"Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of the subject . . . is the
prominent feature of the classic style. The modern writer gives you not
so much the things themselves as his impression of them." Here then is
the familiar critical distinction between the objective and subjective
methods--Schiller's _naiv and sentimentalisch_--applied as a criterion of
classic and romantic style. This contrast the essayist develops at some
length, dwelling upon "the cold reserve and colorless simplicity of the
classic style, where the medium is lost in the object"; and "on the other
hand, the inwardness, the sentimental intensity, the subjective coloring
of the romantic style."

A further distinguishing mark of the romantic spirit, mentioned by Dr.
Hedge in common with many other critics, is the indefiniteness or
incompleteness of its creations. This is a consequence, of course, of
its sense of mystery and aspiration. Schopenbauer said that music was
the characteristic modern art, because of its subjective, indefinite
character. Pursuing this line of thought, Dr. Hedge affirms that
"romantic relates to classic somewhat as music relates to plastic
art. . . It [music] presents no finished ideal, but suggests ideals
beyond the capacity of canvas or stone. Plastic art acts on the
intellect, music on the feelings; the one affects us by what it presents,
the other by what it suggests. This, it seems to me, is essentially the
difference between classic and romantic poetry"; and he names Homer and
Milton as examples of the former, and Scott and Shelley of the latter
school.

Here then we have a third criterion proposed for determining the
essential _differentia_ of romantic art. First it was mystery, then
aspiration; now it is the appeal to the emotions by the method of
suggestion. And yet there is, perhaps, no inconsistency on the critic's
part in this continual shifting of his ground. He is apparently
presenting different facets of the same truth; he means one thing by this
mystery, aspiration, indefiniteness, incompleteness, emotion
suggestiveness: that quality or effect which we all feel to be present in
romantic and absent from classic work, but which we find it hard to
describe by any single term. It is open to any analyst of our critical
vocabulary to draw out the fullest meanings that he can, from such pairs
of related words as classic and romantic, fancy and imagination, wit and
humor, reason and understanding, p