and to certify it. And this explanation of charm, and this
stamping it with the seal of approval, is possible by the help,
and only by the help, of the science of aesthetics,--a science
now only in its beginning, but greatly to be desired in its
full development.

How greatly to be desired we realize in divining that the
present dearth of constructive and destructive criticism, of
all, indeed, except interpretations and reports, is responsible
for the modern mountains of machine-made literature. Will not
the aesthetic critic be for us a new Hercules, to clear away
the ever growing heap of formless things in book covers? If
he will teach us only what great art means in literature; if
he will give us never so little discussion of the first
principles of beauty, and point the moral with some "selling
books," he will at least have turned the flood. There are
stories nowadays, but few novels, and plenty of spectacles,
but no plays; and how should we know the difference, never
having heard what a novel ought to be? But let the aesthetic
critic give us a firm foundation for criticism, a real
understanding of the conditions of literary art; let him teach
us to know a novel or a play when we see it, and we shall not
always mingle the wheat and the chaff.


II
THE NATURE OF BEAUTY


II