bright beam of a great critic shows us the unsuspected floating
atoms of temperament in the mind of a great writer. The popular
understanding of the word _criticize_ is to find fault, to pettifog.
As usual, the popular mind is only partly right. The true critic is
the tender curator and warden of all that is worthy in letters. His
function is sacramental, like the sweeping of a hearth. He keeps the
hearth clean and nourishes the fire. It is a holy fire, for its fuel
is men's hearts.

It seems to us probable that under present conditions the cause of
literature is more likely to suffer from injudicious and excessive
praise rather than from churlish and savage criticism. It seems to
us (and we say this with certain misgivings as to enthusiasms of our
own) that there are many reviewers whose honest zeal for the
discovering of masterpieces is so keen that they are likely to burst
into superlatives half a dozen times a year and hail as a flaming
genius some perfectly worthy creature, who might, if he were given a
little stiff discipline, develop into a writer of best-readers
rather than best-sellers. Too resounding praise is often more
damning than faint praise. The writer who has any honest intentions
is more likely to be helped by a little judicious acid now and then
than by cartloads of honey. Let us be candid and personal. When
someone in _The New Republic_ spoke of some essays of our own as
"blowzy" we were moved for a few moments to an honest self-scrutiny
and repentance. Were we really blowzy, we said to ourself? We did
not know exactly what this meant, and there was no dictionary handy.
But the word gave us a picture of a fat, ruddy beggar-wench trudging
through wind and rain, probably on the way to a tavern; and we
determined, with modest sincerity, to be less like that in future.

The good old profession of criticism tends, in the hands of the
younger generation, toward too fulsome ejaculations of hurrahs and
hyperboles. It is a fine thing, of course, that new talent should so
swiftly win its recognition; yet we think we are not wholly wrong in
believing that many a delicate and promising writer has been
hurried into third-rate work, into women's magazine serials and
cheap sordid sensationalism, by a hasty overcapitalization of the
reviewer's shouts. For our own part, we do not feel any too sure of
our ability to recognize really great work when we first see it. We
have often wondered, if we had been journalizing