erence one need not seek far. They are
to be found in the difference between the bombastic half-knowledge of a
school teacher and the discreet and complete knowledge of a man of
culture. Huneker is that man of culture. He has reported more of
interest and value than any other American critic, living or dead, but
the essence of his criticism does not lie so much in what he
specifically reports as in the civilized point of view from which he
reports it. He is a true cosmopolitan, not only in the actual range of
his adventurings, but also and more especially in his attitude of mind.
His world is not America, nor Europe, nor Christendom, but the whole
universe of beauty. As Jules Simon said of Taine: "_Aucun ecrivain de
nos jours n'a ... decouvert plus d'horizons varies et immenses_."

Need anything else be said in praise of a critic? And does an
extravagance or an error here and there lie validly against the saying
of it? I think not. I could be a professor if I would and show you slips
enough--certain ponderous nothings in the Ibsen essays, already
mentioned; a too easy bemusement at the hands of Shaw; a vacillating
over Wagner; a habit of yielding to the hocus-pocus of the mystics,
particularly Maeterlinck. On the side of painting, I am told, there are
even worse aberrations; I know too little about painting to judge for
myself. But the list, made complete, would still not be over-long, and
few of its items would be important. Huneker, like the rest of us, has
sinned his sins, but his judgments, in the overwhelming main, hold
water. He has resisted the lure of all the wild movements of the
generation; the tornadoes of doctrine have never knocked him over. Nine
times out of ten, in estimating a new man in music or letters, he has
come curiously close to the truth at the first attempt. And he has
always announced it in good time; his solo has always preceded the
chorus. He was, I believe, the first American (not forgetting William
Morton Payne and Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, the pioneers) to write about
Ibsen with any understanding of the artist behind the prophet's mask; he
was the first to see the rising star of Nietzsche (this was back in
1888); he was beating a drum for Shaw the critic before ever Shaw the
dramatist and mob philosopher was born (_circa_ 1886-1890); he was
writing about Hauptmann and Maeterlinck before they had got well set on
their legs in their own countries; his estimate of Sudermann, bearing
date of 190