The cry of "art
for art's sake", a cry raised in France at the moment when Carlyle was
beginning his work in England, must be regarded as a protest against
the moralizing bigotry of the classical school no less than against
its antiquated formalities. The men who raised it were themselves not
free from the charge of formalism; but the forms they worshipped were
at least those inspired by the spontaneous genius of the artist, not
the mechanical rules inherited from the traditions of the past. Nor,
whatever may be the case with those who have taken it up in our own
day, must the cry be pressed too rigorously against the men of 1830.
The very man, on whom it was commonly fathered, was known to disavow
it; and certainly in his own works, in their burning humanity and their
"passion for reforming the world", was the first to set it at defiance.
[Footnote: See Hugo's _William Shakespeare_, p. 288.]
The moralist and the formalist still make their voice heard, and will
always do so. But since Carlyle wrote, it is certain that a wider, a
more fruitful, view of criticism has gained ground among us.
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