The assumption that it may be scientific is the worst curse that lies upon criticism. It is responsible for all the dull, blowsy, “definitive” stuff that literary pedagogues write, and it is responsible, too, for the heavy posturing that so often goes on among critics less learned. Both groups proceed upon the theory that there are exact facts to be ascertained, and that it is their business to ascertain and proclaim them. That theory is nonsense. There is, in truth, no such thing as an exact fact in the whole realm of the beautiful arts. What is true therein to-day may be false to-morrow, or vice versa, and only too often the shift is brought about by something that, properly speaking, is not an æsthetic consideration at all. The case of Whitman comes to mind at once. Orthodox criticism, in his own time, was almost unanimously against him. At his first appearance, true enough, a few critics were a bit dazzled by him, notably Emerson, but they quickly got control of their faculties and took to cover. Down to the time of his death the prevailing doctrine was that he was a third-rate poet and a dirty fellow. Any young professor who, in the seventies or even in the early eighties, had presumed to whoop for him in class would have been cashiered at once, as both incompetent and immoral. If there was anything definitively established in those days, it was that old Walt was below the salt. To-day he is taught to sophomores everywhere, perhaps even in Tennessee, and one of the most unctuously respectable of American publishing houses brings out “Leaves of Grass” unexpurgated, and everyone agrees that he is one of the glories of the national letters. Has that change been brought about by a purely critical process? Does it represent a triumph of criticism over darkness? It does not. It represents, rather, a triumph of external forces over criticism. Whitman’s first partisans were not interested in poetry; they were interested in sex. They were presently reënforced by persons interested in politics. They were finally converted into a majority by a tatterdemalion horde of persons interested mainly, and perhaps only, in making a noise.