36
PARTISAN REVIEW
Mr. Smith, for example, wants to establish the degree in
which Emerson was a romantic. He assumes first the clear import
of the word
romantic
(and rather thinks that it implies progressiv·
ism) and the possibility of expressing it in terms of intensity, of
measurable quantity. Then he tells us that romantic verse is sen·
suous; we
might
question what he means by sensuous but we
must
question whether, on any definition of that word,
all
romantic verse
is sensuous. Then he implies that metaphysical verse is not sen–
suous, which is certainly an inacceptable statement. Then we learn
that Emerson preferred much metaphysical verse to much romantic
verse and that he therefore was only qualifiedly a romantic. Well,
even as literary statements go, this happens to be a bad one; but
even if it were a more
accurate
statement according to the relatively
inexact canons of literary statement, I think it would still not be
scientific.*
But consider further: what did metaphysical verse mean to
Emerson? Mr. Smith assumes that it meant exactly what it means
to Mr. Smith. Would it not, however, be borrowing one of the vir·
tues of science to remember that the object changes as we change
the instrument by which it is observed? Dr. Johnson's Milton is
not Professor Arnold's Milton and in connection with Emerson's
liking for the metaphysical poets we must remember that though
nowadays it is the mark of the "classicist" to like them, it was once
the mark of the classicist to dislike them (e.g. Dr. Johnson) and
that while some romantic poets (e.g. Wordsworth) disliked them
(for Dr. Johnson's reasons, by the way), other romantic poets
(e.g. Coleridge) liked them; clearly we cannot be absolute.
But by science in literature Mr. Smith means still more. He
means that the study of literature and of society together can give
us a certain relation between the two and that each can increase
our knowledge of the other. A few years ago this was a rather more
pugnacious idea than it is today; today we see that we can scarcely
•One could wiah,
by
the way, that Mr. Smith were a more
accurate
critic. For e:r.ample, he tells u
1
(p.
3) that moralism wu "the eetence of Greek criticiam":
but
what of Ari1totle who is certainly attack–
ing moralism of the critical theory of
The Republi.c,
and what of Longinus? He tella u
1
too
that Calvinism wu not individualistic
(p.
80) and that
clanical
1ociety degraded man (p. 80), two very
1trange notion•. We learn that in the Nineteenth Century materialiam • nd acience were making them·
selves felt in philo1ophy (p. 137) and we can only wonder what Bacon, Hobbes, Deacartea, Spinou,
Locke, Berkeley and Hume could have been talkinJ about in previous centuries. We are told that science
affected "even the academic philosophen"; Mr. Srilith 11y1 (p.
139)
"notably ••. Peirce and William
James."
All
we can
IIJ
is
"Even
forsooth !" Then we learn that "romance, deitpite ita Jove for the
simple. is uaually vague and indefinite" (p.
14.5) ;
also that Poe, who wu absorbed with beauty abOt"e
everything else (p.
190:
and not with uglinen?), unever showed the impreAs of any atyle, tendency, or
~nner
that wu not romantic., (p.
188):
but what of P oe'• love of precite ratiocination as ahown ia
his detective and cryptocram atories and in his theory of poetic compoaition ?
