Questions at Issue

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Questions at Issue, by Edmund Gosse




Questions at Issue
EDMUND GOSSE
LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1893

TO JOSEPH HENRY SHORTHOUSE This Volume is Dedicated BY HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND THE AUTHOR

To the essays which are here collected I have given a name which at once, I hope, describes them accurately and distinguishes them from criticism of a more positive order. When a writer speaks to us of the works of the dead masters, of the literary life of the past, we demand from him the authoritative attitude. That Homer is a great poet, and that the verse of Milton is exquisite, are not Questions at Issue. In dealing with such subjects the critic must persuade himself that he is capable of forming an opinion, and must then give us his opinion definitely. But in the continent of literary criticism, where all else is imperial, there is a province which is still republican, and that is the analysis of contemporary literature, the frank examination of the literary life of to-day.