with John Huss and Jerome of Prague and Socinus and old John Zisca, and ran through Neal's history of the Puritans and Calamy's Non-Conformists' Memorial, having like thoughts and passions with them — but then Spinoza became his God, and he took up the vast chain of being in his hand, and the round world became the centre and the soul of things in some shadowy sense, forlorn of meaning, and around him he beheld the living traces and the sky-pointing proportions of the mighty Pan - but poetry redeemed him from this spectral philosophy, and he bathed his heart in beauty, and gazed at the golden light of heaven, and drank of the spirit of the universe, and wandered at eve by fairy-stream or fountain,

· - When he saw nought but beauty, When he heard the voice of that Almighty One

In every breeze that blew or wave that murmured'.

and wedded with truth in Plato's shade, and in the writings of Proclus and Plotinus saw the ideas of things in the eternal mind, and unfolded all mysteries with the Schoolmen and fathomed the depths of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, and entered the third heaven with Jacob Behmen, and walked hand in hand with Swedenborg through the pavilions of the New Jerusalem, and sung his faith in the promise and in the word in his Religious Musings and lowering himself from that dizzy height, poised himself on Milton's wings, and spread out his thoughts in charity with the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's Sonnets, and studied Cowper's blank verse, and betook himself to Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and sported with the wits of Charles the Second's days and of Queen Anne, and relished Swift's style and that of the John Bull (Arbuthnot's we mean, not Mr. Croker's), and dallied with the British Essayists and Novelists, and knew all qualities of more modern writers with a learned spirit, Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Junius, and Burke, and Godwin, and the Sorrows of Werter, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire, and Marivaux, and Crébillon, and thousands more now laughed with Rabelais in his easy chair' or pointed to Hogarth, or afterwards dwelt on Claude's classic scenes, or spoke with rapture of Raphael, and compared the women at Rome to figures that had walked out of his pictures, or visited the Oratory of Pisa, and described the works of Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Massaccio, and gave the moral of the picture of the Triumph of Death, where the beggars and the wretched invoke his dreadful dart, but the rich and mighty of the earth quail and shrink before it; and in that land of siren sights and sounds, saw a dance of peasant girls, and was charmed with lutes and gondolas, - or wandered into Germany and lost himself in the labyrinths of the Hartz Forest and of the Kantean philosophy, and amongst the cabalistic names of Fichté and Schelling and Lessing, and God knows who — this was long after, but all the former while he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes with tears, as he hailed the rising orb of liberty, since quenched in darkness and in blood, and had kindled his affections at the blaze of the French Revolution, and sang for joy when the towers of the Bastile and the proud places of the insolent and the oppressor fell, and would have floated his bark, freighted with fondest fancies, across the Atlantic wave with Southey and others to seek for peace and freedom:

'In Philarmonia's undivided dale!'

In general, Mr. Harrison's essay is somewhat loose in structure. As has been said, he states his point at issue a couple of times at least, frequently digresses from this to discuss Ruskin's ideas and his own likes and dislikes, and is obsessed with the length of Ruskin's sentences.

1. Point out the main topics of Mr. Harrison's essay and show what he is treating in each paragraph. What is the special topic, or critical issue, of his essay? Show how he brings this out and where he diverges from it.

2. Does Mr. Harrison use largely categories of demonstrable fact, or does he frequently deal with terms equivalent, in general, to “good” or “bad”? What, with regard to the preceding question, is implied in such a sentence as this (p. 211): "The piece is overwrought as well as unjust, with somewhat false emphasis, but how splendid in colour and majestic in language"? Or this (p. 219): "Every other faculty of a great master of speech, except reserve, husbanding of resources, and patience, he possesses in a measure most abundant — lucidity, purity, brilliance, elasticity, wit, fire, passion, imagination, majesty, with a mastery over all the melody of cadence that has no rival in the whole range of English literature"? Or this (p. 211): "Stained as usual with the original sin of Calvinism"? Or by the "perfect style" (p. 205)? Compare Ŏn English Prose in the same volume from which this essay is taken (or Representative Essays on the Theory of Style). Make a catalogue of the categories which Mr. Harrison employs, with a view to ascertaining his standards and the sanctions or proofs for them.

3. State Mr. Harrison's theory of "Consonance." Compare it with Stevenson's in On Style in Literature. Do you notice any defects in the theory? Test by this theory any passage that seems to you to be good. 4. Point out other English critics, such as Hazlitt, who have made large use of æsthetic categories in their criticism.

X. CHARLES LAMB

Lamb's famous essay on Shakespeare, perhaps his most conspicuous piece of criticism, is as good an example as can be found of that paradoxical type which rests on personality and a wholly a priori premise. That premise is expressed in these words: "They [Shakespeare's plays] being in themselves essentially so different from all others" (p. 228). Following from this, the critical proposition is: "I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a stage than those of almost any other dramatist whatever" (p. 222). This position Lamb maintains in a series of very brilliantly phrased reasons, of which that about Lear (p. 231) is classic in its eloquence and an excellent example of the dominance of taste in criticism.

The chief positions of the essay are these: (1) The inner life which Shakespeare represents is unfitted to the capacity of audiences which can appreciate only a story, action, or vociferous talk; (2) acting, even of a great sort, like that of Mrs. Siddons, tends to level, or to raise to the same level, both bad and good sentiments; (3) the tragedy of the mind, of Lear and Othello, for example, may not be represented except to the imagination; (4) stage mechanism is inadequate to picture the beauty of Shakespeare's scenes, as those of The Tempest.

It is evident that many fallacies are rampant in Lamb's argument. Historically, for example, it is a fact that the plays were, despite Lamb's interpre

tation, written to be acted. Again Lamb confuses the distinction between good and bad acting. Furthermore, there is no reason why any play may not be acted, since we learn of tragic or spiritual happenings only by words and acts, media, that is, at the command of the actor, and it is doubtful, for psychological reasons, whether the reading of plays, which Lamb approves, may not be objected to on much the same grounds as the seeing of the stage presentation. Such phrases, too, as "I am not arguing that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much Hamlet is made another thing by being acted" (p. 224), contain fallacies; for that sentence implies an absolute Hamlet, which is impossible. Lamb's objection would apply to any interpretation or reading, and yet Lamb, with charming inconsistence, practically allows us to imagine any Hamlet we like; for he says (p. 222) that in seeing a Shakespearian play, "We have let go a dream, in quest of an unattainable substance." Other paradoxes will appear to the reader.

"The truth is," to use a phrase of Lamb's since widely employed by many impressionists, that Lamb's criticism is hardly more than the expression of his personal predilection, put in an eloquent form. The fundamental premise quoted in the first paragraph of this note is strictly undemonstrable. It is one of the curiosities of criticism, both historically and psychologically, to note how different this premise is from that which a century and more earlier assumed Shakespeare to be a barbarian. No more really rational grounds can be assigned for one than for the other; but the change in taste is extreme. It is a matter of curiosity, in like manner, to note the reasons which Lamb's great contemporaries, Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey, and others, gave for holding a premise akin to that of Lamb. Shakespeare was to all these men, in the words of De Quincey, “the glory of the human intellect" (Shakespeare, 1838), yet the reasons why he was so great differ with their authors. His imaginative height is what strikes Lamb; with Coleridge, for example, it is some six or eight qualities of his mind (Lectures on Shakespeare), whereas De Quincey lays especial stress on what might be called Shakespeare's intellectual contribution. These dicta are, of course, quite as illuminating with regard to the personality of the authors as with regard to Shakespeare, and they very well illustrate the rôle played by temperament and predilection in criticism. They are really a very dignified expression of likes and dislikes. Their strength lies in the earnest and brilliant expression of the authors, and they may be regarded as literature rather than as science.

1. State Lamb's thesis and show the points that he makes in support of it. What is the demonstration or evidence for his various positions? What is meant by such phrases as "a proper reverence for Shakespeare"? (p. 229.) 2. Analyze such dicta as "The love-dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night; the more intimate sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus with their married wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful in the reading by the inherent fault of stage representation," etc. (p. 223), with a view to testing its universal soundness and to showing how much truth it contains. How does the passage containing the words "torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play" (p. 222) square with Lamb's own procedure in his Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets?

3. Compare the thesis held by Lamb and his method with the theses and the method of contemporary paradoxical critics, such as Tolstoy in What is Art? or Mr. Bernard Shaw in the introductions to his various volumes of

plays, or Mr. G. K. Chesterton in Varied Types, Heretics, and his biographies of Browning and Dickens. What are the sanctions for the opinions held by these critics?

4. Trace the growth of critical tests regarding Shakespeare from the time of Dryden to Lamb, with a view to showing the steps by which the change took place. Ascertain the influence of Lamb's position on contemporary and subsequent criticism. These are very large topics, too large for most college students to handle. One should have recourse to Professor Saintsbury's History of Criticism, Professor Lounsbury's The Text of Shakespeare, and many other books, besides the periodicals of the time and the work of critics such as Johnson, Coleridge, and Hazlitt.

XI. HENRY JAMES

As is said in the opening paragraph, Mr. James's essay on The Art of Fiction is a discussion of the address of the same name by the late Sir Walter Besant, delivered at the Royal Institution, April 25, 1884. The present essay provoked a lively answer from Robert Louis Stevenson entitled A Humble Remonstrance, originally published in Longmans' Magazine (v. p. 139) and since reprinted in Memories and Portraits. The purport of Besant's address is to be gathered from Mr. James's pages; but it would be an illuminating study in criticism for the reader to examine the material, the point of view, and the sanctions of other essays and books on the subject. (See Gayley and Scott, Introduction, and my Specimens of Narration for more or less complete bibliography.)

The present discussion, as Mr. James is fond of reiterating, assumes the point of view of the producer. All that the latter is really obliged to do is to make his treatment of whatever subject he may choose an interesting one. He should be bound by no canons and by no rules, except the artistic obligation of getting the best possible execution for his material. Unlike Besant, Mr. James gives no directions for the writing of novels and no counsel to the reader for judging their worth, except such as are implied in such words as "treatment" and "interesting." The vagueness of these terms Mr. James admits when he says that no two readers will be interested in or impressed by the same thing. Thus it will be seen that Mr. James's criteria have nothing at all absolute in them; the treatment and the question of excellence is related, not to an ideal of novel writing, but to the material and the artistic impulse of the writer. In practically denying the ideal and the absolutely good, of which actual novels would be, as it were, more or less inexact replicas, he is, philosophically, quite at variance with the fundamental assumptions of the four essays on poetry which follow this.

Like these essays, Mr. James's work might be called constructive as opposed to destructive in that it tries to establish a principle for the understanding of an art. Mr. James would doubtless repudiate the term constructive, on the same grounds which make such terms as romantic and the novel of character appear to him to be clumsy and inexact, and he would strictly be right. No vigorous piece of destructive criticism such, for example, as Macaulay's essay on Montgomery, fails to imply some constructive principle; and, on the other hand, a piece of so-called constructive criticism by implication is damaging to works which do not accord with the principle which it is establishing. It is impossible, actually, with the same exactness which would

characterize a building contractor, to say in literature where destructiveness ends and constructiveness begins. However, the critical question here at issue regards the proof of Mr. James's skilfully wrought and brilliantly phrased exposition.

1. Explain the thesis of the essay. What sort of counsel has Besant offered to writers? What is Mr. James's answer to these points? What is meant in this essay by such terms as the "novel of incident," the "novel of character," the "romance," "the good novel and the bad novel," "life," taste," "morality," "interesting," etc.? Why, of the novels cited, does Mr. James call some failures and some successes? What is Mr. James's test for a novel? Explain and test such sentences as "Catching the very note and trick, the strange irregular rhythm of life, that is the attempt whose strenuous force keeps Fiction upon her feet” (p. 250).

2. On what grounds can Mr. James's position be supported or be overthrown? Are his views rational or are they personal? What light is afforded by the fact that the distinctions which Mr. James denies are actually in common use? Consult Bliss Perry: A Study of Prose Fiction; W. L. Cross: The Development of the English Novel; W. D. Howells's Criticism and Fiction, etc.

XII. EDGAR ALLAN POE

Poe's very brief exposition of the way in which he wrote The Raven is, whether strictly serious or not, an admirable piece of literary analysis. It is so clear that it needs little further comment, but one may remark that it is in general an exposition, first, of the theory of poetry and, next, of the application of the principles laid down to a particular situation. If Poe's premises are sound, that a poem, depending as it does on conditions of limited duration, must be short in length, that beauty must be its object, that the most beautiful matter is the idea of death, etc., then it would follow that The Raven must be the most beautiful poem in existence, unless possibly surpassed by poems of a like character and better execution. With this extreme

judgment criticism would hardly be in accord, and the divergence would relate either to the theory or to its working out in metre, refrain, machinery, and the like. As a matter of fact, poetry has never been successfully defined to square with all theories; the essays of Arnold, Coleridge, and Shelley in this volume are based on other fundamental conceptions as difficult to demonstrate as this. Poe is consistent in his theory; it is the same as that enunciated in his well-known Poetic Principle.

1. State Poe's theory of poetry, showing what, in his view, are the characteristics of a poem. Show how these are applied in the composition of The Raven. What does he mean by "incident," "tone," "effect," "universality," etc.? Apply these principles to such poems as Ulalume and Annabel Lee. Do they apply to typical lyrics of Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, and others? On what proof do they rest?

2. What of the title of this essay as related to the matter under discussion?

XIII. MATTHEW ARNOLD

The structure of Arnold's essay, like that of Poe's, is clear and simple. The essay consists of two parts, a statement of the principles of procedure and the application of them to typical examples. The principles of procedure