number in the case of certain broad subjects, such for instance as mankind, that no exposition could ever hope to exhaust them. Still, an exposition may be considered complete which, after defining its subject, makes a careful division of it on some one principle. It may be advisable at times to select several, provided always that each division be complete in itself and there be no confusion. It would not do to classify newspapers as weekly, daily, democratic, and independent; for these divisions not only fail to cover the whole class but they overlap one another.

It does not come within our scope here to undertake anything of such magnitude as a genuine scientific treatise. We are concerned only with learning how to proceed when such a work is contemplated. Instead then of writing a regular essay, select a subject which admits of some flexibility of treatment (note the last ones in the above list) and prepare an outline indicating how it may be treated.

EXERCISE XLV.

Wordsworth and Bryant.

Ibsen's Claim to Greatness.

Light Literature.

CRITICISM.

Subjects:

Realism in Art.

Standards of Eloquence.

Neutrality as a Political Principle.

The critic should bring to his work the utmost fairness of spirit. He should be ready to praise freely what he finds good as well as to condemn unreservedly

what he finds bad in the object of his criticism. He must of course have certain standards in his own mind. Others will realize that these standards are personal and therefore not absolute. It is the critic's plain duty then to keep these standards as just as may be, and, for the rest, to judge unflinchingly by them. Thus while finality of judgment he may not attain, sincerity at least he can.

Besides impartiality the critic should have a keen perception and a lively sympathy. This last quality is perhaps most essential of all. It is the fundamental principle of the greatest school of modern critics that the critic should endeavor to put himself in the place of the writer and enter into full sympathy with his work, to look at it from his standpoint, to take fully into account his motives and objects, and determine how well he has performed his task and how nearly he has attained the ideal set before him.

Criticism is exposition, for it is concerned with defining the province of art, letters, philosophy, etc., and with determining the place of any particular work in its own province.

One valuable help in exposition is the making of comparisons of all kinds, bringing out similarities and dissimilarities. This is one of our most common resorts in the acquisition of all knowledge and therefore not to be overlooked here. Just as the artist puts a man at the base of the pyramid in his picture, or a tree on the mountain side, or a boat on the river, in order that we may have a more accurate idea of the respective sizes of these objects, so the skillful expositor will set before us familiar things by which to gauge and better under

stand the unfamiliar. Such comparison will play a peculiarly large part in criticism, which involves either establishing standards or judging by them.

For examples read the critical works of Francis Jeffrey, Matthew Arnold, Professor Dowden, James Russell Lowell, John Ruskin. The following is excerpted from Matthew Arnold's essay On Translating Homer:

Therefore, I say, the translator of Homer should penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and directness of Homer's style; of the simplicity with which Homer's thought is evolved and expressed. He has Pope's fate before his eyes to show him what a divorce may be created even between the most gifted translator and Homer by an artificial evolution of thought and a literary cast of style.

own.

Chapman's style is not artificial and literary like Pope's, nor his movement elaborate and self-retarding like the Miltonic movement of Cowper. He is plain-spoken, fresh, vigorous, and, to a certain degree, rapid; and all these are Homeric qualities. I cannot say that I think the movement of his fourteen-syllable line, which has been so much commended, Homeric; but on this point I shall have more to say by and by, when I come to speak of Mr. Newman's exploits. But it is not distinctly anti-Homeric, like the movement of Milton's blank verse; and it has a rapidity of its Chapman's diction, too, is generally good, that is, appropriate to Homer; above all, the syntactical character of his style is appropriate. With these merits, what prevents his translation from being a satisfactory version of Homer? Is it merely the want of literal faithfulness to his original, imposed upon him, it is said, by the exigencies of rhyme? Has this celebrated version, which has so many advantages, no other and deeper defect than that? Its author is a poet, and a poet, too, of the Elizabethan age; the golden age of literature, as it is called, and on the whole truly called; for, whatever be the defects of Elizabethan literature (and they are great), we have no development of our literature to compare with it for vigor and richness. This age, too, showed

what it could do in translating by producing a masterpiece — its version of the Bible.

Chapman's translation has often been praised as eminently Homeric. Keats's fine sonnet in its honor every one knows; but Keats could not read the original, and therefore could not really judge the translation. Coleridge, in praising Chapman's version, says at the same time, "It will give you small idea of Homer." But the grave authority of Mr. Hallam pronounces this translation to be "often exceedingly Homeric "; and its latest editor boldly declares that by what, with a deplorable style, he calls "his own innative Homeric genius," Chapman "has thoroughly identified himself with Homer"; and that "we pardon him even for his digressions, for they are such as we feel Homer himself would have written."

I confess that I can never read twenty lines of Chapman's version without recurring to Bentley's cry, "This is not Homer!" and that from a deeper cause than any unfaithfulness occasioned by the fetters of rhyme.

I said that there were four things which eminently distinguished Homer, and with a sense of which Homer's translator should penetrate himself as fully as possible. One of these four things was, the plainness and directness of Homer's ideas. I have just been speaking of the plainness and directness of his style; but the plainness and directness of the contents of his style, of his ideas themselves, is not less remarkable. But as eminently as Homer is plain, so eminently is the Elizabethan literature in general, and Chapman in particular, fanciful.

...

My limits will not allow me to do more than shortly illustrate, from Chapman's version of the Iliad, what I mean when I speak of this vital difference between Homer and an Elizabethan poet in the quality of their thought; between the plain simplicity of the thought of the one, and the curious complexity of the thought of the other. As in Pope's case, I carefully abstain from choosing passages for the express purpose of making Chapman appear ridiculous; Chapman, like Pope, merits in himself all respect, though he too, like Pope, fails to render Homer.

In that tonic speech of Sarpedon, of which I have said so much, Homer, you may remember, has :

"if indeed, but once this battle avoided,

We were forever to live without growing old and immortal."

Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add a fancy to it:

"if keeping back Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might not wrack In this life's human sea at all";

and so on. Again: "For well I know this in my mind and in my heart, the day will be when sacred Troy shall perish." Chapman makes this:

"And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know, When sacred Troy shall shed her towers, for tears of overthrow."

I might go on forever, but I could not give you a better illustration than this last, of what I mean by saying that the Elizabethan poet fails to render Homer because he cannot forbear to interpose a play of thought between his object and its expression. Chapman translates his object into Elizabethan, as Pope translates it into the Augustan of Queen Anne; both convey it to us through a medium. Homer, on the other hand, sees his object and conveys it to us immediately.