ship of
important _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_[E] articles in the days of their
greatness was usually an open secret. Later periodicals, like the
_Fortnightly_ and the _Academy_ found it a profitable advertisement to
publish the signatures of their eminent critics. The tendency of the
present day is largely in favor of anonymity; no longer as a cover for
the dispensation of malicious vituperation, but as a necessary
safe-guard for the unbiased and untrammeled exercise of the critical
function. Certain abuses of the privilege are inevitable. Mr. Sidney
Colvin in looking over the criticisms of Mr. Stephen Phillips' poetry
recently discovered in three periodicals convincing parallels that led
Mr. Arthur Symons to confess to the authorship of all three critiques.
The average reader would in most cases be strongly influenced by the
united verdict of the critics of the _Saturday Review_, the _Athenaeum_
and the _Quarterly Review_; in this instance his convictions would
undoubtedly be rudely shattered when he learned the truth. Under such
conditions anonymous criticism is a menace, not an aid to the reader's
judgment.

In conclusion, it must be borne in mind that criticism is not an end but
a means to an end. All the literary criticism ever uttered would be
useless as such if it did not evince a desire to further the development
of literary art. The _Iliad_ and the _Oedipus_ were written long
before Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it is not likely that either Homer or
Sophocles would have been a greater poet if he could have read the
Stagirite's treatise. Yet the _Poetics_, as a summary of the essential
features of that art, served an important purpose in later ages and
exerted far-reaching influences. Criticism in all ages has necessarily
been of less importance than art itself--it guides and suggests, but
cannot create. Literary history shows that true criticism must be in
conformity with the spirit of the age; it cannot oppose the trend of
intelligent opinion. It may praise, censure, advise, interpret--but it
will always remain subservient to the art that called it forth. There is
no reason to believe that criticism can ever be established in the
English-speaking world upon a basis that will subject to an arbitrary
and irrevocable ruling the form and spirit of the artist's message to
mankind.

[Footnote A: Reprinted in Professor Arber's _The Term Catalogues_
(1668-1709). London, privately printed, 1903.]

[Footnote B: See the