narrow and conventional method, naturally came to hate the conventional in any form, and to exalt immoderately the advanced and the independent.

And that which reaction caused, conflict confirmed. The ideas for which he struggled at so great a cost and for so long a time became bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. All which his opponents represented became evil in his sight, even when he saw it in the tendency of bygone years. Hence his persistent and unfortunate disparagement of the Romantic

movement.

His first impressions of Romanticism were naturally those derived from Danish literature, a literature derived in its turn from Tieck, Hoffmann, and their German contemporaries. Therefore Romanticism presented itself to him as a return to the medieval, a tendency which produced the unreal and the unnatural, which developed an often hysterical mysticism, and often led its followers into the Roman Catholic church. To be sure, in its Danish form the most extreme manifestations were avoided, but it was inextricably bound up with the German, and in that form Romanticism could not fail to be abhorrent to the reactionary.

A failure to appreciate clearly the essential value of the Romantic mood is not, however, the most important result of Brandes's extreme reaction. This affects merely one portion of his work, the other, his whole critical faculty. To get at it a moment's digression is necessary.

The main tenor of mid-nineteenth century philosophy was destructive. The forces of science, aided by the extravagances of an overconfident metaphysics, had produced a catastrophe of an appalling nature. Systems reared and consecrated by the thought of generations fell in ruins amid a cloud of dust which blinded men's eyes to the vast deal which was left. Constructive philosophy, any all-embracing synthesis, seemed never again possible. The analyst reigned supreme. The immediate, the tangible, in thought and emotion, in science and in literature, seemed the sole reality.

With this spirit Brandes became thoroughly imbued with a result which clearly appears in his formulation of the ultimate criterion of criticism. The value of a literary work

of art is to be guaged, he says, "by the originality and vigor of the spiritual life and of the emotion of which the work is an expression, together with its power of impressing these characteristics on the reader. All art is the expression of some motion, and has for its object the production of emotions."*

This is the truth, but not the whole truth. The function of the intellect is not recognized. Emotion is not conceived of as purified and ordered, but as the individual's direct apprehension of his environment. Anything else would savour of restraint, would be a barrier to the direct expression of individuality, a thing which Brandes, in his preoccupation with immediate reality, could not tolerate. But, in literature, emotion untempered by mind connotes an unhealthy subjectivity, inevitably becoming morbid, just as surely as the cold arrangement of collected facts merges literature into science. Only the harmonious interaction of the two produces that impassioned objectivity which has characterized the greatest masters. The value of this mean, as of so many others, Brandes does not realize. It may fairly be questioned whether a man recognizes its existence, even, who would identify the Shakspere of 1609 with Timon, of all men, and write of Shakspere's part in the play as "a great lyrical outburst of bitterness, scorn and execration."

But it might be urged that only by virtue of a rationalized emotion with all that it implies, the bringing of the flux of phenomena into the permanence of law, the vision of law sub specie aeternitatis,-that only by virtue of this did Shakspere and Dante and Sopohocles become that which they were. If this is true, he who fails to perceive the value of such a vision is in no position to comprehend the greater, or to rate the lesser men.

A second result of Brandes's absorption of the spirit of his age, is, as it finds expression in his criterion, his insistence on originality. "Daring," "advanced," he frequently uses as words of praise. He will have none of the creed which

*Main Currents, Vol. 6, p. 69.

exalts the force of the multitude at the expense of that of the great personality. Such an opinion is "foolish,” “plebian," "the classic expression of middle-class envy." But he does not stop here. It is not so much the great man as it is the great rebel that he admires. He is never so eloquent about Shakspere as when he conceives him to be the lonely figure who scorns and defies a hostile world. But this sympathy with the isolated, unconquerable individual (increased as one is tempted to think, by his own experience) leads Brandes again from the truth. No one was ever less of a rebel than Shakspere. The great masterpiece is not an isolated phenomenon. One needs only to turn to his shelves to see that the greatest literary geniuses have not been the daring, the original men, but those who have truthfully expressed the feelings and the convictions of the age which has produced them, or of which they are a part.

Of this doctrine the party which Brandes represents would have none. They carried individualism to that impossible extreme which has already produced the reaction—a reaction of which the development of Maurice Barrés, and his recent election to the Academy, is a striking manifestation. The extravagant exploitation of personality has had its day and ceased to be, its exponents are already being forgotten, and only Brandes's other qualities will keep him from sharing their oblivion.

The characteristics of Brandes's attitude toward the world are, then, in brief, an unjust disparagement of the conventional, and all that it implies; an over emphasis on the subjective element in literature; and an undue exaltation and isolation of the individual. Their effect on his work is obvious, and needs only the most summary review.

The "Shakspere," of course, suffers most. The most healthy of geniuses was inevitably misunderstood by the natural product of the most unhealthy of centuries. With this exception, the failure is more one of judgment than of vision, and, as has been seen, Brandes is only incidentally a judge. His portraits, on the other hand, are the clearer for this bias of mind. For, with the one notable and a very few minor exceptions, Brandes's subjects were of his own century, or

from the directly preceding years, and were the more perfectly comprehended because he was so much in sympathy with the spirit of the century, and felt so keenly the causes of that spirit.

Of course the bias of mind makes itself felt very keenly when he deals with a man wholly familiar, but once it is thoroughly understood, it may be easily allowed for and guarded against where men who are merely names, the Dingelatedts and Katkòfs, are under discussion.

He does not show completely any man's character, but that not even Titian did. With all his narrowness-which he always exasperatingly assumes to be breadth of view-and with all his limitations, Brandes remains one of the great latter-day critics. Compared to Sainte-Beuve, it goes without saying that but no, comparisons are deceitful; under their influence we should presently be reproaching Brandes for not having the merits which would not fit in with his own-the delicacy of Pater, or the comprehensive grasp of Brunetiére. It is more to the point to appreciate the qualities which he has; the remarkable adaptability of the man who can write well of both Lassalle and Barante; the keenness of vision which produced the invaluable studies of Heine, of Ibsen, of Mme. de Stäel; the charm of style, and the greater charm of the man; and, perhaps most striking of all, the intellectual vigor which could conceive and carry out the great plan of the "Main Currents," a work that is literally monumental.

Essayists: Old and New

BY EDWIN MIMS,

Professor of English Literature in Trinity College

It may be accounted a piece of good luck for an editor when he receives in one season the definitive life of Charles Lamb, a new edition of Stevenson, and two volumes of criticism by the most promising, if not the ablest, critic now living in America.* Especially as they came at a time when there was leisure for reading them as they deserve to be read

a long siege of outside work ended, the next QUARTERLY far enough off to cause no thought of the reviews to be written, and withal long February nights-silent lamp-light evenings by the fire. There was the joy of reading two masters long held in high esteem, and one whose star is only now just above the horizon. There are times when we wish to get as far away as possible from the consideration of any sort of acute problems, when one would go to books as to the woods in the spring time-for recreation and peace of mind. In a word, all the circumstances were favorable for complete enjoyment, the wholehearted absorption in these books.

Three men could not be more different in temperament, or in environment, or in the work accomplished, and yet there is the unity of an enthusiasm for great literature. Who ever loved books with a more personal affection than Lamb? From the time that he pointed out to Coleridge the excellencies of the newly discovered "Compleat Angler" he was an interpreter of his seventeenth century masters-"sweetest names and whose names are a rich perfume." How he got some of the books for his own library is charmingly set forth in "Old China," where Bridget Elia recalls the poverty of the early days. She is speaking of a folio edition of Beaumont

*THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. By E. V. Lucas. New York: Putman, 1905. THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905.

THE SHELBURNE ESSAYS, (II and III). By Paul Elmer More. New York Putman, 1905.