Transcribed from the 1892 Macmillan and Co. edition ,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
BY
HORACE SMITH
London
MACMILLAN AND CO
AND NEW YORK
1892
Criticism is the art of judging. As reasonable persons we arecalled upon to be constantly pronouncing judgment, and either actingupon such judgment ourselves or inviting others to do so. I donot know how anything can be more important with respect to any matterthan the forming a right judgment about it. We pray that we mayhave “a right judgment in all things.” I am awarethat it is an old saying that “people are better than their opinions,”and it is a mercy that it is so, for very many persons not only arefull of false opinions upon almost every subject, but even think thatit is of no consequence what opinions they hold. Whether a particularaction is morally right or wrong, or whether a book or a picture isreally good or bad, is a matter upon which they form either no judgmentor a wrong one with perfect equanimity. The secret of this stateof mind is, I think, that it is on the whole too much bother to forma correct judgment; and it is so much easier to let things slide, andto take the good the gods provide you, than to carefully hold the scalesuntil the balance is steady. But p. 2cananybody doubt that this abdication of the seat of judgment by largenumbers of people is most hurtful to mankind? Does anyone believethat there would be so many bad books, bad pictures, and bad buildingsin the world if people were more justly critical? Bad things continueto be produced in profusion, and worse things are born of them, becausea vast number of people do not know that the things are bad, and donot care, even if they do know. What sells the endless trash publishedevery day? Not the few purchasers who buy what is vilebecause they like it, but the many purchasers who do not knowthat the things are bad, and when they are told so, think there is notmuch harm in it after all. In short, they think that judging rightlyis of no consequence and only a bore.
But I think I shall carry you all with me when I say that this society,almost by its very raison d’être, desires to formjust and proper judgments; and that one of the principal objects whichwe have in view in meeting together from time to time is to learn whatshould be thought, and what ought to be known; and by comparing ourown judgments of things with those of our neighbours, to arrive at ajust modification of our rough and imperfect ideas.
Although criticism is the act of judging in general, and althoughI shall not strictly limit my subject to any particular branch of criticism,yet naturally I shall be led to speak principally of that branch ofwhich we—probably all of us—think at once when the wordis mentioned, viz., literary and artistic criticism. I think ifcriticism were juster and fairer persons criticized would submit morereadily to criticism. It is certain p. 3thatcriticism is generally resented. We—none of us—liketo be told our faults.
“Tell Blackwood,” said Sir Walter Scott, “thatI am one of the Black Hussars of Literature who neither give nor takecriticism.” Tennyson resented any interference with hismuse by writing the now nearly forgotten line about “Musty, crustyChristopher.” Byron flew into a rhapsodical passion andwrote English Bards and Scotch Reviewers—
“Ode, Epic, Elegy, have at you all.”
He says—
“A man must serve his time to every trade
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