positive mention of the religious element would be going too far. But it is equally faulty to say that the religious element has no place in the novel.

History, in the sense explained by Brownson as something more than the mere chronicle of facts, also belongs in part to the domain of literary art-in part, because the facts as such are not dependent on any artistic inspiration but the results of scientific investigation. Thus in history, as Quiller-Couch says, the extremes of art and science meet and seem to conflict; history written in a colorless way will hardly "interest men in human doings." It will attract only the student.103 The general public looks not only for the truth, but for the truth told in a pleasing way. In popularizing history, however, there is great danger of losing the atmosphere of the people and the places that characterized the past; there is frequently, though not necessarily, a conflict between accuracy and imagination.

From the standponit of literature and art, the chief demand of history is that the facts be presented as a whole; that a theory, intuition, or mental attitude, run through them and combine them; that the element of human interest be present; and that the form be an adequate mirror of the whole. To be true history at the same time, this mental attitude must of course arise out of the facts, not to be thrust upon them; while common ethics, too, will demand that the attitude be not one of false principles. But whether the underlying thread be merely that of natural cause and effect, or a higher metaphysical speculation, will matter little from the standpoint of art. All that can be said is that in the latter supposition the work may assume the nature of a philosophical treatise and thus pass out of the sphere of art. Metaphysical speculations should probably be left out of all writing that purports to be mere history; not, as Brownson argues, because of the possible danger of a false theory, but rather because else the work would be a philosophy of history instead of simple history.

No one will refuse to agree with Brownson when he says that a criticism of form without reference to content is not sufficient, if the content is an essential feature of art. At the same

103 Op. cit., pp. 282-3.

time Brownson disparages the form too much, even if he says that viewed in its proper relation everything is important in a piece of writing. We have seen that the We have seen that the proper relation of the form is that it express adequately the content-so much so, that the content has no value except in as far as it is revealed through the form present to the reader. The content is therefore the prime consideration of the critic, but only the content as revealed through the form, so that the latter also becomes a matter of highest importance. Due to the different mental attitudes assumed by critics, criticism has had many offices to perform. "When Coleridge writes a criticism of Shakespeare," says Arthur Symons, "he is giving us his deepest philosophy,...Criticism with Goethe is a part of his view of the world, his judgment of human nature, and of society. With Pater, criticism is quickened meditation; with Matthew Arnold, a form of moral instruction."104 To such a type of criticism Brownson often subscribed in practice, since for him criticism was frequently an occasion for expressing his own views on the topics to hand. He had no patience with those who examined the mental states of the author or his biography and did little more. This is generally called psychological criticism, and like historical criticism, which examines the historical background, has value only in so far as it throws some light on the work examined. But it is not a criticism of the work itself, only an auxiliary to that end. Likewise was the examination of the personal emotions of the critic on reading a work, impressionistic criticism, repudiated by Brownson when offered as the whole estimate of a work. This form of criticism has come much into vogue, and bears with it some good, in as far as every work of art has a personal value to the beholder. However, it easily develops into what Mr. Balfour calls "a kind of anarchy of individual judgment," and too readily leaves out of consideration that there is a common bond in human nature and that the individual peculiarities, when not guided by this common bond, often turn into the eccentric.

When Brownson advises the critic to examine the purpose of the author and then test the content of the work in the light of this purpose, he seems to us to be reversing the proper meth

104 Introduction to Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, p. ix.

od of procedure. After all, the most important consideration is the work itself as it is given out to the public. This the critic should examine as he finds it. He should ascertain for himself what the work reveals to him. The purpose of the author, if not revealed in the work, has no value for the critic, except perhaps to help him understand anything that was not clear at first. The point of importance is not so much the success with which the author has gained an end, as the success with which the work itself reveals its nature. Nor should we as a last step ascertain the beauty and taste with which the author has attained his end. The primary end of the work is the expression of a content. With this expression of the content are immediately connected all the qualities that the work has, and these must to some extent be apparent at first sight, at least to those that have the requisite knowledge.

The first step of the critic, then, regards art in its first phase, as an artistic activity. It examines the success with which the external expression reveals an inutition, and assigns a value to the work in accordance with the degree in which the intuition transcends the intuitional powers of the ordinary man. Thus the critic, like the reader, reverses the process of the artist, and reads out of the form the intuition put into it by him. When the rank as a work of artistic intuition is ascertained, the critic proceeds to examine the probable effect of the work. He tries to discern the amount of human interest it contains, how much it will appeal to mankind; and then weighs the value of the content in the light of all that is best and noblest in life, thus ascertaining the spiritual worthiness of the work.

Hence it is evident that the critic must approach his task with a disinterested spirit, free from prejudices. "Never begin an author, a real author I mean, in a critical spirit," is the advice Brownson gives to his son. This undesirable 'critical spirit' includes the belief in the rigidity of conventional art forms. For the critic must be ever open-minded, and ready to judge any new attempts of different artists on their own merit. In order to separate the permanent and the essential in a work of art from the unimportant and the ephemeral, it is most necessary for the critic to have a profound knowledge of, and sympathy with, human nature, and a far-seeing judgment; else

his work as critic has no raison d'être. "One novel will be praised on the ground that it has a moral purpose," writes E. R. Still, "another on the ground........that it has not a moral purpose; one on the ground that it paints actual facts from life, another on the ground that it depicts an ideal world; etc."105 This is true of all art. The final judgment on it is the outcome of a balance of circumstances and considerations, sometimes conflicting ones. And the critic, to pass a judgment of weight, must in a sense anticipate time, be himself a kind of personification of universal human nature. Only then will his office have any value for his fellowmen, only then will his fellowmen profit by his utterances and find in them a fairly safe guide towards the permanent values of life.

105 The Prose of E. R. Sill, p. 133. Boston 1900.

CONCLUSION

It is somewhat unfortunate that the nature of our task demanded a critical survey of the different theories advanced in the first part of this dissertation. The impression such a survey will leave behind is quite different from that which a mere appreciation of the value of Brownson's critical writings would have given. We say 'unfortunate,' because we are thus forced to read into these writings a system of critical principles and of aesthetics which Brownson most probably never formulated for himself as a whole. Moreover the constructive portions of the criticism have to a great extent only the weight of the writer's personal opinion, as is the case with so many essays on art, and some of the opposition to Brownson's theories rests therefore merely on personal views. If Brownson had set down for himself a complete set of aesthetic and critical principles and had taken such a system for his point of departure, then he would be indeed accountable for the ideas underlying every critical statement he made, and blameworthy in the greatest degree for any contradictions that statements made at different times might involve.

But just these contradictions-they are rather exaggerations of different viewpoints-shows us something of Brownson the man; namely, the absorbing enthusiasm with which he pursued any cause that he thought worth pursuing, and which seemed to control his entire being at such moments. Then, the views we have unfolded point on the one hand to a reaction in Brownson against that phase of Transcendentalism which almost deified external nature, while on the other hand a second phase of it, the doctrine of God's revealing Himself immediately to the mind in intuition, apparently stuck to him at all times, and influenced much of his thinking. His concern for the betterment of society and for the uplift of the lower classes shows him to have been fully alive to the justice of the agitations going on in the United States and especially in England at his time. He was not satisfied with reveling in abstract theories, however, and earnestly pleaded for practical application, an example of which we see in his sociological concep