one paramount question is always: What did the author try to do, and how near did he come to doing it? This form of criticism, which seeks to classify books according to the author's purpose, is very nearly what Mr. Howells had in mind when he wrote:
It is hard for the critic to understand that it is really his business to classify and analyse the fruits of the human mind very much as the naturalist classifies the objects of his study, rather than to praise or blame them; that there is a measure of the same absurdity in his trampling on a poem, a novel or an essay that does not please him as in a botanist grinding a plant underfoot because he does not find it pretty. He does not conceive that it is his business rather to identify the species, and then explain how and where the species is imperfect and irregular.
It has already been said that the young writer can get comparatively small aid
