I
The criticism of criticism is one of the marked literary
characteristics of the last ten or fifteen years, both in this country
and in Europe. It is seen in France in Brunetière’s essays and in
Hennequin’s “Scientific Criticism;” in England in the recent work of
Wm. B. Wordsfold on the “Principles of Criticism” and in Mr. John M.
Robertson’s two volumes of “Essays toward a Critical Method;” in this
country in Mr. Howells’s “Criticism and Fiction,” in Prof. Johnson’s
“Elements of Criticism” and in the still more recent work of Professor
Sears on “Methods and Principles of Criticism,” besides the numerous
discussions of the subject in the magazines and literary journals.
A Western college professor lately discussed some phases of the subject
under the head of “Democratic Criticism;” whereupon other college
professors raised the voice of protest, one of them asking ironically,
Why not have a democratic botany and zoölogy and geology and astronomy?
I think it may be said in reply that, so far as democracy is based
upon natural law and means free inquiry, a fair field and no favor,
we have these things already. All science is democratic, in the sense
that it is no respecter of persons, has no partialities, stops at no
arbitrary boundaries, and places all things on an equal footing before
natural law. Surely the spirit of science makes directly for democracy.
When science shows us that the universe is all made of one stuff, that
the celestial laws, as Whitman said, do not need to be worked over and
rectified, that inherent power and worth alone finally tell, and that
there is not one rule for the heavens above and another for the earth
below, it is making smooth the way for democratic ideas and ideals.
Still, pure science is outside the domain of literature, and does not
reflect a people’s life and character as literature does. It does
not hold the mirror of man’s imagination up to nature, but resolves
nature in the alembic of his understanding. It is not an exponent of
personality, as art is, but an index of the development and progress of
the impersonal reason. But when we enter the region of the sentiments
and the emotions--the subjective world of criticism, literature,
art--the case is different. Here we find reflected social and arbitrary
distinctions; here we find mirrored the spirit and temper of men
as they are acted upon and modified by the social organism and the
ideals of different times and races. A democratic community will have
standards of excellence in art and criticism differing from those of an
aristocratic community, and will be drawn by different qualities. It
seems to me that Dr. Triggs was quite right in saying that a criticism
that estimates literary products according to absolute standards,
that clings to the past, that cultivates the academic spirit, that is
exclusive and unsympathetic, may justly be called aristocratic; and
that a criticism that follows more the comparative method, that adheres
to principles instead of to standards, and lays the stress upon the
vital and the characteristic in a man’s work, rather than upon its form
and extrinsic beauty, is essentially democratic.
No doubt the ideal of the monumental works of antiquity is essentially
anti-democratic. It was fostered by an exclusive culture. It goes with
the idea of the divine right of kings, of a privileged class, and is at
war with the spirit of our times. The Catholic tradition in religion
and the classical tradition in literature are as foreign to the spirit
of democracy as is the monarchical tradition in politics. They are all
branches from the same root. The classical tradition begat Milton,
but it did not beget Shakespeare, the most marvelous genius of the
modern world. To the classic tradition, as it spoke through Voltaire,
Shakespeare was a barbarian. Indeed, Shakespeare’s art was essentially
democratic, how much soever it may have occupied itself with royal and
aristocratic personages. It is as free as an uncaged bird, and pays
no tribute to classic models. Its aim is inward movement, fusion, and
vitality, rather than outward harmony and proportion. A Greek play is
like a Greek temple,--chaste, severe, symmetrical, beautiful. A play of
Shakespeare is, as Dr. Johnson long ago suggested, more like a wood or
a piece of free nature.