To explain what I mean, I shall set forth the dominant tendencies as I see them. What Crane calls "atomist" history may more helpfully be called "positivist" history, for it is concerned more with collecting facts than with interpreting their significance in any but the most narrow frame of reference. If the word "atomist" referes to the "structure" of this kind of history^ the word "positivist" indicates its essence, which is not, of course, identical with the external structure. And, I suppose, one would rather name a thing after its essence than after its external structure. A typical work ofpositivist history is a collection of learned articles on chronologically arranged topics by a motley crew of scholars writing for the instruction (and, presumably, delight) of brother-scholars and hapless graduate students. Every article, pretentiously called a chapter, is self-sufficient, pre-supposing no antecedents and entailing no conclusions to be followed up later. Thus with every chapter a "fresh beginning", a green field, and a pasture new, history barely gets off the ground — and lumbers to a fresh and final halt in the editor's epilogue, which tries to make some sense out of the edifice he has put together in order to provide a continuous thread of narrative which the book as a whole fails to supply. If the history in questionds a history of twentieth-century literature, it contains mandate-, ry chapters on -1 shall mention just a few topics - the background, social and political (but hardly ever economic), intellectual movements (the account is perhaps unconsciously slanted to suit the prejudices of the dominant class), the sciences (more out of reverence for gadgets, I suspect than for any other reason) and education (a neutral term for subtle indoctrination and mystification). The literary chap-^ ers with their unprincipled, ad hoc explanations, and diverse, unstated critical assumptions are written in splendid isolation from all this scholarship which, one hopes, affords unsurpassed intellectual pleasure to the scholarly contributors. Like good modem neighbours, all these chapters, literary as well as non-literary, ignore one another. And thus on the twin rails of background and literary crtitic-ism, the massive contraption of literary history stands — a monument to patience, the editor's as well as the reader's. The compilations elevated to the status of history that I have in mind are the Oxford History of English Literature and the Cambridge History of English Literature. Though the logically separable major ingredients of history — information, analysis and evaluation — are present in each of these series, these elements do not constitute the kind of organic unity which manifests itself as a coherent and continuous narrative in a successful work of history. The division of intellectual labour among so many contributors has, I am afraid, left its mark on the assembled product. The chapters taking care of the background information (such as it is) and those devoted to analysis and cautious evaluation (such as they are) fail to interact, the background information deteriorating into an inert mass of learning — mere history — and analysis in particular becomes an end in itself. Literary history, therefore, presents the look of an amalgam of poor history and autonomous, irresponsible and uncritical criticism. This, to my mind, is not history, no matter how useful it is as a reference tool and no matter how many quick editions it goes through. 68 Journal of Arts and Ideas