n's
essays and Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," and I would assure him, too,
it was not I who wrote that unfortunate review of Conrad that gets such
an exemplary drubbing at his hands for its self-complacent imbecility.
He ought to know that, or he will think that I speak out of malice. He
says that England has need of a literary critic. I agree. And I agree
that this critic must not be of that professorial breed with which he
deals so faithfully, not one who will date you every line in Shakespeare
on internal evidence and then obligingly pronounce Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle our greatest living writer. He will need the intelligence, the
first-hand views, the open mind, the genuine taste for books, the
respect for art and irreverence for persons of Mr. Bennett himself; and,
as I have hinted, he will need one or two qualities for which Mr.
Bennett is not so well off. He must be a resolute critic of literature
and not an authority on current reputations; he must have enough natural
taste to recognize a work of art in odd company, new clothes, or fancy
dress; he must be the sort of person who would have seen at a glance
that Kipling or Paul Bourget was not the real thing; he must be a
scholar and a man of the intellectual world: and he must be as incapable
of calling Mr. George Moore "a great artist" or speaking of "a
first-rate beautiful thing" by that gentleman as Mr. Bennett is of
eating peas with his knife.

The critic of our dreams--Mr. Bennett's and mine--has yet to be found.
You will not imagine, surely, that I am putting myself forward as a
candidate? Here you will find very few of the virtues and some, I
suspect, of the critical vices to which I have alluded in this letter.
But you need not fear, my dear Whitworth, that I am now going to tax
your good nature by an elaborate defence of these essentially
insignificant papers. They are an odd lot, and I think there are but
two--the two last--that I am not a little ashamed of reprinting.
Clearly, were I now to write on the same themes I should have something
very different to say and should say it differently. Honestly, I believe
these things are worth reading; I can say no more for them and I shall
hold him generous who says as much. But the pleasure I shall derive from
seeing them printed and off my hands will be as great almost as that
which I felt when, four years ago, you, or your firm rather, did me the
honour of publishing a book to which I attached, and continue to