Common Sense And The Muses

Text extracted from opening pages of book: sense, or sunk ennerved' Mang heaps o' clavers BURNS William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London 1925 Printed in Great Britain All Rights reserved PREFACE. THE general purpose of my former book, c The Grammar of Philosophy, ' was to show that in the Human Mind we possess a sound basis of Know* ledge; that our faculties, faithfully used, are trustworthy and adequate to execute their legiti mate work; that the special task of the Philoso pher is to collate and interpret the reports of his faculties to the best of his ability; and that a consistent and satisfactory theory of Knowledge and of Life can only be found in, established on, and illuminated by, the dictates and the sanctions of the Common Sense. My other book, c Religion and Intellect/ was a Theological development of' The Grammar of Philosophy '; whilst the present work, ' Common sense and the Muses, ' is an application of the same scientific method to the problems of esthetics and literary criticism. SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. PAOE CRITICS AND THEIR ART 1-33 ( 1) Frequent vagueness of criticism. ( 2) The doctrine of Plato on poets: he associates poetry with madness. ( 3) The doctrine of Sidney and Shakespeare. ( 4) Of Fielding. ( 5) Of 4 The Spectator.' ( 6) Of Dr Johnson. His mistake as to contemplative piety in relation to poetry. His verdict on' Chevy Chase.' ( 7) Vagueness of Aristotle's doctrine of art. ( 8) Sir Joshua Beynolds' view that the artist must show Nature elevated and improved erroneous; it must be difficult to elevate and improve the Ocean or the Setting Sun. But in the Novel and the Drama it is frequently necessary to elevate and improve J) the utter anceof the dramatis personce. ( 9) The curious theory of Queechy, Sir Joshua's biographer, that Nature should be presented by poet and painter in the abstract. ( 10) The contrary doctrine of Addington Symonds, much more reasonable. ( 11) Winckelmann seems to have held that in order to be beautiful, a thing must be nothing in particular; whilst ( 12) Goethe apparently thought that an artist might excel Nature and ( 13) Coleridge held that Shakespeare's characters were all genera intensely individualised. ( 14) Macayday's theory that the imagination is of an overpowering character, that the critical and poetical faculties are not only distinct but almost incompatible, and that great works of imagination are mostly the works of uneducated men refuted, and the contrary shown to be the case, especially when self-education is taken into account. In this sense it may be said that viii SUMMARY OF CONTENTS great works are produced by educated men only. Buskin speaks of Scott having had the benefit of a totally neglected education in the academic sense. ( 15) A man's want of education in the conventional sense may be the very occasion and cause of his education in the great sense. The cases of Turner and Burns. ( 16) Further Babingtonian heresies. ( 17) Wordsworth's perplexed dissertation. ( 18-21) D. M. Moir, Carlyle, Buskin, and Emerson's theories. ( 22) Contrarious views of Swinburne and Lamb regarding' Kubla Khan.' ( 23) Swinburne's Hugonic raptures. ( 24) His panegyrics on Bossetti, ( 25) Shelley, arid Keats. Much wind-blown rhetoric in his essays. ( 26) His art criticisms. ( 27) His strange doctrine that art takes no care of fact. ( 28) His doctrine of Poetry, in conflict with Common-sense.He has failed to notice that Common-sense must govern imagination as well as pure thought. Burns on the subject. The Human Head is as a house made for Beason to dwell in and govern. The Sun in its glory is but an adaptation of magnificent means to magnificent ends. ( 29) What is implied in the Psychology of Common-sense. ( 30) Swin burne's droll theory concerning Poets and Common-sense. ( 30a) In absolute opposition to him, I hold that the sanest of Common-sense is necessary for the equipment of the great poet, and that vital Common-sense is the outstanding