all maxims confirmed by the practice of the great artists must be maxims for the art; although a close examination might reveal that the practice of these artists may have been the result of their peculiar individualities or of the state of culture at their epoch.  A true Philosophy of Criticism would exhibit in how far such maxims were universal, as founded on laws of human nature, and in how far adaptations to particular individualities.  A great talent will discover new methods.  A great success ought to put us on the track of new principles.  But the fundamental laws of Style, resting on the truths of human nature, may be illustrated, they cannot be guaranteed by any individual success.  Moreover, the strong individuality of the artist will create special modifications of the laws to suit himself, making that excellent or endurable which in other hands would be intolerable.  If the purpose of Literature be the sincere expression of the individual’s own ideas and feelings it is obvious that the cant about the “best models” tends to pervert and obstruct that expression.  Unless a man thinks and feels precisely after the manner of Cicero and Titian it is manifestly wrong for him to express himself in their way.  He may study in them the principles of effect, and try to surprise some of their secrets, but he should resolutely shun all imitation of them.  They ought to be illustrations not authorities, studies not models.

The fallacy about models is seen at once if we ask this simple question:  Will the practice of a great writer justify a solecism in grammar or a confusion in logic?  No.  Then why should it justify any other detail not to be reconciled with universal truth?  If we are forced to invoke the arbitration of reason in the one case, we must do so in the other.  Unless we set aside the individual practice whenever it is irreconcilable with general principles, we shall be unable to discriminate in a successful work those merits which secured from those demerits which accompanied success.  Now this is precisely the condition in which Criticism has always been.  It has been formal instead of being psychological:  it has drawn its maxims from the works of successful artists, instead of ascertaining the psychological principles involved in the effects of those works.  When the perplexed dramatist called down curses on the man who invented fifth acts, he never thought of escaping from his tribulation by writing a play in four acts; the formal canon which made five acts indispensable to a tragedy was drawn from the practice of great dramatists, but there was no demonstration of any psychological demand on the part of the audience for precisely five acts.

[English critics are much less pedantic in adherence to “rules” than the French, yet when, many years ago, there appeared a tragedy in three acts, and without a death, these innovations were considered inadmissible; and if the success of the work had been such as to elicit critical discussion, the necessity of five acts and a death would doubtless have been generally insisted on].