James Gibbons Huneker, Critic of the Seven Arts

IN an appreciative introduction to a volume of James Huneker's essays, Henry Louis Mencken presented his friend as a Bohemian in tastes who served as a pioneer in introducing to America new figures and movements in literature, music, and the plastic arts. It was no doubt Mr. Mencken's hostility to Irving Babbitt, Paul More, and the whole tribe of professors that made him ignore the fairly solid scholarly foundations upon which Huneker's criticism had been built. It is easy to underrate him as a critic of music also, to dismiss his significance for music, as Stanley Edgar Hyman belittles his value for literature, by characterizing him as a mere popularizer, a journalist with a gift for striking phrases and little more. Such a characterization, though it contains some truth, falls far short of giving an adequate estimate of the man. As a journalist, Huneker was liable to the faults into which journalistic critics may fall. He had to produce a great deal, much of it under pressure and for money, much of it concerning matters of only transient interest. He himself complained of the necessity of writing musical essays; in a letter of March 8, 1908, he wrote to Henry Finck: loathe criticism! I wish to do something original, individual. The later letters are filled with complaints of the expenditure of time necessary to support himself by critical hackwork. Yet along with this hackwork he found time to produce a good deal of criticism of enduring value

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