and the prodigious part 
 played by the plastic in the history of 
 human expression is receiving a recog- 
 nition long overdue. I remember once, 
 many years ago, a number of us were 
 wasting time in playing one of those 
 games dear to the desultory, consist- 
 ing in making lists of the world's great- 
 est men. We had discussed and ac- 
 credited perhaps a dozen, when Homer 
 
 25
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 Martin, being asked to contribute, ex- 
 claimed, 'Well, I think it's about time 
 to put in an artist or two.' The list 
 was revised, but less radically, I imag- 
 ine, than it would be to-day. 
 
 In France to-day no literary critic 
 with a tithe of Sainte-Beuve's author- 
 ity would be likely to incur the genuine 
 compassion expressed for Sainte-Beuve 
 when he ventured to talk about art 
 by the Goncourts in their candid Di- 
 ary. In England such a critic as Pater 
 owes his reputation quite as much prob- 
 ably to his sense for the plastic as to his 
 Platonism. In Germany doubtless the 
 importance of aesthetics as a constitu- 
 ent of general culture has been gen- 
 erally felt since Lessing's time, and 
 could hardly fail of universal recogni- 
 tion in the shadow of Goethe. With us 
 in America, progress in this very vital 
 respect has notoriously been slower, 
 
 and it is not uncommon to find literary 
 
 26
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 critics who evince, or who even profess, 
 an ignorance of art that is more or less 
 consciously considered by them a mark 
 of more concentrated Hterary serious- 
 ness. And if an Academy of Arts and 
 Letters should contribute in the least 
 to remove this misconception it would 
 disclose one raison-d'etre and justify 
 its modest pretensions. For so far as 
 criticism is concerned with the aes- 
 thetic element, the element of beauty, 
 in literature, a knowledge of aesthetic 
 history and philosophy, theory and 
 practice, serves it with almost self- 
 evident pertinence. 
 
 The principles of art and letters being 
 largely identical, aesthetic knowledge in 
 the discussion of belles-lettres answers 
 very much the purpose of a diagram in 
 a demonstration. In virtue of it the 
 critic may transpose his theme into a 
 plastic key, as it were, and thus get 
 
 nearer to its essential artistic quality 
 
 27
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 by looking beyond the limitations of its 
 proper technic. Similarly useful the 
 art critic of any distinction has always 
 found literary culture, and if this has 
 led him sometimes to overdo the mat- 
 ter, it has been due not to his knowl- 
 edge of literature but to his ignorance 
 of art. But this ignorance is mea- 
 surably as incapacitating to the critic 
 of belles-lettres, whose ability to deal 
 with the plastic that can only be felt 
 must manifestly be immensely aided 
 by an education in the plastic that can 
 be seen as well. And for the critic of 
 thought as well as of expression, the 
 critic who deals with the relations of 
 letters to life, the culture that is artistic 
 as well as literary has the value inher- 
 ent in acquaintance with the history 
 and practice of one of the most influ- 
 ential, inspiring, and illuminating fields 
 that the human spirit has cultivated 
 
 almost from the beginning of time. 
 
 28
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 Finally, since nothing in the way of 
 cognate knowledge comes amiss in the 
 culture pertinent to criticism, to the 
 history and aesthetics of the critic's 
 equipment, a tincture at least of philo- 
 sophic training may be timidly pre- 
 scribed. I am quite aware that this 
 must be sparingly cultivated. Its pe- 
 culiar peril is pedantry. Drenched in 
 philosophy, the critical faculty is al- 
 most certain to drown. This faculty, 
 when genuine, however, is so consti- 
 tuted that a smattering of philosophy 
 makes a saturated solution for it. 
 And such training in the realm of ab- 
 stract thought, as some practice with its 
 terms and processes involves, will help 
 the critic in his thinking — which is, 
 after all, his main business. It will 
 serve to coordinate his analysis, and it 
 will purge his constructive expression 
 of incongruities, even if it endue this 
 with no greater cogency and supply it 
 
 29
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 with no additional energy. For crit- 
 icism, dealing, as I have said, with the 
 abstract, — though with the abstract 
 held as closely to the concrete as a 
 translation to the original, — the gram- 
 mar of the abstract is as useful as its 
 rhetoric is in general superfluous. What 
 it peeds is the ability to 'play freely' 
 with such elements of the abstract as it 
 can use, avoiding sedulously the while 
 contagion from the petrifaction of its 
 systems in which the concrete, which 
 is the constant preoccupation of criti- 
 cism, disappears from view. Duly on 
 his guard against its insidious attrac- 
 tions, the critic may surely justify him- 
 self in his endeavor to make the ab- 
 stract serve him by such examples as 
 Aristotle, Longinus, Goethe, and Cole- 
 ridge, not to mention Arnold, who with 
 less training in it would have attacked 
 it with far less success. It is at all 
 events, in whatever degree it may prove 
 
 30
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 adequate or become excessive, thor- 
 oughly pertinent to a matter so ex- 
 pHcitly involving the discussion of prin- 
 ciples as well as of data. 
 
 Examples in abundance fortify the 
 inherent reasonableness of this general 
 claim for what I have called cognate 
 culture. The 'cases' confirm the the- 
 ory, which of course otherwise they 
 would confute. The three great mod- 
 ern critics of France show each in his 
 own way the value of culture in the crit- 
 ical equipment. Sainte-Beuve's crit- 
 icism is what it is largely because of 
 his saturation with literature in gen- 
 eral, not belles-lettres exclusively; of 
 the sensitiveness and severity of taste 
 thus acquired, or at least thus certified 
 and invigorated; and of the instinctive 
 ease, and almost scientific precision, 
 with which he was thus enabled to ap- 
 ply in his own art that comparative 
 method already established in the sci- 
 
 31
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 entific study of linguistics and literary 
 history. Thus, too, he was enabled to 
 add perhaps his most distinguished 
 contribution to the practice of criticism 
 — the study, sympathetic but objec- 
 tive, of character, namely, the person- 
 ality of the author which informs and 
 explains his productions, and in which 
 his productions inevitably inhere so 
 far as they have any synthetic value, 
 or significant purpose. Such study 
 can only be pursued in the light of 
 standards furnished by the sifting of 
 innumerable examples, and illustrated 
 in the work of the surviving fittest. 
 Moreover the range within which 
 Sainte-Beuve's exquisite critical fac- 
 ulty operated so felicitously acquired 
 an extension of dignity and authorita- 
 tiveness, quite beyond the reach of 
 belles-lettres, in the production of his 
 massive and monumental history of 
 Port Royal. His culture, in a word, 
 
 32
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 as well as his native bent, was such as 
 considerably to obscure the significance 
 of his having 'failed' in early experi- 
 mentation as a noveUst and as a 
 poet! 
 
 How predominant the strain of schol- 
 arship and philosophic training is in 
 the criticism of Taine it is superfluous 
 to point out; the belletristic fanatics 
 have been so tireless in its disparage- 
 ment that at the present time, prob- 
 ably, his chief quality is popularly es- 
 teemed his characteristic defect. It is 
 true that, though serving him splen- 
 didly, his philosophy on occasion dom- 
 inates him rather despotically. After 
 all, the critical faculty should preside 
 in the critic's reflection, and not abdi- 
 cate in favor of system — should keep 
 on weighing and judging, however di- 
 rected by philosophy and erudition, 
 and not lapse into advocacy or admin- 
 istration. Poise, one of the chief crit- 
 
 33
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 ical requirements, settles into immo- 
 bility in Taine. His point of view is so 
 systematically applied that his crit- 
 icism certainly, as I think his history 
 also, is colored by it. But the colors 
 are brilliant in any case, and if now and 
 then untrue, are sure of correction by 
 contemporary lenses, which are rather 
 discreditably adjusted to depreciate his 
 superb achievements — at least among 
 English readers for whom he has done 
 so much. And the apt consideration 
 for our present purpose is the notable 
 service which his philosophy and his- 
 tory have rendered a remarkable body 
 of criticism, both aesthetic and literary; 
 not the occasional way in which they 
 invalidate its conclusiveness. Almost 
 all histories of EngUsh literature are 
 inconsecutive and desultory, or else 
 congested and casual, compared with 
 Taine's great work — whose misappre- 
 ciations, as I say, correct themselves 
 
 34
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 for us, but whose stimulus remains ex- 
 haustless. 
 
 And one may say that he has es- 
 tabHshed the criticism of art on its 
 present basis. The Lectures and the 
 Travels in Italy first vitally connected 
 art with life, and demonstrated its true 
 title by recognizing it as an expression 
 rather than an exercise. Certainly 
 the latter phase demands interpreta- 
 tive treatment also, and it would be 
 idle to ignore in Taine a lack of the 
 sensuous sensitiveness that gives to 
 Fromentin's slender volume so much 
 more than a purely technical interest; 
 just as it would be to look in him for the 
 exquisite appreciation of personal idio- 
 syncrasy possessed by Sainte-Beuve. 
 But in his treatment of art as well as 
 of literature, the philosophic structure 
 around which he masses and distributes 
 his detail is of a stability and signif- 
 icance of design that amply atones for 
 
 35
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 the misapplication or misunderstand- 
 ing of some of the detail itself. 
 
 Another instance of the value of cul- 
 ture in fields outside strictly literary 
 and aesthetic confines, though, as I am 
 contending, strictly cognate to them, is 
 furnished by the Essays of Edmond 
 Scherer. To the comparative personal 
 and circumstantial judgments of Sainte- 
 Beuve, to the systematic historical and 
 evolutionary exposition of Taine, there 
 succeeded in Scherer the point of view 
 suggested rather than defined in the 
 statement of Rod to the effect that 
 Scherer judged not with his intelligence 
 but with his character. Rod meant his 
 epigram as a eulogy. Professor Saints- 
 bury esteems it a betrayal, his own 
 theory of criticism being of the art- 
 for-art*s-sake order, finding its jus- 
 tification in that *it helps the ear to 
 listen when the horns of Elf-land blow,* 
 
 and denying to it, or to what he calls 
 
 36
 
 EQUIPMENT 
 
 'pure literature/ any but hedonistic 
 sanctions — piquant philosophy, it has 
 been observed, for a connoisseur with- 
 out a palate. 
 
 Character at all events forms a sig- 
 nal element in the judgments of Sche- 
 rer*s austere and elevated criticism, and 
 if it made him exacting in the pres- 
 ence of the frivolous, the irresponsi- 
 ble, and the insincere, and limited his 
 responsiveness to the comic spirit, as 
 it certainly did in the case of Moliere, 
 it undoubtedly made his reprehensions 
 significant and his admirations author- 
 itative. He began his career as a pas- 
 teuTy and though he gradually reached 
 an agnostic position in theology, he 
 had had an experience in itself a guar- 
 antee, in a mind of his intelligence, of 
 spirituality and high seriousness in 
 dealing with literary subjects, and as 
 absent from Sainte-Beuve's objectivity 
 as from Taine's materialistic deter- 
 
 37
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 minism. Without Renan's sinuous 
 charm and truly cathoHc openminded- 
 ness, this Protestant-trained theologian 
 turned critic brings to criticism not 
 merely the sinews of spiritual central- 
 ity and personal independence, but a 
 philosophic depth and expertness in 
 reasoning that set him quite apart 
 from his congeners, and establish for 
 him a unique position in French liter- 
 ature. Criticism has never reached a 
 higher plane in literature conceived 
 as, in Carlyle's words, 'the Thought 
 of Thinking Souls'; and it holds it not 
 only in virtue of a native ideality and 
 a perceptive penetration that atone in 
 soundness for whatever they may lack 
 in plasticity, but also, it is not to be 
 doubted, in virtue of the severe and 
 ratiocinative culture for which Geneva 
 has stood for centuries. 
 
 38
 
 Ill 
 
 CRITERION 
 
 ITS equipment established, criticism 
 calls for a criterion. Sainte-Beuve 
 says somewhere that our liking any- 
 thing is not enough, that it is necessary 
 to know further whether we are right 
 in liking it — one of his many utter- 
 ances that show how thoroughly and 
 in what classic spirit he later ration- 
 alized his early romanticism. 
 
 The remark judges in advance the 
 current critical impressionism. It in- 
 volves more than the implication of 
 Mr. Vedder's well-known retort to the 
 time-honored philistine boast, 'I know 
 nothing of art, but I know what I 
 like': 'So do the beasts of the field.' 
 Critical impressionism, intelligent and 
 scholarly, such as that illustrated and 
 
 39
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 advocated by M. Jules Lemaitre and 
 M. Anatole France, for example, 
 though it may, I think, be strictly de- 
 fined as appetite, has certainly nothing 
 gross about it, but, contrariwise, every- 
 thing that is refined. Its position is, in 
 fact, that soundness of criticism varies 
 directly with the fastidiousness of the 
 critic, and that consequently this fas- 
 tidiousness cannot be too highly culti- 
 vated, since it is the court of final juris- 
 diction. It is, however, a court that 
 resembles rather a star chamber in hav- 
 ing the peculiarity of giving no reasons 
 for its decisions. It has, therefore, at 
 the outset an obvious disadvantage in 
 the impossibility of validating its de- 
 cisions for the acceptance of others. 
 So far as this acceptance is concerned, 
 it can only say, *If you are as well en- 
 dowed with taste, native and acquired, 
 as I am, the chances are that you will 
 
 feel in the same way.' 
 
 40
 
 CRITERION 
 
 But it is of the tolerant essence of 
 impressionism to acknowledge that 
 there is no certainty about the matter. 
 And, in truth, the material to be judged 
 is too multifarious for the criterion of 
 taste. Matthew Arnold's measure of a 
 successful translation: that is, the de- 
 gree in which it produces the same ef- 
 fect as the original to a sense compe- 
 tent to appreciate the original, is an 
 instance of a sensible appeal to taste: 
 first, because the question is compara- 
 tively simple; and secondly, because in 
 the circumstances there can be no other 
 arbiter. But such instances are rare, 
 and the very fact that so much mat- 
 ter for criticism still remains matter of 
 controversy proves the proverb that 
 tastes differ and the corollary that 
 there is no use in disputing about them. 
 It is quite probable that M. France 
 would find M. Lemaitre's plays and 
 stories insipid, and quite certain that M. 
 
 41
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 Lemaitre would shrink from the strain 
 of salacity in M. France's romance. 
 High differentiation and the acme of 
 aristocratic fastidiousness, which both 
 of these critics illustrate, manifestly 
 do not serve to unify their taste. 
 There is no universal taste. And crit- 
 icism to be convincing must appeal to 
 some accepted standard. And the aim 
 of criticism is conviction. Otherwise 
 actuated it must be pursued on the art- 
 for-art theory, which, in its case at 
 least, would involve a loss of identity. 
 Recording the adventures of one's 
 soul among masterpieces, which is M. 
 France's variant of Eugene Veron's 
 definition of landscape, — the first for- 
 mal appearance of the idea, I think, — 
 * painting one's emotions in the pres- 
 ence of nature,' must be a purely self- 
 regardant exercise unless the reader 
 has an answering soul and can himself 
 authenticate the masterpieces. 
 
 42
 
 CRITERION 
 
 Feeling the unsatisfactoriness of the 
 impressionist's irresponsibiUty, the late 
 Ferdinand Brunetiere undertook a cam- 
 paign in opposition to it. He began 
 it, if I remember aright, in his lectures 
 in this country nearly twenty years ago. 
 These lectures, however, and the course 
 of polemic which followed them ex- 
 celled particularly, I think, in attack. 
 They contained some very effective 
 destructive criticism of mere personal 
 preference, no matter whose, as a final 
 critical criterion. Constructively, on 
 the other hand, Brunetiere was less 
 conclusive. In a positive way he had 
 nothing to offer but a defense of aca- 
 demic standards. He harked back to 
 the classic canon — that canon in ac- 
 cordance with which were produced 
 those works designed, as Stendhal says, 
 *to give the utmost possible pleasure to 
 our great-grandfathers.' 
 
 The case might perhaps have been 
 
 43
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 better stated. Brunetiere was devoted 
 to the noble French Uterature of the 
 seventeenth century. The august had 
 no doubt a special attraction for the 
 self-made scholar. Out of reach the 
 aristocratic always looks its best — 
 the less attainable the more admirable. 
 But though he became a distinguished 
 scholar, Brunetiere retained the tem- 
 perament of the schoolmaster, which 
 was either native to him or the result 
 of belated acquaintance, however thor- 
 ough, with what French impatience 
 calls the dejd-vu. It was because he 
 had so explicitly learned that he 
 wished always to teach. 
 
 Now there is nothing strictly to 
 teach save the consecrated and the 
 canonical, whereas criticism is a live 
 art, and contemporaneousness is of its 
 essence. Once codified, it releases the 
 genuine critic to conceive new combi- 
 nations, — the 'new duties' taught by 
 
 44
 
 CRITERION 
 
 *new occasions,' — and becomes itself 
 either elementary or obsolete. It is im- 
 portant to know which, of course, as 
 Wordsworth's failure successfully to re- 
 cast the catalogue of the poetic genres, 
 noted by Arnold, piquantly attests. 
 Moreover in his devotion to the seven- 
 teenth, Brunetiere was blind to the eigh- 
 teenth century, — as well as, by the 
 way, heedless of Voltaire's warning that 
 the only bad style is the style ennuyeux; 
 his style alone devitalized his polemic 
 in favor of prescription. Finally, in- 
 stead of winning adherents for him, 
 this ardent advocacy of authority took 
 despotic possession of his entire mind 
 and gathered him to the bosom of re- 
 ligious and political reaction. 
 
 Whatever our view of criticism, it is 
 impossible at the present day to con- 
 ceive it as formula, and the rigidity of 
 rules of taste is less acceptable than the 
 license permitted under the reign of 
 
 45
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 taste unregulated, however irregular, 
 individual, and irresponsible. In spite 
 of the logical weakness of the impres- 
 sionist theory, it is to be observed that 
 a high level of taste, uniform enough 
 to constitute a very serviceable ar- 
 biter, at least in circumstances at all 
 elementary, is practically attainable; 
 and as a matter of fact is, in France at 
 least, often attained. For in criticism 
 as elsewhere it is true that we rest 
 finally upon instinct, and faith under- 
 lies reason. The impressionist may 
 properly remind us that all proof, even 
 Euclidian, proceeds upon postulates. 
 
 The postulates of criticism, however, 
 are apt unsatisfactorily to differ from 
 those of mathematics in being propo- 
 sitions taken for granted rather than 
 self-evident. The distinction is radi- 
 cal. It is not the fact that everybody 
 is agreed about them that gives axioms 
 
 their validity, but their self-evidence. 
 
 46
 
 CRITERION 
 
 Postulates that depend on the sanc- 
 tion of universal agreement, on the 
 other hand, are conventions. Universal 
 agreement may be brought about in a 
 dozen ways. It may be imposed by 
 authority, as in the case of classic criti- 
 cism, or it may develop insensibly, illog- 
 ically, and indefensibly; it may derive, 
 not from truth but from tradition, or it 
 may certainly be the result of general 
 reaction, and promptly crystallize with 
 a rigidity equivalent to that from which 
 it is just emancipated. Examples would 
 be superfluous. The conventions of 
 romanticism, realism, impressionism, 
 symbolism, or what-not, are no more 
 intrinsically valid than those under- 
 lying the criticism of academic pre- 
 scription, as is attested by this varia- 
 bility of the universal agreement which 
 is their sanction. 
 
 The true postulates of criticism have 
 hardly varied since Aristotle's day, and 
 
 47
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 impressionism itself, in imagining its 
 own an advance upon them, would be 
 in peril of fatuity. Yet even sound in- 
 tuitions, fundamental as they may be, 
 do not take us very far. Pascal, who 
 though one of the greatest of reason- 
 ers is always girding at reason, was 
 obliged to admit that it does the over- 
 whelming bulk of the work. 'Would 
 to God,' he exclaims, 'that we had never 
 any need of it, and knew everything by 
 instinct and sentiment! But nature 
 has refused us this blessing; she has, on 
 the contrary, given us but very little 
 knowledge of this kind, and all other 
 knowledge can only be acquired by rea- 
 soning.' But even if intuitions had all 
 the importance claimed for them, it 
 would still be true that conventions are 
 extremely likely to be disintegrated by 
 the mere lapse of time into what every 
 one sees to have been really inductions 
 
 from practice become temporarily and 
 
 48
 
 CRITERION 
 
 more or less fortuitously general, and 
 not genuine intuitive postulates at all. 
 Still clearer is the conventionality of 
 the systems erected upon them, beneath 
 which as a matter of fact they cus- 
 tomarily lie buried. All sorts of ec- 
 centricity are incident to elaboration, 
 of course, whether its basis be sound or 
 unsound. 
 
 So that, in brief, when the impres- 
 sionist alleges that a correct judgment 
 of a work of literature or art depends 
 ultimately upon feeling, we are quite 
 justified in requiring him to tell us why 
 he feels as he does about it. It is not 
 enough for him to say that he is a per- 
 son of particularly sensitive and sound 
 organization, and that his feeling, there- 
 fore, has a corresponding finality. In 
 the first place, as I have said, it is 
 impossible to find in the judgments de- 
 rived from pure taste anything like the 
 uniformity to be found in the equip- 
 
 49
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 ment as regards taste of the judges 
 themselves. But for all their fastidi- 
 ousness these judges are as amenable 
 as grosser spirits to the test of reason. 
 And it is only rational that the first 
 question asked of them when they ap- 
 peal to the arbitrament of feeling should 
 be: Ts your feeling the result of direct 
 intuitive perception, or of unconscious 
 subscription to convention? Your true 
 distinction from the beasts of the field 
 surely should lie, not so much in your 
 superior organization resulting in su- 
 perior taste, as in freedom from the 
 conventional, to which even in their 
 appetites the beasts of the field, often 
 extremely fastidious in this respect, are 
 nevertheless notoriously enslaved. In 
 a word, even if impressionism be philo- 
 sophically sound in the impeachment 
 of reason unsupported by intuitive 
 taste, it cannot dethrone reason as an 
 arbiter in favor of the taste that is 
 
 so
 
 CRITERION 
 
 not intuitive but conventional. The 
 true criterion of criticism therefore is 
 only to be found in the rationalizing of 
 taste. 
 
 This position once reached, it is clear 
 that the only way in which the impres- 
 sionist, however cultivated, can be at 
 all sure of the validity of the feeling on 
 which he bases his judgment is by the 
 exercise of his reasoning faculty. Only 
 in this way can he hope to determine 
 whether his 'impression' originates in 
 a genuine personal perception of the 
 relations of the object producing it to 
 some self-evident principle of truth or 
 beauty, or proceeds from habit, from 
 suggestion, from the insensible pressure 
 of current, which is even more potent 
 than classic, convention. Absolutely 
 certain of achieving this result, the 
 critic can hardly expect to be. Noth- 
 ing is more insidious than the con- 
 ventional. Civilized life is continually 
 
 51
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 paying it tribute in innumerable ways. 
 Culture itself, so far as it is uncritical, 
 is perhaps peculiarly susceptible to it. 
 But the critic can discharge his critical 
 duty only by approximating this cer- 
 tainty as nearly as possible, by pro- 
 cesses of scrutiny, comparison, and re- 
 flection, and in general that arduous 
 but necessary and not unrewarding 
 exercise of the mind involved in the 
 checking of sensation by thought. 
 
 There is nothing truistic at the pres- 
 ent time in celebrating the thinking 
 power, counselling its cultivation and 
 advocating its application — at least 
 within the confines of criticism where 
 the sensorium has decidedly supplanted 
 it in consideration. Nor, on the other 
 hand, is there anything recondite in so 
 doing. It is as plain as it used to be 
 remembered that it is in 'reason' that 
 a man is 'noble,' in 'faculty' that he is 
 'infinite,' in 'apprehension' that he is 
 
 52
 
 CRITERION 
 
 'like a god/ The importance of his 
 exquisite sensitiveness to impressions 
 is a ^oj-^Shakespearean discovery. I 
 certainly do not mean to belittle the 
 value of this sensitiveness, in suggest- 
 ing for criticism the advantages of its 
 control by the thinking power, and in 
 noting the practical disappearance of 
 the latter from the catalogue of con- 
 temporary prescription. If my topic 
 were not criticism, but performance in 
 the field of American imaginative ac- 
 tivity, to belittle taste would at the 
 present time be unpardonable. The 
 need of it is too apparent. The lack 
 of it often cheapens our frequent ex- 
 pertness, ruptures the relation between 
 truth and beauty, and is responsible 
 for a monotonous miscellaneity that is 
 relieved less often than we could wish 
 by works of enduring interest. 
 
 It cannot, however, be maintained 
 that the standard of pure taste is a 
 
 S3
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 wholly adequate corrective for this con- 
 dition even in the field of performance. 
 At least it has been tried, and the re- 
 sults have not been completely satis- 
 factory. We have in literature more 
 taste than we had in days when, per- 
 haps, we had more talent. (I exclude 
 the domain of scholarship and its de- 
 pendencies, in which we have made, I 
 should suppose, a notable advance.) 
 But the very presence of taste has dem- 
 onstrated its insufficiency. In general 
 literature, indeed, if its presence has 
 been marked, its effect is not very trace- 
 able, because it has been mainly exhib- 
 ited in technic. It can't be said, I 
 think, to have greatly affected the sub- 
 stance of our literary production. In 
 two of the arts, however, taste has long 
 had full swing with us — the arts, I 
 mean, of architecture and sculpture; 
 and the appreciation it has met with in 
 these is, though general, not rarely of 
 
 54
 
 CRITERION 
 
 the kind that confuses the merits of the 
 decorative with those of the monumen- 
 tal, and the virtues of adaptation with 
 those of design. A rational instead of a 
 purely susceptible spirit, dictating con- 
 structive rather than merely appreci- 
 ative and assimilative activity, might 
 have been more richly rewarded in these 
 fields — might even have resulted in 
 superior taste. 
 
 In the restricted field of criticism, at 
 all events, the irresponsibility of pure 
 temperament seems currently so popu- 
 lar as to imply a general belief that 
 reasoning in criticism died with Macau- 
 lay and is as defunct as Johnson, hav- 
 ing given place to a personal disposition 
 which perhaps discounts its prejudices 
 but certainly caresses its predilections 
 as warrant of 'insight' and 'sympathy.' 
 Yet our few star examples in current 
 criticism are eminently critics who give 
 reasons for the hope that is in them; and 
 
 55
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 certainly American literature has one 
 critic who so definitely illustrated the 
 value of the thinking power in criticism 
 that he may be said almost to personify 
 the principle of critical ratiocination. I 
 mean Poe. Poe's perversities, his cav- 
 illing temper, his unscrupulousness in 
 praise if not in blame, his personal irre- 
 sponsibility, invalidate a great deal of 
 his criticism, to say nothing of its dog- 
 matic and mechanical character. But 
 at its best it is the expression of his al- 
 together exceptional reasoning faculty. 
 His reasons were not the result of re- 
 flection, and his ideas were often the 
 crotchets Stedman called them; but he 
 was eminently prolific in both, and his 
 handling of them was expertness itself. 
 His ratiocination here has the artistic 
 interest it had in those of his tales that 
 are based on it, and that are imaginative 
 as mathematics is imaginative. And his 
 dogmas were no more conventions than 
 
 56
 
 CRITERION 
 
 his conclusions were impressions. His 
 criticism was equally removed from the 
 canonical and the latitudinarian. If he 
 stated a proposition he essayed to dem- 
 onstrate it, and if he expressed a prefer- 
 ence he told why he had it. 
 
 Poe's practice is, indeed, rather baldly 
 ratiocinative than simply rational, and 
 its felicity in his case does not, it is true, 
 disguise its somewhat stark, exclusive, 
 and exaggerated effect. I do not cite 
 M. Dupin as an example of the perfect 
 critic. There is something debased — 
 not to put too fine a point upon it — 
 in the detective method wherever used. 
 It is not merely subtle, but serpentine 
 — too tortuous and too terrene for the 
 ampler upper air of examination, analy- 
 sis, and constructive comment. Rea- 
 son is justified of her children, not of her 
 caricaturists. But if the answer to the 
 question Why? which I have noted 
 as her essential monopoly (since pre- 
 
 57
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 scription precludes and impressionism 
 scouts the inquiry), be challenged as 
 an advantage to criticism, I think its 
 value can be demonstrated in some 
 detail. 
 
 The epicurean test of the impres- 
 sionist, let me repeat, is of course not 
 a standard, since what gives pleasure to 
 some gives none to others. And some 
 standard is a necessary postulate, not 
 only of all criticism, but of all discussion 
 or even discourse. Without one, art 
 must indeed be * received in silence,' as 
 recommended by the persistently com- 
 municative Whistler. In literature and 
 art there are, it is true, no longer any 
 statutes, but the common law of prin- 
 ciples is as applicable as ever, and it be- 
 hooves criticism to interpret the cases 
 that come before it in the light of these. 
 Its function is judicial, and its business 
 to weigh and reason rather than merely 
 to testify and record. And if it be- 
 
 58
 
 CRITERION 
 
 longs in the field of reason rather than 
 in that of emotion, it must consider less 
 the pleasure that a work of art pro- 
 duces than the worth of the work itself. 
 This is a commonplace in ethics, where 
 conduct is not approved by its happy 
 result but by its spiritual worthiness. 
 And if art and literature were felt to be 
 as important as ethics, the same dis- 
 tinction would doubtless have become 
 as universal in literary and art criti- 
 cism. Which is of course only another 
 way of stating Sainte-Beuve's conten- 
 tion that we need to know whether we 
 are right or not when we are pleased. 
 And the only guide to that knowledge 
 — beyond the culture which, however 
 immensely it may aid us, does not auto- 
 matically produce conformity or secure 
 conviction — is the criterion of reason 
 applied to the work of ascertaining 
 value apart from mere attractiveness. 
 The attractiveness takes care of itself, 
 
 59
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 as happiness does when we have done 
 our duty. 
 
 At all events, aside from its superior 
 philosophic satisfactoriness, thus indi- 
 cated, a rational — rather than either 
 an academic and authoritative or an 
 impressionist and individual — criti- 
 cism is especially useful, I think, at the 
 present time, in two important particu- 
 lars. It is, in the first place, especially 
 fitted to deal with the current phase of 
 art and letters. Of this phase, I take 
 it, freedom and eclecticism are the main 
 traits. Even followers of tradition ex- 
 ercise the freest of choices, tradition it- 
 self having become too multifarious to 
 be followed en bloc. On the other hand, 
 those who flout tradition and pursue 
 the experimental, illustrate naturally 
 still greater diversity. Both must ul- 
 timately appeal to the criterion of rea- 
 son, for neither can otherwise justify 
 
 its practice and pretensions. Prescrip- 
 
 60
 
 CRITERION 
 
 tion is a practical ideal if it is coherent; 
 it loses its constituting sanction the mo- 
 ment it offers a choice. And experi- 
 ment attains success only when through 
 proof it reaches demonstration. In 
 either case a criterion is ultimately ad- 
 dressed which is untrammeled by prec- 
 edent and unmoved by change; which is 
 strict without rigidity, and seeks the 
 law of any performance within and not 
 outside it; which demands no corre- 
 spondence to any other concrete, but 
 only to the appropriate abstract; which, 
 in fact, substitutes for a concrete ideal 
 a purely abstract one of intrinsic ap- 
 plicability to the matter in hand. It 
 exacts titles, but they may be couched 
 in any form, or expressed in any tongue 
 but that of irrationality. No more the 
 slave of schools than the sponsor of 
 whim, it does not legislate, but judges 
 performance, in its twofold aspect of 
 conception and execution, in accor- 
 
 6i
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 dance with principles universally un- 
 contested. 
 
 In the next place, no other criterion 
 is competent to deal critically with the 
 great question of our day in art and 
 letters alike, namely, the relation of 
 reality to the ideal. No other, I think, 
 can hope to preserve disentangled the 
 skein of polemic and fanaticism in 
 which this question tends constantly to 
 wind itself up into apparently inextri- 
 cable confusion. Taste, surely, cannot. 
 Taste, quite comprehensibly, I think, 
 breathes a sigh of weariness whenever 
 the subject of 'reaUsm' is mentioned. 
 Nevertheless, 'reaUsm' is established, 
 entrenched, and I should say impreg- 
 nable to the assaults of its more radical 
 and numerous foes, more particularly 
 those of the art-for-art's-sake army. It 
 is too fundamentally consonant with 
 the current phase of the Time-Spirit to 
 
 be in any present danger. But it is 
 
 62
 
 CRITERION 
 
 only reason that can reconcile its claims 
 with those of its censors by showing 
 wherein, and to what extent, 'reahsm' 
 is really a catholic treatment of reality, 
 and not a protestant and polemic gos- 
 pel of the literal. 
 
 Reality has become recognized as the 
 one vital element of significant art, and 
 it seems unlikely that the unreal will 
 ever regain the empire it once possessed. 
 Its loss, at all events, is not ours, since 
 it leaves us the universe. But it is ob- 
 vious that 'realism' is often in practice, 
 and not infrequently in conception, a 
 very imperfect treatment of reality, 
 which indeed not rarely receives more 
 sympathetic attention in the romantic 
 or even the classic household. Balzac 
 is a realist, and at times the most arti- 
 ficial of great romancers. George Sand 
 is a romanticist, and a very deep and 
 fundamental reality not rarely under- 
 lies her superficial extravagances. Fun- 
 
 63
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 damentally, truth — which is certainly 
 none other than reaHty — was her 
 inspiration, as, fundamentally, it cer- 
 tainly was not always Balzac's. 'Re- 
 alism' has made reality our touchstone. 
 But it is not a talisman acting auto- 
 matically if misapplied. To mistake 
 the badge for the credentials of a doc- 
 trine is so frequent an error because it 
 is irrational, and close-thinking, being 
 difficult, is exceptional. Exponents of 
 'realism,' such as that most admirable 
 of artists, Maupassant, are extraordina- 
 rily apt in practice to restrict the field 
 of reality till the false proportion re- 
 sults in a quintessentially unreal effect. 
 Every detail is real, but the implication 
 of the whole is fantastic. Why.? Be- 
 cause the ideal is excluded. The an- 
 tithesis of reality is not the ideal, but 
 the fantastic. 
 
 This is, I think, the most important 
 distinction to bear in mind in consider- 
 
 64
 
 CRITERION 
 
 ing the current realistic practice in all 
 the arts. I refer of course to what we 
 characterize as the ideal in general — 
 not to the particular ideal whose inter- 
 penetration with the object constitutes 
 the object a work of art and measures 
 it as such. But for that matter the 
 ideal in general may be conceived as 
 having a similar relation to reality. 
 Since it is a part of the order of the uni- 
 verse, — of reality, that is to say, — it 
 is obviously not antithetic to it. On 
 the other hand, the fantastic is essen- 
 tially chaotic by definition though often 
 speciously, attractively, and at times 
 poetically garbed in the raiment of or- 
 der — the poetry of Coleridge or the 
 compositions of Blake, for example. 
 The defect of this kind of art is its lack 
 of reality, and its consequent compara- 
 tive insignificance. But it is no more 
 ideal for that reason than Lear or the 
 Venus of Melos. This is still more ap-
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 parent in the less artistic example of 
 Hawthorne's tales, where in general the 
 fantasticality consists in the garb rather 
 than the idea, and where accordingly 
 we can more readily perceive the unre- 
 ality and consequent insignificance, the 
 incongruous being more obvious in the 
 material than in the moral field. But 
 it is the special business of criticism at 
 the present time of 'realistic' tyranny 
 to avoid confusing the ideal with the 
 fantastic, to avoid disparagement of it 
 as opposed to reality, and to disengage 
 it from elements that obscure without 
 invalidating it. 
 
 Ivanhoe, for example, is fantastic his- 
 tory, but the character of the Templar 
 is a splendid instance of the ideal in- 
 spiring, informing, intensifying, incon- 
 testable reality. In Le Pere Goriot, on 
 the other hand, in which the environ- 
 ment and atmosphere are realistic to 
 
 the last degree, the protagonist is the 
 
 66
 
 CRITERION 
 
 mere personification of a passion. These 
 are, no doubt, subtleties. But they arc 
 not verbal subtleties. They are insep- 
 arable from the business of criticism. 
 And they impose on it the criterion 
 of reason rather than that of feeling, 
 which cannot be a standard, or that 
 of precedent and prescription, which 
 is outworn. 
 
 Finally, — and if I have hitherto 
 elaborated to excess, here I need not 
 elaborate at all, — no other than a ra- 
 tional criterion so well serves criticism 
 in the most important of all its func- 
 tions, that of establishing and deter- 
 mining the relation of art and letters 
 to the life that is their substance and 
 their subject as well. 
 
 67
 
 IV 
 
 METHOD 
 
 AND a rational criterion implies a 
 ^ constructive method. In itself 
 analysis reaches no conclusion, which is 
 the end and aim of reason. Invaluable 
 as is its service in detail, some rational 
 ideal must underlie its processes, and 
 if these are to be fruitful they must de- 
 termine the relations of the matter in 
 hand to this ideal, and even in dissec- 
 tion contribute to the synthesis that 
 constitutes the essence of every work 
 of any individuality. The weak joint 
 in Sainte-Beuve's armor is his occa- 
 sional tendency to rest in his analysis. 
 It is the finer art to suggest the con- 
 clusion rather than to draw it, no doubt, 
 but one should at least do that; and I 
 
 think Sainte-Beuve, in spite of his 
 
 68
 
 METHOD 
 
 search for the faculte maitresse and his 
 anticipation of the race, the milieu^ and 
 the moment theory so hard worked by 
 Taine, occasionally fails to justify his 
 analysis in this way; so that his result 
 is both artistically and philosophically 
 inconclusive. Now and then he pays 
 in this way for his aversion to pedantry 
 and system, and the excessive disinter- 
 estedness of his curiosity. 
 
 It would certainly be pedantry to in- 
 sist on truly constructive criticism in 
 every causerie du lundi in which a great 
 critic may quite pardonably vary his 
 more important work with the play for 
 which he has a penchant. But on the 
 other hand truly constructive criticism 
 does not of necessity involve rigidity. 
 It implies not a system, but a method 
 — to employ the distinction with which 
 Taine defended his procedure, but 
 which assuredly he more or less con- 
 spicuously failed to observe. It pre- 
 
 69
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 scribes, in every work of criticism, a 
 certain independence of its subject, and 
 imposes on it the same constructive ob- 
 ligations that it in turn requires of its 
 theme. A work of criticism is in fact 
 as much a thesis as its theme, and the 
 same thematic treatment is to be ex- 
 acted of it. And considered in this way 
 as a thesis, its unity is to be secured 
 only by the development in detail of 
 some central conception preliminarily 
 established and constantly referred to, 
 however arrived at, whether by intui- 
 tion or analysis. The detail thus treated 
 becomes truly contributive and con- 
 structive in a way open to no other 
 method. We may say indeed that all 
 criticism of moment, even impression- 
 ist criticism, has this synthetic aspect 
 at least, as otherwise it must lack even 
 the appearance of that organic quality 
 necessary to effectiveness. And when 
 
 we read some very interesting and dis- 
 
 70
 
 METHOD 
 
 tinguished criticism — such as the ag- 
 glutinate and amorphous essays of 
 Lowell, for example — and compare 
 it with concentric and constructive 
 work, — such as par excellence that of 
 Arnold, — we can readily see that its 
 failure in force is one of method as well 
 as of faculty. 
 
 On the other hand, the constructive 
 method is peculiarly liable to excess. 
 If the central conception it is concerned 
 with is followed out in detail without 
 the checks and rectifications of analy- 
 sis — the great verifying process — we 
 have the partisanship of Carlyle, the 
 inelasticity of Taine, the prescriptive 
 formulary of Brunetiere. The spirit of 
 system stifles freedom of perception and 
 distorts detail. Criticism becomes the- 
 oretic. And though theoretic criticism 
 may be, and in fact is not unlikely to be, 
 artistically effective, it is fatally un- 
 trustworthy, because it is bent on illus- 
 
 71
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 trating its theory in its analysis, instead 
 of merely verifying such features of its 
 central conception as analysis will con- 
 firm. Against such intuitive extrava- 
 gance as Carlyle's the advantages of re* 
 markable insight may fairly be set off. 
 The academic prescriptions of Brune- 
 tierfe, too, have a distinct educational 
 value — the results of a high-class lit- 
 erary scholiast are always technically 
 instructive, however lacking they may 
 be in the freedom and impressionability 
 sanctioned by a criterion less rigid for 
 being purely rational, and committed 
 to no body of doctrine, traditional or 
 other. 
 
 It is, however, the historical method 
 of criticism that chiefly illustrates con- 
 structive excess. This method has at 
 present probably the centre of the 
 stage; and though there is in France a 
 distinct reaction from the supremacy of 
 
 Taine and in favor of Sainte-Beuve's 
 
 72
 
 METHOD 
 
 sinuous plasticity, the method itself 
 maintains its authority. Taine was an 
 historian and a philosopher rather than 
 a critic, and his criticism is accordingly 
 not so much criticism illuminated by 
 history and philosophy as philosophic 
 history. The data of literature and art 
 under his hand become the 'documents' 
 of history, of which in a scientific age 
 we hear so much. His thesis once es- 
 tablished, however, as historical rather 
 than literary or aesthetic, too much I 
 think can hardly be said for his treat- 
 ment. Classification has the advantage 
 of clearing up confusion, and the value 
 of a work like the History of English Lit- 
 erature appears when one recognizes its 
 paramount merit as resident in the 
 larger scope and general view of history 
 in which of necessity purely individual 
 traits are to some extent blurred if not 
 distorted. These indeed may very well 
 be left to pure criticism whose precise 
 
 73
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 business they are. But the historic 
 method in pure criticism is held quite 
 independently of Taine's authority. 
 Scherer, for example, arguing against 
 * personal sensations' in criticism, main- 
 tains that from the study of a writer's 
 character and of his period the right un- 
 defstanding of his work issues sponta- 
 neously. This is excellent prescription 
 for the impressionist, although Scherer 
 doubtless means by * personal sensa- 
 tions,' personal judgment also, and thus 
 minimizes or indeed obliterates perhaps 
 the most essential element of all in 
 criticism, the critic's own personality. 
 Scherer's practice, precisely owing to his 
 personality, far excelled his theory, as 
 to which Arnold reminded him of Ma- 
 caulay, who certainly knew his writers 
 and their period, but in whose mind 
 a right understanding of their works 
 occasionally failed spontaneously to 
 issue. 
 
 74
 
 METHOD 
 
 In fine, the historic method, great as 
 have been its services to criticism and 
 truly constructive as it is, has two er- 
 roneous tendencies. It tends gener- 
 ally to impose its historical theory on 
 the literary and aesthetic facts, to dis- 
 cern their historical rather than their 
 essential character; and, as inelasti- 
 cally applied, at all events, it tends 
 specifically to accept its 'documents* 
 as final rather than as the very subjects 
 of its concern. Taine furnishes a strik- 
 ing instance of the latter practice. I 
 have never myself been able to agree 
 with those of his opponents, who, like 
 Brunetiere, rested in the comfortable as- 
 surance that his whole theory was over- 
 thrown by the fact that the ordinary 
 Venetian gondolier of the period was 
 the product of the influences that also 
 produced Tintoretto. One might as 
 well hold that immunity in some cases 
 is not the result of the vaccine that 
 
 75
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 fails to take In others; the causes of 
 such differences in either physiology or 
 history being perhaps, so far as they 
 are not obvious, too obscure for prof- 
 itable discussion compared with the 
 causes of resemblances. But from the 
 critical point of view it is a legitimate 
 objection to his rigorous application 
 of his method that he is led by it to 
 consider so disproportionately causes, 
 which are the proper subject of history, 
 rather than characteristics, which are 
 the true subject of criticism; to deem 
 the business finished, so to say, when it 
 is explained, and, comparatively speak- 
 ing, to eschew its estimation. 
 
 As to the other tendency, that of 
 imposing historical theory on critical 
 data, it is a commonplace that history 
 itself, which has been luminously called 
 philosophy teaching by examples, some- 
 times suffers from the submergence of 
 
 its examples by its philosophy. In crit- 
 
 76
 
 METHOD 
 
 icism the result is more serious because, 
 viewed in the same Hght, its 'examples' 
 have a far more saHent importance. 
 They are themselves differentiated phil- 
 osophically in a high degree, and it is 
 correspondingly difficult successfully to 
 treat them merely as pieces of some 
 vaster mosaic. On large lines and in an 
 elementary way, this may of course be 
 usefully done, but the work belongs in 
 general I think rather to the class-room 
 than to the forum of criticism. In the 
 latter place their traits call for a treat- 
 ment at once more individually search- 
 ing and more conformed to an abstract, 
 ideal, independent, and rational stand- 
 ard — for the application to the data 
 they furnish of the ideas they suggest, 
 not the theory they fit. 
 
 Now, in the true critical field of in- 
 dependent judgment, however enlight- 
 ened by culture and fortified by phil- 
 osophic training, we know very well 
 
 77
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 that theory means preconception. And, 
 carried into any detail of prescription, 
 preconception is as a matter of fact 
 constantly being confuted by perform- 
 ance. Divorced from the ideas proper 
 to each performance, reposing on a for- 
 mula derived in its turn from previous 
 performance become accepted and con- 
 secrate, it is continually disconcerted. 
 New schools with new formulae arise 
 as if by some inherent law, precisely 
 at the apogee of old ones. And pre- 
 conception, based as it perforce is upon 
 some former crystallization of the di- 
 verse and undulating elements of artis- 
 tic expression, is logically inapplicable 
 at any given time — except as it draws 
 its authority from examples of perma- 
 nent value and enduring appeal, in 
 which case no one would think of call- 
 ing it preconception at all. It may 
 be said, to be sure, that philosophically 
 this view, in excluding theory, degrades 
 
 78
 
 METHOD 
 
 criticism to an altogether ancillary sta- 
 tion — the business of merely furnish- 
 ing data for an historical synthesis. 
 But I am disinclined to accept this im- 
 plication until the possibility of an his- 
 torical synthesis at all comparable in 
 exactness with the critical determina- 
 tion of the data for it is realized or 
 shown to be realizable. The monu- 
 ment that Sainte-Beuve's critical es- 
 says constitute is, in spite of their dis- 
 proportionate analysis, far otherwise 
 considerable than the fascinating his- 
 torical and evolutionary framework 
 within which Taine's brilliant synthesis 
 so hypnotizes our critical faculty. 
 
 In general effect, moreover, Sainte- 
 Beuve's work is itself markedly syn- 
 thetic. What a complete picture it 
 presents, at the same time continually 
 illustrating the truth that the wiser 
 business of criticism is to occupy it- 
 self with examples and the ideas they 
 
 79
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 evoke, not with theories and the sys- 
 tems they threaten! For with exam- 
 ples we have the essential element of 
 unity 'given'; it is actual, not prob- 
 lematical. And — impersonal theses of 
 course aside — in criticism of the larger 
 kind as distinct from mere reviewing or 
 expert commentary, by examples we 
 mean, practically, personalities. That 
 is to say, not Manfred, but Byron, not 
 the Choral Symphony, but Beethoven. 
 I mean, naturally, so far as personality 
 is expressed in work, and do not sug- 
 gest invasion of the field of biography 
 except to tact commensurable with that 
 which so notably served Sainte-Beuve. 
 There is here ample scope for the freest 
 exercise of the synthetic method. For 
 personality is the most concrete and 
 consistent entity imaginable, mysteri- 
 ously unifying the most varied and 
 complicated attributes. The solution 
 
 of this mystery is the end of critical 
 
 80
 
 METHOD 
 
 research. To state it is the crown of 
 critical achievement. The critic may 
 well disembarrass himself of theoretical 
 apparatus, augment and mobilize his 
 stock of ideas, sharpen his faculties of 
 penetration, and set in order all his 
 constructive capacity, before attack- 
 ing such a complex as any personality, 
 worthy of attention at all, presents at 
 the very outset. If he takes to pieces 
 and puts together again the elements 
 of its composition, and in the process or 
 in the result conveys a correct judg- 
 ment as well as portrait of the orig- 
 inal thus interpreted, he has accom- 
 plished the essentially critical part of 
 a task demanding the exercise of all 
 his powers. 
 
 And I think he will achieve the most 
 useful result in following the line I have 
 endeavored to trace in the work of the 
 true masters of this branch of litera- 
 ture, the born critics whose practice 
 
 8i
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 shows it to be a distinctive branch of 
 literature, having a function, an equip- 
 ment, a criterion, and a method of its 
 own. This practice involves, let me 
 recapitulate, the initial establishment 
 of some central conception of the sub- 
 ject, gained from specific study illu- 
 minated by a general culture, followed 
 by an analysis of detail confirming or 
 modifying this, and concluding with a 
 synthetic presentation of a physiog- 
 nomy whose features are as distinct as 
 the whole they compose — the whole 
 process interpenetrated by an estimate 
 of value based on the standard of rea- 
 son, judging the subject freely after 
 the laws of the latter*s own projec- 
 tion, and not by its responsiveness to 
 either individual whim or formulated 
 prescription. This, at all events, is the 
 ideal illustrated, with more or less 
 closeness, by not only such critics as 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Scherer, and Arnold, but 
 
 82
 
 METHOD 
 
 such straightfonvard apostles of pure 
 good sense as Sarcey and Emile Faguet. 
 How the critic conducts his criticism 
 will of course depend upon his own per- 
 sonality, and the ranks of criticism con- 
 tain perhaps as great a variety of types 
 and individuals as is to be found in any 
 other field of artistic expression. For, 
 beyond denial, criticism is itself an art; 
 and, as many of its most successful 
 products have been entitled * portraits,* 
 sustains a closer analogy at its best 
 with plastic portraiture than with such 
 pursuits as history and philosophy, 
 which seek system through science. 
 One of Sainte-Beuve's studies is as def- 
 initely a portrait as one of Holbein's; 
 and on the other hand a portrait by 
 Sargent, for example, is only more ob- 
 viously and not more really, a critical 
 product than are the famous 'portraits' 
 that have interpreted to us the genera- 
 tions of the great. More exclusively 
 
 83
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 imaginative art the critic must, it is 
 true, forego. He would wisely, as I 
 have contended, confine himself to por- 
 traiture and eschew the panorama. In 
 essaying a 'School of Athens' he is 
 apt, rather, to produce a 'Victory of 
 Constantine/ His direct aim is truth 
 even in dealing with beauty, forgetting 
 which his criticism is menaced with 
 transmutation into the kind of poetry 
 that one 'drops into' rather than at- 
 tains. 
 
 I have dwelt on the aesthetic as well 
 as the literary field in the province of 
 criticism, and insisted on the aesthetic 
 element as well as the historic in the 
 culture that criticism calls for, because 
 in a very true and fundamental sense 
 art and letters are one. They are so at 
 all events in so far as the function of 
 criticism is concerned, and dictate to 
 this the same practice. Current phi- 
 losophy may find a pragmatic sanction 
 
 84
 
 METHOD 
 
 for a pluralistic universe, but in the 
 criticism of art, whether plastic or lit- 
 erary, we are all 'monists.' The end 
 of our effort is a true estimate of the 
 data encountered in the search for that 
 beauty which from Plato to Keats has 
 been virtually identified with truth, 
 and the highest service of criticism is 
 to secure that the true and the beau- 
 tiful, and not the ugly and the false, 
 may in wider and wider circles of ap- 
 preciation be esteemed to be the good. 
 
 85
 
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