follow the rules of art? If it passes the first test, it is well worth
the courteous attention of the critic. If it passes both tests, it is
perfect. But if only the second test is passed, it may please a few
pedants, but it is worthless, and cannot live.

6. _Criticisms should be bona fide_.

You will be rather alarmed at a lawyer beginning this topic, and will
expect to hear pages of "Starkie on Libel," or to have all the
perorations of Erskine's speeches recited to you. For one terrible
moment I feel I have you in my power; but I scorn to take advantage of
the position. I don't mean to talk about libel at all, or, at least, not
more than I can help. I have been endeavouring to show what good
criticism should be like. If criticism is so base that there is a
question to be left to a jury as to what damages ought to be paid for the
speaking or writing of it, one may say at once that it is unworthy of the
name of criticism at all. Slander is not criticism. But there is a
great deal of criticism which may be called not _bona fide_, which is yet
not malicious. It is biassed perhaps, even from some charitable motive,
perhaps from some sordid motive, perhaps from indolence, from a desire to
be thought learned or clever, or what not--in fact, from one or other of
those thousand things which prevent persons from speaking fairly and
straightforwardly. When you take up the _Athenaeum_ or the _Spectator_,
and read from those very able reviews an account of the last new novel,
do you think the writer has written simply what he truly thinks and feels
about the matter? No! he has been told he has been dull of late. He
feels he must write a spicy review. He has a cold in his head, he is
savage accordingly. A friend of his tells him he knows the author, or he
recognizes the name of a college friend--he will be lenient. The book is
on a subject which he meant to take up himself; and, without knowing it,