The longer one studies life and literature,the more strongly one feels that behind everything that is wonderful stands the individual,and that it is not the moment that makes the man,but the man who creates the age.Indeed,I am inclined to think that each myth and legend that seems to us to spring out of the wonder,or terror,or fancy of tribe and nation,was in its origin the invention of one single mind.The curiously limited number of the myths seems to me to point to this conclusion.But we must not go off into questions of comparative mythology.We must keep to criticism.And what I want to point out is this.An age that has no criticism is either an age in which art is immobile,hieratic,and confined to the reproduction of formal types,or an age that possesses no art at all.There have been critical ages that have not been creative,in the ordinary sense of the word,ages in which the spirit of man has sought to set in order the treasures of his treasure-house,to separate the gold from the silver,and the silver from the lead,to count over the jewels,and to give names to the pearls.But there has never been a creative age that has not been critical also.For it is the critical faculty that invents fresh forms.The tendency of creation is to repeat itself.
It is to the critical instinct that we owe each new school that springs up,each new mould that art finds ready to its hand.There is really not a single form that art now uses that does not come to us from the critical spirit of Alexandria,where these forms were either stereotyped or invented or made perfect.I say Alexandria,not merely because it was there that the Greek spirit became most self-conscious,and indeed ultimately expired in scepticism and theology,but because it was to that city,and not to Athens,that Rome turned for her models,and it was through the survival,such as it was,of the Latin language that culture lived at all.When,at the Renaissance,Greek literature dawned upon Europe,the soil had been in some measure prepared for it.But,to get rid of the details of history,which are always wearisome and usually inaccurate,let us say generally,that the forms of art have been due to the Greek critical spirit.To it we owe the epic,the lyric,the entire drama in every one of its developments,including burlesque,the idyll,the romantic novel,the novel of adventure,the essay,the dialogue,the oration,the lecture,for which perhaps we should not forgive them,and the epigram,in all the wide meaning of that word.In fact,we owe it everything,except the sonnet,to which,however,some curious parallels of thought-movement may be traced in the Anthology,American journalism,to which no parallel can be found anywhere,and the ballad in sham Scotch dialect,which one of our most industrious writers has recently proposed should be made the basis for a final and unanimous effort on the part of our second-rate poets to make themselves really romantic.Each new school,as it appears,cries out against criticism,but it is to the critical faculty in man that it owes its origin.The mere creative instinct does not innovate,but reproduces.
ERNEST.You have been talking of criticism as an essential part of the creative spirit,and I now fully accept your theory.But what of criticism outside creation?I have a foolish habit of reading periodicals,and it seems to me that most modern criticism is perfectly valueless.
GILBERT.So is most modern creative work also.Mediocrity weighing mediocrity in the balance,and incompetence applauding its brother -that is the spectacle which the artistic activity of England affords us from time to time.And yet,I feel I am a little unfair in this matter.As a rule,the critics -I speak,of course,of the higher class,of those in fact who write for the sixpenny papers -are far more cultured than the people whose work they are called upon to review.This is,indeed,only what one would expect,for criticism demands infinitely more cultivation than creation does.
ERNEST.Really?
GILBERT.Certainly.Anybody can write a three-volumed novel.It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.
The difficulty that I should fancy the reviewer feels is the difficulty of sustaining any standard.Where there is no style a standard must be impossible.The poor reviewers are apparently reduced to be the reporters of the police-court of literature,the chroniclers of the doings of the habitual criminals of art.It is sometimes said of them that they do not read all through the works they are called upon to criticise.They do not.Or at least they should not.If they did so,they would become confirmed misanthropes,or if I may borrow a phrase from one of the pretty Newnham graduates,confirmed womanthropes for the rest of their lives.Nor is it necessary.To know the vintage and quality of a wine one need not drink the whole cask.It must be perfectly easy in half an hour to say whether a book is worth anything or worth nothing.Ten minutes are really sufficient,if one has the instinct for form.Who wants to wade through a dull volume?One tastes it,and that is quite enough -more than enough,I should imagine.I am aware that there are many honest workers in painting as well as in literature who object to criticism entirely.They are quite right.Their work stands in no intellectual relation to their age.It brings us no new element of pleasure.It suggests no fresh departure of thought,or passion,or beauty.It should not be spoken of.It should be left to the oblivion that it deserves.
ERNEST.But,my dear fellow -excuse me for interrupting you -you seem to me to be allowing your passion for criticism to lead you a great deal too far.For,after all,even you must admit that it is much more difficult to do a thing than to talk about it.
