ON SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 



WHILE tracing the decline of Italian art at the end of the 

 Renaissance period, and its partial revival under the influences 

 of the Catholic Reaction, I had occasion to write a chapter on 

 the Bolognese school of painting. This brought before my 

 mind the revolution to which taste is subject, and the 

 apparent uncertainty of critical determinations. To what 

 extent are there principles, I asked myself, by which men 

 eager for the truth can arrive at a sound judgment in 

 aesthetics, steering amid the shoals and billows of opinion ? 

 Or must we confess that literature and art are bound to 

 remain the province of caprice and shifting fashion ? With 

 these doubts in my mind, I wrote the following paragraphs, 

 which I will here resume, inasmuch as they may serve to 

 introduce further discussion. 



II 



In the history of criticism few things are more perplexing 

 than the vicissitudes of taste, whereby the idols of past 

 generations crumble suddenly to dust, while the despised and 

 rejected are lifted to pinnacles of glory. Successive waves of 

 sesthetical preference, following one another with curious 

 rapidity, sweep the established fortresses of fame from their 

 venerable basements, and raise aloft neglected monuments 

 of genius which lay erewhile embedded in the quicksands of 

 oblivion. 



During the last half -century taste has appeared to be more 

 capricious, revolutionary, and anarchical than at any previous 



