Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and arelinked for ease of reference. Internal references in the textand index are also linked.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Pleasesee the transcriber’s note at the end of this textfor details regarding the handling of any textual issues encounteredduring its preparation.
Any corrections are indicated using an underlinehighlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce theoriginal text in a small popup.
Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate thereader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in thenote at the end of the text.
A History of Criticism
PREFACE.
It is perhaps vain to attempt to tone down the audacity of thepresent essay by any explanations or limitations; it is certainthat those who are offended by it at first blush are very unlikelyto be propitiated by excuses of the faults which, excusablyor inexcusably, it no doubt contains. The genesis of itis as follows. When, not much less than thirty years ago,the writer was first asked to undertake the duty of a critic,he had naturally to overhaul his own acquaintance with thetheory and practice of criticism, and to inquire what was theacquaintance of others therewith. The disconcerting smallnessof the first was a little compensated by the discovery thatvery few persons seemed to be much better furnished. DrJohnson’s projected “History of Criticism, as it relates toJudging of Authours” no doubt has had fellows in the greatlibrary of books unwritten. But there were then, and I believethere are still, only two actual attempts to deal with the whole