even of social mouchards, do not sink so low as this.

The profession of the critic, even in honourable and open criticism,
is beset with dangers. It is often hard to avoid saying an unkind
thing, a cruel thing, which is smart, and which may even be
deserved. Who can say that he has escaped this temptation, and what
man of heart can think of his own fall without a sense of shame?
There are, I admit, authors so antipathetic to me, that I cannot
trust myself to review them. Would that I had never reviewed them!
They cannot be so bad as they seem to me: they must have qualities
which escape my observation. Then there is the temptation to hit
back. Some one writes, unjustly or unkindly as you think, of you or
of your friends. You wait till your enemy has written a book, and
then you have your innings. It is not in nature that your review
should be fair: you must inevitably be more on the look-out for
faults than merits. The ereintage, the "smashing" of a literary foe
is very delightful at the moment, but it does not look well in the
light of reflection. But these deeds are mere peccadilloes compared
with the confirmed habit of regarding all men and women as fair game
for personal tattle and the sating of private spite. Nobody,
perhaps, begins with this intention. Most men and women can find
ready sophistries. If a report about any one reaches their ears,
they say that they are doing him a service by publishing it and
enabling him to contradict it. As if any mortal ever listened to a
contradiction! And there are charges--that of plagiarism, for
example--which can never be disproved, even if contradictions were
listened to by the public. The accusation goes everywhere, is
copied into every printed rag; the contradiction dies with the daily
death of a single newspaper. You may reply that a man of sense will
be indifferent to false accusations. He may, or may not be,--that