That, as it seems to us, is the specifically critical activity, and one
which is in peril of death from desuetude. The other important type of
criticism which is analysis of poetic method, an investigation and
appreciation of the means by which the poet communicates his intuitive
comprehension to an audience, is in a less perilous condition. Where
there are real poets--and only a bigot will deny that there are real
poets among us now: we have just named four--there will always be true
criticism of poetic method, though it may seldom find utterance in the
printed word. But criticism of poetic method has, by hypothesis, no
perspective and no horizons; it is concerned with a unique thing under
the aspect, of its uniqueness. It may, and happily most often does,
assume that poetry is the highest expression of the spiritual life of
man; but it makes no endeavour to assess it according to the standards
that are implicit in such an assumption. That is the function of
philosophical criticism. If philosophical criticism can be combined with
criticism of method--and there is no reason why they should not coexist
in a single person; the only two English critics of the nineteenth
century, Coleridge and Arnold, were of this kind--so much the better;
but it is philosophical criticism of which we stand in desperate need
at this moment.
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