11)14] on A Criticism on Critics 149 



respects better than anything he wrote." Xor should he talk of a 

 thing- as "translated in English." It is a pity to say things like 

 that ; it is more than a pity to speak as follows. Here the subject 

 was Mrs. Gaskell, of whom Scriptor approves in this manner. " But 

 then she wrote ' Cranford,' which secured her place in English litera- 

 ture — a book full of a gentle comprehension, of a simple life lived in 

 clear autumnal weather, in its way one of the most successful studies 

 of the little town which we now know as Knutsford, and which was 

 subsequently described as Hollingford, which any sympathetic artist 

 could have put on paper." 



Now, nothing will persuade me that this is a proper sentence ; 

 indeed, it is difficult to know how anybody who knew what a proper 

 sentence was could possibly have written it ; and I dig up these 

 scandals with great personal pleasure, because I have so frequently 

 and smartly been told by Scriptor's colleagues that I am incapable 

 of writing grammar myself. This is the sort of sentence which 

 critics, if they are happy enough to find it, print in full in a short 

 review of a long book as a sample of their author's style with the 

 statement that there is nothing more to be said about him. Nor 

 perhaps should there be : and we will pass on. 



But if these are the official pronouncements of a general of the 

 critical army, what must we expect from the conversation, so to 

 speak, of the privates — of those who, lately enlisted, supply the 

 shorter and anonymous notices of books ? Let us grant that they 

 have what is called a literary bent : let us credit them with a public 

 school education and a smattering of Greek, and they now have 

 obtained posts as reviewers on one of the daily papers. But they 

 have yet to learn to write, they have yet to form their literary taste 

 and judgment, to acquire the knowledge on which it is based. And 

 they find no school, no tradition, by which they can educate them- 

 selves, no standard, such as for two hundred years has marched in 

 front of the critics of France, to guide them, but the whole business 

 is haphazard, slovenly, and party. Even the driver of a taxi-cab has 

 to show his competence in steering through traffic : no such test is 

 required of those who steer the public through the mazes of art. 

 Instead, cartloads of inferior novels are weekly shot out on them ; 

 they have to judge not of the 350 pages which are too much for 

 Scriptor, but five times that number of pages, and to write what 

 purports to be a respectable opinion on them. No wonder they get 

 practised in the art of skipping, for the task imposed on them is an 

 impossible one. To review books which they cannot possibly read 

 with care may teach them how to skip, and how to write swift 

 twaddle, but it cannot lead to the formation of a sound literary 

 judgment. Very likely three-quarters of what they are supposed 

 to read is very poor stuff, but what they say about it is hke to be 

 poorer. And further, they have to convey the impression of having 

 discriminated, and so they mingle their contempt for most of what 



