scholars. But few are the practising critics who have thought so hard or written so much on the technic and art of criticism that is expert, helpful and stimulating to other practitioners. At exactly what time he dedicated himself to mastering its materials and methods I cannot say, but, as I conjecture, at a fairly early period; for no characteristic of his short row of masterpieces is more marked than their coherent, adequate, yet economical fulfilment of a preconceived design. He must have done these things, I say, for the abstract precepts of Criticism, produced in 1914, are illustrated with precision by his own practice since 1889.
The critic's business, according to this little manual, is to discern and characterize the abstract qualities of the personality which informs every important piece of literature, as every important work of plastic art. His equipment should include, in addition to extensive and intensive acquaintance with belles-lettres, a liberal knowledge of history, acquaintance with the fine arts, a tincture of philosophic training, and a personal "philosophy of life"—the last indispensable if one's work is to have outline and coherence. In his essay on Henry James, I cannot feel that Mr. Brownell has quite justly denied the novelist's possession of a philosophy of life; but in the essay on James he has stated succinctly what the indispensable elements of an artist's "philosophy" are:
