54 ON SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 



epoch. The unity of orthodox opinion has broken up. Critics 

 have sought to display originality by depreciating names 

 famous in former ages, and by exalting minor stars to the 

 rank of luminaries of the first magnitude. A man, yet in 

 middle life, can remember with what reverence engravings 

 after Raphael, the Caracci, and the Poussins were treated 

 in his boyhood; how Fra Angelico and Perugino ruled at 

 a somewhat later period ; how one set of eloquent writers 

 discovered Blake, another Botticelli, and a third Carpaccio ; 

 how Signorelli and Bellini and Mantegna and Luini received 

 tardy recognition ; and now, of late years, how Tiepolo has 

 bidden fair to obtain the European grido. 



He will also bear in mind that the conditions under which 

 his own aesthetical development has taken place studies in 

 the Elgin marbles, the application of photography to works 

 of art, the publications of the Arundel Society in London, 

 the encyclopaedic and comparative collections of German 

 archaeologists explain and to some extent justify what looks 

 like caprice and chaos in aesthetic fashion. Our generation 

 has been engaged in cataloguing, classifying, and rearranging 

 the museums of the past. We need not be astonished then 

 if the palace of art is in some confusion at the present 

 moment. Despite such seeming confusion, a student who 

 has been careful to addict himself to no one school and to 

 no master, is aware that after thirty years of intelligent 

 curiosity he stands on larger and surer ground than his 

 predecessors. 



Criticism and popular intelligence, meanwhile, are unani- 

 mous upon two points : first, in manifesting an earnest 

 determination to distinguish what is essentially good and 

 true in art from what is only specious, without attributing 

 too much weight to established reputations or to the traditions 

 of orthodox authority ; secondly, in an enthusiastic effort to 

 appreciate and exhibit what is sincere and beautiful in works 

 to which our forefathers were obtuse and irresponsive. A 

 wholesome reaction, in one word, has taken place against 

 academical dogmatism ; the study of art has been based 

 upon sounder historical and comparative methods ; taste 





