Criticism and Fiction

Criticism and Fiction, by William Dean Howells, says the question of a final criterion for the appreciation of art is one that perpetually recurs to those interested in any sort of aesthetic endeavor. The text names Mr. John Addington Symonds, who in a chapter of The Renaissance in Italy treating of the Bolognese school of painting seeks to determine whether there can be an enduring criterion or not. The text says that hitherto the mass of common men have been afraid to apply their own simplicity, naturalness, and honesty to the appreciation of the beautiful.

The text says common men have been taught to compare what they see and what they read, not with the things that they have observed and known, but with the things that some other artist or writer has done. The text says it may be safely assumed that most of the novel-reading which people fancy an intellectual pastime is the emptiest dissipation. The text says that toyings with the mere elements of character, and attempts to present these in combinations foreign to experience, are still praised by the poorer sort of critics as masterpieces of creative work.