Textual criticism

“ Textual criticism fulfils its task best, that is, is most likely to succeed ultimately in distinguishing true readings from false, when it is guided by a full and clear perception of all the classes of phenomena which directly or indirectly supply any kind of evidence, and when it regulates itself by such definite methods as the several classes of phenomena suggest when patiently and circumspectly studied. ”

“ I have no complaint against the term Higher Criticism, which has a recognized place in literary technical language, denoting that familiar and lawful process, the study of books not for their grammar and style only, but in order to infer from their whole phenomena what their age is, and their structure, and their character. The Higher Criticism is a term pointing not to methods and results transcending ordinary intelligence, but to a study which aims "higher" than grammatical and textual questions considered as final. ”

“ It is not easy to shake ourselves free from the traditions and methods of mere textual criticism and treat a question, which is after all more or less a question of scholarship, on a wider basis than such questions usually demand. ”

“ Without the remotest intention of imposing views of our own on the general Reader, but only to enable him to give his intelligent assent to much that is to follow, we find ourselves constrained in the first instance,—before conducting him over any part of the domain which the Revisionists have ventured uninvited to occupy,—to premise a few ordinary facts which lie on the threshold of the science of Textual Criticism. ”

“ The higher criticism may, indeed, cause us to modify some of our views regarding literary or textual problems, but as to the basal truths of Scripture, they stand absolutely in all their divine immutability untouched and absolutely unassailable. ”

“ I should think you must have observed, in the course of your reading, that even in the most accredited organs of opinion, principles of literary criticism, either explicitly stated or tacitly assumed, are often utterly ignored, in the notice of some work or other in the self-same number. The result can only be to create confusion in the public mind. ”

“ There has arisen, to the great detriment of religion, an inept method, dignified by the name of the "higher criticism," which pretends to judge the origin, integrity and authority of each book from internal indications alone. ”

“ Seeking a negative result from them,—personal altercation and wrangling,—one gets no fruit; seeking a positive result,—the elucidation and establishment of one’s ideas,—one may get much. Even bad criticisms may thus be made suggestive and fruitful. I declared, in a former lecture on this subject, my conviction that criticism is not the strong point of our national literature. ”

“ Might I, an unlettered man, venture to prescribe bounds to the latitude of criticism, I should exclude, in estimating the merit of such a production, all rules drawn from the ancient or modern literature of Europe, all references to such sentiments or manners as are become the standards of propriety for opinion and action in our own modes, and, equally, all appeals to our revealed tenets of religion and moral duty. ”

“ We want to make the best and finest thought accessible to every one, and more particularly to create and sustain an enormous free criticism, without which art, literature, and research alike degenerate into tradition or imposture. ”

“ All that boiling rancour which sputters against the thoughts, the style, the taste, the moral character of an author, is often nothing more than practising what, to give it a name, we may call Political Criticism in Literature; where an author’s literary character is attacked solely from the accidental circumstance of his differing in opinion from his critics on subjects unconnected with the topics he treats of. ”

“ CRITICISM Criticism, taken in its general sense, is the free exercise of judgment. Whether it be a question of literary, artistic, or intellectual analysis—that is to say, the observation of the beautiful—or of philosophy, history, or philology, experimental or exact sciences, criticism is necessary, as it shows the value of a conception and realisation. ”

“ A criticism that should be founded on the principle of expression, would somewhat derange, it must be confessed, received judgments, and would carry some disorder into the hierarchy of the renowned. We do not undertake such a revolution; we only propose to confirm, or at least elucidate our principle by an example, and by an example that is at our hand. ”

“ It leaves out of sight all that criticism—the criticism of literature and art—has done to throw light upon the dark places of human thought and history, upon the growth and subtle transformations of spiritual belief, upon the power of reason and imagination to mould the shape of outward institutions. ”

“ It brings literary productions into comparison with recognized principles and ideal standards; it investigates them in their matter, form, and spirit; and, as a result of this process, it determines their merits and their defects. The end of literary criticism is not fault-finding but truth. The critic should be more than a censor or caviler. He should discover and make known whatever is commendable or excellent. At its best, criticism is not a mere record of general impressions but the statement of an intelligent judgment. ”

“ They rise from the most matter of fact to the most mystical uses of truth-notions in criticism. All might be taken as glosses upon the phrase ‘Truth to Nature’; they serve to show what different things may be meant by what is apparently simple language. ”

“ But that is exactly what we are doing, whether we praise or blame, accept or reject, so long as we base our opinion on sincere personal or sound principles, we criticize. For criticism is the attempt to estimate the worth of something—object or idea—either abstractly on a basis of principles and relations, or personally on the basis of our reactions to the subject of criticism. ”

“ The nobility or elevation of all arts, like the excellency of virtue itself, consists in adopting this enlarged and comprehensive idea; and all criticism built upon the more confined view of what is natural may properly be called shallow criticism, rather than false: its defect is, that the truth is not sufficiently extensive. ”

“ I have often seen it do great harm, and yet remember few cases in natural knowledge where it has helped much either to pull down error or advance truth. Criticism, on the other hand, is of much value. ”

“ IT looks as though we were never to get to the end of the discussion about criticism—its scope, aims, functions, any more than we are likely to get to the end of the discussion of any real question in philosophy, ethics, or religion.
Is the aim of literary criticism judgment, or interpretation, or analysis, or description? May it not have all these aims? For myself, I am disposed to answer in the affirmative.
I doubt if there will ever be a critical method which all may apply. Every man will have his own method, as truly as he has his own manners. ”

“ It has come, however, to possess a secondary and specialized meaning as a published analysis of the qualities and characteristics of a work in literature or fine art, itself taking the form of independent literature. The sense in which criticism is taken as implying censure, the “picking holes” in any statement or production, is frequent, but it is entirely unjustifiable. There is nothing in the proper scope of criticism which presupposes blame. ”

“ Let us, for a moment, consider the nature of this thing called criticism, which exerts such a sway over the literary world. The pronoun we, used by critics, has a most imposing and delusive sound. The reader pictures to himself a conclave of learned men, deliberating gravely and scrupulously on the merits of the book in question ”

“ He must above all be assiduous to escape from pompous generalizations, which conceal lack of thought under a flow of words. The finest criticism should take every circumstance of the case into consideration, and hold it necessary, if possible, to know the author as well as the book. ”

“ There are, he says, three kinds of criticism—the historical, the philosophic, and the purely literary.
'Every form of genuine criticism is directed towards creation. The historical or philosophic critic of poetry is criticising poetry in order to create a history or a philosophy ”

“ The great stumbling-block of literary criticism, alike for the professional critic and the unprofessional reader, is the tacit assumption that the opinions, preferences, and estimates of to-day are not merely passing opinions, preferences, and estimates, but will be permanent ones ”

“ If all other circumstances be equal, he will undoubtedly be the best critic, who knows best the phenomena of human thought and feeling; and, without this knowledge, criticism can be nothing but a measurement of words, or a repetition of the ever repeated and endless common places of rhetoric. ”

“ The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.” This true saying introduces us to the hardest problem of criticism, the paradox of literature, the stumbling-block of rhetoricians. To analyse the precise method whereby a great personality can make itself felt in words, even while it neglects and contemns the study of words, would be to lay bare the secrets of religion and life—it is beyond human competence. ”

“ In the year 1709 was written the Essay on Criticism, a work which displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest experience. ”

“ In science, philosophy, politics, and religion, the foundations of belief are fearlessly examined, and the facilities for the process are unprecedented. Criticism has new and improved instruments, and they are extensively used—often misused. ”

“ Between the general inquiry into the nature of the good and the appreciation of particular works of art, there may seem to be a wide gap, and the discussion upon which we are about to embark may appear a roundabout way of approaching our subject. Morals have often been treated, especially in recent times, as a side-issue for criticism, from which the special concern of the critic must be carefully separated. ”

“ Should we force him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the laws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to discover in the works of previous writers? ”

“ But the Explanation of those Beauties, that are less obvious to common Readers, and whose Illustration depends on the Rules of just Criticism, and an exact Knowledge of human Life, should deservedly have a Share in a general Critic upon the Author. ”

“ The enumeration of the causes into which the intellectual elements of doubt are resolvable, is furnished in the text of the first Lecture.16 If the nature of some of them be obscure, and the reader be unaccustomed to the philosophical study necessary for fully understanding them; information must be sought in the books to which references are elsewhere given, as the subject is too large to be developed in the limited space of this Preface.
The work however professes to be not merely a narrative, but a “critical history.” The idea of criticism in a history imparts to it an ethical aspect. ”

“ You take up, however, the lectures of Hudson or the charming study of Dowden, and you find that criticism is becoming, not merely an art, depending on certain instincts and tastes, but a science, building slowly a well-settled body of laws and rules, and shaping already a well defined consensus of judgment. ”

“ It can do for us what History cannot do. It can tell us what man thought before he learned how to write. You have asked me about the influence of Criticism. I think I have answered that question already ”

“ Criticism led to the separation of the many from the one, the imperfect copy from the perfect type, the sensuous and passionate from the rational and the intrinsically good, the impermanent particular from the incorruptible universal. The line of demarcation ran between the lasting reality that answered to critical objective thought and the realm of perishing imperfect instances, of partially realized forms full of unmeaning differences due to distortion and imperfection, the realm answering to a sensuous passionate unreflective experience. ”

“ If we view the literary characteristic of the present, in comparison with that of past ages, we are perhaps right in stating, that its peculiar feature is the prevalence of the method of historical criticism. ”

“ Those who have wished to react against such emasculated erudition have often thrown themselves into the opposite extreme, that is, into a dogmatic, abstract, intellectualistic, or moralistic form of criticism. ”

“ Criticism, considered in its ancient and noblest office of doing justice to the merits of great writers, more especially in works of poetry and invention, demands, to its perfect execution, these two qualities: a philosophic spirit, capable of penetrating the fundamental reasons of excellence in every different species of composition; and a strong imagination, 282 the parent of what we call true taste, enabling the critic to feel the full force of his author’s excellence himself, and to impress a lively sense of it upon others. ”

“ It is inevitable that there should be differences of opinion in regard to many questions of criticism and interpretation, and it seems best that these differences should find free expression in different volumes. ”

“ The contents of every publication are certainly a fair subject for criticism; and to the fair comments of real critics, however repugnant to the sentiments I entertain, or the doctrine I seek to inculcate, I shall ever submit without murmur or reproach. ”