The historical critic approaches literature
as the manifestation of an evolutionary process in which all the phases
are of equal value. Essentially, he has no concern with the greater or
less literary excellence of the objects whose history he traces--their
existence is alone sufficient for him; a bad book is as important as a
good one, and much more important than a good one if it exercised, as
bad books have a way of doing, a real influence on the course of
literature. In practice, it is true, the historical critic generally
fails of this ideal of unimpassioned objectivity. He either begins by
making judgments of value for himself, or accepts those judgments which
have been endorsed by tradition. He fastens upon a number of outstanding
figures and more or less deliberately represents the process as from
culmination to culmination; but in spite of this arbitrary
foreshortening he is primarily concerned, in each one of the phases
which he distinguishes, with that which is common to every member of the
group of writers which it includes.
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