t essentially to be.

But I am far from holding that those central conceptions which the
artist embodies through the forms of his art are metaphysical
conceptions. This is where I should disagree with Mr. Lascelles
Abercrombie, who wrote some profoundly interesting chapters on this
subject in a book on Thomas Hardy. Mr. Abercrombie laid it down that
every great artist must have a metaphysic, and that in bringing his
subject-matter under the form conceived by his imagination his
metaphysic is throughout the work consistently represented (of course
implicitly, not explicitly); and he suggested that we may apply a
definite standard of criticism by asking: How far does a work of art
correspond with the artist's philosophical view of life?--this being
for him another way of saying: How far has the artist succeeded in
imposing the desired form upon his material? With the latter mode of
stating the question I should have no quarrel. But the former implies
that the artist has devoted himself to metaphysical studies. Mr.
Abercrombie may have meant only that every work of art presupposes a
metaphysic; but so does everything in the world. The remark would
scarcely have been worth making. So I suppose him to have meant that
every great artist must have subdued his mind to a definite
philosophical interpretation of the Universe, and that in his works he
shows nature and human life as parts of the cosmic scheme definitely
conceived by him. As it happened, the particular novelist whom he was
considering, Mr. Thomas Hardy, exactly answers to this description. So
does Sophocles, so does Milton--authors specially esteemed by Mr.
Abercrombie. Homer, too, might perhaps be accounted for in this way;
for he had at any rate a perfectly definite conception of the relation
of men to the gods of Olympus and to the ghosts who trod the mead of
Asphodel; and to the perfect spontaneity, the unhesitating certainty
with which Homer bodies forth the conviction of pantheism is due much
of the charm and infinite delight of the Epics. Perhaps with ingenuity
one might discover a metaphysic for Shakespeare--and even if we could
not discover it, none the less it may have been there. But how about
Herrick, Robert Burns, or even Mr. Henry James? Are we to equip them
with a metaphysic, or exclude them from the portals of art? Shall we
not gain more by requiring from an artist something, definite indeed,
but less exacting and elusive than a definite scheme of th