s we do not need to be instructed by artists any more than by
critics. But Sir Thomas Jackson may mean that the artist is to instruct
the public only through his works. Still, the question remains, How is
the artist to be recognized? There is a riddle--When is an artist not an
artist? and the answer is--Nine times out of ten. Certainly the opinions
of artists about each other will not bring security to the public mind;
and does Sir T. Jackson really believe that artists always value the
criticism of brother artists? Does an Academician value the criticism
of a Vorticist, or _vice versa_? The Academician, of course, would say
that the Vorticist was not an artist--and _vice versa_. The artist
values the opinion of the artist who agrees with him; and at present
there is less agreement among artists than among critics. They condemn
each other more than the critics condemn them.

But these are minor points. What I am concerned with is Sir T. Jackson's
notion of the function of criticism. For him, as for most Englishmen,
the critic is one who tells people what to think; and the value of his
criticism depends upon his reputation; we should pay no heed to art
critics, because they are not artists. But the critic, whether of art or
of anything else; is a writer; and he is to be judged not by his
reputation either as artist or as critic, but by what he writes. Sir T.
Jackson thinks that he is condemning the critic when he says that he
writes only for the public. He might as well think that he condemned the
artist if he said that he worked only for the public. Of course the
critic writes for the public, as the painter paints for the public; and
he writes as one of the public, not as an artist. Further, if he is a
critic, he does not write to tell the public what to think any more
than he writes to tell the painter how to paint. Just as the painter in
his pictures expresses a general interest in the visible world, so the
critic in his criticism expresses a general interest in art; and his
justification, like that of the painter, consists in his power of
expressing this interest. If he cannot express it well, it is useless to
talk about his reputation either as artist or critic; one might as well
excuse a bad picture of a garden by saying that the painter of it was a
good gardener and therefore a good judge of gardens.

It is a misfortune that the word critic should be derived from a Greek
word meaning judge. A critic certainly does