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But after all, how little difference it makes whether or not a writer appears with a mask on which everybody can take off, whether he bolts his door or not, when everybody can look in at his windows, and all his entrances are at the mercy of the critic's skeleton key and the jimmy of any ill-disposed assailant!
Ho! everyone that by the nose is led, Automatons of which the world is full, Ye myriad bodies, each without a head, That dangle from a critic's brainless skull, Come, hearken to a deep discovery made, A mighty truth now wondrously displayed.
In spite of the scrupulous conscientiousness with which Sergey Ivanovitch verified the correctness of the critic's arguments, he did not for a minute stop to ponder over the faults and mistakes which were ridiculed; but unconsciously he began immediately trying to recall every detail of his meeting and conversation with the author of the article. "Didn't I offend him in some way?"
"I have just come across a review of your last book, and send it, thinking you may wish to see it. I have put a query to one of the passages, which I think misquoted: and there will be no necessity to call your attention to the critic's English. You can afford to laugh at it, but I confess it puts your friends in a rage.
The portrait usually presented of Mozart meekly accepting the humiliation is of a piece with the legend that Keats died of a broken heart because of a bitter review of his poetry. The fact being, of course, that Keats' death was due to constitutional weakness, and that the emotion inspired by the attack upon his art was a burning desire to punch the critic's head.
The critic's ink may suffer equally from too large an infusion of nutgalls or of sugar. But it is easier to be generous than to be just, and we might readily put faith in that fabulous direction to the hiding-place of truth, did we judge from the amount of water which we usually find mixed with it. Remarkable experiences are usually confined to the inner life of imaginative men, but Mr.
The recitations thus served the purpose of the modern reviews. They affixed to each new work the critic's verdict, and assigned to it its place among the list of candidates for fame. No sooner was the practice introduced than it became popular. Horace already complains of it, and declares that he will not indulge it: "Non recito cuiquam nisi amicis, idque coactus, Non ubivis coramve quibuslibet."
To this Fitzjames replied that every principle, applicable to India, contained in the 1508 royal octavo pages of Taylor, was contained in the 167 sections of his bill, and that it also disposed fully of every subject treated in his critic's book.
Crockett is not only not a great man, but a rather futile very small one. The unblushing effrontery of those gentlemen of the press who have set him on a level with Sir Walter is the most mournful and most contemptible thing in association with the poorer sort of criticism which has been encountered of late years. It is no part of an honest critic's business to be personally offensive.
Perhaps the matter of languages is not of very great importance, seeing that most of the critic's work concerns English Drama, or drama in what is supposed to be English, which, too often, is quite a different thing. What, then, are the necessary qualifications of the critic who takes his work and himself seriously?
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