There is hardly one of the papers in either book (though some of the Guardian pieces are simple, yet quite honest and adequate reviews) that does not display that critical attitude which we have defined above, both directly and in relation to the subjects. The most interesting and important passages are those which reveal in the critic, or recognise in his authors, this attitude itself—as when we read of Amiel: “In Switzerland it is easy to be pleased with scenery. But the record of such pleasure becomes really worth while when, as happens with A., we feel that there has been and, with success, an intellectual effort to get at the secret, the precise motive, of this pleasure—to define feeling.” Indeed, I really do not know that “to define feeling” is not as good—it is certainly as short—a definition of at least a great part of the business of the critic as you can get. And so again of Lamb: “To feel strongly the charm of an old poet or moralist,... and then to interpret that charm, to convey it to others,... this is the way of his criticism.”

It is certainly the way of Mr Pater’s, and it is always good to walk with him in it—better, I venture to think, than to endeavour to follow him in his rarer and never quite successful attempts to lift himself off it, and flutter in the vague. Good, for instance, as is the Essay on “Æsthetic Poetry,” it would have been far better if it had contented itself with being, in fact and in name, what it is in its best parts—a review of Mr William Morris.[[984]] This, however, was written very early, and before he had sent out his spies to the Promised Land in The Renaissance (and they had brought back mighty bunches of grapes!), still more before he had reached the Pisgah of Marius. Even here though, and naturally still more in the much later paper on Rossetti, he presents us, as he does almost everywhere, with admirable, sometimes with consummate, examples of “defined feeling” about Wordsworth and Coleridge, about Browning and Lamb, about Sir Thomas Browne (one of his most memorable things), about more modern persons—Mr Gosse, M. Fabre, M. Filon. Particularly precious are the three papers on Shakespeare. I have always wished that Mr Pater had given us more of them, as well as others on authors possessing more of what we may call the positive quality, than those whom he actually selected. It would, I think, speaking without impertinence, have done him some good: and it would, speaking with certainty, have done us a great deal. One may sometimes think that it was in his case (as in some others, though so few!) almost a pity that he was in a position to write mainly for amusement. But it is not likely that his sequestered and sensitive genius could ever have done its best—if it could have done anything at all—at forced draught. So, as usual, things are probably better as they are.

Universality of his method.

What, however, is not probable but certain, and what is here of most importance, is that the Paterian method is co-extensive in possibility of application with the entire range of criticism—from the long and slow degustation and appreciation of a Dante or a Shakespeare to the rapidest adequate review of the most trivial and ephemeral of books. Feel; discover the source of feeling (or no feeling, or disgust, as it will often be in the trivial cases); express the discovery so as to communicate the feeling: this can be done in every case. And if it cannot be done by every person, why, that is only equivalent to saying that it is not precisely possible for everybody to be a critic, which, again, is a particular case of a general proposition announced in choice Latin a long time ago, practically anticipated in choicer Greek long before, and no doubt perfectly well understood by wise persons of all nations and languages at any time back to the Twenty-third of October B.C. 4004, or any other date which may be preferred thereto. Besides the objections before referred to, there may be others—such as that the critic’s powers, even if he possesses them, will become callous by too much exercise,—an objection refuted by the fact, so often noticed, that there is hardly an instance of a man with real critical powers becoming a worse critic as he grew older, and many a one of his becoming a better. But, at any rate, this was Mr Pater’s way of criticism: this had already been the way pursued, more or less darkling or in clear vision, by all modern critics—the way first definitely formulated, and, perhaps, allowing for bulk of work, most consistently pursued, by himself. And I have said—perhaps often enough—that I do not know a better.

Mr J. A. Symonds.

Although the relation of “moon” to “sun,” so often used as an image in literary history, will not work with pedantic exactness in relation to Mr J. A. Symonds and the critic just mentioned,—for the moon is not many times more voluminous than the sun, and there are other difficulties,—it applies to a certain extent. Both were literary Hedonists; both were strongly influenced by Greek and Italian. But Mr Symonds’s mind, like his style, was very much more irregular and undisciplined than Mr Pater’s (which had almost something of Neo-classic precision adjusting its Romantic luxuriance), and this want of discipline let him loose[[985]] into a loquacity which certainly deserved the Petronian epithet of enormis, and could sometimes hardly escape the companion one of ventosa. His treatise on Blank Verse,[[986]] interesting as it is, would give the enemy of the extremer “modern” criticism far too many occasions to blaspheme by its sheer critical anti-nomianism: and over all his extensive work, faults of excess of various kinds swarm. But beauties and merits are there in ample measure as well as faults: and in the literary parts of The Renaissance in Italy the author has endeavoured to put some restraint on himself, and has been rewarded for the sacrifice. From some little acquaintance with literary history, I think I may say that there is no better historical treatment of a foreign literature in English. One can never help wishing that the author had left half his actual subject untouched, and had completed the study of Italian literature.[[987]]

Thomson (“B. V.”)