CRISPI, FRANCESCO (1819-1901), Italian statesman, was born at Ribera in
Sicily on the 4th of October 1819. In 1846 he established himself as
advocate at Naples. On the outbreak of the Sicilian revolution at
Palermo (January 12, 1848) he hastened to the island and took an active
part in guiding the insurrection. Upon the restoration of the Bourbon
government (May 15, 1849) he was excluded from the amnesty and compelled
to flee to Piedmont. Here he unsuccessfully applied for a situation as
communal secretary of Verolengo, and eked out a penurious existence by
journalism. Implicated in the Mazzinian conspiracy at Milan (February 6,
1853), he was expelled from Piedmont, and obliged to take refuge at
Malta, whence he fled to Paris. Expelled from France, he joined Mazzini
in London, and continued to conspire for the redemption of Italy. On the
15th of June 1859 he returned to Italy after publishing a letter
repudiating the aggrandizement of Piedmont, and proclaiming himself a
republican and a partisan of national unity. Twice in that year he went
the round of the Sicilian cities in disguise, and prepared the
insurrectionary movement of 1860.
Upon his return to Genoa he organized, with Bertani, Bixio, Medici and
Garibaldi, the expedition of the Thousand, and overcoming by a stratagem
the hesitation of Garibaldi, secured the departure of the expedition on
the 5th of May 1860. Disembarking at Marsala on the 11th, Crispi on the
13th, at Salemi, drew up the proclamation whereby Garibaldi assumed the
dictatorship of Sicily, with the programme: "Italy and Victor Emmanuel."
After the fall of Palermo, Crispi was appointed minister of the interior
and of finance in the Sicilian provisional government, but was shortly
afterwards obliged to resign on account of the struggle between
Garibaldi and the emissaries of Cavour with regard to the question of
immediate annexation. Appointed secretary to Garibaldi, Crispi secured
the resignation of Depretis, whom Garibaldi had appointed pro-dictator,
and would have continued his fierce opposition to Cavour at Naples,
where he had been placed by Garibaldi in the foreign office, had not the
advent of the Italian regular troops and the annexation of the Two
Sicilies to Italy brought about Garibaldi's withdrawal to Caprera and
Crispi's own resignation. Entering parliament in 1861 as deputy of the
extreme Left for Castelvetrano, Crispi acquired the reputation of being
the most aggressive and most impetuous member of the republican party.
In 1864, however, he made at the chamber a monarchical profession of
faith, in the famous phrase afterwards repeated in his letter to
Mazzini: "The monarchy unites us; the republic would divide us." In 1860
he refused to enter the Ricasoli cabinet; in 1867 he worked to impede
the Garibaldian invasion of the papal states, foreseeing the French
occupation of Rome and the disaster of Mentana. By methods of the same
character as those subsequently employed against himself by Cavallotti,
he carried on the violent agitation known as the Lobbia affair, in which
sundry conservative deputies were, on insufficient grounds, accused of
corruption. On the outbreak of the Franco-German War he worked
energetically to impede the projected alliance with France, and to drive
the Lanza cabinet to Rome. The death of Ratazzi in 1873 induced Crispi's
friends to put forward his candidature to the leadership of the Left;
but Crispi, anxious to reassure the crown, secured the election of
Depretis. After the advent of the Left he was elected (November 1876)
president of the chamber. During the autumn of 1877 he went to London,
Paris and Berlin on a confidential mission, establishing cordial
personal relationships with Gladstone, Granville and other English
statesmen, and with Bismarck.
In December 1877 he replaced Nicotera as minister of the interior in the
Depretis cabinet, his short term of office (70 days) being signalized by
a series of important events. On January 9, 1878, the death of Victor
Emmanuel and the accession of King Humbert enabled Crispi to secure the
formal establishment of a unitary monarchy, the new monarch taking the
title of Humbert I. of Italy instead of Humbert IV. of Savoy. The
remains of Victor Emmanuel were interred in the Pantheon instead of
being transported to the Savoy Mausoleum at Superga. On the 9th of
February, 1879, the death of Pius IX. necessitated a conclave, the first
to be held after the unification of Italy. Crispi, helped by Mancini and
Cardinal Pecci (afterwards Leo XIII.), persuaded the Sacred College to
hold the conclave in Rome, and prorogued the chamber lest any untoward
manifestation should mar the solemnity of the event. The statesmanlike
qualities displayed on this occasion were unavailing to avert the storm
of indignation conjured up by Crispi's opponents in connexion with a
charge of bigamy not susceptible of legal proof. Crispi was compelled to
resign office, although the judicial authorities upheld the invalidity
of his early marriage, contracted at Malta in 1853, and ratified his
subsequent union with Signora Barbagallo. For nine years Crispi remained
politically under a cloud, but in 1887 returned to office as minister of
the interior in the Depretis cabinet, succeeding to the premiership upon
the death of Depretis (July 29, 1887).
One of his first acts as premier was a visit to Bismarck, whom he
desired to consult upon the working of the Triple Alliance. Basing his
foreign policy upon the alliance, as supplemented by the naval _entente_
with Great Britain negotiated by his predecessor, Count Robilant, Crispi
assumed a resolute attitude towards France, breaking off the prolonged
and unfruitful negotiations for a new Franco-Italian commercial treaty,
and refusing the French invitation to organize an Italian section at the
Paris Exhibition of 1889. At home Crispi secured the adoption of the
Sanitary and Commercial Codes, and reformed the administration of
justice. Forsaken by his Radical friends, Crispi governed with the help
of the Right until, on the 31st of January 1891, an intemperate allusion
to the _sante memorie_ of the conservative party led to his overthrow.
In December 1893 the impotence of the Giolitti cabinet to restore public
order, then menaced by disturbances in Sicily and in Lunigiana, gave
rise to a general demand that Crispi should return to power. Upon
resuming office he vigorously suppressed the disorders, and steadily
supported the energetic remedies adopted by Sonnino, minister of
finance, to save Italian credit, which had been severely shaken by the
bank and financial crises of 1892-1893. Crispi's uncompromising
suppression of disorder, and his refusal to abandon either the Triple
Alliance or the Eritrean colony, or to forsake his colleague Sonnino,
caused a breach between him and the radical leader Cavallotti.
Cavallotti then began against him a pitiless campaign of defamation. An
unsuccessful attempt upon Crispi's life by the anarchist Lega brought a
momentary truce, but Cavallotti's attacks were soon renewed more
fiercely than ever. They produced so little effect that the general
election of 1895 gave Crispi a huge majority, but, a year later, the
defeat of the Italian army at Adowa in Abyssinia brought about his
resignation. The ensuing Rudini cabinet lent itself to Cavallotti's
campaign, and at the end of 1897 the judicial authorities applied to the
chamber for permission to prosecute Crispi for embezzlement. A
parliamentary commission, appointed to inquire into the charges against
him, discovered only that Crispi, on assuming office in 1893, had found
the secret service coffers empty, and had borrowed from a state bank
the sum of L12,000 for secret service, repaying it with the monthly
instalments granted in regular course by the treasury. The commission,
considering this proceeding irregular, proposed, and the chamber
adopted, a vote of censure, but refused to authorize a prosecution.
Crispi resigned his seat in parliament, but was re-elected by an
overwhelming majority in April 1898 by his Palermo constituents. For
some time he took little part in active politics, chiefly on account of
his growing blindness. A successful operation for cataract restored his
eyesight in June 1900, and notwithstanding his 81 years he resumed to
some extent his former political activity. Soon afterwards, however, his
health began to give way permanently, and he died at Naples on the 12th
of August 1901.
The importance of Crispi in Italian public life depended less upon the
many reforms accomplished under his administrations than upon his
intense patriotism, remarkable fibre, and capacity for administering to
his fellow-countrymen the political tonic of which they stood in
constant need. In regard to foreign politics he greatly contributed to
raise Italian prestige and to dispel the reputation for
untrustworthiness and vacillation acquired by many of his predecessors.
If in regard to France his policy appeared to lack suavity and
circumspection, it must be remembered that the French republic was then
engaged in active anti-Italian schemes and was working, both at the
Vatican and in the sphere of colonial politics, to create a situation
that should compel Italy to bow to French exigencies and to abandon the
Triple Alliance. Crispi was prepared to cultivate good relations with
France, but refused to yield to pressure or to submit to dictation; and
in this attitude he was firmly supported by the bulk of his
fellow-countrymen. The criticism freely directed against him was based
rather upon the circumstances of his unfortunate private life and the
misdeeds of an unscrupulous _entourage_ which traded upon his name than
upon his personal or political shortcomings.
See _Scritti e discorsi politici di F. Crispi, 1847-1890_ (Rome,
1890); _Francesco Crispi_, by W. J. Stillman (London, 1899).
CRISPIN and CRISPINIAN, the patron saints of shoemakers, whose festival
is celebrated on the 25th of October. Their history is largely
legendary, and there exists no trace of it earlier than the 8th century.
It is said that they were brothers and members of a noble family in
Rome. They gave up their property and travelled to Soissons (Noviodunum,
Augusta Sucessionum), where they supported themselves by shoemaking and
made many converts to Christianity. The emperor Maximianus (Herculius)
condemned them to death. His prefect Rictiovarus endeavoured to carry
out the sentence, but they emerged unharmed from all the ordeals to
which he subjected them, and the weapons he used recoiled against the
executioners. Rictiovarus in disgust cast himself into the fire, or the
caldron of boiling tar, from which they had emerged refreshed. At last
Maximian had their heads cut off (c. 287-300). Their remains were buried
at Soissons, but were afterwards removed, partly by Charlemagne to
Osnabruck (where a festival is observed annually on the 20th of June)
and partly to the chapel of St Lawrence in Rome. The abbeys of St
Crepin-en-Chaye (the remains of which still form part of a farmhouse on
the river Aisne, N.N.W. of Soissons), of St Crepin-le-Petit, and St
Crepin-le-Grand (the site of which is occupied by a house belonging to
the Sisters of Mercy), in or near Soissons, commemorated the places
sanctified by their imprisonment and burial. There are also relics at
Fulda, and a Kentish tradition claims that the bodies of the martyrs
were cast into the sea and cast on shore on Romney Marsh (see _Acta SS.
Bolland_, xi. 495; A. Butler, _Lives of the Saints_. October 25th).
Especially in France, but also in England and in other parts of Europe,
the festival of St Crispin was for centuries the occasion of solemn
processions and merry-making, in which gilds of shoemakers took the
chief part. At Troyes, where the gild of St Crispin was reconstituted as
late as 1820, an annual festival is celebrated in the church of St
Urban. In England and Scotland the day acquired additional importance as
the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt (cf. Shakespeare, _Henry V._
iv. 3); the symbolical processions in honour of "King Crispin" at
Stirling and Edinburgh were particularly famous.
For other examples see _Notes and Queries_, 1st series, v. 30, vi.
243; W. S. Walsh, _Curiosities of Popular Customs_ (London, 1898).
CRITIAS, Athenian orator and poet, and one of the Thirty Tyrants. In his
youth he was a pupil of Gorgias and Socrates, but subsequently devoted
himself to political intrigues. In 415 B.C. he was implicated in the
mutilation of the Hermae and imprisoned. In 411 he helped to put down
the Four Hundred, and was instrumental in procuring the recall of
Alcibiades. He was banished (probably in the democratic reaction of 407)
and fled to Thessaly, where he stirred up the Penestae (the helots of
Thessaly) against their masters, and endeavoured to establish a
democracy. Returning to Athens he was made ephor by the oligarchical
party; and he was the most cruel and unscrupulous of the Thirty Tyrants
who in 404 were appointed by the Lacedaemonians. He was slain in battle
against Thrasybulus and the returning democrats. Critias was a man of
varied talents--poet, orator, historian and philosopher. Some fragments
of his elegies will be found in Bergk, _Poetae Lyrici Graeci_. He was
also the author of several tragedies and of biographies of distinguished
poets (possibly in verse).
See Xenophon, _Hellenica_, ii. 3. 4. 19, _Memorabilia_, i. 2;
Cornelius Nepos, _Thrasybulus_, 2; R. Lallier, _De Critiae tyranni
vita ac scriptis_ (1875); Nestle, _Neue Jahrb. f. d. kl. Altert._
(1903).
CRITICISM (from the Gr. [Greek: _krites_], a judge, [Greek: _krinein_],
to decide, to give an authoritative opinion), the art of judging the
qualities and values of an aesthetic object, whether in literature or
the fine arts.[1] It involves, in the first instance, the formation and
expression of a judgment on the qualities of anything, and Matthew
Arnold defined it in this general sense as "a disinterested endeavour to
learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." It
has come, however, to possess a secondary and specialized meaning as a
published analysis of the qualities and characteristics of a work in
literature or fine art, itself taking the form of independent
literature. The sense in which criticism is taken as implying censure,
the "picking holes" in any statement or production, is frequent, but it
is entirely unjustifiable. There is nothing in the proper scope of
criticism which presupposes blame. On the contrary, a work of perfect
beauty and fitness, in which no fault could possibly be found with
justice, is as proper a subject for criticism to deal with as a work of
the greatest imperfection. It may be perfectly just to state that a book
or a picture is "beneath criticism," i.e. is so wanting in all qualities
of originality and technical excellence that time would merely be wasted
in analysing it. But it can never be properly said that a work is "above
criticism," although it may be "above censure," for the very complexity
of its merits and the fulness of its beauties tempt the skill of the
analyser and reward it.
It is necessary at the threshold of an examination of the history of
criticism to expose this laxity of speech, since nothing is more
confusing to a clear conception of this art than to suppose that it
consists in an effort to detect what is blameworthy. Candid criticism
should be neither benevolent nor adverse; its function is to give a just
judgment, without partiality or bias. A critic ([Greek: _kritikos_]) is
one who exercises the art of criticism, who sets himself up, or is set
up, as a judge of literary and artistic merit. The irritability of
mankind, which easily forgets and neglects praise, but cannot forgive
the rankling poison of blame, has set upon the word _critic_ a seal
which is even more unamiable than that of _criticism_. It takes its most
savage form in Benjamin Disraeli's celebrated and deplorable _dictum_,
"the critics are the men who have failed in literature and art." It is
plain that such names as those of Aristotle, Dante, Dryden, Joshua
Reynolds, Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold are not to be thus swept by a
reckless fulmination. There have been many critics who brought from
failure in imaginative composition a cavilling, jealous and ignoble
temper, who have mainly exercised their function in indulging the evil
passion of envy. But, so far as they have done this, they have proved
themselves bad critics, and neither minute care, nor a basis of
learning, nor wide experience of literature, salutary as all these must
be, can avail to make that criticism valuable which is founded on the
desire to exaggerate fault-finding and to emphasize censure unfairly.
The examination of what has been produced by other ages of human thought
is much less liable to this dangerous error than the attempt to estimate
contemporary works of art and literature. There are few indeed whom
personal passion can blind to the merits of a picture of the 15th or a
poem of the 17th century. In the higher branches of historical
criticism, prejudice of this ignoble sort is hardly possible, and
therefore, in considering criticism in its ideal forms, it is best to
leave out of consideration that invidious and fugitive species which
bears the general name of "reviewing." This pedestrian criticism,
indeed, is useful and even indispensable, but it is, by its very nature,
ephemeral, and it is liable to a multitude of drawbacks. Even when the
reviewer is, or desires to be, strictly just, it is almost impossible
for him to stand far enough back from the object under review to see it
in its proper perspective. He is dazzled, or scandalized, by its
novelty; he has formed a preconceived notion of the degree to which its
author should be encouraged or depressed; he is himself, in all cases,
an element in the mental condition which he attempts to judge, and if
not positively a defendant is at least a juryman in the court over which
he ought to preside with remote impartiality.
It may be laid down as the definition of criticism in its pure sense,
that it should consist in the application, in the most competent form,
of the principles of literary composition. Those principles are the
general aesthetics upon which taste is founded; they take the character
of rules of writing. From the days of Aristotle the existence of such
rules has not been doubted, but different orders of mind in various ages
have given them diverse application, and upon this diversity the
fluctuations of taste are founded. It is now generally admitted that in
past ages critics have too often succumbed to the temptation to regulate
taste rigidly, and to lay down rules that shall match every case with a
formula. Over-legislation has been the bane of official criticism, and
originality, especially in works of creative imagination, has been
condemned because it did not conform to existing rules. Such instances
of want of contemporary appreciation as the reception given to William
Blake or Keats, or even Milton, are quoted to prove the futility of
criticism. As a matter of fact they do nothing of the kind. They merely
prove the immutable principles which underlie all judgment of artistic
products to have been misunderstood or imperfectly obeyed during the
life-times of those illustrious men. False critics have built domes of
glass, as Voltaire put it, between the heavens and themselves, domes
which genius has to shatter in pieces before it can make itself
comprehended. In critical application formulas are often useful, but
they should be held lightly; when the formula becomes the tyrant where
it should be the servant of thought, fatal error is imminent. What is
required above all else by a critic is knowledge, tempered with good
sense, and combined with an exquisite delicacy of taste. He who
possesses these qualities may go wrong in certain instances, but his
error cannot become radical, and he is always open to correction. It is
not his business crudely to pronounce a composition "good" or "bad"; he
must be able to show why it is "good" and wherein it is "bad"; he must
admire with independence and blame with careful candour. He must above
all be assiduous to escape from pompous generalizations, which conceal
lack of thought under a flow of words. The finest criticism should take
every circumstance of the case into consideration, and hold it
necessary, if possible, to know the author as well as the book. A large
part of the reason why the criticism of productions of the past is so
much more fruitful than mere contemporary reviewing, is that by
remoteness from the scene of action the critic is able to make himself
familiar with all the elements of age, place and medium which affected
the writer at the moment of his composition. In short, knowledge and
even taste are not sufficient for perfect criticism without the infusion
of a still rarer quality, breadth of sympathy.
Criticism has been one of the latest branches of literature to reach
maturity, but from very early times the instinct which induces mankind
to review what it has produced led to the composition of imperfect but
often extremely valuable bodies of opinion. What makes these early
criticisms tantalizing is that the moral or political aspects of
literature had not disengaged themselves from the purely intellectual or
aesthetic.
To pass to an historical examination of the subject, we find that in
antiquity Aristotle was regarded as the father and almost as the founder
of literary criticism. Yet before his day, three Greek writers of
eminence had examined, in more or less fulness, the principles of
composition; these were Plato, Isocrates and Aristophanes. The comedy of
_The Frogs_, by the latter, is the earliest specimen we possess of
hostile literary criticism, being devoted to ridicule of the plays of
Euripides. In the cases of Plato and Isocrates, criticism takes the form
mainly of an examination of the rules of rhetoric. We reach, however,
much firmer ground when we arrive at Aristotle, whose _Poetics_ and
_Rhetoric_ are among the most valuable treatises which antiquity has
handed down to us. Of what existed in the literature of his age,
extremely rich in some branches, entirely empty in others, Aristotle
speaks with extraordinary authority; but Mr G. Saintsbury has justly
remarked that as his criticism of poetry was injuriously affected by the
non-existence of the novelist, so his criticism of prose was injuriously
affected by the omnipresence of the orator. This continues true of all
ancient criticism. A work by Aristotle on the problems raised by a study
of Homer is lost, and there may have been others of a similar nature; in
the two famous treatises which remain we have nothing less important
than the foundation on which all subsequent European criticism has been
raised. It does not appear that any of the numerous disciples of
Aristotle understood his attitude to literature, nor do the later
philosophical schools offer much of interest. The Neoplatonists,
however, were occupied with analysis of the Beautiful, on which both
Proclus and Plotinus expatiated; still more purely literary were some of
the treatises of Porphyry. There seems to be no doubt that Alexandria
possessed, in the third century, a vivid school of critic-grammarians;
the names of Zenodotus, of Crates and of Aristarchus were eminent in
this connexion, but of their writings nothing substantial has survived.
They were followed by the scholiasts, and they by the mere rhetoricians
of the last Greek schools, such as Hermogenes and Aphthonius. In the 2nd
century of our era, Dio Chrysostom, Aristides of Smyrna, and Maximus of
Tyre were the main representatives of criticism, and they were succeeded
by Philostratus and Libanius. The most modern of post-Christian Greek
critics, however, is unquestionably Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who
leads up to Lucian and Cassius Longinus. The last-mentioned name calls
for special notice; in "the lovely and magnificent personality of
Longinus" we find the most intelligent judge of literature who wrote
between Aristotle and the moderns. His book _On the Sublime_ ([Greek:
_Peri hupsous_]), probably written about A.D. 260, and first printed in
1554, is of extreme importance, while his intuitions and the splendour
of his style combine to lift Longinus to the highest rank among the
critics of the world.
In Roman literature criticism never took a very prominent position. In
early days the rhetorical works of Cicero and the famous _Art of Poetry_
of Horace exhaust the category. During the later Augustan period the
only literary critic of importance was the elder Seneca. Passing over
the valuable allusions to the art of writing in the poets, especially in
Juvenal and Martial, we reach, in the Silver Age, Quintilian, the most
accomplished of all the Roman critics. His _Institutes of Oratory_ has
been described as the fullest and most intelligent application of
criticism to literature which the Latin world produced, and one which
places the name of Quintilian not far below those of Aristotle and
Longinus. He was followed by Aulus Gellius, by Macrobius (whose
reputation was great in the middle ages), by Servius (the great
commentator on Virgil), and, after a long interval, by Martianus
Capella. Latin criticism sank into mere pedantry about rhetoric and
grammar. This continued throughout the Dark Ages, until the 13th
century, when rhythmical treatises, of which the _Labyrinthus_ of
Eberhard (1212?) and the _Ars rhythmica_ of John of Garlandia (John
Garland) are the most famous, came into fashion. These writings
testified to a growing revival of a taste for poetry.
It is, however, in the masterly technical treatise _De vulgari eloquio_,
generally attributed to Dante, the first printed (in Italian) in 1529,
that modern poetical criticism takes its first step. The example of this
admirable book was not adequately followed; throughout the 14th and 15th
centuries, criticism is mainly indirect and accidental. Boccaccio,
indeed, is the only figure worthy of mention, between Dante and Erasmus.
With the Renaissance came a blossoming of Humanist criticism in Italy,
producing such excellent specimens as the _Sylvae_ of Poliziano, the
_Poetics_ (1527) of Vida, and the _Poetica_ of Trissino, the best of a
whole crop of critical works produced, often by famous names, between
1525 and 1560. These were followed by sounder scholars and acuter
theorists: by Scaliger with his epoch-making _Poetices_ (1561); by L.
Castelvetro, whose _Poetica_ (1570) started the modern cultivation of
the Unities and asserted the value of the Epic; by Tasso with his
_Discorsi_ (1587); and by Francesco Patrizzi in his _Poetica_ (1586).
In France, the earliest and for a long time the most important specimen
of literary criticism was the _Defense et illustration de la langue
francaise_, published in 1549 by Joachim du Bellay. Ronsard, also, wrote
frequently and ably on the art of poetry. The theories of the Pleiade
were summed up in the _Art poetique_ of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, which
belongs to 1574 (though not printed until 1605).
In England, the earliest literary critic of importance was Thomas
Wilson, whose _Art of Rhetoric_ was printed in 1553, and the earliest
student of poetry, George Gascoigne, whose _Instruction_ appeared in
1575. Gascoigne is the first writer who deals intelligently with the
subject of English prosody. He was followed by Thomas Drant, Harvey,
Gosson, Lodge and Sidney, whose controversial pamphlets belong to the
period between 1575 and 1580. Among Elizabethan "arts" or "defences" of
English poetry are to be mentioned those of William Webbe (1586), George
Puttenham (1589), Thomas Campion (1602), and Samuel Daniel (1603). With
the tractates of Ben Jonson, several of them lost, the criticism of the
Renaissance may be said to close.
A new era began throughout Europe when Malherbe started, about 1600, a
taste for the neo-classic or anti-romantic school of poetry, taking up
the line which had been foreshadowed by Castelvetro. _Enfin Malherbe
vint_, and he was supported in his revolution by Regnier, Vaugelas,
Balzac, and finally by Corneille himself, in his famous prefatory
discourses. It was Boileau, however, who more than any other man stood
out at the close of the 17th century as the law-giver of Parnassus. The
rules of the neo-classics were drawn together and arranged in a system
by Rene Rapin, whose authoritative treatises mainly appeared between
1668 and 1674. It is in writings of this man, and of the Jesuits, Le
Bossu and Bouhours, that the preposterous rigidity of the formal classic
criticism is most plainly seen. The influence of these three critics
was, however, very great throughout Europe, and we trace it in the
writings of Dryden, Addison and Rymer. In the course of the 18th
century, when the neoclassic creed was universally accepted, Pope,
Blair, Kames, Harris, Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson were its most
distinguished exponents in England, while Voltaire, Buffon (to whom we
owe the phrase "the style is the man"), Marmontel, La Harpe and Suard
were the types of academic opinion in France.
Modern, or more properly Romantic, criticism came in when the
neo-classic tradition became bankrupt throughout Europe at the very
close of the 18th century. It has been heralded in Germany by the
writings of Lessing, and in France by those of Diderot. Of the
reconstruction of critical opinion in the 19th century it is impossible
to speak here with any fulness, it is contained in the record of the
recent literature of each European language. It is noticeable, in
England, that the predominant place in it was occupied, in violent
contrast with Disraeli's dictum, by those who had obviously _not_ failed
in imaginative composition, by Wordsworth, by Shelley, by Keats, by
Landor, and pre-eminently by S. T. Coleridge, who was one of the most
penetrative, original and imaginative critics who have ever lived. In
France, the importance of Sainte-Beuve is not to be ignored or even
qualified; after manifold changes of taste, he remains as much a master
as he was a precursor. He was followed by Theophile Gautier, Saint-Marc,
Girardin, Paul de Saint Victor, and a crowd of others, down to Taine and
the latest school of individualistic critics, comparable with Matthew
Arnold, Pater, and their followers in England.
See G. Saintsbury, _A History of Criticism_ (3 vols., 1902-1904); J.
E. Spingarn, _A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_ (2nd
ed. 1908); Thery, _Histoire des opinions litteraires_ (1849); J. A.
Symonds, _The Revival of Learning_ (1877); Matthew Arnold, _Essays in
Criticism_, i. (1865), ii. (1868); Bourgoin, _Les Maitres de la
critique au XVII^e siecle_ (1889); Paul Hamelius, _Die Kritik in der
englischen Literatur_ (1897); S. H. Butcher, _The Poetics of
Aristotle_ (1898); H. L. Havell and Andrew Lang, _Longinus on the
Sublime_ (1890). See also the writings of Sainte-Beuve, Matthew
Arnold, F. Brunetiere, Anatole France, Walter Pater, _passim_.
(E. G.)