any rate, knew what they wanted in art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty
which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism. How often have I felt this
when reading words of disparagement or of cavil: that it is the uncertainty as
to what is really to be aimed at which makes our difficulty, not the dissatis
faction of the critic, who himself suffers from the same uncertainty. Non me
tua fervida terrent Dicta; . . . Dii me terrent, et Jupiter hostis.4
Two kinds of dilettanti, says Goethe, there are in poetry: he who neglects
the indispensable mechanical part, and thinks he has done enough if he shows
spirituality and feeling; and he who seeks to arrive at poetry merely by mech
anism, in which he can acquire an artisan's readiness, and is without soul and
matter.5 And he adds, that the first does most harm to art, and the last to
himself. If we must be dilettanti; if it is impossible for us, under the circum
3. B. G. Niebuhr (1776-1831), German histo-Turnus, a warrior abandoned by the gods, is replyrian. Both writers felt that their own age had added ing to Aeneas, who has taunted him with being little to the store of great literature. afraid. 4. The gods frighten me, and [having] Jupiter as 5. See 'Concerning the So-called Dilettantism' an enemy (Latin); from Virgil's Aeneid 12.894?95. (1799) in his Werke (1833) 44.281.
.
1384 / MATTHEW ARNOLD
stances amidst which we live, to think clearly, to feel nobly, and to delineate
firmly; if we cannot attain to the mastery of the great artists; let us, at least,
have so much respect for our art as to prefer it to ourselves. Let us not bewilder
our successors; let us transmit to them the practice of poetry, with its bound
aries and wholesome regulative laws, under which excellent works may again,
perhaps, at some future time, be produced, not yet fallen into oblivion through
our neglect, not yet condemned and canceled by the influence of their eternal
enemy, caprice.
1853
From The Function of Criticism at the Present Time1
Many objections have been made to a proposition which, in some remarks
of mine on translating Homer,2 I ventured to put forth; a proposition about
criticism, and its importance at the present day. I said: 'Of the literature of
France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort,
for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavor, in all branches
of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as
in itself it really is.' I added, that owing to the operation in English literature
of certain causes, 'almost the last thing for which one would come to English
literature is just that very thing which now Europe most desires?criticism';
and that the power and value of English literature was thereby impaired. More
than one rejoinder declared that the importance I here assigned to criticism
was excessive, and asserted the inherent superiority of the creative effort of
the human spirit over its critical effort. And the other day, having been led by
a Mr. Shairp's excellent notice of Wordsworth3 to turn again to his biography,
1 found, in the words of this great man, whom I, for one, must always listen
to with the profoundest respect, a sentence passed on the critic's business,
which seems to justify every possible disparagement of it. Wordsworth says in
one of his letters: The writers in these publications (the Reviews), while they prosecute their
inglorious employment, cannot be supposed to be in a state of mind very
favorable for being affected by the finer influences of a thing so pure as
genuine poetry. And a trustworthy reporter4 of his conversation quotes a more elaborate
judgment to the same effect: Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infinitely lower than the
inventive; and he said today that if the quantity of time consumed in
