ON SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 75 



them for a friend who Mr. W. H. was, and who the dark 

 lady was then at once we differ. As it seems to me, this is 

 the point at which sound criticism diverges from criticism 

 over- weighted with erudition or with subjective prepossession. 

 Queen Elizabeth, Lord Southampton, Lord Pembroke, William 

 Hughes, 1 William Himself, have successively posed, in the 

 schemes of constructive critics, for Mr. W. H. I need not 

 enlarge upon this topic, because the case of Shakespeare's 

 sonnets is only too familiar to every student of English 

 literature. I have adduced the instance simply because it 

 is a crucial one one in which the competent critic should 

 hail every contribution made by research or formulated by 

 a scheming brain for the solution of a sphinx-like problem, 

 but should avoid like a hidden rock tanquam scopulum 

 any temptation to construct a biographical romance out of 

 elements so slender, until irrefutable facts have been pre- 

 sented. In a word, criticism welcomes research, welcomes 

 discovery, welcomes constructive ingenuity. But she does 

 not recognise these things as criticism, and holds a dubious 

 balance until the case seems proved. The same may be said 

 about the less enigmatical problem of Tasso's relation to 

 Leonora d'Este. Let the critic state the problem as he finds 

 it, but not engage (unless he be convinced) in any of its 

 plausible solutions. Enough is left for the exercise of his 

 aesthetic judgment in the poetry of Shakespeare's and of 

 Tasso's sonnets. 



These remarks bring to light two relations in which the 

 spirit of research and erudition is dangerous to criticism. 



In the first place it inclines people to make too much of 

 mere externals as though one should persuade himself that 

 a knowledge of the bibliography of the ' Paradise Lost ' is 

 essential to the comprehension of that poem, or that the 

 ' Faery Queen ' demands a preparatory training in Anglo- 

 Saxon. You may know everything about the editions of 

 Milton's poems, and have their misprints at your fingers' end, 



1 William Hughes had been in literary existence a century before 

 Mr. Oscar Wilde resuscitated this hypothetical youth in a magazine 

 of 1889. 



