CHAPTER XII
CRITICISM AND THE CRITIC
“Apart from the publication of 'news and reports, and occasional original articles of a descriptive and miscellaneous character, the chief function of a newspaper is criticism, whether of politics or other topics of the moment, or of the drama, art, music, books, sport or finance.”—H. Chisholm.
The office of the critic "is mainly to ascertain facts and traits of literature, not to invent or denounce them ; to discover principles, not to establish them; to report, not to create.”—W. D. Howells.
“Literary criticism in France, by its catholicity, by the co-operation and continuity of its schools, has become the most authoritative and influential of the civilized world.”—E. Wright.
“Telle que je l'entends et que vousme la laissez faire , la critique est, comme la philosophie et l'histoire, une espèce de roman à l'usage des biographie. Le bon critique est celui qui raconte les aventures de son âmeau milieu des chefs d'oeuvre."—Anatole France.
The attitude the historian should assume towards criticism and the use he should make of the work of the critic in the periodical press is a troublesome problem. It is complicated by the varying and even contradictory standards of criticism that
have prevailed in different countries at different times, and
even in the same country at the same time. The historian is
often confronted not only by an apparent lack of standards of
criticism but he is also often met by a positive disbelief in the
value of standards on the part of critics themselves. From the
time of Aristotle down there has been no consensus of opinion
as to the nature and functions of criticism,—a difference of
opinion in part explained by different national ideals that have
varied from generation to generation , in part by the development of schools of criticism in one country and by the entire
lack of such schools in other countries, in part by the inevitable personal differences of opinion among the leaders of criticism.
