The second result is that until some fruitful aesthetic principle is found, "all work among the arts will be fragmentary, groping, and uncertain. Even historical work will be of doubtful value, doubtful in almost direct proportion to its minuteness, for history is far more than the recording of bare facts, dates, and circumstances; it is the recording of some of these in the interests of a governing purpose."

Now I venture to point out that the critic's choice does not lie between imposture and nonentity. When Spingarn, whom Dr. Pepper cites in this matter, says that criticism is the work of a "sensitive soul detailing his 'adventures among masterpieces' "' he is by no means saying that the critic is "no nearer God than any man." The critic is nearer by the length of that word sensitive. Moreover he 'redreams the poet's dream.' This is actually a step more. It implies a creative power without necessarily an expressive power. When he has in addition any power of expression he replaces 'one work of art with another.' Now this is not in the ordinary sense to abdicate the function of critic. For in so dreaming the critic has not dropped to the level of the people; he has ascended to the pinnacle of the artist. In the interval till a science of aesthetics be born, the critic's choice lies, it seems to me, between a sham activity and an assured identification of his mind and eye for the moment with the mind and eye of the artist.

Furthermore, I take it to be axiomatic that the laws and standards of beauty will not be evolved in the mind of the critic but will be revealed by him as they exist in the artist and his work, even as they exist behind the artist in nature, in the smile of Nell Gwynne, in waters pallid under the dawn. It seems to me also that to reject a partial statement of what makes the beauty when a bluebird goes beneath the bough, or what when Vasili Andreich throws himself upon the freezing body of Nikita, until a law accounts for both at once, is aestheti

cally suicidal. It would be not unlike refusing to be cured of typhoid because man has never created life in a vacuum. For such measures the instincts to live and to enjoy beauty are too strong. And to say that the critic gives the standard and law to the artist as well as to the public, that there can be no genuine criticism until there is a science of aesthetics to state laws and set standards for both artist and public, is to say that there is no created beauty yet in all the world. "As education is to psychology, . . . criticism would be to aesthetics." (Chronicle, 1921, p. 117.) Yet there was education of men-very good education-long before the applied science of education, or its basis the science of psychology. Was it more arrogant, more self-conceited in Aristotle to tutor the son of King Philip than it is in Dr. Laws, of Teachers' College, to coach the son of the great middleman, McChaos? I think not.

As a fact I have deep respect for science and the scientific method. I am appealing here for that method. I accept the fact that there exists no science of aesthetics and agree that in the arts nothing is more to be desired. In the interval, literary research will serve several great uses to the aesthetic judgment. In all those phases of the arts which have fallen into what we call historical perspective-which sometimes happens in the present tense—research first equips the critic with those facts which are necessary to him before he can identify himself with the artist and partially explain the beautiful in the work.

Of this value of research to criticism the history of the appreciation of Chaucer's poetry is an illustration. No one who has looked through Miss Spurgeon's Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion can have failed to be struck by the progress, pari passu, of aesthetic criticism with the increased learning of the ages. And generally the main lines of living and writing in the fourteenth century have been so clearly marked

out that George Lyman Kittredge has been able to write a racy, vivid revelation of the human comedy as it enacted itself in Chaucer's time. Insight merely, love of Chaucer merely, immense personal resources merely could hardly have produced Chaucer and His Poetry. Behind it lie the vast arid areas of research, the laborso dull to the outsider and to the indolent insider, so useless to the essentially unimaginative critic-labor carried on in little fields by numberless scholars with singleness of mind and well-disciplined habit. Francis James Child, with his equal gifts-Professor Kittredge would say greater gifts-could not have written such a book as this. He was himself, with respect to Chaucer, one of those workers in little fields who prepare the way. Professor Kittredge has had the advantage of that preparation, of his own manifold researches, of the researches of his students, and of contemporary scholars.

A second value of research to criticism is not a temporary but a permanent value. It prepares for the day when aesthetics shall have become a science. The object of research is to establish the true fact, the true date, the true circumstances, and it is to establish, so far as possible, all of these. When Dr. Pepper says "history is far more than the recording of bare facts, dates, and circumstances," every one must assent. When he adds "it is the recording of some of these in the interests of a governing purpose" all artists will agree, but all scientists will dissent. For what "governing purpose" conceived by the human mind, is a final concept? History as the record of kings and premiers has indeed been overset by history written under the aegis of the social sciences. Who shall say that "social laws" offer a legitimate governing purpose? Before the seas dry up men may see in history properly written a superbiological science. Science finds her facts first; her governing purpose afterward. The scientist can only record all facts in the interest of truth, whatever it may

be. The law (or purpose) is derived from the data; no data can be arranged to support a law. For in the large view laws are as susceptible of adjustment as are hypotheses. When the facts do not fall in with the law, the law must be changed. The formula for this method is well known; we say, we test our generalizations by experience. Now it is obvious that if any significant data are false, if the researcher has for any reason failed to establish the true facts, the law or principle will not be a true one. When subsequently it is applied in another case, great damage may—and likely enough will -result.

And conversely, when the laws of beauty are once established, they can be applied, in the form of standards, only to what is truly known and understood. No science of aesthetics would have made much of Chaucer's melodies before Child and his pupils taught us the peculiarities of Chaucer's language. And were some one to find the fruitful unit of aesthetic value tonight, he will still not be able fully to explain what constituted the beauty of Beowulf till some researcher discover that simpler verse pattern which I firmly believe lurks in the ancient Teutonic meters. To the point I am here making it has already been replied that these researches are ancillary to other sciences, like philology. But to what is philology ancillary? To criticism.

It is worthy of further notice regarding the value of research to aesthetic criticism that the whole aesthetic problem is complicated by living ties with other human values. Take for example the line from Dante's Paradiso (III, 85) which Arnold gave currency in English minds (from a poor text),

And his will is our peace.

E la sua volontate è nostra pace.

It is a wonderful line; even to the ignorant ear it is swathed in beauty. But actually its beauty is deep, it

is an integumental beauty. It requires that the artist listener know out of what profound conception of life the artist philosopher wrought. Behind that line lies a sense like our own of the struggle of life on our passionate and troubled planet, of the conflict, under dominion of will, of man with his world, and there lies there also a poignant wistful sense of escape quite foreign to us. To one seeing these, the line is not only swathed in beauty, it is informed with beauty. So says the critic, in partial function. But how does he come by the prerequisite facts: through the investigator who excavates Dante's doctrine of the will.

And literary research will do the critic and the aesthetician another service. One of the most profitable fields of historical research is that which deals with sources and origins. To know what Chaucer borrowed from Chrestien and Watriquet is curious information but of little importance; to know what he did with his borrowings is of great importance to the critic and may not inconceivably hold some hint of great aesthetic value. Shakespeare takes good lines from a chronicle, touches them, and they are very splendor. Ben Jonson, who is to be tracked everywhere in the snow of the classics, borrows the roses of Philostratus for his

"I sent thee late a rosy wreath";

and translates a few good lines into the sheer beauty of the second stanza of Drink to me only with thine eyes. Dryden translates a Latin epigram of Crashaw's about the marriage of Cana,

"The conscious water saw its god and blushed." The suggestions of this sort of thing are multitudinous, revealing much to the critic who would if possible come at the characteristics of the sense of beauty as it varies from age to age. And sources, origins, and developments should be regarded as facts of a peculiarly significant