center. As soon, however, as you analyze, and make definite, so soon he will receive real enlightenment. In the following account of the work of James Russell Lowell at the Court of Saint James we find at once this careful breaking of the subject into parts which can be treated definitely. Had the writer merely uttered general impressions of the diplomacy of our ambassador we who read should have been comparatively unhelped.

To those who hold the semi-barbarous notion that one of the duties of a foreign minister is to convey a defiant attitude toward the people to whom he is accredited - that he should stick to his post, to use the popular phrase, “with his back up," and keep the world that he lives in constantly in mind that his countrymen are rough, untamable, and above all things quarrelsome, Mr. Lowell has not seemed a success. But to them we must observe, that they know so little of the subject of diplomacy that their opinion is of no sort of consequence. The aim of diplomacy is not to provoke war, but to keep the peace; it is not to beget irritation, or to keep it alive, but to produce and maintain a pacific temper; not to make disputes hard, but easy, to settle; not to magnify differences of interest or feeling, but to make them seem small; not to win by threats, but by persuasion; not to promote mutual ignorance, but mutual comprehension-to be, in short, the representative of a Christian nation, and not of a savage tribe.

No foreign minister, it is safe to say, has ever done these things so successfully in the same space of time as Mr. Lowell. If it be a service to the United States to inspire Englishmen with respect such as they have never felt before for American wit and eloquence and knowledge, and thus for American civilization itself, nobody has rendered this service so effectually as he has done. They are familiar almost ad nauseam with the material growth of the United States, with the immense strides which the country has made and is making in the production of things to eat, drink, and wear. What they know least of, and had had most doubts about, is American progress in acquiring those gifts and graces which are commonly supposed to be the inheritance of countries that have left the ruder beginnings of national life far behind, and have had cen

turies of leisure for art, literature, and science. Well, Mr. Lowell has disabused them. As far as blood and training go, there is no more genuine American than he. He went to England as pure a product of the American soil as ever landed there, and yet he at once showed English scholars that in the field of English letters they had nothing to teach him. In that higher political philosophy which all Englishmen are now questioning so anxiously, he has spcken not only as a master, but almost as an oracle. In the lighter but still more difficult arts, too, which make social gatherings delightful and exciting to intellectual men, in the talk which stimulates strong brains and loosens eloquent tongues, he has really reduced the best-trained and most loquacious London diners-out to abashed silence. In fact, he has, in captivating English society, - harder, perhaps, to cultivate, considering the vast variety of culture it contains, than any other society in the world, — in making every Englishman who met him wish that he were an Englishman too, performed a feat such as no diplomatist, we believe, ever performed before.1

b. Knowledge of the General Field

Besides the ability to analyze the critic must have some knowledge of the general field in which the subject lies. For a man who has never thought about musical form to attempt criticism of a sonata is foolish he can at best merely comment. It is this fact that vitiates much of the crackerbarrel criticism of the country store subjects are estimated about which the critic is largely ignorant. When an uneducated person makes shrewd comment, as he often does, on a play, he will usually be found to have criticized a character such as he has known or the outcome of a situation the like of which he is familiar with rather than the play as a whole. Now perfect criticism would demand perfect knowledge, but since that is impossible, a good working knowledge will suffice, the wider the better. Knowledge of the general principles of piano playing will enable a critic

1 Gustav Pollak: Fifty Years of American Idealism. Houghton Mifflin Company. By courtesy of The Nation.

to estimate, in the large, the work of a performer; he cannot criticize minutely until he has added more detailed knowledge to his mental equipment.

c. Common Sense

However much knowledge and ability to analyze a critic may have, he is a will-o'-the-wisp unless he have common sense and balance. Since a critic is in many ways a guide, he must guard as sacred his ability to see the straight road and to refuse the appeal of by-paths, however attractive. As critic, you must not be overawed by a name, be it of artist or manufacturer, nor allow much crying of wares in the street to swerve you from your fixed determination to judge and estimate only on the worth of the subject as you find it. This is far from meaning that the critic should give no weight to the opinions of others; you should always do that; but, having examined the subject, and knowing your opinions, you should then speak the truth as you see it. Your one final desire should be to go to the heart of the matter accurately, and then to state this clearly. And just as you do not blindly accept a great name, so do not be wheedled by gloss and appearance, but keep a steady aim for the truth.

d. Open-mindedness

Finally, this balance, this passion for the truth, will lead the critic to strive always for open-mindedness. "I would rather be a man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling," wrote Hazlitt, "to see and acknowledge truth and beauty wherever I found it, than a man of greater and more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all excellence but my And he was right when he said it: the willingness to accept a new idea or object if it is worthy, whether it go against the critic's personal desires or not, is one of the great qualities that he will find indispensable. "I never heard

own.

of such a thing!" is not a sufficient remark to condemn the thing. In fact, almost a sufficient answer to such an exclamation would be, “Well, what of it?” or, “”T is time you did."

Methods of Criticism

Armed with open-mindedness, then, with balance and common sense, with knowledge of the field, and with ability to analyze, you are ready to begin. What method shall you pursue? Though no absolutely sharp line can be drawn between kinds of criticism, we may treat of three that are fairly distinct: the historical method, the method by standards, and the appreciative. In most criticism we are likely to find more than one method employed, often all three. You need not confine yourself to one any more than a carpenter need refuse to use any but one tool, but for purposes of comprehension and presentation we shall keep the three here fairly distinct. We shall examine the three now, briefly, in the order named.

a. The Historical Method

Suppose that you are asked to criticize one of Cooper's novels, say The Last of the Mohicans. You find in it red men idealized out of the actual, red men such as presumably never existed. You may, then, in disgust throw the book down and damn it with the remark, “The man does not tell the truth!" But you will not thereby have disposed of Cooper. Much better it would be to ask, How came this man to write thus? When did he write? For whom? How did men at that time regard the Indian? In answering these questions you will relate Cooper's novel to the time in which it was written, you will see that before that time the Indian was regarded with unmixed fear, as too often since with contempt, and that at only that time could he have been idealized as Cooper treats him. You would relate the

novel to the whole movement of Sentimentalism, which thought that it believed the savage more noble than civilized man, and you would then, and only then, get a proper perspective. Your original judgment, that Cooper's Indians are not accurate portraits of their kind, would not be modified; for the whole work, however, you would have a new attitude.

In the same way, asked for an opinion of the old-style bicycle with enormous front wheel and tiny trailer, you would not summarily reply, "I prefer a chainless model of my own day," but would discover the place that the old style occupied in the total development of the bicycle, would look at it as related to the preceding absence of any bicycle, and would see that, though it may to-day be useless, in its time it was remarkable. Likewise you will discover that the old three-legged milking stool has been in immemorial use in rude byres and stables, since three points - the ends of the legs always make a firm plane, which four points do not necessarily do. And one hundred years hence, when a critic comes to judge the nature faking of the early twentieth century, he will relate this sentimental movement to the times in which it appeared, and, though he may well finally be disgusted, he will understand what the thing was and meant, how it came about, what causes produced it.

Illustration of the value of this method is found in the following historical account of the American business man. To a European this man sometimes is inexplicable - until he reads some illuminating setting forth of the facts as here.

As long as the economic opportunities of American life consisted chiefly in the appropriation and improvement of uncultivated land, the average energetic man had no difficulty in obtaining his fair share of the increasing American economic product; but the time came when such opportunities, although still important, were dwarfed by other opportunities, incident to the development of a more mature economic system. These opportunities which were,