THE criticism of criticism is one of the marked literary characteristics of the last ten or fifteen years, both in this country and in Europe. It is seen in France in Brunetière’s essays and in Hennequin’s “Scientific Criticism;” in England in the recent work of Wm. B. Wordsfold on the “Principles of Criticism” and in Mr. John M. Robertson’s two volumes of “Essays toward a Critical Method;” in this country in Mr. Howells’s “Criticism and Fiction,” in Prof. Johnson’s “Elements of Criticism” and in the still more recent work of Professor Sears on “Methods and Principles of Criticism,” besides the numerous discussions of the subject in the magazines and literary journals.
A Western college professor lately discussed some phases of the subject under the head of “Democratic Criticism;” whereupon other college professors raised the voice of protest, one of them asking ironically, Why not have a democratic botany and zoölogy and geology and astronomy? I think it may be said in reply that, so far as democracy is based upon natural law and means free inquiry, a fair field and no favor, we have these things already. All science is democratic, in the sense that it is no respecter of persons, has no partialities, stops at no arbitrary boundaries, and places all things on an equal footing before natural law. Surely the spirit of science makes directly for democracy. When science shows us that the universe is all made of one stuff, that the celestial laws, as Whitman said, do not need to be worked over and rectified, that inherent power and worth alone finally tell, and that there is not one rule for the heavens above and another for the earth below, it is making smooth the way for democratic ideas and ideals.
Still, pure science is outside the domain of literature, and does not reflect a people’s life and character as literature does. It does not hold the mirror of man’s imagination up to nature, but resolves nature in the alembic of his understanding. It is not an exponent of personality, as art is, but an index of the development and progress of the impersonal reason. But when we enter the region of the sentiments and the emotions—the subjective world of criticism, literature, art—the case is different. Here we find reflected social and arbitrary distinctions; here we find mirrored the spirit and temper of men as they are acted upon and modified by the social organism and the ideals of different times and races. A democratic community will have standards of excellence in art and criticism differing from those of an aristocratic community, and will be drawn by different qualities. It seems to me that Dr. Triggs was quite right in saying that a criticism that estimates literary products according to absolute standards, that clings to the past, that cultivates the academic spirit, that is exclusive and unsympathetic, may justly be called aristocratic; and that a criticism that follows more the comparative method, that adheres to principles instead of to standards, and lays the stress upon the vital and the characteristic in a man’s work, rather than upon its form and extrinsic beauty, is essentially democratic.
No doubt the ideal of the monumental works of antiquity is essentially anti-democratic. It was fostered by an exclusive culture. It goes with the idea of the divine right of kings, of a privileged class, and is at war with the spirit of our times. The Catholic tradition in religion and the classical tradition in literature are as foreign to the spirit of democracy as is the monarchical tradition in politics. They are all branches from the same root. The classical tradition begat Milton, but it did not beget Shakespeare, the most marvelous genius of the modern world. To the classic tradition, as it spoke through Voltaire, Shakespeare was a barbarian. Indeed, Shakespeare’s art was essentially democratic, how much soever it may have occupied itself with royal and aristocratic personages. It is as free as an uncaged bird, and pays no tribute to classic models. Its aim is inward movement, fusion, and vitality, rather than outward harmony and proportion. A Greek play is like a Greek temple,—chaste, severe, symmetrical, beautiful. A play of Shakespeare is, as Dr. Johnson long ago suggested, more like a wood or a piece of free nature.
II
Democratic and aristocratic may not be the best terms to apply to the two opposing types of critics,—men like Matthew Arnold or the French critic Ferdinand Brunetière, on the one hand, both the spokesmen of authority in letters; and men like Sainte-Beuve and Anatole France, and the younger generation of English and American critics on the other, men who are more tolerant of individual differences and more inclined to seek the reason of each work within itself. Yet these terms indicate fairly well two profoundly different types.
Brunetière is a militant and dogmatic critic, as we saw by his severe denunciation of Zola while lecturing in this country a few years since. One of his eulogists speaks of him as the “autocrat of triumphant convictions.” Of democratic blood in his veins there is very little. He reflects the old orthodox and aristocratic spirit in his dictum that nature is not to be trusted; that both in taste and in morals what comes natural to us and gives us pleasure is, for that very reason, to be avoided. Nature is depraved. In morals, would we attain to virtue, we must go counter to her; and in art and literature, would we attain to wisdom, we must distrust what we like. This suspicion of nature was the keynote of the old theology, which found its authority in a miraculous revelation, and it is the keynote of the old Aristotelian criticism, which found its authority in a body of rules deduced from the masters. The new theology looks for a scientific basis for its morals, or seeks for the sanction of nature herself; and democratic criticism aims to stand upon the same basis, and cleaves to principles and not to standards, not by yielding to the caprices of uninformed taste, but by seeking the law and test of every work within itself. We no longer judge of the worth of a man by his creed, but by what he is in and of himself; by his natural virtues and aptitudes; and we no longer condemn a work of art because it breaks with the old traditions.
Arnold was of similar temper with Brunetière. His elements of style are “dignity and distinction,” a part of the classic tradition, a survival from the feudal and aristocratic world, from a literature of courts and courtiers, as distinguished from a literature of the people, a democratic literature. Distinction of utterance, distinction of manners, distinction of dress and equipage—they are all of a piece, and adhere in the aristocratic and monarchical ideal. The special antipathy of this ideal is the common; all commonness is vulgar. When Arnold came to this country and became interested in the lives of Grant and Lincoln, he found them both wanting in distinction,—there was no savor of the aristocratic in their words or manners. And the criticism is true. From all accounts, Grant presented a far less distinguished appearance at Appomattox than did Lee; and Lincoln was easily outshone in aristocratic graces by some members of his cabinet. Indeed, the predominant quality of the two men was their immense commonness. Washington and Jefferson came much nearer the aristocratic ideal. Lincoln and Grant both had greatness of the first order, but their type was democratic and not aristocratic. The aristocratic ideal of excellence embraces other qualities; there is more pride, more exclusiveness in it; it holds more by traditions and special privileges. Lincoln had less distinction than Sumner or Chase, Grant less than Sherman or Lee, but each had an excellence the others had not. The choice, the refined, the cultured, belong to one class of excellencies: the qualities of Lincoln and Grant belong to another and more fundamental kind. Arnold himself had distinction,—he had urbanity, lucidity, proportion, and many other classic virtues,—but he had not breadth, sympathy, heartiness, commonness. The quality of distinction, an air of something choice, high-bred, superfine, will doubtless count for less and less in a country like ours. In literature and in character we are looking for other values, for the true, the vital, the characteristic. There is nothing in life or character more winsome than commonness wedded to great excellence; the ordinary crowned with the extraordinary, as in Lincoln the man, Socrates the philosopher, Burns or Wordsworth the poet. Distinction wins admiration, commonness wins love. The note of equality, the democratic note, is much more pronounced in Browning than in Tennyson, in Shelley than in Arnold, in Wordsworth than in Milton, and it is more pronounced in American poets than in English. In times and for a people like ours, the suggestion of something hearty and heroic in letters is more needed than the suggestion of something fine and exquisite. Distinction is not to be confounded with dignity or elevation, which flourishes more or less in all great peoples. A common laboring man may show great dignity, but never distinction. Dignity often shone in the speeches of the old Indian chiefs, but not distinction, as the term is here used.
The more points at which a man touches his fellow man, the more democratic he is. The breadth of his relation to the rest of the world, that is the test. Sainte-Beuve was more truly a democratic critic than is Brunetière. The democratic producer in literature will differ from the aristocratic less in his standards of excellence than in the atmosphere of human equality and commonness which he effuses. We are too apt to associate the common with the vulgar. There is the commonness of a Lincoln or a Grant, and there is the commonness of the lower strata of society. There is the commonness of earth, air, and water, and there is the commonness of dust and mud; the commonness of the basic and the universal, and the commonness of the cheap and tawdry. Grant’s calmness, self-control, tenacity of purpose, modesty, comprehensiveness of mind, were uncommon in degree, not in kind. He was the common soldier with extraordinary powers added, but the common soldier was always visible. So with Lincoln,—his greatness was inclusive, not exclusive.
III