586 HISTORY OF ART 



ality of the artist and the spirit and feeling of his work which is last 

 century's method of criticism a method now somewhat obsolescent 

 because regarded as unscientific. 



So you see that with all the newer and higher criticism has taught 

 us, there is still cause for doubt and room for caution. And these 

 must inevitably centre about extravagant theories and unproved 

 hypotheses. That very quality of imagination, which has been 

 esteemed a virtue in the historian, has by continuous abuse become 

 little short of a vice. By its employment art-history has become 

 less of a fact and more of a fiction, until now people scarcely know 

 what to believe about, let us say, Giorgione, Lotto, the van Eycks, 

 or Phidias, Mino, and Jean Goujon. Skepticism is bred of this, and 

 I know of no more discouraging state of mind. When a person 

 does not know what to believe and doubts everything, he some- 

 times thinks that at least he is scientific, but in reality he is only 

 unhappy. 



If I were asked the remedy for this ailment of historical criticism 

 I should certainly suggest that there be less of this twisting and 

 warping of facts to fit a preconceived theory less of subjective 

 imagination and mental functioning and more of objective fact. 

 Why not state the facts as they are and let the reader draw his own 

 conclusions? It is the business of the historian or the critic to get 

 at the truth; it is not a part of his business to be forever putting 

 the other fellow in the wrong. He is not, or should not be, a partisan 

 advocate trying, by contorted statement and specious argument, 

 to win the case for his client, whether rightfully or otherwise; he 

 should be an investigator trying to establish the truth, though the 

 finding of it should shake his idol from its pedestal. 



If I mistake not, impartial investigation, with the truth only as 

 a goal, is to be the spirit of the very newest criticism, and is to be the 

 ruling factor in the science of art-history for the next decade. Some 

 little volumes recently published Michael Angela, by Sir Charles 

 Holroyd, and Donatella, by Lord Balcarres will point my meaning. 

 In them one feels the disposition to get at the truth without partisan 

 bias; and in the Donatella book you have an assembling of the facts 

 without dogmatic utterances and fine-spun theories. That, it seems 

 to me, is as it should be. If there is anything very obvious or note- 

 worthy about the man or his work or the period, the facts will all 

 point toward it; if there is not, all the argument in the world will 

 fail to convince. There is something radically wrong with the theory 

 that has to be argued through five hundred pages. It doth protest 

 too much. 



Now I would not have it thought for a moment that I am out of 

 sympathy with this higher criticism in art-history, or that I think it 

 might better never have been. On the contrary, it has done great 



