ion of it as one among many parallel
manifestations of the human spirit, and with a system of values derived
from his metaphysical scheme? Hegel and Croce are philosophical critics
in this sense, and Aristotle is not, as far as we can judge from the
Poetics, wherein he considers the literary work of Greece as an isolated
phenomenon, and examines it in and for itself. But for the moment, and
with the uneasy sense that we have not thoroughly laid the ghost of
philosophic criticism, we will assume that we have isolated him, and
pass to the consideration of the pure literary critic, if indeed we can
find him.

What does he do? How shall we recognise him? Mr Eliot puts before us
Coleridge and Aristotle and Dryden as literary critics _par excellence_
arranged in an ascending scale of purity. The concatenation is curious,
for these were men possessed of very different interests and faculties
of mind; and it would occur to few to place Dryden, as a critic, at
their head. The living centre of Aristotle's criticism is a conception
of art as a means to a good life. As an activity, poetry 'is more
philosophic than history,' a nearer approach to the universal truth in
appearances; and as a more active influence, drama refines our spiritual
being by a purgation of pity and terror. Indeed, it would not be an
exaggeration to say that the very pith and marrow of Aristotle's
literary criticism is a system of moral values derived from his
contemplation of life. It was necessary that this relation should exist,
because for Aristotle literature was, essentially, an imitation of life
though we must remember to understand imitation according to our final
sense of the theme which is the golden, persistent thread throughout the
Poetics. The imitation of life in literature was for Aristotle, the
creative revelation of the ideal actively at work in human life. The
tragic hero failed because his composition was less than ideal; but he
could only be a tragic hero if the ideal was implicit in him and he
visibly approximated to it. It is this constant reference to the ideal
which makes of 'imitation' a truly creative principle and the one which,
properly understood, is the most permanently valid and pregnant of all;
it is also one which has been constantly misunderstood. Its importance
is, nevertheless, so central that adequate recognition of it might
conceivably be taken as the distinguishing mark of all fruitful
criticism.

To his sympathetic und