ON SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 67 



How difficult his duty is, and how ill it is performed for the 

 most part, none knows better than one who has attempted to 

 discharge it in a sincere and modest spirit. Common sense, 

 sagacity, justice of perception, openness to ideas, susceptibility 

 to beauty, sufficient information, the power of weighing 

 evidence and estimating the worth of testimony: these 

 qualities constitute the critic, and whoever possesses and 

 exercises them is a critic, whatever else he may be. 



When judging or pronouncing an opinion, he has to con- 

 sider both the matter and the form of that which is presented 

 to his mind what the work of art contains, and how it is 

 put forth. Since then all art expresses what the artist has 

 perceived, thought, and felt concerning external nature, 

 mankind, and himself the world, human life, and his own 

 being the critic asks : How far in this case is perception just, 

 accurate, penetrative, subtle ? How far is the representation 

 of life and nature adequate to fact ? To what extent is the 

 product in harmony with the best thought, the noblest 

 emotions, the worthiest sentiments of our race ? What kind 

 of individuality is indicated in the work? Does the artist 

 show himself to be a man of normal or abnormal tempera- 

 ment ? By right of what particular quality, moral, intellectual, 

 and sensuous, does he claim attention ? In what relation does 

 he stand to the permanent facts of human nature ? How is 

 he related to the spirit of his age and nation ; and what has 

 he contributed to the sum of culture? The substance or 

 content of a work of art being inseparable from its form, the 

 critic connects these questions with a parallel series of 

 interrogations regarding the artist's style, his command of the 

 particular vehicle adopted for expression, his attitude toward 

 the art of his own century, and the genius of the nation to 

 which he belongs. When we speak of critical judgment, we 

 assume that a double process of inquiry upon these lines has 

 consciously or unconsciously been gone through by the critic. 

 His final utterance or verdict is a summing up of the impres- 

 sions made upon him by the work subjected to his sensibility 

 and analytic reason. His experience of life, his susceptibility 

 to beauty, his knowledge of history, his insight into character, 



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