g a distinguished Austrian
critic who visited the University--"These foreigners are always
talking about Art!" Foreigners and long-haired aesthetes were one and
the same thing to my atrabilious instructor. The latter was an exact
man. No wonder he detested a word which is used so vaguely and in so
many contrary senses; which is sometimes applied to a poem or a novel
as if its "art" were an ornamental thing _separate_ from the poem or
the novel; or as if it were a mere synonym for style or adherence to
some technical formula.

Yet we cannot very well get on without the word, and we certainly
cannot avoid its connotation. No man in his senses can deny that there
is such a thing as the "art of literature," though it may seem absurd
to talk about it. No one, however healthy in his tastes, would refuse
to distinguish the statement "This is a very good book"--which may
mean only that it is instructive, or useful for certain purposes--from
the statement "This, anyhow, is literature"--which means something
quite specific, namely, that this is a work of art. The very word
would become less offensive if we could be a little less vague about
it, if we could make up our minds what it is that it does mean or that
we wish it to mean. We all of us distinguish between good and bad in
literature, even if we regard our own judgments as fallible. We are
all disposed to mistrust the opinions of our contemporaries, though we
have a childlike faith in the verdict of posterity. Well, what is it
that will satisfy posterity, and that ought, _a fortiori_, to satisfy
us? What is it, in the domain of the delightful, as opposed to the
merely knowable, which has value for the future, and therefore should
have more value for the present? And what is it--an even more
important question--which may have this kind of value for us, whether
posterity choose to value it or not? That is the main point. We want
to find what that quality is, in literature or any of the fine arts,
which makes it a matter of so great consideration to us. What do we
expect and demand from it, if it is to be something of real moment?
That is one side of the question. And putting the question from the
other side--What sort of process is implied in the writing of
literature, and what is the sanction of the writer? It seems we are
compelled to form some provisional theory of art before we can make
the most modest pretensions to discuss literature. For such a theory
is implied in eve