Talks on Writing English. First Series

by Arlo Bates

Criticism is appreciation based upon comparison of work with defined standards. To criticise is to form or to express an opinion. It is as far from blame on the one hand as from praise on the other; but it establishes the reason for either. As a branch of Exposition it is a written estimate. The principles of the art are the same whatever is the nature of the work to which judgment is applied, but we shall speak of it here chiefly as applied to literature.

The first necessity in criticism is that of a standard. Without definite standards there can be no measurement of work. There is no estimating the truth or falsity of anything unless there is first some idea of truth; the merit or the worthlessness of a thing cannot be measured unless there be some ideal by which it may be judged. Until one has personal standards by which to measure life he cannot be said to have any moral identity; until he has standards by which to estimate ideas, he has no intellectual identity; until he has definite and defined standards by which to criticise literature it is hardly possible to consider that he has literary identity or that he is entitled to lay claim to any literary opinion as his own.

I have spoken in a former lecture of that irritating class who take refuge behind the phrase, “I do not know what is good or bad, but I know what I like.” The phrase is a confession of either mental incapacity or of mental slothfulness. It means either “I am too stupid to think out the reason why this pleases me,” or “I am too lazy to think.” It is a moral duty for one to know why one likes or dislikes a thing. I do not mean that we can go to the ultimate analysis of the reasons why beauty delights and ugliness pains. I do mean that the possession of reason lays on a man a moral obligation to use it; and that so far as his individual reason can go, it is his duty to examine the grounds of his feelings. How is a man to have the courage of his dislikes if he does not know upon what they rest? It is the duty of every rational creature to have opinions. In order to have opinions it is necessary to estimate belief and feeling. In order to estimate it is needful to have standards.

All this being so, how are standards to be obtained? There is unfortunately no market where they are to be bought; and the mere mention of acquiring them fills untrained and timorous minds with a shuddering sense of horribly laborious undertaking. Yet in its plainest form the matter is simply to know what one believes; and that is the first step in any mental development which can claim to be genuine. This does not mean that criticism is to be a matter of personal opinion in the sense of its being arbitrary liking or disliking. It means that the first standard by which all work must be tried is that of its truth; and that to be able to measure its truth it is necessary to know what one regards as truth. To be able to estimate the verity of a book it is essential that one have definite opinions in regard to the truth as it concerns life and humanity, and that one be not in the least in doubt what those opinions are. Criticism by vague opinions is like weight by an uncertain balance.

For individual criticism, moreover, it is absolutely essential that judgment be made by truth as it appears to the critic, and not by his idea of what others may think to be truth. His knowledge of what others believe is to influence him in establishing a standard, not in his measurement of works by it. In other words, we all are and should be affected in our decision of what is truth by the opinion of our fellow-men. When we have made up our mind that a certain thing is true, we try work by it as a standard without reference to the belief or the disbelief of others.

This is a matter which reaches far. It seems to me that it is hardly possible to insist too strongly in education upon the need of realizing one’s opinions. What many persons call their mind is merely a sort of mental protoplasm from which a mind may with care be developed, and the most effective means of development is that of defining clearly the things which we believe and of assuring ourselves as exactly as may be what to us is and what is not truth.

Our idea of truth is the standard by which we estimate the thing that a work expresses, whether in idea or in impression. To estimate the mechanics of a book, its technical finish, and all that has to do with workmanship, it is necessary to study the masterpieces of literature. To judge of what may be done and what may therefore be fairly demanded, it is necessary to examine those works which have stood the test of time and which are pronounced good by the verdict of mankind. It is difficult to form our standards from contemporary writings because in them what is permanent is apt to be obscured by the temporary. Literature shows the relation of men to their time and the relation of man to life. In the classics of all languages, in the books which have lived from generation to generation, the temporary drops out of sight while the essential remains. A story which showed the relation of the men of the Restoration to the great struggle between Puritanism and Royalty was of poignant and even bitter interest to the readers of that time because each reader was a partisan on one side or on the other. To-day we have no personal feeling in regard to these political and religious differences, which without the aid of foot-notes we very likely do not even understand. Only the essential and human remains. We read such a tale with a perception only of the revelation which it makes of the nature of permanent human emotions. We get from it only the truths which have to do with the relation of man to life, not as it is for one party or sect, but as it is for man as a human being. When “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was new, it was hardly possible to look at it from a literary standpoint, because from one side or the other of the great anti-slavery question its readers felt passionately its moral purpose. We are already far enough away from the anti-slavery struggle to be able to examine the book critically, and to decide upon its literary qualities without reference to its political or moral weight. It is only when time has practically eliminated the temporary and accidental in a work that we are able to look at it in a temper dispassionate enough to allow us to get from it an idea of the essential qualities which shall be to us a standard.

The things which we are thus to learn from the study of the masterpieces and the classics of literature, are: first, the laws of province, and second, the possibilities of literary expression. By the laws of province—which is a somewhat formidable name for a not very complicated thing—I mean what is the province of each variety of literary form. This would include, for instance, the consideration of the consistency of fairy tales, the discussion of a moral purpose in fiction, methods in writing history or biography, and all the many matters of this nature. If we are to consider how well a novelist has done his work, it is necessary that we have some clearly defined notion of what comes properly within the scope of a novel; if we are to criticise a romance, a history, an essay, it is in any case needful that we be acquainted with what the experience of permanent literature and the judgment of the masters have decided to be the proper range of each sort of writing. This is what is meant by the laws of province. It is only by the careful study of the best works of these several sorts that we become qualified to judge how far a new production holds by the laws which should govern a composition of its kind. This is the more difficult as these laws are largely unwritten, and from the nature of things must be differently applied in different cases.

One thing must be said in regard to the authority of the classics, the masterpieces of literature to which we are to go to learn our standards. The young author is apt to feel that it is a mark of weakness to confess that he is influenced by the example of those who have gone before him. He protests, often pretty vigorously, against this autocratic rule of authors long since dust strewn as far as waters flow or the wind speeds. He feels that it is for the living to make laws for the living, and this generally means in his own case a willingness to make such canons, or at least a determination to be a law unto himself. The difficulty is that he does not recognize the true state of things. The domain of literature is not a despotism, but the most absolutely free of all republics. No author, no matter how great he be, can force the public to accept his book or can impose his works upon the generations. It is by the suffrages of the readers of the world that he stands or falls, and if there was ever given in the whole world a disinterested and impartial vote, it is precisely this decision which the world makes upon the merit of works. What we call the classics are the books which the world has decided are good. It is the consensus of the opinion of mankind that dominates here. The opinion of individuals is often wrong. I doubt if the verdict of generations upon a book ever errs substantially.

Yet another thought is of importance. To write is to endeavor to communicate thought. It is manifestly inconsistent and illogical not to choose that method of communication to which the world will listen. The measure of the world’s willingness is to be found in the works which the world has permanently approved. We learn our standards from the masterpieces of literature, we say; we might say: Here are the books which show what form of composition will be attended to by the world which the writer wishes to address. To see how far successful a given author has been in doing what he attempted, it is well to compare his work with this.