118 LITEEAET VALUES 



Cosmos, but not with the poet of the drawing-room 

 or library. My taste is not shocked, but my cour- 

 age is challenged. 



In Whitman's case the appeal is not so directly 

 and exclusively to our sesthetic perceptions as it is 

 in most other poets ; he is elemental where they 

 are cultured and artificial ; at the same time he can 

 no more escape sesthetic principles than they can. 

 Because a flower, a gem, a well-kept lawn, etc., are 

 beautiful, we are not compelled to deny beauty to 

 rocks, trees, and mountains. If Whitman does not, 

 in his total effects, attain to something like this kind 

 of beauty, he is not a poet. 



IV 



I have said that Sainte-Beuve was more truly a 

 democratic critic than is M. Brunetiere. He is more 

 tolerant of individualism in letters. He called him- 

 self a naturalist of minds. His main interest in 

 each work was in what was most individual and 

 characteristic in it. He was inclusive rather than 

 exclusive, less given to positive judgments, but more 

 to sympathetic interpretation. He united the method 

 of Darwin to the sensibility of the artist. Critics 

 like Arnold and Brunetifere uphold the classic and 

 academic traditions. They are aristocratic because 

 they are the spokesmen of an exclusive culture. 

 They derive from Catholicism more than from Pro- 

 testantism ; they uphold authority rather than en- 

 courage individuality in life and letters. In criti- 

 cism they aim at that intellectual disinterestedness 



