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PARTISAN REVIEW
ways whereby Shakespeare conveys the meaning he intends? Mr. Leavis
does not tell us. He goes on to more general questions about tragedy,
but he throws no further light on
Macbeth:
he rests his case on the
validity of his over-all judgment.
In
Measure for Measure
also he judges that that play is consistent
in form, and among the most significant and ethically sensitive
of
Shakespeare's works; and in this I agree too. Yet Mr. Leavis says litde
to substantiate that view beyond observations on some of the characten.
He refers to G. Wilson Knight's essay with approval, but does not ex–
plore his Christian interpretation any further, as Professor Battenhouse
did so ably in his
Measure for Measure and Christian Doctrine of the
Atonement,
illuminating thereby many complex passages and dramatic
situations. Here too one feels that there is something in Mr. Leavis'
conception of literary criticism, perhaps his emphasis on "judgement"
as its aim, perhaps too exclusive a reliance on "sensibility,"
which
makes him stop short of conclusive and completely lucid analysis. He
prefers to safeguard the fertile mystery of literature: a laudable policy,
but one which after twenty years of modern criticism seems to show
diminishing returns.
In "Henry James and the Function of Criticism" Mr. Leavis
dis–
cusses Mr. Quentin Anderson's essay on James's last three novels,
in
which Mr. Anderson demonstrated an elaborate Swedenborgian allegory
culminating in
The Golden Bowl.
Mr. Leavis gives full credit to
Mr.
Anderson for his discovery of the allegory, which he accepts, but adds,
"My main criticism of Mr. Anderson is that he is not, in his interpre–
tation of James, actively enough a literary critic: his use of the
key
seems to be something apart from his critical sensibility." That
is
probably right, and Mr. Anderson himself, in his essay, had pointed out
that further work was to be done in relating the allegorical scheme
to
the actual language and drama of the novel. But Mr. Leavis does not
proceed to attempt that task. Instead he gives us his judgment
that
late James is morally distasteful and comparatively empty of life. I do
not have much confidence in that judgment. It seems to rest on other
resistances in Mr. Leavis, notably a resistance to James's picture of the
rich Middle Western Ververs in
The Golden Bowl.
Mr. Leavis wants
to regard the American rich as vulgar, hearty pirates or guileless op–
timists. I admit that I have had little chance to observe them in their
fabulous, inaccessible world, but I do not think that innocence of
any
sort will go far toward accounting for them. I can believe in
the
terrible struggle for power which James shows the Ververs winning
against Charlotte and the Prince-by dint of the power of their money,
