The Project Gutenberg eBook, Interludes, by Horace Smith

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Title: Interludes
being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses

Author: Horace Smith

Release Date: November 14, 2005 [eBook #17065]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTERLUDES***

Transcribed from the 1892 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

INTERLUDES
BEING
TWO ESSAYS, A STORY, AND SOME VERSES

BY
HORACE SMITH

London
MACMILLAN AND CO
AND NEW YORK
1892

ESSAYS.

I. ON CRITICISM.

Criticism is the art of judging. As reasonable persons we are called
upon to be constantly pronouncing judgment, and either acting upon such
judgment ourselves or inviting others to do so. I do not know how
anything can be more important with respect to any matter than the
forming a right judgment about it. We pray that we may have "a right
judgment in all things." I am aware that 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 are full of false opinions upon almost
every subject, but even think that it is of no consequence what opinions
they hold. Whether a particular action is morally right or wrong, or
whether a book or a picture is really good or bad, is a matter upon which
they form either no judgment or a wrong one with perfect equanimity. The
secret of this state of mind is, I think, that it is on the whole too
much bother to form a correct judgment; and it is so much easier to let
things slide, and to take the good the gods provide you, than to
carefully hold the scales until the balance is steady. But can anybody
doubt that this abdication of the seat of judgment by large numbers of
people is most hurtful to mankind? Does anyone believe that there would
be so many bad books, bad pictures, and bad buildings in the world if
people were more justly critical? Bad things continue to be produced in
profusion, and worse things are born of them, because a vast number of
people do not know that the things are bad, and do not care, even if they
do know. What sells the