One critic flings to the winds all previous standards of criticism , while the belief that standards do and must exist is the leading
thesis in the reasoned analysis of criticism given by another.2 Carlyle believed that the critic's first and foremost duty is to make plain to himself, “ what the poet's aim really and truly was, how the task he had to do stood before his eye , and how far, with such materials as were afforded him , he had fulfilled it,”
and he indignantly writes of the British reviewers of Goethe, “ For what, after all, were their portraits of him but copies, with some retouchings and ornamental appendages, of our grand English original Picture of the German generally ? - In itself such a piece of art, as national portraits, under like circumstances, are wont to be; and resembling Goethe, as some unusually expres sive Sign of the Saracen 's Head may resemble the present Sultan of Constantinople !” 3
Matthew Arnold , with his fastidious distaste of everything savoring of Philistinism , writes of the " aggressive manner in literature ” that prevails in newspapers,due to theprovincial spirit that characterizes both literature and the press , and he explains
it by saying: “ The French talk of the brutalité des journaux anglais. What strikes them comes from the necessary inherent
tendencies of newspaper-writing not being checked in England
by any centre of intelligent and urbane spirit, but rather stimu lated by coming in contact with a provincial spirit.” 4 .
Yet Matthew Arnold 's theory of criticism as being " the art of seeing the object as in itself it really is ” is a negative concep
tion as compared with that of Irving Babbitt who finds that “ to study the chief French critics of the nineteenth century is
to get very close to the intellectual centre of the age,” 5 and that " the chief problem of criticism , namely , the search for
standards to oppose to individual caprice, is also the chief prob lem of contemporary thought in general.” 6 1 J . E . Spingarn , The New Criticism , 1911. 2 W . C . Brownell, Criticism , 1914 .
3 “ Goethe,” Foreign Review , No. 3, 1828; Critical and Miscellaneous 4" The Literary Influence of Academies," Essays in Criticism First
Essays, I, 198 – 257.
Series , pp . 66 -67. 5 The Masters of Modern French Criticism , p . xi.
6 Ib ., p . 368.
