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select a group of novels which will delightfully substantiate a theory of the evolution" or the "development" of the novel, which would be quite different from the theory which another set of novels would reveal. It is an easy and common act to draw a circle around some part of human activity and label the result with the more general names of "life," art," "evolution," or some other pleasing term of criticism. Much of the discussion of the modern short story is nothing more than an isolating and describing of some characteristics which the form probably possesses, -as that it has unity, point, etc., and thence jumping to the generalization that the form has these things, not in common with many other forms, but exclusively. Attempts to define poetry are likely to illustrate this fallacy. Thus, when Poe would have poems limited to about one hundred lines, on the ground that the inspiration cannot be sustained over a longer space, and when he considers Death to be the most beautiful and appropriate of poetical subjects, the first thought that occurs to a reader is that the theory may possibly not square with the facts.

Here are some other instances of bad generalization of different sorts. When Dryden, in a moment of enthusiasm, says of Chaucer that "not a single character escaped him," the saying can be reconciled with the demands of common sense and logic only by supposing Dryden to have meant that of all the characters that Chaucer treated not a single one escaped him. It is very difficult to be certain that Chaucer "has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age." The chances are against it, even if we did not know of other characters in other writers, Or again, when Dryden, in the same famous Preface to the Fables, said that "it were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his [Chaucer's] verses which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise," he evidently generalized from that lack of knowledge which an alleged happier age has since made good. When Mr. Frederic Harrison calls attention to the consonance" of Ruskin, that is, to the recurrence of similar vowel and consonantal sounds as an element of excellence in prose, he does a very interesting thing, but the observation should be cautiously pressed without more proof than is given; for, since the language has only about forty sounds and twenty-six signs to represent them, some repetition of sounds is unavoidable in any such voluminous writer as Ruskin. When Lamb most persuasively argues that Shakspere cannot be acted, he loses sight of the historical fact that the plays were written to be acted, he forgets that there is such a thing as good acting as well as bad acting, and he neglects the other important fact that the tragical and spiritual happenings of which he so much approves, and which he thinks mutilated by stage representation, can be represented only by words and pantomime, either on the stage or in the imaginings that reading may conjure up.

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It would doubtless be possible to find instances in literary criticism of nearly all the types of logical fallacy that are classified in books of formal logic. A few may be indicated. Begging the question is a very common practice. A recent writer is inclined to take exception to George Meredith on the ground that he did not have "temperament," the term being vaguely defined by something possessed by Thackeray and George Eliot, among other novelists, and hence assumed to be a desirable thing. The real point is, however, to show that the absence of this temperament is a drawback to Meredith, and this cannot be assumed by any summary handling of the word. Arnold often supplies examples of this kind of fallacy; here is one: "The accent of such verse as

In la sua volontade è nostra pace

is altogether beyond Chaucer's reach; we praise him, but we feel that this accent is out of question for him. It may be said that it was necessarily out of the reach of any poet in the England of that stage of growth. Possibly; but we are to adopt a real, not a historic, estimate of poetry," etc. (The Study of Poetry). Well, nobody says that Chaucer did the same thing that Dante did, and it is conventional and possibly reasonable to give the latter the palm of greatness; but what is the "real" thing in poetry? Arnold uses the term in other writings also; in this essay it is set in opposition to the "historical estimate" and the "personal estimate" and has some advantage in being illustrated by the well-known "touchstones." But it does not appear that the touchstones of high excellence are chosen on other ground than Arnold's own personal predilections; certainly there is no hint of any more objective definition than is supplied by the "personal estimate" of many generations of readers. What Arnold is doing, then, is, as in most of his criticism, to point out, with great impressiveness, a distinction in result which is fairly evident, and then to assume the very thing to be demonstrated, that one result is better than another.

He also gives a good illustration of the fallacy of false cause or false sign, a kind of post hoc (in hoc would be more accurate), ergo propter hoc fallacy, in his essay on Gray, a thing alleged, in comparison with Johnson's Life of Gray, to be very broad and catholic. The reason, according to Arnold, that "Gray never spoke out" is that "he fell on an age of prose." But logically, before coming to such a fine conclusion, it would be worth while to ascertain whether or not Gray "fell on an age" of dyspepsia, or comfort, or laziness, or many of the other conditions that have deterred people from producing work which it is fancied they might have been capable of. Gray did not produce a great amount; that is probably true; but it is unwarranted to "leap to a so-called cause" and be satisfied. The fact, however, in the instance in question, is probably more important than the reason, the finding of which is a form of amusement.

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Here is a good example of irrelevant conclusion. "The love-dialogues of Romeo and Juliet," says Lamb in his essay on the tragedies of Shakspere, 'those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night; the more intimate and sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus with their married wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful in the reading, as when we read of those youthful dalliances in Paradise

As beseem'd

Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league,

Alone:

by the inherent fault of stage representation, how are these things sullied and turned from their very nature by being exposed to a large assembly; when such speeches as Imogen addresses to her lord, come drawling out of the mouth of a hired actress, whose courtship, though nominally addressed to the personated Posthumus, is manifestly aimed at the spectators, who are to judge of her endearments and her returns of love." If the criticism is at all just, a matter not at present in point, then the audience and the actors are not, as Lamb seems to imply, the guilty ones, but the great bard himself who wrote these scenes with the intention of having people see them and actors represent them. Lamb's own conclusion is a non sequitur.

Mr. Robertson (Poe) writes thus: "It is Mr. Henry James who, in a passage already quoted from, makes the remark: 'With all due respect to the very original genius of the author of the Tales of Mystery, it seems to me that to take him with more than a certain degree of seriousness is to lack seriousness oneself. An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.' One cannot guess with any confidence as to the precise ' degree of seriousness' which Mr. James would concede; or how much seriousness he brings to bear on his own attachments; or what the stage of reflection was at which he cultivated an enthusiasm for, say, Théophile Gautier. One therefore hesitates to put one's self in competition with Mr. James in the matter of seriousness of character." The remark that Mr. James's "degree of seriousness" is a vague phrase is a legitimate criticism; but not so the rest of the passage. It is irrelevant, an argumentum ad hominem, good enough for a lawyer scoring points, but really apart from the issue and an obscuring of it. Mr. James's criticism of Poe is probably not particularly sound, but the remarks on his liking for Gautier or his seriousness of character have nothing to do with their soundness. Mr. Robertson is inclined to write criticism as if he were composing a lawyer's brief, and may occasionally follow the lawyer's advice to "take it out of the other fellow."

The foregoing examples illustrate from one point of view the meaning of the term logic as applied to literary criticism, but of this important side of the subject no full account has yet been given. Looked at in another way, many of the improvements that have been made in critical method are really the

application of more exact and reasonable logical processes to this interesting pursuit of establishing opinions. A glance at the history of literary criticism shows many improvements. To-day, for example, we are inclined to define, and hence to isolate, from the body of matter which enters into any elaborate and conscientious critical act, certain processes which lie on the borderland of the comparative methods that have been described above; and consequently we find such types as descriptive criticism, on the one hand, which merely recounts data and phenomena, and, on the other, collective criticism, which states as data opinions about literature. Large parts of Pater's criticism approximate the former type; any statement of common opinion or the growth of a vogue, as, for example, Sir Sidney Lee's chapter on "Shakespeare's Posthumous Reputation" (A Life of William Shakespeare), stands for the latter. A great gain is made, also, when we recognize that certain opinions, of the socalled impressionistic sort, attempt to be no more than a law unto themselves; for thereby we are enabled to recognize the possibility of a divergent type to which more scientific methods may be applicable.

Or again, the modern study of forms and genres may be regarded as a clearing of the decks for the action of logic. Comparisons will not be made between things that are not properly comparable. We compare things with things of the same class or with the purpose for which they were written, and can thereby bring the logical processes into exacter limits and to more definite. issues. Our modern calling for totality as opposed to the isolated finding — what is that but a drift from what has been called the reviewer's fallacy toward a fairer examination of the phenomena? The decadence of polemic, too, in the history of criticism, is simply a gain in the relevancy of judgment. The attempts to account for literature in terms of contemporary life, and to base the value of it on human values and interests rather than on a priori and academic criteria, are discoveries of the highest importance, and are fundamental to the logic of literary criticism, as to any reasonable logic.

At best, literary criticism remains, and will always remain, a provoking and inexact science, however entertaining as a pursuit. It is a creative art and has few bounds but those of personality. About all that a science of criticism can do is to check up judgment in the making or in the revision, just as the knowledge of rhetoric can do little more than tinker with the common, everyday act of writing. It is too obvious to need saying that good criticism, like any other good thing, depends first of all on mental vigor. The theory of the subject can merely tame and prune the untutored result. That more attention, however, than has heretofore been given may be properly bestowed on the broad application of logic to literary criticism, it has been the aim of this article briefly to indicate.

THE NARRATIVE ART OF THE OLD FRENCH

FABLIAUX

WALTER MORRIS HART

The Old French fabliaux were comic tales in verse. They seem to have been composed mainly in the north of France, as early as the twelfth, and during the thirteenth and part of the fourteenth centuries. The majority are anonymous; their authors were, for the most part, professional jongleurs, unfrocked monks or priests, expelled students, half-educated 'clerks." But individual authorship signifies nothing; the fabliaux are absolutely impersonal in style, technique, and subject matter. And yet there is, in their narrative art, evidence of a certain self-consciousness. Jongleurs declared that their stories were to be brief, interesting, new, that their purpose was to make people laugh, to transform anger to good humor and so put an end to quarrels. They intended these comic tales for public recitation; and these two factors, comic purpose and oral presentation, determine the whole economy of fabliau technique. For a "funny story" must be well told. The art of a tale of adventure, a tale of ghosts or of fairies, matters very little. But the only justification for the existence of a "funny story" is the laugh at the proper place. This requires nice adjustment of means to ends, self-conscious art. The end must be seen from the beginning; each step must be remembered at the right moment; and it is fatal to forget the "point." Public presentation enforced the necessity of this carefully calculated art. For the jongleur, face to face with his audience, knew at every instant whether he was succeeding or not. His technique, like the technique of the dramatist, was directly and absolutely controlled by his public. Consciously and constantly aiming at comic effects, subjected for some two hundred years to immediate and emphatic criticism, the fabliau inevitably came to be the best narrative art of the Middle Ages. It must be remembered, however, that it was planned, not, like the high comedies of Shakspere, to awaken thoughtful laughter, but to produce an immediate and momentary effect; and it must be read to-day, if read at all, with no less charity than last night's after-dinner joke.

be—and,

Immediate effects are not produced by long, complex stories requiring summaries, explanations, transitions. As a means to its own ends the fabliau was likely, then, to be- and, as a matter of fact, was conscientious in the observance of the unities. A single day, more often a single night, sufficed for the development of the action. It was time enough, manifestly, for a wife