Truth is both subjective and objective. The former is what is agreeable
to one’s constitution and point of view, or mental and spiritual
make-up. Objective truth is verifiable truth, or what agrees with
outward facts and conditions.
Criticism deals with both aspects. It is objective when it is directed
upon objective or verifiable facts; it is subjective when it is
directed upon subjective facts. It is an objective fact, for instance,
that such a man as Shakespeare lived in such a country in such a time,
that he wrote various plays of such and such a character, and that
these plays were founded upon other plays or legends or histories.
But the poetic truth, the poetic beauty of these plays, their covert
meanings, the philosophy that lies back of them, are not in the same
sense objective facts. In these respects no two persons read them
just alike. Hamlet has been interpreted in many ways. Which Hamlet
is the true one, Goethe’s, or Coleridge’s, or Hazlitt’s, or Kean’s,
or Booth’s? Each is true, so far as it expresses a real and vital
conception begotten by the poet upon the critic’s or the actor’s mind.
The beauty of a poem or any work of art is not an objective something
patent to all; it is an experience of the mind which we each have in
different degrees. In fact, the field of our æsthetic perceptions and
enjoyments is no more fixed and definite than is the field of our
religious perceptions and enjoyments, and we diverge from one another
in the one case as much as in the other. This divergence is of course,
in both cases, mainly superficial; it is in form and not in essence.
Religions perish, but religion remains. Styles of art pass, but art
abides. Go deep enough and we all agree, because human nature is
fundamentally the same everywhere. All that I mean to say is that the
outward expressions of art differ in different ages and among different
races as much as do the outward expressions of religion. In all these
matters the subjective element plays an important part. Is Browning
a greater poet than Tennyson? Is Thackeray a greater novelist than
Dickens? Has Newman a better style than Arnold? Is Poe our greatest
poet, as many British critics think? These and all similar questions
involve the personal equation of the critic, and his answer to them
will be given more by his unconscious than by his conscious self.
The appeal is not so much to his rational faculties as to his secret
affinities or his æsthetic perceptions. You can move a man’s reason,
but you cannot by any similar process change his taste or his faith. If
we are not by nature committed to certain views, we are committed to a
certain habit of mind, to a certain moral and spiritual attitude, which
makes these views almost inevitable to us. “It is not given to all
minds,” says Sainte-Beuve, “to feel and to relish equally the peculiar
beauties and excellences of Massillon,” or, it may be added, of any
other author, especially if he be of marked individuality.
We do not and cannot all have the same measure of appreciation of
Emerson, or Wordsworth, or Ruskin, or Whitman, or Browning. To
enjoy these men “sincerely and without weariness is a quality and
almost a peculiarity of certain minds, which may serve to define
them.” Sainte-Beuve himself was chiefly interested in an author’s
character,--“in what was most individual in his personality.” He had
no arbitrary rules, touchstones, or systems, but pressed each new work
gently, almost caressingly, till it gave up its characteristic quality
and flavor.
But the objective consideration of the merits of a man’s work does not
and cannot preclude or measure the subjective attraction or repulsion
or indifference which we do or do not feel toward that work. Something
deeper and more potent than reason is at work here. Back of the most
impartial literary judgment lies the fact that the critic is a person;
that he is of a certain race, family, temperament, environment; that
he is naturally cold or sympathetic, liberal or reactionary, tolerant
or intolerant, and therefore has his individual likes and dislikes;
that certain types attract him more than others; that, of two poets of
equal power, the voice of one moves him more than that of the other.
Something as subtle and vital and hard to analyze as the flavor of a
fruit, and analogous to it, makes him prefer this poet to that. One
may see clearly the superiority of Milton over Wordsworth, and yet
cleave to the latter. How beautiful is “Lycidas,” yet it left Dr.
Johnson cold and critical. There is much more of a cry--a real cry
of the heart--in Arnold’s “Thyrsis.” One feels that the passion is
real in one, and assumed in the other. Is “Lycidas” therefore less a
creative work? The affirmative side of the question is not without
support. Johnson undervalued some of Gray’s best work; the touch of
sympathy was lacking. This touch of sympathy does not wait upon the
critical judgment, but often underruns and outruns it. It is said that
Miss Martineau found “Tom Jones” dull reading, that Charlotte Brontë
cared not for Jane Austen, and that Thackeray placed Cooper above
Scott,--all, no doubt, from a lack of the quickening touch of sympathy.
As a rule, we have more sympathy with the authors of our own country
than with those of another. Few Englishmen can do justice to Victor
Hugo, and even to some Frenchmen he is a “gigantic blusterer.” It is
equally hard for a Frenchman to appreciate Carlyle, and how absurd
seems Voltaire’s verdict upon Shakespeare,--“a drunken savage”!
The French mind is preëminently a critical mind, yet in France
there are and have been as many schools of criticism as of poetry
or philosophy or romance. Different types of mind, individual
idiosyncrasy, opposing theories and methods, stand out just as clearly
in this branch as in any other branch of mental activity. From Madame
de Staël down through Barante, Villemain, Nisard, Sainte-Beuve,
to Brunetière and the critics of our own day, criticism has been
individualistic, and has reflected as many types of mind and points
of view as there have been critics. Where shall we look for the final
criticism? First it is classicism that rules, then it is romanticism,
then naturalism, and next, we are told, it is to be idealism. Whichever
it is, it is true enough when uttered by vital and earnest minds,
and serves its purpose. There are many excellences, but where is the
supreme excellence? The naturalism of Sainte-Beuve is excellent, the
positivism of Nisard is excellent, the classicism of Brunetière is
excellent, and the determinism of Taine yields interesting results; but
all are relative, all are experimental, all are subject to revision. It
is given to no man to have a monopoly of truth. It is given to no poet
to have a monopoly of beauty. There is one beauty of Milton, another
of Wordsworth, another of Burns, another of Tennyson. To seize upon
and draw out the characteristic beauty of each, and give his reader a
lively sense of it, is the business of the critic.