T.
S.
ELIOT
changed its mind so often, at different times preferring Dryden's
"All for Love" to Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," not to
dwell upon such sad and brutal facts as that most of Sophocles'
ninety plays have disappeared, and thus evaded the test of time and the
fickleness of posterity, or such another dismaying piece of information
as the fact that the Romans thought Ennius, whose work has almost
entirely disappeared, was a far better epic poet than Virgil. Or again,
let us remember that when the Mohammedans burnt the great library
at Alexandria, they destroyed survival in time as a literary criterion
and a basis for literary criticism.
Babbit's other three kinds of criticism are also, I think, inade–
quate classifications. For example, when Babbitt speaks of scientific
criticism, what he really means is historical criticism, since he cites
Taine as its leading exponent. What we ought to distinguish and em–
phasize is the purpose which each kind of critic has in mind when
he takes hold of a literary work. The neo-classic critic looks
in
the
new literary work for the specific characteristics which he has found
in masterpieces of the past, and consequently he denounces Shake–
speare because he did not write like Sophocles. Thus, Voltaire con–
demns Shakespeare as a barbarian because he does not write like
Racine. The historical critic is interested in the causes, social and bio–
graphical, of the literary work rather than in the work itself. The
impressionistic critic is interested in the effects of the literary work
upon himself as a delicate and rare sensibility rather than in the work
as
an objective and social phenomenon. The historical critic goes in
back of the work to its causes; the impressionistic critic is concerned
with
himself rather than with the work itself; to use Pater's. unfor–
tunately immortal phrase, he wants to burn with a hard gemlike
flame before the work of art, usually neglecting, in his concern with
being
inflamed, to distinguish and discriminate carefully between the
objects which excite him. Eliot's criticism fits none of these classifica–
tions, although it is to be regretted that there has not been more of
the historical critic in him. He has proceeded, as I have said, by
intuition and by seeking out what most interested him from time
to
time. Yet, at his best he has been what I would like to call the
classic kind of critic, the critic who is expert precisely because he
depends upon the quality of
his
own experience, while, at the same
time
being aware that the more experience of literature he has, the
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