a. It is not meant to instruct the
instructed, and it makes no pretence to be infallible, but it is issued
in its present form in the belief that it will (in some degree) aid the
average reader in the formation of just opinions on contemporary art,
and in the hope that it may (in some degree) impose a check on certain
interested or over-enthusiastic people.

MY CONTEMPORARIES IN FICTION

I.--FIRST, THE CRITICS, AND THEN A WORD ON DICKENS

The critics of to-day are suffering from a sort of epidemic of kindness.
They have accustomed themselves to the administration of praise in
unmeasured doses. They are not, taking them in the mass, critics any
longer, but merely professional admirers. They have ceased to be useful
to the public, and are becoming dangerous to the interests of letters.
In their over-friendly eyes every painstaking apprentice in the art of
fiction is a master, and hysterical schoolgirls, who have spent their
brief day in the acquisition of ignorance, are reviewed as if they were
so many Elizabeth Barrett Brownings or George Eliots. One of the most
curious and instructive things in this regard is the use which the
modern critic makes of Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter is set up as a sort
of first standard for the aspirant in the art of fiction to excel. Let
the question be asked, with as much gravity as is possible: What _is_
the use of a critic who gravely assures us that Mr. S. R. Crockett 'has
rivalled, if not surpassed, Sir Walter'? The statement is, of course,
most lamentably and ludicrously absurd, but it is made more than once,
or twice, or thrice, and it is quoted and advertised. It is not Mr.
Crockett's fault that he is set on this ridiculous eminence, and
his name is not cited here with any grain of malice. He has his
fellow-sufferers. Other gentlemen who have 'rivalled, if not surpassed,
Sir Walter,' are Dr. Conan Doyle, Mr. J. M. Barrie, Mr. Ian Maclaren,
and Mr. Stanley Weyman. No person whose judgment is worth a straw can
read the writings of these accomplished workmen without respect and
pleasure. But it is no more true that they rival Sir Walter than it is
true that they are twelve feet high, or that any one of them believes in
his own private mind the egregious announcement of the reviewer. The one
great sufferer by this craze for setting men of middling stature side
by side with Scott is our beautiful and beloved Stevenson, who, unless
rescued by some judicious hand, is likely t