112 LITEEAEY VALUES 



Dr. Johnson long ago suggested, more like a wood 

 or a piece of free nature. 



II 



Democratic and aristocratic may not be the best 

 terms to apply to the two opposing types of critics, 

 — men like Matthew Arnold or the French critic 

 Ferdinand Brunetiere, on the one hand, both the 

 spokesmen of authority in letters ; and men. like 

 Sainte-Beuve and Anatole France, and the younger 

 generation of English and American critics on the 

 other, men who are more tolerant of individual 

 differences and more inclined to seek the reason of 

 each work within itself. Yet these terms indicate 

 fairly well two profoundly different types. 



Brunetiere is a militant and dogmatic critic, as we 

 saw by his severe denunciation of Zola while lectur- 

 ing in this country a few years since. One of his 

 eulogists speaks of him as the " autocrat of trium- 

 phant convictions." Of democratic blood in his 

 veins there is very little. He reflects the old ortho- 

 dox and aristocratic spirit in his dictum that nature 

 is not to be trusted ; that both in taste and in morals 

 what comes natural to us and gives us pleasure is, for 

 that very reason, to be avoided. Nature is depraved. 

 In morals, would we attain to virtue, we must go 

 counter to her ; and in art and literature, would we 

 attain to wisdom, we must distrust what we like. 

 This suspicion of nature was the keynote of the 

 old theology, which found its authority in a mirac- 

 ulous revelation, and it is the keynote of the old 



