That the new theory of the proper scope of criticism is well founded, cannot be entirely denied. Literature to a certain degree is a characteristic product of the age and of the people for which, if not by which, it is produced. And if Mr. Van Laun had confined himself to the affirmative part of his proposition, his position would have been less disputable than it became when he added his negative assertion. It is not quite true that the history of a literature is the history of a people; still further from the truth is it that literary history which is not the history of a people is worthless. It might be easily shown that some of the very greatest literary productions known to the world have very slight relations, or none at all, to the condition of the society in which they were written. What, for example, is there in Shakespeare's plays, or in Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels, which is a manifestation of the spirit of their time? Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Moore were strictly contemporaries. What could be more unlike than their poems in spirit or in substance? What one trait have they in common? The theory in question is an example of the tendency of men to over generalization of particular facts, and of a like tendency to over subtlety in critical philosophy.
The spirit of a people is, however, undeniably manifest in the writings of its best and most favored authors; and to trace the rise of that spirit and the gradual formation of a national or popular character is a legitimate and a very instructive part of the task of a critic who undertakes to present a full appreciation of a national literature.
Mr. Van Laun certainly begins at the beginning. He shows us what the French people are; how the French nation arose and gradually grew into an individual existence; and he thus imitates and emulates the distinguished French critic whose work he has translated. M. Taine is strong on the manifestation of Anglo-Saxonism in English literature, and even finds the results of English beef and beer, and of the very rain and fog of England, in the books of English writers.