It is a homely saying, but one full of deep wisdom, that we should

Always read a book three times: the first time, to see what it is all about; the second time, to see what it says; the third time, in an attitude of friendly hostility.'

'Friendly hostility' is a felicitous expression to describe the golden mean of appreciative exactness: questioning what is before us to guard ourselves against misleading first impressions, but questioning with full preparedness for conviction. That we should read a book to see what it says is obvious. The description of the purpose of the first reading-to see what it is all about-aptly expresses the adjustment of our mental focus to a particular work before we can catch from it its own perspective. When this has been done, and not before, we can proceed to estimates of value without risk of misjudgment. In the interest of judicial criticism itself we have to recognize that the judicial criticism must always be preceded by the criticism of interpretation.

I

Quoted to me as a saying of the late Sir Andrew Clarke, M.D.

CHAPTER XIII

INDUCTIVE CRITICISM, OR THE CRITICISM OF

INTERPRETATION

I

The Criticism of Interpretation stands in such direct contrast with the reigning conception of criticism, which is criticism of judgment, that the best explanation of either is to place the two critical attitudes side by side.1

Such criticism of interpretation is inductive. The essence of inductive method is observation, suggested explanation, and verification of explanations by fresh observation. First, the content of the literary work is interrogated down to its smallest details, not for the sake of the details themselves, but with a

The Introduction to my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (Oxford University Press), written nearly thirty years ago, follows the same lines as the present chapter in its "Plea for an Inductive Science of Literary Criticism." I may be permitted to express my astonishment at the widespread misunderstanding of its argument, by reviewers who seemed unable to distinguish my position-that there is one type of criticism which is wholly inductive from a view which they ascribed to me without any warrant that all criticism must be inductive. The connection of the present chapter with the chapters that follow will make such misinterpretation impossible.

view to their harmony or unification in a common explanation. In the second place, these resulting explanations are always provisional-technically, hypotheses-ever ready to give place to results based on wider explanation.

Foundation axiom.-Interpretation in literature is of the nature of hypothesis, tested by the degree in which it explains the content of the literary work.

Such inductive treatment constitutes the very alphabet of science. The simplest application of it to literature is seen in such a thing as translation. A Latin sentence is before us of which two translations are offered. In the one translation the sentence comes out as an eloquent aphorism; the other is comparatively simple. But the first version obtains its aphorism by treating an imperfect subjunctive in the Latin sentence as if it were an imperfect indicative; to the other there is no such objection. Which is to be preferred? The aphorism is intrinsically a more valuable thing, and we may add it to our stores of wisdom; but it breaks down as a translation, because it is an hypothesis that fails to explain an important detail of the original. Similarly, the question is as to the character of Shakespeare's Hamlet. One formulation of this character has authority of a Coleridge or Hazlitt; a second represents the uniform tradition from Shakespeare's day to ours; a third affords opportunity to the actor for a splendid histrionic effect. But all these explanations (let us suppose) suffer by comparison with the details of the play: they are in contradiction to one item of the text, they leave a considerable part of what appears as to Hamlet without significance. If another hypothetical view, lacking the advantages of the others, yet is found entirely to agree with the text, contradicting no part of it and leaving no part of it without relevancy, this last explanation gives the truer character of the Shakespearean Hamlet.

This bare statement of inductive criticism, apart from its further implications, is apt to raise objections in some minds. One of these objections might be styled the fallacy of mechanical induction. Such interpretation, it is objected, takes all the spiritual element out of poetry, and all delicacy and refinement out of taste: it is a sort of interpretation by machinery, brought down to the level of the man in the street. But this objection is the common confusion between inductive treatment in general and the formal logic of induction. Logic, of any kind, will test a man's thoughts for him, if they need testing, but will not give him the thoughts to think. The objector need not be under any apprehension that the criticism of interpretation will be too easy. Is there anything more difficult than to observe correctly? And where is the supposed man of routine to get his hypotheses from? The truth is, that literary grasp and insight, and the mental touch which graduates the finest shades of significance in details, are just as much required in inductive as in other kinds of literary study. The difference is that the inductive explanation invites confronting with the literature to be explained.

Another of these preliminary objections is more theoretic in character. The inductive, it will be said, is right for the positive sciences: it has no place in literature and art where it can find nothing of the positive to work upon. As we have seen,' the real art does not consist in the concrete details of the picture or drama, but in the impressions these details are to make upon the spectator; these impressions are subjective and vary with different spectators, and thus lack positiveness. Now, if all this were urged as an example of the difficulty of inductive literary interpretation, there would be some ground for it. It has no force as an objection to the process itself. In the most positive sciences details of external nature will leave different impressions on different observers, so that the as

tronomer has to allow for 'personal error,' or 'error of instrument.' But how does he deal with difficulties of this kind? By fresh observation. In all treatments of literature varying subjective impressions will be a difficulty. But the inductive interpreter has a means of meeting the difficulty, by appealing again and yet again to the literature that is being observed. The concrete details are not the art itself, but they constitute the objective limit upon the subjective impressions; and the results of inductive study are always provisional, valid in the absence of some explanation that will eliminate all difference of opinion. On the other hand, literature and art have one advantage over other studies as a field for inductive method, namely, the strict limitation of the evidence to be brought into harmony. If, in historic science, I can evolve a theory as to the character of Henry the Eighth which absolutely satisfies the facts, my fine theory is liable to be upset by the discovery tomorrow of an entirely new vein of evidence. For the Shakespearean Henry the Eighth the volume of evidence is closed.

II

At this point it may be well to illustrate the criticism of interpretation in application to some particular literary work. I take The Monastery of Sir Walter Scott.1

First, we have to interpret the spirit of the work as a whole: to formulate the unity of impression in which all the rich variety of the story finds its harmony. On page 274 is given an interpretative scheme of The Monastery (Chart XX).

It is essentially a story of situation: the Reformation movement, with the scene localized in the halidome of a monastery, a monastery belonging to the stormy borderland between

1 The reader will perceive that I am wholly out of sympathy with the common idea that The Monastery, and especially "The White Lady of Avenel," is a failure. It is a capital example of the general contention in the present work that poets are pioneers in beauty, and that appreciation often takes a long time to enter into their conceptions.