SOURCE: Farmer, Albert J. “The Method.” In Walter Pater as a Critic of English Literature, pp. 1-17. N.p.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1973.

In the following excerpt, Farmer considers Pater's critical method in the context of earlier nineteenth-century criticism.

I

The beginning of the nineteenth century marks the opening of a new chapter in the history of English criticism. The attempt to escape from the conventional restraint which had so long weighed upon literature is not less evident here than elsewhere. In prose writing, as in verse, the tenets and dogmas sacred to the writers of the preceding age lose their prestige. A new attitude is everywhere visible. Instead of clinging to outworn notions which had so long served, critics tend more and more to establish their judgments on more flexible, and more personal standards. The rigid objective methods of the past are cast aside, the subjective method asserts...