powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficent.

By the very nature of things much of the best that is known and thought in the world cannot be of English growth—must be foreign; by the nature of things, again, it is just this that we are least likely to know, while English thought is streaming in upon us from all sides, and takes excellent care that we shall not be ignorant of its existence. The English critic must dwell much on foreign thought, and with particular heed on any part of it, which, while significant and fruitful in itself, is for any reason specially likely to escape him.

Again, judging is often spoken of as the critic's business; and so in some sense it is. But the judgment which almost insensibly forms itself in a fair and clear mind, along with fresh knowledge, is the valuable one; and, therefore, knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, must be the critic's great concern for himself. And it is by communicating fresh knowledge, and letting his own judgment pass along with it—as a sort of companion and clue—that he will generally do most good to his readers.

To get near the standard of the best that is known and thought in the world, every critic should possess one great literature at least beside his own; and the more unlike his own the better. For the criticism I am concerned with regards Europe as being for intellectual and spiritual purposes one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a common result.

I conclude with what I said at the beginning. To have the sense of creative activity is not denied to criticism; but then criticism must be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge. Then it may have, in no contemptible measure, a joyful sense of creative activity, a sense which a man of insight and conscience will prefer to that he might derive from a poor, starved, fragmentary, inadequate creation. And at some epochs no other creation is possible. Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity belongs only to genuine creation; in literature we must never forget that. But what true man of letters ever can forget it? It is no such common matter for a gifted nature to come into possession of a current of true and living ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of them, that we are likely to underrate it. The glorious epochs of Æschylus and Shakespeare make us feel their pre-eminence. In an epoch like those is the true life of literature; there is the promised land towards which criticism can only beckon.

IV.—Should We Have an Academy?

It is impossible to put down a book like the history of the French Academy by Pellisson and D'Olivet without being led to reflect upon the absence in our own country of any institution like the French Academy, upon the probable causes of this absence, and upon its results. Improvement of the language was the declared grand aim for the operations of that academy. Its statutes of foundation say expressly that "the Academy's principal function shall be to work with all the care and all the diligence possible at giving sure rules to our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent and capable of treating the arts and sciences." It is said that Richelieu had it in his mind that French should succeed Latin in its general ascendancy, as Latin had succeeded Greek. If it were so, even this wish has to some extent been fulfilled. This was not all Richelieu had in his mind, however. The new academy was meant to be a literary tribunal, a high court of letters, and this is what it has really been.

Such an effort, to set up a recognised authority, imposing on us a high standard in matters of intellect and taste, has many enemies in human nature. We all of us like to go our own way, and not to be forced out of the atmosphere of commonplace habitual to most of us. We like to be suffered to lie comfortably on the old straw of our habits, especially of our intellectual habits, even though this straw may not be very fine and clean. But if this effort to limit the freedom of our lower nature finds enemies in human nature, it also finds auxiliaries in it. Man alone of living creatures, says Cicero, goes feeling after the discovery of an order, a law of good taste; other creatures submissively fulfil the law of their nature.

Now in France, says M. Sainte-Beuve, "the first consideration for us is not whether we are amused and pleased by a work of art or of mind, or is it whether we are touched by it. What we seek above all to learn is whether we were right in being amused with it, and in applauding it, and in being moved by it." A Frenchman has, to a considerable degree, what one may call a conscience in intellectual matters. Seeing this, we are on the road to see why the French have their Academy and we have nothing of the kind.

What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of our nation? Our greatest admirers would not claim for us an open and clear mind, a quick and flexible intelligence. Rather would they allege as our chief spiritual characteristics energy and honesty—most important and fruitful qualities in the intellectual and spiritual, as in the moral sphere, for, of what we call genius, energy is the most essential part. Now, what that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon, is freedom—entire independence of authority, prescription and routine, the fullest power to extend as it will. Therefore, a nation whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy will not be very apt to set up in intellectual matters a fixed standard, an authority like an academy. By this it certainly escapes real inconveniences and dangers, and it can, at the same time, reach undeniably splendid heights in poetry and science. We have Shakespeare, and we have Newton. In the intellectual sphere there can be no higher names.

On the other hand, some of the requisites of intellectual work are specially the affair of quickness of mind and flexibility of intelligence. In prose literature they are of first-rate importance. These are elements that can, to a certain degree, be appropriated, while the free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate and maintain them, and therefore a nation with an eminent turn for them naturally establishes academies.

V.—Our Loss Through Provinciality

How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! How much better do the productions of its spirit show in the qualities of genius than in the qualities of intelligence! But the question as to the utility of academies to the intellectual life of a nation is not settled when we say that we have never had an academy, yet we have, confessedly, a very great literature. It is by no means sure that either our literature or the general intellectual life of our nation has got already without academies all that academies can give. Our literature, in spite of the genius manifested in it, may fall short in form, method, precision, proportions, arrangement—all things where intelligence proper comes in. It may be weak in prose, full of haphazard, crudeness, provincialism, eccentricity, violence, blundering; and instead of always fixing our thoughts upon the points in which our literature is strong, we should, from time to time, fix them upon those in which it is weak. In France, the Academy serves as a sort of centre and rallying-point to educated opinion, and gives it a force which it has not got here. In the bulk of the intellectual work of a nation which has no centre, no intellectual metropolis like an academy, there is observable a note of provinciality. Great powers of mind will make a man think profoundly, but not even great powers of mind will keep his taste and style perfectly sound and sure if he is left too much to himself with no sovereign organ of opinion near him.