This is a fair vision; so fair, perhaps, that it may seem to be, like others, made of nothing more solid than “golden air.” That would be perhaps excessive, for, as has been pointed out above, the positive gains under this New Dispensation, both of good criticism produced and of good literature freed from arbitrary persecution, have been very great. But, as we foreshadowed in the Interchapter at the end of the last volume, there is another side to the account, a side not to be ignored. If Buddha and Mr Arnold be right, and if “Fixity” be “a sign of the Law”—then most assuredly Modern Criticism is not merely lawless, but frankly and wilfully antinomian. It is rare to find two critics of competence liking just the same things; it is rarer still to find them liking the same things for the same reason. And so it happens that the catholic ideal which this New Criticism seemed likely to establish is just as far off, and just as frequently neglected or even outraged, as in the old days of strict sectarianism, and without the same excuse. The eighteenth-century critic could render a reason, pro tanto valid, for patronising Chaucer, and taking exceptions even to Milton, because neither was like Dryden. But the critic of to-day who belittles Dryden because he is not like Chaucer or Milton is utterly without excuse:—and yet he is to be found, and found in high places. If (as in another case) critics were to be for a single day what they ought to be, the world would no doubt be converted; but there certainly does not appear to be much more chance of this in the one case than in the other.
And so the enemy—who is sometimes a friendly enemy enough—has not the slightest difficulty in blaspheming,—in asking whether the criterion of pleasure does not leave the fatal difficulty: “Yes: but pleasure to whom?”; in demanding some test which the simple can apply; in reproaching “Romantic” critics with faction and will-worship, with inconsistency and anarchy. Nor perhaps is there any better shift than the old Pantagruelian one—to passer oultre. There are these objections to the modern way of criticism: and probably they can never be got rid of or validly gainsaid. But there is something beyond them, which can be reached in spite of them, and which is worth the reaching.
This something is the comprehensive and catholic possession of literature—all literature and all that is good in all—which has for the first time become possible and legitimate. From Aristotle to La Harpe—even to one of the two Matthew Arnolds—the covenant of criticism was strictly similar to that of the Jewish Law,—it was a perpetual “Thou shalt not do this,” or “Thou shalt do this only in such and such a specified way.” There might be some reason for all the commandments, and excellent reason for some; but these reasons were never in themselves immortal, and they constantly tended to constitute a mortal and mortifying Letter. The mischief of this has been shown in something not far from two thousand pages, and there is no need to spend more time on it. Nor is it necessary even to argue that in the region of Art such a Law entirely lacks the justification which it may have in the region of Morals.
But it may fairly be asked, How do you propose to define any principles for your New Critic? And the answers are ready, one in Hellenic, one in Hebraic phraseology. The definition shall be couched as the man of understanding would define it: and if any will do the works of the New Criticism he shall know the doctrine thereof. And the works themselves are not hard to set forth. He must read, and, as far as possible, read everything—that is the first and great commandment. If he omits one period of a literature, even one author of some real, if ever so little, importance in a period, he runs the risk of putting his view of the rest out of focus; if he fails to take at least some account of other literatures as well, his state will be nearly as perilous. Secondly, he must constantly compare books, authors, literatures indeed, to see in what each differs from each, but never in order to dislike one because it is not the other. Thirdly, he must, as far as he possibly can, divest himself of any idea of what a book ought to be, until he has seen what it is. In other words, and to revert to the old simile, the plate to which he exposes the object cannot be too carefully prepared and sensitised, so that it may take the exactest possible reflection: but it cannot also be too carefully protected from even the minutest line, shadow, dot, that may affect or predetermine the impression in the very slightest degree.
To carry this out is, of course, difficult; to carry it out in perfection is, no doubt, impossible. But I believe that it can be done in some measure, and could be done, if men would take criticism both seriously and faithfully, better and better—by those, at least, who start with a certain favourable disposition and talent for the exercise, and who submit this disposition to a suitable training in ancient and modern literature. And by such endeavours, some nearer approach to the “Fair Vision” must surely be probable than was even possible by the older system of schedule and precept, under which even a new masterpiece of genius, which somehow or other “forced the consign” and established itself, became a mischief, because it introduced a new prohibitive and exclusive pattern. I have said more than once that, according to the common law of flux and reflux—the Revolution which those may accept who are profoundly sceptical of Evolution—some return, not to the old Neo-classicism, but to some more dogmatic and less æsthetic criticism than we have seen for the last three generations, may be expected, and that there have been not a few signs of its arrival. But this is a History, not a Prophecy, and sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. Perhaps even the good is not quite so insufficient as the day itself, “chagrined at whatsoe’er it is,” may be apt to suppose.
II.
“Who would has heard Sordello’s story told.”
In these three volumes an endeavour has been made to fulfil the pledge given at their beginning, and to set before the reader, in a plain tale, what men have actually done, said, and thought in Criticism of Literature, in Judging of Authors. We have seen how the art grew up, like so many other arts, as a sort of parergon, as a corollary upon the strictly practical study of Rhetoric for the purpose of the orator: and how it was long held in a sort of subjection to this techne, which, if not exactly a techne banausos, certainly must rank far below the study and the fruition of the whole of literature. We have seen how, in the times called ancient, it never got wholly free from this inferior position; how, in the times called mediæval, it hardly showed any signs of life; how it revived with the general new birth, and what have been its fortunes since. There can be no need to pad this already stout volume with abstracts of our Interchapters. The story of Criticism is actually before the reader, and if he will not take it now, that it is at last given to him, because there is wanting something that is not the story, I cannot help it. No doubt there are some, perhaps there are many, who honestly and impartially think the story not worth giving, think it a story of something, at best a superfluity, generally a failure, at worst a nuisance, redeemable and excusable only (if then) by being made to serve as illustration of some philosophic theory. But I have said often enough and positively enough, though I trust not too contumaciously, that I do not think so.
And even if the record seem too often a record of failure and mistake, there is a cheerful side to this also. Most of the dangers of criticism, as this long survey must have sufficiently taught those who care to learn, are comfortably and reassuringly (if from another point of view despairingly) old. We know they will come, and we know they will go, whether in our time or in another we cannot say, but it does not much matter.
“The Whole man idly boasts to find,” no doubt. Not many have even attempted to do it; few who have attempted it have succeeded in that comparatively initial and rudimentary adventure which consists in justly finding the parts. But Criticism is, after all, an attempt, however faulty and failing, however wandering and purblind, to do both the one and the other. No Muse, or handmaid of the Muses (let it be freely confessed) has been less often justified of her children: none has had so many good-for-nothings for sons. Of hardly any have some children had such disgusting, such patent, such intolerable faults. The purblind theorist who mistakes the passport for the person, and who will not admit without passport the veriest angel; the acrid pedant who will allow no one whom he dislikes to write well, and no one at all to write on any subject that he himself has written on, or would like to write on, who dwells on dates and commas, who garbles out and foists in, whose learning may be easily exaggerated but whose taste and judgment cannot be, because they do not exist;—these are the too often justified patterns of the critic to many minds. The whole record of critical result, which we have so laboriously arranged and developed, is a record of mistake and of misdoing, of half-truths and nearly whole errors.