sonal characteristics that are likely to interfere with the success -as an intelligence office or a teacher's agency would say - of the critic, as rancour, malice, a desire for revenge, a prevailing flippancy, a slovenly style of address, are in the way of the permanent acceptability of critical opinion. The basis of Mr. Robertson's well-taken attack on Griswold's criticism of Poe is that Griswold stultified himself by harbouring motives of revenge against his dead author. Such a view is coming to be the common verdict with regard to all the Griswoldian criticism. The common view, the commonly accepted opinion that is the ultimate court of appeal in criticism- that is, like usage in language, what gives even the critic his final place. Argumentative and other tests are but methods of hastening or retarding the process. All induction, so called, in literary criticism must ultimately be based on data supplied by diverse and fallible minds.

In sum, if the preceding analyses are correct, literary criticism is opinion about books, authors, and literary art, with a view, so far as possible, to establishing acceptable fact. Actually, it consists of a corpus of opinion, theory, and fact, in the form of reviews, essays, addresses, treatises, casual sayings, and dicta generally. It may deal with personality, with ideas, with style, in short, with any aspect of literature that it please, and still be criticism. It will be good criticism in so far as it utters ideas that it is good for mankind to know, or that contain in themselves substantial demonstration of their truth. It will also be good in proportion as it is orderly, clear, and definite in exposition. It would follow that the essentials of good criticism are, as personal qualities, sincerity, fairness, and candour; as intellectual characteristics, knowledge of the facts, and an ability to use the ordinary rules of logic and common sense; as expression, clear and orderly statement.

VI

Let us pursue the matter into the region of practice. Criticism is a very interesting field for both amusing and disciplinary study, and the writing of critiques is pleasing diversion as well as an occasionally irksome part of the rhetorical curriculum in colleges.

The analysis of criticism and critical essays may be briefly explained. The most important element is surely the material that the critic has to expound and the ideas that he sets forth; his

substance, in short, is, as in any prose work, the first thing to be taken into consideration by the student. The point of view of the writer, that is to say, the kind of proof that he uses in support of his conclusions, is another important element. In short, the essential process is (1) to note the critic's conclusions, and (2) then see the steps by which he reached them. After these may properly come (3) a study of the occasion as effecting the treatment, and (4) an analysis of the structure and style. The actual fact, the soundness of the opinion, the quality and kind of proof, the standards explicit and implicit — these are the important things. For convenience in this analysis, a student should have in mind the extreme types of criticism: impressionism, where an author gives simply and solely his own feeling or opinion without regard to external and objective fact, and a matter-of-fact statement of the collective fact. No writer in this volume quite reaches either extreme. Lamb is nearest to impressionism; Mr. Robertson to collectivism.

The selections in this book will furnish abundant material for analysis. They represent considerable variety of taste and opinion and they are arranged in order from the simplest and most easily demonstrable positions, dealing with particular men, up to the more general and abstract positions, dealing with general theories and points of view. Any body of criticism which the student may pick up will, however, serve as well for the purposes of analytical and disciplinary study. Lowell, Hazlitt, DeQuincey, Carlyle, Ruskin, Mill, Thackeray, Addison, Ben Jonson, Sidney, George Eliot, Hunt, Jeffrey, F. W. H. Myers, R. W. Church, Mark Pattison, G. H. Lewes, and among living critics, Mr. Collins, Mr. Stedman, Mr. Morley, Mr. Courthorpe, Mr. Chesterton, Mr. Archer, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Colvin, Professor Gosse, Professor Saintsbury, Professor Ward, Professor Woodberry, and many others are among the best-known and substantial critics. It must not be forgotten that criticism, to revert to Professor Saintsbury's dictum, is what these men and many others have said about books, and that they have their accepted position because they say things that we gladly hear, though often with reservation and disagreement. Nor must it be forgotten that the aim in reading any critic is not only to find out his opinions but to ascertain how he arrived at them. It is an admirable study, so long as the student does not make many demands on the Real and the Absolute.

VII

1

To turn to the writing of criticism. In the preface to one of the most handy, compact, complete, and sensible of the many modern text-books on rhetoric, the author 1 says, "In attempts at literary criticism or anything resembling it the average student produces rubbish." And the author adds, with a competence that no one can question, that very few men in any large newspaper office have adequate intellectual equipment for producing respectable criticism. Those of us who have had much experience with the literary production of students will readily admit the truth of the remark; students' criticisms are far too often jejune, attenuated, vague. Young writers are prone to glut their themes with such phrases, to cite actual examples, as "real life," "rare imaginative power and beauty," "a personality of singular charm," "a certain unique style" (of the late General Lew Wallace), "natural," "spontaneous," "deep thought," "appreciation of nature," "striking at the root of things," "underlying thought," "the book itself," "in harmony with its theme," "singular suggestiveness and beauty," "characteristic tone," 66 distinctly reflective trend" (of, say, J. S. Mill), a "certain something" (there or wanting, as the case may be). Wordsworth's ballads, we are told, "lack charm, power, grace, sympathy, fine sentiment, effectiveness." Sir Thomas Browne's style "is a complete expression of the author's personality." Or, again, "his style is not sustained." Or, referring to the same eminent mystic, "The man himself chiefly interests us a man of distinctly intellectual quality, and of great richness of imagination and intensity of feeling." George Eliot "understands human nature, "but "many of her characters are not universal." "If she does not give us all the truth about life, she touches some of its deeper realities - She loves the deeper problems." "She has a perfectly marvellous insight into human nature. Few, if any, of her characters are overdrawn." Keats "left a poetic heritage rich in classical themes, cloaked in imagery both tropical and delicate, sensuous, breathing an intense love of beauty as beauty." His "Eve of St. Agnes holds one under a spell in its romantic loveliness, almost as strong as the weird charm of the Ancient Mariner. Such suggestiveness, such exquisite

1 H. Lamont, English Composition.

colouring, such delicate characterization, of youthful Madeline and Porphyro contrasted with the ancient dame and beadsman.” “To a Grecian Urn is a unique treatment of an unusual idea. With a classic breath he vitalizes the pictorial decorations of the urn, and warms them with the atmosphere of ancient Greece."

Such phrases and dicta, the list of which might be indefinitely prolonged, have repeatedly come under the eye of the reader of themes. To condemn them and, by inference, all student criticism is an easy task, and it is still easier, as probably every teacher has been inclined to do, to laugh at them. But one must plead for a distinction, as Arnold would say. Courses in criticism, the writing of criticism, have assumed a pretty definite place, just as a matter of fact, in many colleges; they are found to be a profitable source of discipline, and students are interested in the subject. The dicta quoted, to be sure, are not interesting; for the most part they stand for genuine impressions that young readers have; but they are either very vague and so obvious that one could guess at them with his eyes shut, or they are very exclamatory, and in either case half a dozen pages of such talk is not good. They are nearly as low as the "red blood" or the "vital, absorbing interest" of the stories that "grip" you, like the influenza, in a newspaper review or its twin brother, the publisher's advertisement of the latest novel. The remedy is largely a rhetorical one, and is more easily stated than applied; for the application of any precept usually calls for much fasting and prayer. Stated, it is simply that students should be required to say fewer things and to say each more definitely.

General faults of most frequent occurrence will be found to lie in the region of the intellectual conscience and in the manner of expression. As to the first of these, students are prone to say too many things and to say more than they really know. They deal, perhaps, too largely with personal "appeal," yet, if their exposition of their own impressions was clear and forcible, much could be said for such limitation. But the danger is that they will look at an author in terms of a naturally narrow experience, instead of tak ing him in his own terms, merely, so to speak, as a matter of fact. A student will sometimes assert, with undoubted truth, surely, that he doesn't see how Thoreau, say, could have lived alone in the woods and cooked his own meals as he did, because, forsooth, modern city houses, with good plumbing and a bevy of cooks, are good enough for the critic. Doubtless this attitude is more

wholesome than the sentimental one would be, but it does not conduce to an understanding of Thoreau. Nor is it possible to agree with the earnest conviction of a conscientious young woman that Boswell gives a wholly wrong impression of Johnson, for as a matter of fact nearly everything that we know of Johnson comes from Boswell. A common attitude is for students to apologize for their authors - for Franklin, say, or Poe - a thing that seems to be quite irrelevant. Students will gravely discuss the question as to whether Emma is a better character than Romola, wholly forgetting to discriminate between the artistic problem involved and the personal reaction, and assuming too blithely that the two are really comparable. Again, a young critic will be disappointed because Maggie Tulliver "is different from what we expected." Strictly a reader has no business to expect anything different from what the writer chooses to give him; the reader is not bound to like the feast, but that is his fault for having his expectations too keen. Or rather it is the fault of the teacher from too much preliminary praise. The main point is that young writers, when they commit any such typical faults as have been mentioned, when they fall into vagueness, or when they make sweeping assertions, err in that they do not canvass the ground to see what is really possible and legitimate, logical and honest, for them to know. As an eradicator of such intellectual sins, a course in criticism is very valuable. "What does it mean?" is the great question to ask.

As to the rhetorical side of the matter, the chief trouble seems to be that young writers try to say too many things, not only with resulting vagueness, but a generally scattering effect. Too many points that is a thing to be avoided and shunned. One small train of thought is about all that anybody can manage in the course of five hundred or one thousand words, the usual length for college exercises. Against the desirable centrality of effect, there operates the patchwork spirit. It is typical, widely so, for students to begin with an introduction 'a kind of an introduction" is the term that usually describes it. This, however, seldom introduces: the idea comes to a close, an impasse is formed, into the head wall of which the writer butts; he has to fall back to a new subject in paragraph two. This is often a summary of the work under discussion, and in itself it may be a good one; the trouble is that it has no necessary connection with the comment to follow. A summary is really nothing but the necessary exposition of what is under discussion, and should accordingly be written with that in view. It is not a