Impressionist Criticism—Any expression of taste without adequate guidance of knowledge or thought.
Intellectualist (or dogmatic) criticism—Criticism based on the conception that art is a product of thought rather than of imagination, and that the creative fantasy of the artist can be limited and judged by the critic’s pre-conceived theories; or in the more ornate words of Francis Thompson, criticism that is “for ever shearing the wild tresses of poetry between rusty rules.”
The Intellectuals—All who lay undue stress on the place of intellect in life, and assume that the turbulent flux of reality can be tied up in neat parcels of intellectual formulæ.
Poetry—All literature in which reality has been transfigured by the imagination, including poetry in its narrower sense, the novel, the drama, etc.; used instead of “imaginative literature,” not merely for the sake of brevity, but as implying a special emphasis on creative power.
Poet—A writer of imaginative literature in any of its forms; not used in this essay in the narrower sense of a writer of verse.
Learning—The accumulation of certain forms of knowledge as a basis for scholarship, but no more the main purpose of scholarship than his preparatory training is the sole object of the athlete or soldier.
Scholarship—The discipline and illumination that come from the intellectual mastery of a definite problem in the spiritual (as opposed to the practical) life of man.
Pedant—Any one who thinks that learning is the whole of scholarship.
J. E. S.