so easy to imitate. To-day the regret is rather that there were not more imitations. A flood of Addisonian sentences would have been vastly preferable to a flood of weak Popean couplets.

So Welsted ambles on, digressing here and there, and tempting the commentator to like sin. The curse of complacent mediocrity lies heavy upon the whole essay. One longs for a good, tough error of judgment like some of Dennis'. The remark that Milton's uncouth style prevents him from being the greatest of our poets, is too feeble to replace old Dennis' swashing blows. One would prefer even the violent classicism of Rymer's advocacy of the Greek chorus. One feels that Welsted didn't much care one way or the other; that, like many Englishmen, especially those of Georgian days, he felt that poetry was not a thing to get excited about, especially when writing to a lord.

ALLAN There is nothing half-hearted or undecided RAMSAY about Ramsay's preface. To be sure, Ramsay was Scottish, not English, and his few short paragraphs are hardly criticism. But they are immensely significant, and significant even more for what they imply than for what they say. They imply a real demand for what we call the romantic in literature. If Ramsay was right, there was coming a real shift in the balance of taste, not in an isolated individual here and there, but in a growing body of readers. And that he was right is abundantly shown both by the large sale of his books and by subsequent literary history.

With such an essay as this the present volume properly ends. The next quarter-century shows no more unanimity of critical opinion than this; it marks evolution, not revolution. But the general tone of criticism

is different; the attitude toward the old problems is in the main a new attitude. It would be pleasant to attempt a characterization of this change, but it must be reserved, for it properly demands the accompaniment of another body of texts.

From even so cursory and superficial an examination of these half-dozen critics must appear the fact, doubly clear to one who actually reads their work, that none, with the exception of Ramsay, can be neatly pigeonholed as a classicist or a romanticist or a rationalist or an 'ist' of any sort. More accurately, each one has his 'ism'; but it is individual, not general. One, like Welsted, scoffs at the rules, but scorns Miltonic diction; another, like Dennis, deifies Milton, and defends the rules; a third defends the rules and sniffs at Milton. Thus we could continue to ring the changes and rearrange the combinations, but to no useful purpose. To group them is a help to memory, but a hindrance to accuracy.

Are there, then, no generalizations to make, no possible conclusions as to the critical temper of this period? One or two may possibly be hazarded, with the proviso that they are intentionally vague and that they must constantly be checked by reference to the actual opinions of individual critics.

In the first place it is evident that criticism at this time was not stagnant, that very few minds were content to reiterate the old formulæ without limitation or alteration. Gildon alone, and he for only part of his life, was content to quote without qualification the dicta of the preceding period, and even he specifically recognizes the fact that his system does not account for all the manifestations of real genius, that there is, at least, another

gate by which a few may enter the realm of art. The period is not, therefore, one in which tradition was blindly accepted; it is one in which men were working toward new points of view; in which theories, however narrow, were becoming more elastic, more capable of including the infinitely various manifestations of genius. On the other hand, it would be a mistake, I believe, to say that these modifications of old formulæ, these attempts at a more accurate statement of critical truth, indicate a new 'critical movement'. A short time ago it seemed as if so much that could be called romantic was being discovered in this period that it could hardly be called a classical period at all. Hardly any piece of writing seemed incapable of being pressed into service. as a 'beginning of the romantic movement'. That effort exhausted itself; its success showed its futility. It would certainly be a complete mistake to suppose that these critics were in a state of revolt, conscious or unconscious. They were not seeking to overturn the existing order, but to improve it.

But one word with regard to the supposed discovery of widespread romantic tendencies may still be in order. In all the arts, in philosophy, in politics, in practically all the activities of the human mind, two opposing tendencies are perceptible. In philosophy they appear as the sense of the one and the sense of the many. From the beginning of history there have been men who were profoundly impressed by the unity of the world, by its order and harmony; who have been fascinated by the possibility of an ultimate synthesis of all its elements. There have been others who were equally impressed by differences, by the variety of phenomena, by the strife and discord of the world, by its strangeness, mystery, and complexity. Such men have often completely lost sight of the con

ceivable unity. Philosophy has tried again and again to mediate between the two types, but they still exist in hostile camps. We still have monists and pluralists.

Theology has faced the same antipodal conceptions. It has had to deal with polytheists and unitarians, with all sorts and conditions of men between. Catholic theology, with its dogma of the Trinity, has boldly grasped both horns of the dilemma-God one and God many; but not even S. Thomas Aquinas succeeded in making the two points of view intellectually reconcilable. Similarly in architecture. Given men who had a keen feeling for unity, simplicity, harmony, adaptation of the part to the whole, and they produce Greek temples. Given men with an overpowering sense of the mystery, the variety, the strangeness and occasional grotesqueness of life, and they may create a Gothic cathedral.

So in poetry. Given a man who loves above all things simplicity, obviousness, orderly beauty, and you will get what we call classic poetry. Given a man who finds strangeness, mystery, complexity in the simplest things, who regards those aspects of life as vital and essential, and you will get romantic poetry. And as in creation, so in appreciation, in criticism.

If, then, we use the words 'classic' and 'romantic' merely as convenient terms for two fundamental tendencies of human minds, they are serviceable. If for more, they are misleading. For the two classes of men exist always side by side; the two tendencies exist in the same men. Sometimes one is dominant, sometimes the other; but in greater or less degree both are there. It is merely a question of preponderance. The historian. can only say which tendency is ascendant in the majority at a given moment. So in the England of this period what we have called the classic tendency-the monistic,

the simplifying tendency-was dominant. But men were still conscious of the other point of view; some of them were trying to make their own broad enough to include it. But their basic attitude remained. Hence we may find romantic qualities by the score, both in production and in criticism; but we cannot, at this time, find a real romantic movement. The balance was not yet shaken.

It remains, in eighteenth century fashion, to point a moral. It is silly for those in either camp to curse their fellows across the way. The two points of view are both right. The world is one, it is simple; and it is many and complex. The greatness of the Iliad does not preclude that of the Paradiso. Until we can make a completely inclusive synthesis, we should beware lest our omissions be as great as those of our opponents. Modern criticism, which commonly stresses novelty and variety of emotional appeal, may be no nearer the whole truth than criticism of the Aristotelean sort. And unless modern criticism is striving with more and more success to equate the two opposing tendencies, it may in reality be less fruitful than that of those eighteenth century men who are to-day a hissing and a by-word.

There is, of course, a way out, that of shirking the whole problem. One may say of a new book, as of a new picture or a new piece of music, "It seems mad and ugly to me, but I am probably mistaken. It may be a masterpiece." To do that is to lay oneself open to the charge of cowardice, of unwillingness to risk possible ridicule from generations present or to come. To call indecision broadmindedness does not make it the less. weak. Better to have scoffed at Shakespeare like Rymer, to have derided Wagner like Hanslick, to have insulted Whistler like Ruskin, than to be too feeble, too halfhearted to attack anything. Dennis and Gildon and