Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/53

WHAT IS CRITICISM? too exact, Poe had a curiously scientific method. His perception of the logic of the beauty which he so adored was always vivid. And his own definition of poetry, though exclusive and narrow, is almost the only one on record which conforms to the Euclidean maxim, viz., That a definition shall distinguish the thing defined from all things else.

There is nothing so nebulous in the meaning of Criticism as to befog either its practitioners or the logicians. The dictionaries consider it chiefly in its relation to art and letters. For myself, now first attempting to define a function which nearly all modern writers exercise, I can offer no formula which seems more simple and comprehensive than the following:

Criticism is the art and practice of declaring in what degree any work, character or action conforms to the Right.

Conversely, and implied in this definition, the office of criticism is to see and declare what is wrong—i. e., in what degree a work fails to conform to the Right. As "the Right" fully includes certain traditional constituents—the true, the beautiful, the good—the term thus applies to all matters of fact, taste, virtue, all questions, in other words, of verity, æsthetics and morals. Since analysis resolves it in this wise, the primary qualifications of a critic are accuracy, taste and honesty. Assuredly the last two of these should be inborn, and all are heightened by exercise and culture.

In the differentiation of effort we find many critics restricting themselves, or best adapted, to the review [39]