THE CRITIC

People often forget that criticism, like poetry, is of many kinds. The critics themselves are, perhaps, the worst transgressors in the matter. They are divided into almost as many sects as the theologians, and every sect but one regards its own standards as the very rules of salvation. This would not matter so much if it did not lead to the excommunication of all the critics who cannot subscribe to the same creed. There is nothing more absurd in the history of literature than the severities of the excommunicating sort of critic. A critic has the right to condemn any work, critical or other, which is bad of its kind. He has not the right to say that only his own kind of criticism is good. There are as many ways of writing about books as of writing about flowers. The poet reveals to us a different flower from the flower of the botanist. Wordsworth's "small celandine" is not seen through the same eyes as the plant of which the botanist tells us: "The lesser celandine is a species of Ranunculus (R. Ficarus), a small low-growing herb with smooth heart-shaped

leaves and bright yellow flowers about an inch across, borne each on a stout stalk springing from a leaf-axil." There is yet another sort of writer on flowers whose work is a charming compound of poetry, science and any sort of relevant gossip, whether philological or herbalist-who will inform us, for instance, that Ranunculus is a diminutive of rana, "a frog," which has the same damp, marshy haunts as the flower, and that Nicholas Culpepper held that even to carry the plant about one's body next the skin helped to cure piles. These are but three out of scores of ways of writing about flowers, and it is mere sectarianism to deny the excellence of any of them.

It is, of course, open to the man of science to declare that Wordsworth was not a botanist. It is possible, indeed, that Wordsworth did not know that his "host of golden daffodils" belonged to the natural order Amaryllidacea. This, however, would be to quarrel about words. Wordsworth and the man of science alike give an honest report of the flowers they have seen, and for my part I find Wordsworth's report the more interesting. It is much the same with books as with flowers. The scientific critic shakes his head over the imaginative treatment of books. His ideal critic would write about books in the spirit of a Linnæus

rather than of a Wordsworth. This, I think, is to take a narrow view of criticism. Criticism is an art which has developed in a score of different directions, and it is best to use the word in a sense that includes them all. Criticism-good criticism, at least is almost any sort of good writing about books by a man or woman of taste. Criticism, says the dictionary, is the art of judging. As a matter of fact, criticism is something more than that. The good critic does a great deal more than deliver judgments on books and authors. He may at times play the part of the defending counsel rather than that of the judge. There are occasions on which he makes no attempt to hide the warmth of his feelings. He cannot announce a masterpiece as though a summary of pros and cons expressed what it meant to him. That is why I like to think of a critic as a portrait-painter rather than a judge. The portrait-painter reveals the character of his subject. He does not label or analyse it so much as set before us a synthesis of all the most interesting things he has seen, felt and thought in observing it. The judgment is always there, but it may be implicit rather than explicit. The author sits to the critic for his portrait. Even the book may be said-if we may put a slight constraint on language—to sit to the critic for its portrait. In criticism the character

sketch of the book or author is as important as any technical analysis. Criticism is a magic mirror, in which a work of art is reflected with a new emphasis and in new relations. The critic must bathe his subject in the light of his own mind-his taste, his enthusiasm, his moral ideas, his knowledge. Hence criticism is an extremely personal thing. It relates, if one may adapt Anatole France's famous phrase, the adventures of masterpieces in the soul of the critic, or to put it a little more precisely-in the intellectual and imaginative world of the critic.

It is said that, if we adopt this view, we are denying the existence of any standards in criticism. This is not so. One may believe in the conscience while admitting that moral standards fluctuate. Similarly, one may believe in the literary conscience while admitting that literary standards fluctuate. There is an eternal difference between good and evil, but what seems good to one generation may seem evil to another, and it is possible to recognise the goodness of a man, such as an Old Testament polygamist or a Scottish Sabbatarian, whose moral standards are in conflict with ours. We can hold to our own moral standards while realising that they are not the only conceivable moral standards. There is, no doubt, a perfect moral standard somewhere, but

only a perfect spirit could perceive it. The rest of us can but do our best, and we cannot even do that. Milton was right when he made "all-judging Jove" the one supreme critic of literature. Meanwhile, the standards of sublunar critics are but guesses. The critic who claims that they are more is simply a dogmatist who climbs into a pulpit when he should be going on a pilgrimage.

Brunetière accused Anatole France of having no standards, and it is possible that Anatole France does not subscribe to any Thirty-nine Articles of criticism. But if to have a conscience is to have standards, and if taste is conscience in the æsthetic world, who can deny that Anatole France has very fine literary standards indeed? It is obvious that he all the time measures an author by the excellence of all the authors he has loved, just as most of us get our standards of character from the love and veneration we have felt for good men. This love of excellence is indisputably the first of all the requisites of a critic-love of excellence and acquaintance with excellence. The critic's first standard is his enthusiasm for the great writers. "By 'poetry,' in these pages," says Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in one of his books of criticism, "I mean what has been written by Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and some others." It is an admirable definition. It