lating the reader's judgment by exposing alternative opinions for comparison. Coleridge is loud in praise of the permanent good that he received from his master Bowyer; yet the examples of Bowyer's teaching prove that he must have been frequently extravagant and wrong-headed in his denunciation of the faults of poets. I cannot affirm that the literary judgments passed upon exemplary passages are, on every occasion, the clear and unbiassed application of some guiding maxim. There must, no doubt, be cases where feeling or intuition enters into the judgments expressed. All I can say is, that I should have entirely mistrusted the methods I have followed, if the conclusions had been often at variance with the general consent of the best critical authorities in all ages. No one can be more conscious than I am of the limits to a scientific explanation of the emotional effect of any given composition. The merits are often so shadowy, so numerous and conflicting, that their minute analysis fails to give a result. The attempt to sum up the influence of a combination of words, whose separate emotional meanings are vague and incalculable, must often be nugatory and devoid of all purpose. Yet we must not forget that the intuitive critic really does all this, without avowing it; while to reduce the steps to articulate enumeration would not necessarily make a worse decision. Besides, criticism has long attained the point where reasons can be given for a very wide range of literary effects; and Rhetoric is but the arranging and methodizing of these reasons. Still more stringent are the limitations to the nature of the analyses that can with profit be sub mitted to pupils entering upon the work of criticism. To be too elaborate or nice is to elude their powers of judging, and to incur the prevailing vice of literary teaching-memory cram. It is only a person of considerable reading that can decide, for example, as to the originality of a given poetical combination; such a matter must be pronounced upon ex cathedrâ. Exercises have to be chosen and adapted to the state of advancement and powers of the pupils; so that their discrimination may be brought to a genuine test. Although it is desirable to meet all the points of difficulty in any given passage, it does not follow that they are all at the level of a given stage of teaching. Some may be skipped for a time, or explained provisionally. The least useful examples are those where neither merits nor defects are of a pronounced character. Many excellent writers are of this kind. It is difficult to work an exegetical commentary on Landor; while comparatively easy on De Quincey and Macaulay. To such as take umbrage at the operation of anatomizing (as it is called) the finest products of poetic genius, I can offer no apology that will be deemed sufficient. But it ought to be remembered, that a work of genius may be sufficiently impressive and interesting, grand or beautiful, as a whole, and yet contain here and there minute defects such as the ordinary writer should be warned against. No writer is faultless; and the exhibition of faults may be so conducted as to reflect a stronger light upon the merits. Although it is hoped that the handling thus bestowed on the Emotional Qualities may not be altogether devoid of suggestiveness to advanced English scholars, there is necessarily much that to them will appear superfluous and elementary. This is no disadvantage, but the contrary, to the younger students, provided only the exposition is such as to impart in a lucid and compendious form the terminology and the regulating maxims of the qualities referred to. The method of criticism herein sketched involves, as part of its essence, the separation of the subject of a composition and its treatment. It is the province of Rhetoric to deal primarily with the form alone. It thereby isolates the matter, which it views only with reference to its capability of receiving form. The utmost ingenuity in packing a mere Text-book must leave a great deal to be done over so wide a field, even in the enunciation of generalities. The two volumes that now represent the original work have not fully overtaken all the matters therein sketched. Many important niceties of style adverted to under the Kinds of Composition might still be expanded into a THIRD PART. This, however, my years, and the demands upon me in another walk, forbid my contemplating. Many topics manifestly included in a science of Rhetoric are of a kind to demand special monographs for doing them justice. Metre has been already mentioned. Epic, Dramatic and Lyric Poetry, when entire compositions are taken into view, need an expanded and separate treatment, although the principles involved are no other than the present work undertakes to set forth. The Drama, for example, requires a work to itself, based on a wide survey of the actual examples. Prose Fiction, in like manner, is a vast subject, even standing alone. The citation of illustrative passages, indispensable to the elucidation of these themes, makes their treatment necessarily voluminous. Nevertheless, as regards the best order of study for pupils in Literature, all these subjects are subsequent to the handling of Rhetoric, as exemplified in the work now submitted to the public. ABERDEEN, May, 1888. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Designations of Emotional Qualities: Examples of the Critical ART EMOTIONS CLASSIFIED. 1. The Feelings of the human mind are characterized by Pleasure, Pain or Neutrality, ... ... ... 2. Pleasures and Pains divided under Sensations and Emotions. The artistic senses are Sight and Hearing, 3. Objects of Sight enter into Poetry by verbal suggestion, 4. The Emotions have numerous artistic bearings,... 5. The Art Emotions have reference to still deeper sources of 1 ib. 4 ib. 5 ib. ib. 6. Pre-eminence given to the contrasting couple-LOVE and MALEVOLENCE, ... ... 8. Literary Art embraces various feelings coming under the comprehensive term EGOTISM, 9. Importance attached to SYMPATHY in the artistic point of view, 10. Pleasure of discovering UNITY in Multitude, 11. Interest of PLOT allied with our Activity, ... ... 12. Relation of the USEFUL and the Beautiful, AIDS TO EMOTIONAL QUALITIES. Common end-the evoking of Emotion of the pleasurable kind. ... 678 ib. ib. 9 ib. ib. 11 |