96 LITERARY VALUES 



the subject with the thought of the critic. When 

 Mr. James writes upon Sainte-Beuve we are under 

 his spell ; it is Mr. James that absorbs and delights 

 us now. We get the truth about his subject, of 

 course, but it is always in combination with the 

 truth about Mr, James. The same is true when 

 Macaulay writes about Milton, and Carlyle about 

 Burns or Johnson, and Emerson about Montaigne or 

 Plato, and Lowell about Thoreau or Wordsworth, — 

 the critic reveals himself in and through his subject. 

 We do not demand that Arnold get the real Ar- 

 nold out of the way and merge himself into general 

 humanity (this he cannot do in any case), but only 

 that he put aside the conscious exterior Arnold, so 

 to speak, — Arnold the supercilious, the contemptu- 

 ous, the hater of dissent, the teaser of the Philistine. 

 The critic must escape from the local and accidental. 

 We would have Macaulay cease to be a Whig, 

 Johnson cease to be a Tory, Sch6rer forget his theo- 

 logical training, and Brunetiere escape from his 

 Catholic bias. 



No matter how much truth the critic tells us, if 

 his work does not itself rise to the dignity of good 

 literature, if he does not use language in a vital and 

 imaginative way, we shall not care for him. Liter- 

 ary and artistic truth is not something that can be 

 seized and repeated indifferently by this man and by 

 that, like the truths of science : it must be repro- 

 duced or recreated by the critic ; it must be as vital 



