rson who writes six
columns on the general theory of poetry when he professes to review Mr.
Apollo's last book, may do all these things well and not be good
critics; but then all these things may be done, and done well, and yet
not be good reviews.

Whether the reviewer and the critic are valuable members of society or
useless encumbrances, must be questions left to the decision of the
world at large, which apparently is not in a hurry to decide either way.
There are, no doubt, certain things that the critic, whether he be
critic major or critic minor, Sainte-Beuve or Mr. Gall, cannot do. He
cannot certainly, and for the present, sell or prevent the sale of a
book. "You slated this and it has gone through twenty editions" is not a
more uncommon remark than the other, "They slated that and you extol it
to the skies." Both, as generally urged, rest on fallacy. In the first
case, nothing was probably farther from the critic's intention than to
say "this book is not popular"; the most that he intended was "this book
is not good." In the second case, it has been discovered of late (it is
one of the few things that we have discovered) that very rarely has any
really good thing, even in the most famous or infamous attacks on it,
been attacked, even with a shadow of success, for its goodness. The
critics were severe on Byron's faults, on Keats's faults, and on the
present Laureate's faults; they were seldom severe on their goodness,
though they often failed to appreciate it fully.

This, however, is in one sense a digression, for there is no criticism
of contemporary work in this volume. I think, however, as I have just
endeavoured to point out, that criticism of contemporary work and
criticism of classics should proceed on the same lines, and I think that
both require the same qualities and the same outfit. Nor am I certain
that if narrow inquiry were made, some of the best criticism in all
times and in all languages would not be found in the merest casual
reviewing. That in all cases the critic must start from a wide
comparative study of different languages and literatures, is the first
position to be laid down. In the next place he must, I think, constantly
refer back his sensations of agreement and disagreement, of liking and
disliking, in the same comparative fashion. "Why do I like the
_Agamemnon_ and dislike Mr. Dash's five-act tragedy?" is a question to
be constantly put, and to be answered only by a pretty close perso