o be buried under foolish and
unmeasured praises.

It would be easy to fill pages with verifications of the charge here
made. Books of the last half-dozen years or so, which have already
proved the ephemeral nature of their own claim, have been received with
plaudits which would have been exaggerated if applied to some of our
acknowledged classics. The critical declaration that 'Eric Bright-eyes'
could have been written by no other Englishman of the last six hundred
years than Mr. Rider Haggard may be allowed its own monumental place in
the desert of silly and hysteric judgments.

It is time, for the sake of mere common-sense, to get back to something
like a real standard of excellence. It is time to say plainly that our
literature is in danger of degradation, and that the mass of readers is
systematically misled.

Before I go further, I will offer one word in self-excuse. I have taken
this work upon my own shoulders, because I cannot see that anybody else
will take it, and because it seems to me to be calling loudly to be
done. My one unwillingness to undertake it lies in the fact that I have
devoted my own life to the pursuit of that art the exercise of which
by my contemporaries I am now about to criticise. That has an evil and
ungenerous look. But, whatever the declaration may seem to be worth, I
make it with sincerity and truth. I have never tasted the gall of envy
in my life. I have had my share, and my full share, of the critical
sugarplums. I have never, in the critics, apprehension, 'rivalled
or surpassed Sir Walter,' but on many thousands of printed pages
(of advertisement) it is recorded that I have 'more genius for the
delineation of rustic character than any half-dozen surviving novelists
put together.' I laugh when I read this, for I remember Thomas Hardy,
who is my master far and far away. I am quite persuaded that my critic
was genuinely pleased with the book over which he thus 'pyrotechnicated'
(as poor Artemus used to say), but I think my judgment the more sane
and sober of the two. I have not the faintest desire to pull down other
men's flags and leave my own flag flying. And there is the first and
last intrusion of myself. I felt it necessary, and I will neither erase
it nor apologise for its presence.

Side by side with the exaggerated admiration with which our professional
censors greet the crowd of new-comers, it is instructive to note the
contempt into which some of our old gods have fallen.