This is a fine definition, and well worth studying. From Aristotle downwards great critics have agreed that one aim of art is certainly "infection," and that the greater the art the more powerful the "infection" is likely to be. Tolstoy asserts again that art is one of the great unifying forces of mankind, that it binds together different nations and different generations of men, and that that art is the greatest which has the most universal appeal. Here again there is little with which to quarrel. Tolstoy's definition of great art is almost St. Beuve's definition of a classic. The amazement lies in the extraordinary manner in which Tolstoy has applied his own most excellent ideas. He loves Homer, and declares that his poems are truly national art, but he declines to admire the Greek tragedians. Why? They are surely as national as Homer himself. Again, he declares that the truly great artist ought always to express the best religious and ethical ideas of his time. Quite probably! Yet he denies this greatness to Dante, but if there ever was a poet who embodied the noblest religious thought of his epoch it was surely Dante! And Tolstoy condemns Goethe, who embodied the new religious conceptions arising upon the ruins of the materialistic eighteenth century. The fact of the matter is that Tolstoy does not really know the content of the world's great classics, and those {75} whom he happens to praise--Homer and Molière--he appreciates, not because they are finer moralists than the rest (they are not), but because some accident has directed towards them his attention. It is curious to compare this essay with Shelley's _Defence of Poetry_; the underlying ideas in both treatises are identical; Shelley also says that the main aim of art is a unifying aim, and that the artist ought always, as a moral duty, to communicate the best impression that he knows. But what a world of difference in the catholic appreciation of Shelley! Shelley, also a great lover of mankind, never made the mistake of underrating the human intellect. _What is Art?_ had a sequel, to the English mind still more extraordinary, in two essays on Shakespeare published separately. In them Tolstoy condemns all Shakespeare, but singles out _King Lear_ especially, mainly on the ground that the plot is absurd and the whole division of the kingdom fantastic. It is strange Tolstoy cannot see that _King Lear_ is in essence, the thing he himself most admires--a moving and beautiful folk-tale; the very absurdity of the plot Shakespeare took over directly from the old story, and probably left untouched because it was so deeply embedded in his hearers' hearts.