RECENT PHASES OF LITEKAEY CRITICISM 129 



the influence of one or the other of these notions, — 

 either he submits himself to it disinterestedly, intent 

 only upon seizing and appreciating its characteristic 

 quality, or he comes prepossessed with certain rules 

 and standards upon which his taste has been formed. 

 In other words, he comes to the new work simply 

 as a man, a human being seeking edification, or he 

 comes clothed in some professional authority, seek- 

 ing judgment. 



Our best reading is a search for the excellent ; 

 but what is the excellent ? Is there any final stand- 

 ard of excellence in literature ? Each may be ex- 

 cellent after its kind, but kinds differ. There is one 

 excellence of Milton and Arnold and the classic 

 school, and another excellence of Shakespeare and 

 Pope and Burns and Wordsworth and Whitmauj or 

 of the romantic and democratic school. The critic 

 is to hold a work up to its own ideal or standard. 

 Of the perfect works, or the works that aim at per- 

 fection, at absolute symmetry and proportion, ap- 

 pealing to us through the cunning of their form, 

 scheme, structure, details, ornamentation, we make 

 a different demand from the one we make of a prim- 

 itive, unique, individual utterance or expression of 

 personality like " Leaves of Grass," in which the end 

 is not form, but life ; not perfection, bt.t suggestion ; 

 not intellect, but character ; not beauty, but power ; 

 not carving, or sculpture, or architecture, but the 

 building of a man. 



It is no doubt a great loss to be compelled to read 

 any work of literary art in a conscious critical mood, 



