Nor can I believe that we approximate the ideal critic in passion, in a burning unquenchable indomitable love of perfect things. This is the spirit that giveth life to standards that otherwise would seem too skeletal, too non-human to be glamorous and magical in their remoteness: this is the spirit that killeth despair and compromise. Infused with it, our imagined critic becomes single-minded and proof against deviations and resting-places. Finally, he would, I conceive, be distinguished by an immense capacity for relating deeds to words. His interest would not cease with a beautiful formulation, but would continue until the formulation was embodied in experience. Not words alone, not deeds alone, but words _and_ actions would be his great desideratum. Of whom am I thinking? It is dangerous in calling attention to concepts or principles to cite examples until the concept or principle or, in our case, ideal has been thoroughly understood, and I dare not hope for that within the space of this paper. But with a caution not to debate the achievements of him but only to study his framework, I take the risk of nominating Matthew Arnold as having the build of a great critic. We need in our national letters a critic of the stamp and dimensions of Arnold. V I append _The Prayer of a Young Critic_. But we have heard rumour of the Mistral. It is a cold wind that blows from the heights, Day after day it sweeps steadily down, Cold and from above, changing the air In the lowlands. We are dwellers in lowlands And our air has been breathed before. It is A sultry air: men talk to each other In haze and their words are close and fevered. A warm breeze crosses our little hillocks, And then the dust settles down again. Not near the Alps do we live. Great Genius, Grant us an electric climate! Touch us With snowy fire, send the Mistral to sweep Bare our plain and proclaim the gaiety Of altitudes, the glory of clear stars, The exaltation of the sun burning The rare air. Great Genius, send the Mistral! FOOTNOTES [63] From _Points of View_, 1924, Charles Scribner’s Sons, publisher. [64] From _Americans_, 1922, Charles Scribner’s Sons, publisher. [65] The rest of the sentence is “and he sees the common weal as the mighty rock in the shadow of which his little life and personality are to be surrendered, if need be, as things negligible and transitory.” [66] Also he could have mastered the philosophy of Mr. John Dewey and made his “religion of democracy” more respectable.