with that which it displaces—to make the best ideas prevail. Presently these new ideas reach society; the touch of truth is the touch of life; and there is a stir and growth everywhere. Out of this stir and growth come the creative epochs of literature.

II.—The Literary "Atmosphere"

It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our literature through the first quarter of the nineteenth century had about it something premature, and for this cause its productions are doomed to prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes from its having proceeded without having its proper data, without sufficient materials to work with. In other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth, profound as he is, so wanting in completeness and variety.

It was not really books and reading that lacked to our poetry at this epoch. Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense reading; Pindar and Sophocles had not many books; Shakespeare was no deep reader. True; but in the Greece of Pindar and Sophocles and the England of Shakespeare the poet lived in a current of ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing to creative power.

Such an atmosphere the many-sided learning and the long and widely combined critical effort of Germany formed for Goethe when he lived and worked. In the England of the first quarter of the nineteenth century there was neither a national glow of life and thought, such as we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a force of learning and criticism, such as was to be found in Germany. The creative power of poetry wanted, for success in the highest sense, materials and a basis—a thorough interpretation of the world was necessarily denied to it.

At first it seems strange that out of the immense stir of the French Revolution and its age should not have come a crop of works of genius equal to that which came out of the stir of the great productive time of Greece, or out of that of the Renaissance, with its powerful episode of the Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of the French Revolution took a character which essentially distinguished it from such movements as these. The French Revolution found, undoubtedly, its motive power in the intelligence of men, and not in their practical sense. It appeals to an order of ideas which are universal, certain, permanent. The year 1789 asked of a thing: Is it rational? That a whole nation should have been penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure reason is a very remarkable thing when we consider how little of mind, or anything so worthy or quickening as mind, comes into the motives which in general impel great masses of men. In spite of the crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives, from the force, truth and universality of the ideas which it took for its law, a unique and still living power; and it is, and will probably long remain, the greatest, the most animating event in history.

But the mania for giving an immediate political and practical application to all these fine ideas of the reason was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his element: on this theme we can all go on for hours. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for themselves, cannot be too much lived with; but to transport them abruptly into the world of politics and practice, violently to revolutionise this world to their bidding—that is quite another thing. "Force and right are the governors of the world; force till right is ready" Joubert has said. The grand error of the French Revolution was that it set at naught the second great half of that maxim—force till right is ready—and, rushing furiously into the political sphere, created in opposition to itself what I may call an epoch of concentration.

The great force of that epoch of concentration was England, and the great voice of that epoch of concentration was Burke. I will not deny that his writings are often disfigured by the violence and passion of the moment, and that in some directions Burke's view was bounded and his observations therefore at fault; but for those who can make the needful corrections what distinguishes these writings is their profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth—they contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration. Now, an epoch of expansion seems to be opening in this country. In spite of the absorbing and brutalising influence of our passionate material progress, this progress is likely to lead in the end to an apparition of intellectual life. It is of the last importance that English criticism should discern what rule it ought to take, to avail itself of the field now opening to it. That rule may be summed up in one word—disinterestedness.

III.—The Virtue of Detachment

How is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from practice; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches. Its business is simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by making this known to create a current of fresh and true ideas. What is at present the bane of criticism in this country? It is that our organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the first thing, and the play of the mind the second—so much play of mind as is compatible with the prosecution of these practical ends is all that is wanted.

An organ like the Revue des Deux Mondes, existing as just an organ for a free play of mind, we have not; but we have the "Edinburgh Review," existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the "Quarterly Review," existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the "British Quarterly Review," existing as an organ of the political Dissenters, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have "The Times," existing as an organ of the common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that. And so on through all the various fractions, political and religious, of our society—every fraction has, as such, its organ of criticism, but the notion of combining all fractions in the common pleasure of a free, disinterested play of mind meets with no favour. Yet no other criticism will ever attain any real authority, or make any real way towards its end—the creating of a current of true and fresh ideas.

It will be said that, by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue of detachment, criticism condemns itself to a slow and obscure work; but it is the only proper work of criticism. Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, and yet in these distinctions truth and the highest culture greatly find their account. To act is so easy, as Goethe says, and to think is so hard. Criticism must maintain its independence of the practical spirit and its aims. Even with well meant efforts of the practical spirit it must express dissatisfaction if, in the sphere of the ideal, they seem impoverishing and limiting. It must be apt to study and praise elements that for the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they belong to a power which, in the practical sphere, may be maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual shortcomings of