and interest in, the peculiar subject-matter of criticism,--
the elements of beauty in a work of literature.

But although the present body of criticism consists rather
of preliminaries and supplements to what should be its real
accomplishment, these should not therefore receive the less
regard. The impressionist has set himself a definite task,
and he has succeeded. If not the true critic, he is an
artist in his own right, and he has something to say to the
world. The scientific critic has taken all knowledge for his
province; and although we hold that it has rushed in upon and
swamped his distinctly critical function, so long as we may
call him by his other name of natural historian of literature,
we can only acknowledge his great achievements. For the
appreciative critic we have less sympathy as yet, but the
"development of the luxurious intricacy and the manifold
implications of our enjoyment" may fully crown the edifice of
aesthetic explanation and appraisal of the art of every age.
But all these, we feel, do not fulfill the essential function;
the Idea of Criticism is not here. What the idea of criticism
is we have tried to work out: a judgment of a work of art on
the basis of the laws of beauty. That such laws there are,
that they exist directly in the relation between the material
form and the suggested physical reactions, and that they are
practically changeless, even as the human instincts are
changeless, we have sought to show. And if there can be a
science of the beautiful, then an objective judgment on the
basis of the laws of the beautiful can be rendered. The true
end of criticism, therefore, is to tell us whence and why the
charm of a work of art: to disengage, to explain, to measure,