Hippolyte Taine is also one of those persons who think they understand everything. And there are times when he understands nothing. His History of English Literature, which makes an effort to be broad and generous, is one of the pettiest, most niggardly histories ever written anywhere. His articles on Shakespeare, Walter Scott and Dickens have been fabricated by a French professor, which is to say that they are among the most wooden productions of the universities of Europe.
Ruskin
He impresses me as the Prince of Upstarts, grandiloquent and at the same time unctuous, a General in a Salvation Army of Art, or a monk who is a devotee of an esthetic Doctrine which has been drawn up by a Congress of Tourists.
Croce
The esthetic theory of Benedetto Croce has proved another delusion to me. Rather than an esthetic theory, it is a study of esthetic theories. As in most Latin productions, the fundamental question is not discussed therein, but the method of approaching that question.
Clarin [Footnote: Pseudonym of Leopoldo Alas, a Spanish critic and novelist of the transition, born in Asturias, whose influence was widely felt in Spanish letters. He died in 1905.]
I have a poor opinion of Clarin, although some of my friends regard him with admiration. As a man, he must have been envious; as a novelist, he is dull and unhappy; as a critic, I am not certain that he was ever in the right.
V
THE PHILOSOPHERS
A thirst for some knowledge of philosophy resulted in consulting Dr. Letamendi's book on pathology during my student days. I also purchased the works of Kant, Fichte, and Schopenhauer in the cheap editions which were published by Zozaya. The first of these that I read was Fichte's Science of Knowledge, of which I understood nothing. It stirred in me a veritable indignation against both author and translator. Was philosophy nothing but mystification, as it is assumed to be by artists and shop clerks?