preoccupation for them and one which is, we believe,
symptomatic of a general hesitancy and expectation. In the world of
letters everything is a little up in the air, volatile and
uncrystallised. It is a world of rejections and velleities; in spite of
outward similarities, a strangely different world from that of half a
dozen years ago. Then one had a tolerable certainty that the new star,
if the new star was to appear, would burst upon our vision in the shape
of a novel. To-day we feel it might be anything. The cloud no bigger
than a man's hand might even be, like Trigorin's in 'The Sea-gull,' like
a piano; it has no predetermined form.

This sense of incalculability, which has been aroused by the prodigious
literary efflorescence of late years, reacts upon its cause; and the
reaction tends by many different paths to express itself finally in the
ventilation of problems that hinge about criticism. There is a general
feeling that the growth of the young plant has been too luxuriant; a
desire to have it vigorously pruned by a capable gardener, in order that
its strength may be gathered together to produce a more perfect fruit.
There is also a sense that if the _lusus naturae_, the writer of genius,
were to appear, there ought to be a person or an organisation capable of
recognising him, however unexpected his scent or the shape of his
leaves. Both these tasks fall upon criticism. The younger generation
looks round a little apprehensively to see if there is a gardener whom
it can trust, and decides, perhaps a little prematurely, that there is
none.

There is reviewing but no criticism, says one icy voice that we have
learned to respect. There are pontiffs and potential pontiffs, but no
critics, says another disrespectful young man. Oh, for some more Scotch
Reviewers to settle the hash of our English bards, sighs a third. And
the _London Mercury_, after whetting our appetite by announcing that it
proposed to restore the standards of authoritative criticism, still
leaves us a little in the dark as to what these standards are. Mr T.S.
Eliot deals more kindly, if more frigidly, with us in the _Monthly
Chapbook_. There are, he says, three kinds of criticism--the historical,
the philosophic, and the purely literary.

'Every form of genuine criticism is directed towards creation. The
historical or philosophic critic of poetry is criticising poetry in
order to create a history or a philosophy; the poetic critic is