1914] on A Criticism on Critics 143 



amateur and the critic saj." He tells us that it would be as reason- 

 able to have the Observatory at Greenwich in the hands of an 

 apothecary, or the College of Physicians under the presidency of 

 Tennyson, as to put art-criticisms in the hands of a man who is' not 

 himself a painter. But none of these analogies will hold. Certainly 

 it does not matter what the amateur and the critic say regarding the 

 addition of two and two, since the fact that they do make four can 

 be demonstrated to and by everybody, for it is in no sense a matter 

 of taste, but of fact readily verifiable, and the entire science of 

 mathematics is built up on this class of fact, which is in no way a 

 matter of opinion. But on the other hand no apothecary, if he were 

 only an apothecary, could possibly demonstrate the orbit of Saturn, 

 nor would writing millions of idylls of a thousand kings prevent 

 Tennyson from giving prescriptions of prussic acid to cure colds in the 

 head But art, even if everybody in the world agreed about it, must 

 be a matter of taste in a way in which addition sums or the effects of 

 the administration of large doses of poison are not, except to Christian 

 scientists ; and it is by taste, that both critics and artists prove their 

 quality. Very likely Whistler's critics were wrong when they decided 

 that his picture of Battersea Bridge was not worth £200, but they 

 had a right to be wrong, and were not wrong in the same sense that 

 Tennyson would have been wrong if he had dispensed drugs without 

 knowing anything whatever about the effects of them. Ruskin did 

 not admire Whistler's picture, though Whistler did : to the artist its 

 efficiency was proved, but to this particular critic it was not. But if 

 Tennyson had given a pound or two of aconite to a man with a sore 

 throat, the result would have been proved to the satisfaction or other- 

 wise of everybody. We may add also that when artists such as Sir 

 Edward Burne-Jones were called in to pronounce upon Whistler's 

 work, he did not like it any the better. 



Indeed, there are admiraljle reasons why the practitioners in any 

 art should not be installed as critics of that art ; and Mr. Tom Taylor, 

 ait-critic to the Times, pointed out one of them in answer to this 

 pamphlet of Whistler's when he said, " God help the artists if once 

 the criticism of pictures falls into the hands of painters." But mere 

 censorious jealousy, which is what is here hinted at, does not go to 

 the root of the matter, nor near it. The fact is that, inasmuch as a 

 man does practise a certain art, he is for that very reason incompetent 

 to take a sane and critical attitude about either his own performance, 

 or that of his colleagues in the same art. For in that he is an artist, 

 he cannot really imagine anybody seeing or rendering a thing in a 

 manner altogether different from his own. A certain key of writing, 

 a certain colour of words, or melody of pigments, as the critics say, is 

 his, and since he uses that, he must think that it is the best possible 

 mode or melody. Who, for instance, except the pundits of the 

 English law-courts, could seriously value the opinion of Mr. Frith with 

 regard to Whistler's own picture, or who, if he wanted a sound 



