Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/56

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS has added a step to the stairway from which it takes a more penetrative and enlarged view. Lessing declared the innate sovereignty of genius. Applying his thought to technics, he discussed the privileges of the respective fine arts and mapped out the border lines across which neither can pass without encroaching on the other's ground. Goethe's generalizations are those of a lofty intellect surveying works of the genius to which it was allied and conscious of the theory of their perfection. Taine, more definitely than others, has regarded environment and heredity as factors, a knowledge of which is wholly indispensable for the consideration of an author's product. Sainte-Beuve's method, so poetic and intuitive, looked into the spiritual growth of the character under notice, always intent upon a subject's personality and seeking in his work the expression of his soul. On similar lines Matthew Arnold probes for the realities of life, thought, action; an Anglo-ethical reverence underlies his judgments, in which a consciousness of the malady disturbing a school, an individual, or a nation, is usually apparent.

I speak of criticism as an art, but there is a science of criticism, as of other arts, and to this fact is due the success of great artists, musicians, poets, architects, etc., in technical comment upon the rules and examples of their respective departments. In this age, whose chief note is a recognition of the "reign of law," it is more than ever fit that these classes should be heard with reference to their own lines of effort, should be Masters in the traditional sense of the appellation. The unformulated instinct of a true artist is  [42]