or sunlight distinguish it at once from insincere limelight? But
what is the test, and would it be of any use to those likely to mistake
limelight for daylight?

I cannot say I have ever been greatly helped by what I have read
concerning the standards for literary criticism. Of the many wise and
learned critics to whose works I have gone for light, I can remember only
Aristotle, Longinus, Tolstoy, and Anatole France--probably because it is
easy for the innocent to agree with dominating men. Of the moderns I
enjoy reading anything "Q" has to say about books; useless pleasure
again, for what does one get but "Q's" full, friendly, ironic, and
humorous mind? Lately, too, the critics have been unanimously
recommending to us--and that shows the genuine value to the community of
mere book reviewers--the _Letters of Tchehov_, as noble a document as we
have had for a very long time. But I thought they did not praise Tchehov
enough as a critic, for that wise and lovable author, among his letters,
made many casual asides about art that were pleasing and therefore right
to me. I begin to fear that most of the good things said about literature
are said in casual asides.

If I were asked to say why I preferred Christabel or Keats's odes to
Tennyson's Revenge or the _Barrack-Room Ballads_, I should find it hard
to explain satisfactorily to anyone who preferred to read Tennyson or
Kipling. Where are the criteria? Can a Chinaman talk to an Arab? The
difference, we see at once, is even deeper than that of language. It is a
difference in nature; and we may set up any criterion of literature we
like, but it will never carry across such a chasm. Our only consolation
is that we may tell the other man he is on the wrong side of it, but he
will not care, because he will not see it. The means by which we are able
to separate what is precious in books from the matrix is not a process,
and is nothing measurable. It is instinctive, and not only differs from
age to age, but changes in the life of each of us. It is as indefinable
as beauty itself. An artist may know how to create a beautiful thing, but
he cannot communicate his knowledge except by that creation. That is all
he can tell us of beauty, and, indeed, he may be innocent of the measure
of his effort; and the next generation may ridicule the very thing which
gave us so much pleasure, pleasure we proved to our own satisfaction to
be legitimate and well founded by many sound generalizations a