as almost invariably the writer of the present day.

CHAPTER IX--Pseudo-Critics.

A certain set of individuals calling themselves critics have attacked
Lavengro with much virulence and malice. If what they call criticism had
been founded on truth, the author would have had nothing to say. The
book contains plenty of blemishes, some of them, by the bye, wilful ones,
as the writer will presently show; not one of these, however, has been
detected and pointed out; but the best passages in the book, indeed
whatever was calculated to make the book valuable, have been assailed
with abuse and misrepresentation. The duty of the true critic is to play
the part of a leech, and not of a viper. Upon true and upon malignant
criticism there is an excellent fable by the Spaniard Iriarte. The viper
says to the leech, "Why do people invite your bite, and flee from mine?"
"Because," says the leech, "people receive health from my bite, and
poison from yours." "There is as much difference," says the clever
Spaniard, "between true and malignant criticism, as between poison and
medicine." Certainly a great many meritorious writers have allowed
themselves to be poisoned by malignant criticism; the writer, however, is
not one of those who allow themselves to be poisoned by pseudo-critics;
no! no! he will rather hold them up by their tails, and show the
creatures wriggling, blood and foam streaming from their broken jaws.
First of all, however, he will notice one of their objections. "The book
isn't true," say they. Now one of the principal reasons with those that
have attacked Lavengro for their abuse of it is, that it is particularly
true in one instance, namely, that it exposes their own nonsense, their
love of humbug, their slavishness, their dressings, their goings out,
their scraping and bowing to great people; it is the showing up of
"gentility-nonsense" in Lavengro that has been one principal reason for
raising the above cry; for in Lavengro is denounced the besetting folly
of the English people, a folly which those who call themselves guardians
of the public taste are far from being above. "We can't abide anything
that isn't true!" they exclaim. Can't they? Then why are they so
enraptured with any fiction that is adapted to purposes of humbug, which
tends to make them satisfied with their own proceedings, with their own
nonsense, which does not tell them to reform, to become more alive to
their own failings, and less s