ir critical
standards have altered at different times of their career. This simply
means that they have been constantly applying the comparative method,
and profiting by the application. After all, there are few, though there
are some, absolute truths in criticism; and a man will often be
relatively right in condemning, from certain aspects and in certain
combinations, work which, under other aspects and in other combinations,
he has been relatively quite as right in admiring. Occasionally, no
doubt, there will be an apparent exception to the rule of critical
development, as in the case of Hazlitt: but that remarkable exception
does not fail to justify the rule. For in truth, Hazlitt's critical
range was not so wide as his penetration was deep; and he avows, almost
exultingly, that after a comparatively early time of life, he
practically left off reading. That is to say, he carefully avoided
renewing his plant, and he usually eschewed new material--conditions
which, no doubt, conduce to the uniformity, and, within obvious limits,
are not prejudicial to the excellence of the product.

It is possible that the title "The Kinds of Criticism" may have excited
in some readers expectations of the discussion of a subject which has
not yet been handled. We have recently seen revived the sempiternal
argument between authors and critics--an argument in which it may be as
well to say that the present writer has not yet taken part either
anonymously or otherwise. The authors, or some of them, have remarked
that they have never personally benefited by criticism; and the critics,
after their disagreeable way, have retorted that this was obvious. A
critic of great ingenuity, my friend Mr. Andrew Lang, has, with his
usual humour, suggested that critics and reviewers are two different
kinds, and have nothing to do with each other essentially, though
accidentally, and in the imperfect arrangements of the world, the
discharge of their functions may happen to be combined in the same
person. As a matter of practice, this is no doubt too often the case; as
a matter of theory, nothing ought much less to be the case. I think
that if I were dictator, one of the first non-political things that I
should do, would be to make the order of reviewers as close a one, at
least, as the bench of judges, or the staff of the Mint, or of any
public establishment of a similar character. That any large amount of
reviewing is determined by fear or favour is a g