bonds in which they have been arbitrarily fettered by linguistic usage-a task which could only be achieved, he thought, by recognising the intimate connexion of the so-called æsthetic and artistic facts with the other facts of the mental life. This programme he was himself destined to carry out in his own æsthetic philosophy, a glance at which is necessary if we are properly to understand his conception of the correct method of criticism.

A mere glance must suffice; and fortunately Croce's definition of Beauty (the creation of which is, in his view, the sole end of Art) admits of extremely brief statement-in three words in fact: Beauty is Expression. But the meaning he attaches to the word 'expression' demands explanation, for it is employed by him in a somewhat unusual sense. Expression is the business of the imagination, which bears in Croce's philosophy the quite literal signification of mind in its intuitive or image-producing capacity. There are, however, three important points to be emphasised. Firstly, unless the image formed by the imagination can be in fact expressed, it does not exist all, but remains a mere impression outside the mind altogether. The ability to express it is the test of its very existence; or, more briefly, its existence and expression are one. What exactly does this mean? Simply that there is no such thing as a man knowing what he wants to say but not finding words or the right words in which to say it. If he has ideas in his head, says Croce, he can always give them expression. For by the mere fact of his having them they are simultaneously expressed.

This brings us to the second point to be noted. The term 'expression,' as employed in ordinary conversation, usually means to put an idea into words in the sense of communicating it to other people by uttering aloud or writing it down. According to Croce, expression must be thought of as wholly internal, a purely mental image, whatever its medium, whether words, colours, sounds, physical movements or marble. Language is the general term employed by Croce to cover all forms of artistic expression; for, so long as the image is thought of as retained in the mind, the need for the differentiation of the Arts by reference to the physical medium and technique

peculiar to each, does not arise. Art is essentially one and identical with language as thus defined. The image expressed is formed purely mentally, indivisible therefore into parts and at the same time undistinguished as real or unreal, simply because it is the primary activity of mind itself, mind in the state of experiencing or living the sensation, before, logically speaking, the intellect and the will have come into play. This is equivalent to asserting that the poet, painter, sculptor, or any other kind of artist must have, and as a matter of fact does have, the idea or conception of his work of art completely and definitely formed and finished (that is, expressed) in his head before he begins to put pen to paper, brush to canvas, or chisel to marble. And it is the image in his head which is the true work of art, not the recited poem, the painted picture, or the carved statue. Further, this image is not formed by the artist gradually or in sections; it springs into existence as a single indivisible whole. Whether it is the image of something really existing or is a mere hallucination the artist does not, because he cannot, know; all that matters to him is that he should see it clearly. Once it is clearly seen (fully expressed, that is to say) the artist is, as it were, notified of the fact by experiencing the feeling of pure æsthetic joy :

'Joy that ne'er was given

Save to the pure and in their purest hour.'

This active feeling of joy is not to be identified with the æsthetic activity itself, nor does it result from it, as effect from cause. It merely accompanies it. It is the self-approval of the mind æsthetically employed at the moment when it has achieved the expression of the particular intuition it was seeking to attain.

The achievement of the expression-and this is the third point to be emphasised-is the creation of Beauty, Beauty being identical with successful expression or rather with expression simply, since unsuccessful expression is not expression at all. There can, therefore, be no degree in Beauty, which is always perfect, but only in ugliness, which is failure in expression and may vary from the merely slightly ugly to the extremely repulsive. Complete ugliness-which would, if it could exist, be

negation of expression-is a pure abstraction and impossible in the concrete.

As a corollary to all this it follows, among other things, that an artist cannot choose his subject; it comes to him; he is inspired with it, as we may say, which means that all subjects alike are potentially artistic. It follows, too, that no moral value whatever attaches to the artistic fact quá artistic, for the will has not been engaged in its production; further, that Beauty consists in the form of art (and the form only), not in its content or in a combination of the two; and, finally, that works of art cannot be classified or referred for definition to any so-called Laws of Form, for each is unique and must be judged by its own standard and that alone,

'If a poet,' asks Mr A. C. Bradley in his well-known essay entitled 'Poetry for Poetry's Sake,'' already knew what he meant to say, why should he write the poem? The poem would, in fact, already be written.' Yes, Croce would reply, that is precisely the case. So far as the poet himself is concerned, his task is achieved; the poem is as good as written, when once inwardly expressed. Yet he almost always wills to write it down for several compelling reasons, of which two are by far the most powerful. He wants to remember it himself for the sake of reproducing again at will the joy he experienced at its first creation; and secondly, he wants to communicate it to the world in general. These two motives are in most artists irresistible. The will to give them effect is, however, necessarily conditioned by the previous existence of the poem. The poet's device for executing this double E purpose is to externalise his mental image by committing it to spoken or written words, to accomplish which he requires of course the necessary technical knowledge and skill. The very essence of Croce's theory of art is missed, however, by those who would identify the printed poem with the artistic fact itself. The poem printed to be read with the voice, the melody played to be heard by the ears, or the picture painted to be seen with the eyes, is not itself the work of art, but merely the physical or material stimulus for its reproduction te mentally in the imagination of the reader, hearer, or observer as the case may be.

Such in barest outline is Croce's theory of Art, and it is a question whether it is not itself open to attack by the same critical argument he employs against the Hedonists. The latter, as he truly points out, reduce all mental activities to one, i.e. feeling, and having effected this reduction, naturally do not see anything except pleasure or pain in any activity. They therefore find no substantial difference between the pleasure of art and (let us say) that of a good digestion. Croce, perceiving quite truly that form is of the essence of all works of art whatsoever, abstracts the formal element and reduces the aesthetic activity to this alone. He thus deliberately empties the artistic fact of all value-feelings and can therefore find, as we shall see, no difference in beauty between an epic and an epigram, so long as both are perfectly self-expressive. Although by this expedient he certainly supplies a definition of the Beautiful universally adequate to all works of art, at whatever period produced and in whatever land, he only does so by sacrificing what, to most men, alone makes Art worth while.

Two, more obvious, objections to his theory together with his reply to them may be briefly referred to before turning to his method of literary criticism. The first is this. Do not many poets compose their poems by means of the very process of writing them down? Did Milton, for example, have the whole of Paradise Lost' in his head before putting pen to paper? The mere idea is surely absurd. And this is the second objection-is it not equally ridiculous to assert that a poet never selects his subject, but that it comes to him? Is not such a supposition refuted by our proven knowledge of the fact that Milton did choose his subject, and that too with the greatest deliberation; and not only the subject of his poem, but the form also, when he decided to write, not, for example, a five-act drama, but a twelve-book epic ?

Croce's reply to this objection, to take the latter point first, is simply that there is an ambiguity in the word 'subject' or perhaps in the word 'poet,' which is commonly applied to Milton in his capacity both as man and artist. If by subject you mean the description, general or even detailed, of what you intend your poem to be about, you can certainly choose that. But that is not the poem. If it were, we might all be Miltons, for

we can all draw up schemes for epics. The raw material of life out of which he hopes to make his poem, the dead mechanism out of which he is to create living form, is, a Croce would agree, selected by the poet as man or is perhaps rather selected for him as a result of his own temperament or the suggestion of his friends or the historical moment in which he lives. But what a poet, as a man, wills to create, and what, as artist, he does create, are two quite distinct things, and have no necessary relation to one another. In this connexion Croce would probably quote a paradoxical saying of de Sanctis à propos of Dante.

'The poet,' says de Sanctis, 'sets to work endowed with the poetic theory, the forms, the ideas, and the preoccupations of his time; and the less of an artist he is, the more accurately does he reproduce the material of his selection. Look at Brunetto and Frezzi. Here everything is clear, logical, and harmonious; the reality is a mere figure. But, if the poet is an artist, the contradiction disappears; there results not the world of his intention but the world of art.'

This is equivalent to saying that you can never pass through his creation to the artist's character, save just in so far as that creation is inartistic, while it means, on the other hand, that the expression of personality, or of a 'state of soul' (the artist's soul and no one else's) is of the very essence of pure intuition. All art must be lyrical to be art at all. On the other hand, it does not know that it is lyrical. A poet can no more choose what the concrete thing called his poem is to be about, or what form it is to take, than a man, when going to sleep, can choose what shall be the material or shape of his dreams or, when dreaming, know that he is not awake. The dreams are his, but he is not responsible for them.

To the objection that the poet often creates his expressions not before, but by, writing them down, Croce replies that this, though an excusable, is a superficial view. For the poet-how can he ?-never writes down an idea without having first seen it in imagination. The latter is the essential condition of the former. And, if he has not yet seen it, he will write the words, not to externalise his expression, which