In its first stage literary criticism in a young country attempts to _appraise_, by exotic, traditional standards, foreign literature. Such criticism has no communal value. It is not disinterested but personal. It only exhibits, as it was intended to do, the fine taste and style of the critics. In its pragmatic stage literary criticism in a young country attempts to _praise_ native literature, so as to win for this literature the appreciation of the people in the land in which it was produced and, secondarily, the decent regard of foreign men of letters. The matter of such pragmatic criticism always counts most, or for more than the manner or style. It aims to be constructive. But because it is self-conscious, self-reliant, and ardent, its praise tends to be too high and its condemnation too severe. In the final stage literary criticism becomes less self-conscious, less ardent, and more detached and philosophical towards native literature. It takes a synoptic view of the whole civilization and culture which the native literature of a young country embodies and interprets. It looks first to this literature as an entity by itself and next regards it from the point of view of absolute or long established standards. It judges the native poetry and prose of a young country by their relative importance to the people of that country itself, and by its dignity as a contribution to world-literature. These are the stages in evolution of Literary Criticism in Canada. Progressively there arose four Schools of Criticism—the Traditional, the Academic or Dilettante, the Pragmatic or Pedagogical, and the Synoptic or Philosophical. But the fourth is not so much a new School as it is the Pragmatic School with a broader and more philosophical application of its aims and methods. All these distinctions, however, are themselves pedagogical. The members of the various Schools commingle aesthetic, academic, and pragmatic methods in the same essay, for the reason that in Canada criticism has been compelled, as it still is compelled, to be primarily a cultural agency, and could never aim to be literature, wholly delectable in itself. The Traditional School has passed but it was represented by such deceased critics as George Stewart, John Reade, George Murray, and Martin Griffin. The Academic or Dilettante School is represented by Professors James Cappon, W. J. Alexander, Pelham Edgar, and Archibald MacMechan, and by Sir Andrew Macphail, and Arnold Haultain; and the Pragmatic School, by T. G. Marquis, Miss Jean Graham, Miss Marjory MacMurchy, Katherine Hale (Mrs. John Garvin), Donald G. French, Melvin O. Hammond, R. H. Hathaway, J. D. Logan, and Bernard Muddiman. The Synoptic School, which, too, is pragmatic but also philosophical, is represented by Ray Palmer Baker, author of _A History of English-Canadian Literature to Confederation_ and by the author of the present work.