ARTIST AND CRITIC 99 



criticism to each member of their body in turn, and this plan 

 could hardly be adopted in other arts. In fact, the right to 

 print one's judgment depends in great measure on the power of 

 expressing it, and the power of doing this belongs to the writer 

 caste alone. Hence we find that of necessity the professed 

 critics are literary men. Painters, musicians, actors, are all 

 judged by journalists; not because journalists know more of 

 these things by nature than other people, but because they can 

 write what they feel in such a way that people will read it, and 

 whether this be right or wrong it is inevitable. There are 

 indeed some writers who treat criticism itself as a fine art, or 

 rather as one branch of literary art. Taking a book, a picture, 

 or a song as text, they write a graceful essay. Whether the 

 opinions of such a critic as this are right or wrong matters little 

 the essay is ingenious, learned, suggestive. It contains 

 something for the artist, something for the connoisseur, some- 

 thing for the public. It has a beginning, a middle, and an 

 end. Yet the painter or musician who reads the essay must 

 often writhe with indignation at the judgments given. They 

 may find comfort in the thought of the larger public who can- 

 not write neat essays, but who answer to the magic call of art 

 whenever the piping is true. This public reads the neat essays 

 because in their way they, too, are artistic ; but when a great 

 play, a great book, or a great picture shines out through the 

 daily fog of life, not all the little literary essays of all the 

 little literary men on earth can hide the new sun. 



Beyond and above the journalist, the essayist, the prophet, 

 and the artist there is a wiser judge not any one man living 

 now or in the past or future, but that section of mankind which, 

 by an extension of the analogy we have used in contrasting 

 artist and layman, we may call the Art Church. All true art 

 believers of all times are members of this church. Each honest 

 art lover in his day brings some little atom of his soul to nourish 

 this great judge, and each little element building the spiritual 

 whole coheres in virtue of its fitness. 



The Art Church has its schisms, offshoots, heresies, reforma- 

 tions. Even in her bosom there is no abiding rest ; but poor 

 fallible mankind can provide no better champion for beauty. 



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