of literature, and be able to test the present by the touchstone of the past. Particularly he must know something of the world in which the artist lived, and of those among whom he lived and moved. In other words, he must have taste, judgment, and learning. And that is not all. He must have an ear finely attuned to the sound of words and the cadence of phrases. He must be quick to catch the allusion in the use of a word to earlier uses; he must not pass over an unfamiliar idiom, or the echo of another language. The painter think that they have exhausted must have a wide knowledge their method. They wish, in the words of Mr Herbert Read, "to raise literary criticism above the vague level of emotional appreciation through the incorporation of scientific elements." Though they may wish to do this, they are not likely to succeed, since "scientific elements," which have not been taken into account by the artist himself, are wholly inapposite. It was once laid down, as a warning to annotators, that no note should be written which would have been unintelligible to the annotator's subject or victim. And the critic who drags psycho-analysis Degas at one time of his career into an argument about Shake--so Paul Valéry has told the speare openly defies this salut- story-made a gallant attempt ary warning. 66 Nor has the work which we have hitherto known as criticism" always been kept at the level of emotional appreciation. Though emotional appreciation is of greater importance than psycho-analysis, as it is called, to literary criticism, it is not the beginning and the end of the critic's craft. When Jules Lemaître defined criticism as the art of enjoying masterpieces, his definition covered only a corner of the ground. A critic must condemn as well as enjoy. He is not merely an advocate; he must be a judge also. And to condemn he must find sound reason for the verdict which he accords of guilty. He cannot explain his reason unless he is able to find all the precedents possible for his judgment. Thus he to write verses. He missed poetry with ideas; you write The introduction of psychoanalysis and its jargon into literary criticism is irrelevant. The literary critics are so eager to say something new that they do not care enough about its relevance. They catch at a new fad of the philosophers considered the sole mainspring without reflecting deeply of action or inaction. Yet those enough upon its truth or its there are who would interpret permanence. There was a time even the works of Shakespeare when Lombroso taught the in accordance with the jargon world how to detect the man of Freud. of Freud. Poor Shakespeare ! of genius, who (he declared) He had no chance. He lived, was closely allied to the imbe- worked, and died without ever cile, not by his works but by hearing of Freud or of the the habits of his life. If a Edipus complex. The modern natural restlessness took him critics, however, have detertoo frequently from one town mined that he shall not suffer to another, his genius (or his for his deprivation. And, findlunacy) was assured. And pres- ing 'Hamlet' unintelligible to ently Nordau gave the critics them, they proceed to discover another easy clue in the theory what psycho-analysis will do of degeneracy. If a poet had for the solution of the problem. a love of words, a fancy for Dr Ernest Jones, for instance, alliteration and assonance; 66 if he was lave-eared; if he had the eyes of a fawn, then you might be sure that he was a poet, and fear the worst. Today Lombroso and Nordau are dead and forgotten. Their short-cuts to the discovery of genius will never be followed again. And how do we know that the methods of Freud and Jung will last any longer than those which they are superseding? The critic who at tempts to substitute for his taste, his knowledge, his emotion, a psychological jargon may find himself unintelligible in a very few years. The ideas upon which Freud's psychoanalysis depends-the Edipus complex, the influence of libido and sexual perversion-are pure assumptions. We believe that in a very short time incest (or the desire of it) will not be Now sees in Hamlet's vacillation the workings of a typical complex-the Edipus complex, as it is called by the psychoanalyists. That is to say, the mental peculiarities of Hamlet, expressed throughout the play with such vividness and actuality, can be explained as the consequences of repressed' infantile incestuous wishes, stirred into activity by the death of the father and the appearance of a rival, Claudius." 1 what all this has to do with Shakespeare is not explained. The Edipus complex, if indeed such a thing exists as a pretended explanation of invention and imagination, was not of the slightest interest to Shakespeare, who unhappily had not studied the works of Freud, and it is unlikely to be of the slightest interest to anybody in another ten years. It is already beginning to bear a 1 See 'Reason and Romanticism,' by Herbert Read, p. 96. label of dated ridicule. But if Dr Ernest Jones means that Shakespeare, in drawing' Hamlet,' was unconsciously representing a conflict which went on in his own mind, it seems hardly worth while to discuss the question. As Shakespeare's life is hidden from us, and as no two persons agree about the character of Hamlet, the critic who applies the method of Freud to Shakespeare is comparing one unknown by another, and is presuming to judge the poet by a standard wholly unintelligible to him. Surely it is wiser and easier to believe that Shakespeare drew Hamlet as he drew him, because he chose thus to draw him; and if his conduct do not conform with the prejudices of the critic, so much the worse for the critic. At any rate, Hamlet has always justified himself on the stage, and will continue to justify himself unto the end of time. And as for psycho-analysis, which has not yet won acceptance, and which may presently join the heresies of Lombroso and Nordau, we hope that the younger critics will exclude it from their judgments. After all, it carries you no farther, if in a difficulty of understanding you murmur "Edipus complex." You do but exchange one piece of jargon for another. And there is more for the critic to learn in a volume of Sainte-Beuve or Professor Saintsbury than in the complete collected works of Professor Freud and his school. Printed in Great Britain by WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS LTD. 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