No foreign minister, it is safe to say, has ever done these things so successfully in the same space of time as Mr. Lowell. If it be a service to the United States to inspire Englishmen with respect such as they have never felt before for American wit and eloquence and knowledge, and thus for American civilization itself, nobody has rendered this service so effectually as he has done. They are familiar almost _ad nauseam_ with the material growth of the United States, with the immense strides which the country has made and is making in the production of things to eat, drink, and wear. What they know least of, and had had most doubts about, is American progress in acquiring those gifts and graces which are commonly supposed to be the inheritance of countries that have left the ruder beginnings of national life far behind, and have had centuries of leisure for art, literature, and science. Well, Mr. Lowell has disabused them. As far as blood and training go, there is no more genuine American than he. He went to England as pure a product of the American soil as ever landed there, and yet he at once showed English scholars that in the field of English letters they had nothing to teach him. In that higher political philosophy which all Englishmen are now questioning so anxiously, he has spoken not only as a master, but almost as an oracle. In the lighter but still more difficult arts, too, which make social gatherings delightful and exciting to intellectual men, in the talk which stimulates strong brains and loosens eloquent tongues, he has really reduced the best-trained and most loquacious London diners-out to abashed silence. In fact, he has, in captivating English society,--harder, perhaps, to cultivate, considering the vast variety of culture it contains, than any other society in the world,--in making every Englishman who met him wish that he were an Englishman too, performed a feat such as no diplomatist, we believe, ever performed before.[67]
[67] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_.
Besides the ability to analyze the critic must have some knowledge of the general field in which the subject lies. For a man who has never thought about musical form to attempt criticism of a sonata is foolish--he can at best merely comment. It is this fact that vitiates much of the cracker-barrel criticism of the country store--subjects are estimated about which the critic is largely ignorant. When an uneducated person makes shrewd comment, as he often does, on a play, he will usually be found to have criticized a character such as he has known or the outcome of a situation the like of which he is familiar with rather than the play as a whole. Now perfect criticism would demand perfect knowledge, but since that is impossible, a good working knowledge will suffice, the wider the better. Knowledge of the general principles of piano playing will enable a critic to estimate, in the large, the work of a performer; he cannot criticize minutely until he has added more detailed knowledge to his mental equipment.