I
In one of those essays which were often as speculative and suggestive as
he claimed, the late John Addington Symonds called attention to three
successive phases of criticism, pointing out that the critics had first
set up as judges, delivering opinions from the bench and never
hesitating to put on the black cap; that then they had changed into
showmen, dwelling chiefly on the beauties of the masterpieces they were
exhibiting; and that finally, and only very recently, they had become
natural historians, studying "each object in relation to its antecedents
and its consequences" and making themselves acquainted "with the
conditions under which the artist grew, the habits of his race, the
opinions of his age, his physiological and psychological peculiarities."
And Symonds might have added that it is only in this latest phase, when
the critics have availed themselves of the methods of the comparative
biologists, that they are concerned with the interesting problems
connected with the origin of the several literary species.
All over the world to-day devoted students are working at the hidden
history of the lyric, for example, and of certain subdivisions of this
species, such as the elegy, as it flowered long ago in Greece and as it
has flourished in most of the literatures of modern Europe. To the
"natural historian" of literary art, these subdivisions of a species are
becoming more and more interesting, as he perceives more clearly how
prone the poets have always been to work in accord with the pattern
popular in their own time and to express themselves freely in the form
they found ready to their hands. The student of the English drama is
delighted when he can seize firmly the rise and fall of the
tragedy-of-blood for one example, of the comedy-of-humors for another,
and of sentimental-comedy for a third; just as the investigator into the
annals of fiction is pleased to be able to trace the transformations of
the pastoral, of the picaresque romance, and of the later short-story.
The beginnings of a species, or of a subspecies, are obscure more often
than not; and they are rarely to be declared with certainty. "Nothing is
more difficult than to discover who have been in literature the first
inventors" of a new form, so M. Jules Lemaître once asserted, adding
that innovations have generally been attempted by writers of no great
value, and not infrequently by those who failed in those first efforts,
unable to profit by their own originality. And it is natural enough that
a good many sighting shots should be wasted on a new target before even
an accomplished marksman could plump his bullet in the bull's-eye. The
historical novel as we know it now must be credited to Scott, who
preluded by the rather feeble 'Waverley,' before attaining the more
boldly planned 'Rob Roy' and 'Guy Mannering.' The sea-tale is to be
ascribed to Cooper, whose wavering faith in its successful
accomplishment is reflected in the shifting of the successive episodes
of the 'Pilot' from land to water and back again to land; and it was
only when he came to write the 'Red Rover' that Cooper displayed full
confidence in the form he had been the first to experiment with. But the
history of the detective-story begins with the publication of the
'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' a masterpiece of its kind, which even its
author was unable to surpass; and Poe, unlike most other originators,
rang the bell the very first time he took aim.