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plain that French criticism is too abstract, that French critics fasten
on a single theory and use it not merely to explain the entire
output of an individual writer, but a whole period and even a
whole literature. The charge is not altogether without foundation.
In a country where philosophy very properly forms part of the
normal secondary school curriculum, men tend to think systematically.
The result is that nearly all the distinguished French critics of the
last century tried to create 'systems' even when they repudiated the
term and claimed like Taine to be using a 'method.' A training in
philosophy ought to be a help to the critic, but in France this has
not always been so.
It
encourages the Frenchman's natural tendency
to abstract speculation, is a perpetual invitation to the logical mind
to build up an order in which comprehensiveness is sacrificed
to
external coherence. Instead of improving the standards of practical
criticism, systems usually carry the critic farther and farther away
from
his
texts which become a mere excuse for the discussion of
abstract problems only indirectly connected with them. That is why
French criticism is rich in generalizations about the nature of
art,
but often provides little assistance in the appreciation of particular
authors, and why with a critic like Taine literature is so much the
handmaid of a dogmatic conception of life that it degenerates into
a minor branch of sociology or history.
Riviere's training in philosophy stood
him
in good stead.
It
enabled him to appreciate to the full the implications of the work
that he was discussing, but his philosophical skepticism prevented
him
from overlooking its literary merits because they happened to
be at variance with some private system. No one had a deeper sense
of the need for a clearly defined philosophy of life, but no one had
a deeper distrust of the neat formula, the facile solution. It is
his
honesty and integrity, his sensitive response to his texts which give
Riviere's criticism its balance and which relate him to Baudelaire
and Bourget-a critic who has never had his due-and distinguish
him from Sainte-Beuve and Taine.
Mr. Eliot remarks in the same note that Riviere's early work
seemed to him to reveal an enthusiasm which was sometimes too
partial and that the outlook displayed in his later writing was wider
and more tolerant. His criticism does indeed divide neatly into two
