sniff, unlimited repetitions of foppery to make a Fastidious Brisk. We call this second mode of treatment 'caricature': using a word which of the same root as 'cargo'-suggests overloading. Now, the effect of the fallacy under consideration is that one of these modes of treatment is assumed to be correct, or higher, and the other incorrect, or lower: many people use the word 'caricature' as if it meant bad character painting. But the two things are simply different in kind; and literary art is the richer for having at its disposal the two modes of delineation. One will distinguish the art of a Thackeray; the other, the art of a Ben Jonson. And in highly complex art, like that of Shakespeare, the two treatments can be joined together in the same play; in Much Ado we have the most refined characterization in the parts of Claudio and Hero, and the roughest caricature in the parts of Dogberry and Verges.

We may note again the fallacy of law and fault. This is caused by the double meaning of the word 'law': there are laws in the political sense, imposed upon a subject by some authority; and there are scientific laws, derived from a subject by an observer. The confusion is common to criticism and other fields of thought.

A law of nature, as formulated in a scientific treatise, is a statement of facts, and nothing more. Expressed in the indicative mood, it has nothing whatever to do with the imperative. Science knows nothing of a celestial Ukase compelling the earth to gravitate toward the sun. We know that it does so gravitate with a certain intensity, and that is the whole story. Nevertheless, so strong is the realistic tendency that, in speaking of laws of nature, the most careful writers too seldom avoid "a tacit reference to the original sense of the word law, . . . . the expression of the will of a superior."2

The laws of poetry are laws in the scientific sense-formulations of poetic practice; the law of the unities in Greek drama is just * Compare Shakespeare as Artist, pages 32–35.

2 Fiske's Cosmic Philosophy, Volume IV, page 204.

as much a statement of facts as are the three laws of motion. The fallacy consists in mistaking these for laws in the other sense; as if the laws of poetry were imposed by some authority -presumably that of criticism-upon poets. And by an extension of the error we hear of 'poetic license,' as if by some mysterious dispensing power-poets were exempted from some of the restrictions imposed upon their brethren of prose. The distinction between the two kinds of laws is of first importance to inductive criticism. When an Englishman does not conform to the laws of England, he is violating law. When a poet does not conform to existing laws of poetry, he is extending law. A whole history of poetry might be written upon these lines: bringing out how what were at first regarded as 'faults' and violations of law come later to be recognized as extensions of law, principles of new departures in poetry. We may lay down as a paradox of criticism that art is made legitimate by refusing to obey laws.

I am inclined to mention yet another fallacy, and to describe it as the common-sense fallacy. We sometimes find a prejudice against inductive interpretation express itself by laying down that "common-sense" can see how the interpreters have read their own intricate fancies into the simplicity of the poetic masters. Now, it is true-appallingly true that interpreters of literature have often read fancies of their own into the literature on which they comment: but to do this is not inductive criticism, but, on the contrary, the greatest of all offenses against inductive criticism. Nothing in inductive treatment is more fundamental than the principle of verification: that all explanation is provisional, to be verified by comparison with the content of the literature. Inductive interpretation is simply a plea that literary interpretation is a thing that rests on evidence. On the other hand, the fallacy sets up the most absurd of all criteria-the infallibility of the casual reader. We recognize that poets are pioneers in art, and in theory we do

homage to them as supreme minds; yet in practice we often behave as if all that such a supreme mind, excited to its highest pitch by inspiration, can effect, must be immediately perceptible to an average mind at the first moment of contact with it. And the absurdity was never so great as at the present time, when the minds of readers-by habits of newspaper and similar reading-have been trained to a mastery in the art of skimming and discursive half-attention. Creation, we have seen, involves responsive creation on the reader's part; and it may take many readings before the average mind can come up to the pace of the great master. Inductive interpretation makes its appeal neither to the reader nor to the critic, but always to the literature itself. This appeal to the literature will always lie open; meanwhile, it is well to remember that Common-Sense has a twinsister-Inertia.

V

This chapter cannot conclude better than by returning to its starting-point: that the criticism of interpretation is most clearly defined by its antithesis to the criticism of judgment. The mind cannot commence its work of assaying and judging until it has concluded its work of investigating and interpreting; the thought of what ought to be is so much disturbance to the examination of what actually is; consciousness of a formed taste is unfavorable to the effort at enlarging taste; we cannot at the same time be maintaining standards against innovations and keeping watch for new literary departures; we cannot be at the same time adjusting literature to our ideas and adjusting our ideas to literature: in a word, we cannot at the same moment be judicial and inductive. Like oil and water, the two conceptions of criticism have their value: like oil and water the two will not mingle. The case for the criticism of interpretation is so simple and obvious that no one disputes it in theory: in practice it is neglected by being taken for granted. Every

attempt at valuation of literature, every estimate of correctness, assumes that the literature to which it is applied has been rightly understood. What this chapter has endeavored to show is that such process of accurately understanding literature cannot be carried on while there is disturbance from judicial ideas. Hence Hogarth's paradox, that everyone is a judge of painting except the connoisseur. The mind habituated to form judgments will see more than the plain mind within a certain range of art. But where the unexpected comes in, where there is a call for a total readjustment of the receptive attitude, the mind will not do this if it has the easier alternative of suspecting that the unusual element is something which ought not to be. The most judicial of critics knows that he must be fair and without prejudice. But a great deal more than sense of fairness is required for the sympathetic effort that will overtake the pioneers in creation. Thus, in art judgment is itself a prejudice—a prejudice against what is novel.

What theory in this matter lays down, history confirms. As long as the traditional conception of criticism has been synonymous with judgment, literary history has been a triumph of literature over criticism. The modern attitude to literature does not exclude valuation and judgment. But it recognizes that a criticism of judgment must have been preceded by a process of the freest inductive examination; and that thus the most fundamental element in criticism is the criticism of interpretation.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HISTORY OF CRITICAL OPINION

Our treatment of literary criticism commenced by distinguishing four different types. Of these, the two which have been discussed in the preceding chapters seem to belong to the very nature of things; the two that remain to be treated have their foundations rather in literary history. This then seems a favorable point at which to make a rapid survey of the history of criticism. In accordance with the general plan of this work I attempt, on page 304 (Chart XXI) to present in tabular form the whole scheme of this history, with its successive phases and underlying principles.

I

The development of our world literature, as the term is used in this book, falls into four divisions: Hellenic, Mediaeval, Renaissance, and Modern. The first two are successive epochs; the last two cannot be chronologically separated, but represent two influences moving together, the one diminishing as the other advances.

In ancient Greece-like Athene springing fully armed from the brain of Zeus-criticism makes its appearance full grown in the Poetics of Aristotle. It is a presentation of literary theory by a philosopher of first rank; the Poetics is as much a standard book today as it was two thousand years ago. And yet, from our viewpoint of world literature, it seems a capital example of the premature methodization which Bacon has distinguished as one of the incidental weaknesses of learning."

Another error

is the overearly and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods; from which time commonly

1 Compare above, page 236, note 2.

2 Advancement of Learning, First Book, section V, 4.