ON SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 77 



Rightly employed, learning checks caprice, sustains our feet 

 on solid ground, and leads to hidden paths whereby we may 

 approach the truth. Misused, it smothers intuition in a 

 jungle of cumbrous and unimportant details, diverts attention 

 from the proper end of culture, or bases the vagaries of the 

 fancy upon sand-banks and rubble. 



It seems trite to say so yet common sense, implying 

 knowledge of human nature, prudence, shrewdness, the power 

 of weighing evidence, is the main quality for the critic. 

 Learning gives weight and force ; it is indispensable. But 

 learning is as nothing, or as worse than nothing, unless sound 

 judgment stand above it. Sense, like charity in S. Paul's 

 exposition of the virtues, is the one and saving faculty 

 'though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, 

 though my memory is stored with the omne scibile, and I 

 have not common sense, I am become as sounding brass or a 

 tinkling cymbal.' Without this, erudition obscures the main 

 points at issue, and transforms the mirage of illusion into 

 momentary domes and towers. A sensible, unlettered girl 

 is a better critic than the learned simpleton who uses the 

 stores of a vast library to bolster up some baseless paradox. 

 Sense, in the region of criticism, is equivalent to imagination. 

 It enables its possessor to distinguish what is or may be from 

 what cannot be. 



IX 



The critical faculty may be described then as trained per- 

 ception in a man endowed with common sense and sound 

 imagination. This faculty may be exercised in every branch 

 of knowledge; but for its particular display in any single 

 province we have to presuppose special qualifications (natural 

 and acquired, physical and mental), which enable the skilled 

 interpreter and judge to pronounce opinions with more 

 authority than the rest of mankind. A critic of music need 

 not be a critic of poetry ; nor do we seek enlightenment on 

 the art of painting from a judge of horseflesh. 



Finally, the critic must beware of his subjective bias, and 

 keep himself resolutely in accord with the common wisdom 



