Criticism and Fiction Read online

  The art which in the mean time disdains the office of teacher is one ofthe last refuges of the aristocratic spirit which is disappearing frompolitics and society, and is now seeking to shelter itself in aesthetics.The pride of caste is becoming the pride of taste; but as before, it isaverse to the mass of men; it consents to know them only in someconventionalized and artificial guise. It seeks to withdraw itself, tostand aloof; to be distinguished, and not to be identified. Democracy inliterature is the reverse of all this. It wishes to know and to tell thetruth, confident that consolation and delight are there; it does not careto paint the marvellous and impossible for the vulgar many, or tosentimentalize and falsify the actual for the vulgar few. Men are morelike than unlike one another: let us make them know one another better,that they may be all humbled and strengthened with a sense of theirfraternity. Neither arts, nor letters, nor sciences, except as theysomehow, clearly or obscurely, tend to make the race better and kinder,are to be regarded as serious interests; they are all lower than therudest crafts that feed and house and clothe, for except they do thisoffice they are idle; and they cannot do this except from and through thetruth.

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  A Thanksgiving-Christmas Story Anthony Trollope Authorities Browbeat wholesome common-sense into the self-distrust Canon Fairfax,'s opinions of literary criticism Comfort from the thought that most things cannot be helped Concerning popularity as a test of merit in a book Critical vanity and self-righteousness Critics are in no sense the legislators of literature Dickens rescued Christmas from Puritan distrust Effectism Fact that it is hash many times warmed over reassures them Forbear the excesses of analysis Glance of the common eye, is and always was the best light Greatest classics are sometimes not at all great Holiday literature Imitators of one another than of nature Jane Austen Languages, while they live, are perpetually changing Let fiction cease to lie about life Long-puerilized fancy will bear an endless repetition Made them talk as seldom man and never woman talked Michelangelo's "light of the piazza," No greatness, no beauty, which does not come from truth Novels hurt because they are not true Plain industry and plodding perseverance are despised Pseudo-realists Public wish to be amused rather than edified Teach what they do not know Tediously analytical To break new ground Unless we prefer a luxury of grief Vulgarity: bad art to lug it in What makes a better fashion change for a worse Whatever is established is sacred with those who do not think