d cadence; you may classify the
subjects which appeal to the general, and further classify their
particular manners of appeal; you may arrange the most ingenious
"product-of-the-circumstances" theories about race, climate, religion.
But always sooner or later, and much more often sooner than later, the
mocking demon of the individual, or, if a different phrase be preferred,
the great and splendid mystery of the idiosyncrasy of the artist, will
meet and baffle you. You will find that on the showing of this science
falsely so called, there is no reason why Chapelain should not be a
poet, and none why Shakespeare is. You will ask science in vain to tell
you why some dozen or sixteen of the simplest words in language arranged
by one man or in one fashion, why a certain number of dabs of colour
arranged by another man or in another fashion, make a permanent addition
to the delight of the world, while other words and other dabs of colour,
differently arranged by others, do not. To put the matter yet otherwise,
the whole end, aim, and object of literature and the criticism of
literature, as of all art, and the criticism of all art, is beauty and
the enjoyment of beauty. With beauty science has absolutely nothing to
do.

It is no doubt the sense, conscious or unconscious, of this that has
inclined men to that other conception of criticism as a saying of fine
things, of which Mr. Goldwin Smith complains, and which certainly has
many votaries, in most countries at the present day. These votaries have
their various kinds. There is the critic who simply uses his subject as
a sort of springboard or platform, on and from which to display his
natural grace and agility, his urbane learning, his faculty of pleasant
wit. This is perhaps the most popular of all critics, and no age has
ever had better examples of him than this age. There is a more serious
kind who founds on his subject (if indeed founding be not too solemn a
term) elaborate descants, makes it the theme of complicated variations.
There is a third, closely allied to him, who seeks in it apparently
first of all, and sometimes with no further aim, an opportunity for the
display of style. And lastly (though as usual all these kinds pervade
and melt into one another, so that, while in any individual one may
prevail, it is rare to find an individual in whom that one is alone
present) there is the purely impressionist critic who endeavours in his
own way to show the impression whi