410 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of significant facts ; for method, they follow rather such an historian of 

 our literature as Hettner, in his admirable volume on the eighteenth 

 century; his definition 1 of literature "the history of ideas, and 

 of their scientific and artistic forms" is dominant over Taine's 

 famous triad. Of allied sciences, psychology is now the favorite; for 

 psychology is in demand with each of the two divisions of literary 

 research. The formula of invention and imitation is neatly halved. 

 To the critic goes invention; his old quest of genius, his old study 

 of the individual and responsible artist, is restored in full measure; 

 while to comparative literature, a new and lusty science, which 

 must ignore social forces and all such exsufflicate and blown sur- 

 mise, is assigned the glorified search for stolen goods, mainly, how- 

 ever, without imputation of unrighteousness in the theft, - in a 

 \\ ord, the trail of imitation. The " history of ideas " and their " artis- 

 tic form " is a more dignified phase of the same task, but in a larger 

 scope; to trace ideas and artistic forms from place to place, from 

 time to time, glancing only as an incident of the way at environ- 

 ment and social influences, is beyond all doubt the present way to the 

 stars. Criticism, meanwhile, is taking good care of invention, and 

 is preserving genius from all popular contamination. In a word, the 

 relation of English literature to other sciences is now a relation 

 far more limited and reduced in the strictly professional domain 

 than was the case four decades ago, or at the opening of the preceding 

 century. 



This reaction against sociological studies has, however, gone too 

 far. No science has ever rejected in mass its store of old achievement: 

 and while the extravagances must go. the mistaken method and the 

 too confident, too sweeping theory, ancient good is not all uncouth, 

 and the solid gains of those great scholars who fought the democratic 

 fight in literature shall not be flung away. Returning to the useful 

 division of labor between critic and scholar, one asks what is their 

 present attitude, in sober and rational survey, toward the sciences in 

 <]uestion, particularly toward sociology? What shall they reject, 

 and what shall they retain? It is clear that the monarchical school, 

 like the democratic, may run to an extreme; while the latter took 

 a poet entirely out of his own personality, and overwhelmed him in 

 a flood of influences, inheritances, movements, and things not only 

 figuratively but often literally in the air, the monarchical method 

 tends to surround the author with a hedge of divinity and psychology, 

 and to set up a theory of divine right in matters of art. Criticism 

 of the best class now begins to refuse recognition for this theory. 

 Bnmetiere, in his study of literary types as well as literary personal- 

 ities, is witness for a still lively relation between modern science and 

 the larger scope of criticism. His studies, however, border closely 

 1 Preface to fourth edition. 



