338 HISTORY OF LITERATURE 



chief characteristic is his desire to interpret and reproduce the 

 author; Symonds's, to show the historical relations of poetry and 

 art. 



Among contemporary critics there is evident a right tendency in 

 theoretic criticism to regard poetry both as absolute and relative: 

 to test the absolute aesthetic worth by reference to the laws of nature 

 and thought, the poet's own conception of these and of his poetic 

 function in interpreting them, the poet's aim; to test the relative 

 worth of a poem by reference not to the standard of some preferred, 

 so-called classical or romantic school, but with reference to the par- 

 ticular movement of which it was part, and to the social, the inher- 

 ited, the artistic, and the individual conditions of the age that have 

 contributed to that movement and have affected the individual. And 

 in method the tendency has fortunately been, with the best writers, 

 more impartial, comparative, genetic, psychological, sometimes with 

 a view to recording, sometimes interpreting, sometimes to teaching. 

 As a result, something like artistic criticism has occasionally been 

 produced. Credit in this regard is especially due to Arnold, Pater, 

 Symonds, Gurney, Stephen, Saintsbury, Gosse, and Dowden. In the 

 treatment of literary types, the palm for scientific performance must 

 be given to A. W. Ward and E. K. Chambers both historians of 

 the English drama; and to C. H. Herford for his Literary Relations 

 of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century. In the history of 

 English poetry, unfortunately, little that is methodical has been done 

 by English-speaking writers. Morley's English Writers promised 

 well, but comes only halfway down. Courthope's History of English 

 Poetry is not yet finished, and has been sev.erely handled by the 

 philologists. Garnett and Gosse 's History is especially valuable for 

 its social illustrations and its dynamic and biographical methods of 

 treatment. 



That I have not in this survey said anything of the contribution 

 to literary science made by the students of linguistic and purely 

 historical science proceeds by no means from oversight, but from 

 the limitations of space. To mention a few like Donaldson and 

 Mure for Greek in the first half of the century, and Mahaffy, Jebb, 

 ana Haigh for the latter half; or like Cruttwell, Nettleship, Simcox, 

 Sellar, Munro, Mayor, Conington, Ellis, Mackail, and Tyrrell for the 

 Latin, is simply invidious, therefore I desist. A catalogue, imperfect 

 at that, of scholars in modern philology and literary history would be 

 similarly unavailing. And to attempt, anywhere in this sketch, any 

 estimate of the influence of the methods of political historians such 

 as Stubbs, Freeman, Bryce, etid omne genus for England, Curtius, 

 Mommsen, and Grote for Germany, though absolutely requisite to 

 a complete investigation of the subject, would be madness. 



Of the contribution of England to the present condition of literary 



