the one he is at pains to produce for the use of others) can speak of
nothing else. It is M. Anatole France, the most eloquent and just of
French prose-writers, who says that we must recognize at last that,
"failing the resolution to hold our peace, we can only talk of
ourselves."

This remark, if I remember rightly, was made in the course of a sparring
match with the late Ferdinand Brunetiere over the principles and rules
of literary criticism. As was fitting for a man to whom we owe the
memorable saying, "The good critic is he who relates the adventures of
his soul among masterpieces," M. Anatole France maintained that there
were no rules and no principles. And that may be very true. Rules,
principles, and standards die and vanish every day. Perhaps they are all
dead and vanished by this time. These, if ever, are the brave, free days
of destroyed landmarks, while the ingenious minds are busy inventing the
forms of the new beacons which, it is consoling to think, will be set up
presently in the old places. But what is interesting to a writer is the
possession of an inward certitude that literary criticism will never
die, for man (so variously defined) is, before everything else, a
critical animal. And as long as distinguished minds are ready to treat
it in the spirit of high adventure literary criticism shall appeal to
us with all the charm and wisdom of a well-told tale of personal
experience.

For Englishmen especially, of all the races of the earth, a task, any
task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance.
But the critics as a rule exhibit but little of an adventurous spirit.
They take risks, of course--one can hardly live with out that. The daily
bread is served out to us (however sparingly) with a pinch of salt.
Otherwise one would get sick of the diet one prays for, and that would