g of fine things. I agree with him that this is one
vicious extreme of the popular conception of the art; but in order to
define correctly, we cannot be contented with one only. The other, as it
seems to me, is fixed by the notion, now warmly championed by some
younger critics both at home and abroad, that criticism must be of all
things "scientific." For my own part, I have gravely and strenuously
endeavoured to ascertain from the writings both of foreign critics (the
chief of whom was the late M. Hennequin in France), and of their
disciples at home, what "scientific" criticism means. In no case have I
been able to obtain any clear conception of its connotation in the
mouths or minds of those who use the phrase. The new heaven and the new
earth which they promise are no doubt to be very different from our own
old earth and heaven; of that they are sure, and their sureness does not
fail to make itself plain. But what the flora and fauna, the biology and
geology of the new heaven and earth are to be, I have never succeeded in
ascertaining. The country would appear to be like that Land of Ignorance
which, as Lord Brooke says, "none can describe until he be past it."
Only I have perceived that when this "scientific" criticism sticks
closest to its own formulas and ways, it appears to me to be very bad
criticism; and that when, as sometimes happens, it is good criticism,
its ways and formulas are not perceptibly distinguishable from those of
criticism which is not "scientific." For the rest, it is all but
demonstrable that "scientific" literary criticism is impossible, unless
the word "scientific" is to have its meaning very illegitimately
altered. For the essential qualities of literature, as of all art, are
communicated by the individual, they depend upon idiosyncrasy: and this
makes science in any proper sense powerless. _She_ can deal only with
classes, only with general laws; and so long as these classes are
constantly reduced to "species of one," and these laws are set at nought
by incalculable and singular influences, she must be constantly baffled
and find all her elaborate plant of formulas and generalisations
useless. Of course, there are generalisations possible in literature,
and to such I may return presently; but scientific criticism of
literature must always be a contradiction in terms. You may to some
considerable extent ascertain the general laws of language, of metre, of
music, as applied to verbal rhythm an