CRITICISM.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2650, 6 July 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

CRITICISM.

TO TIIK EDITOR. Sill, —Thore are unfortunate classes of tho community, such as attorneys, publishers, critics, and minor poets, at whom everyone has his fling, and who must suffer in silence. The second villain of a novel is commonly a solicitor ; the post of first villain being reserved for an earl, or a baronet at least. On the stage the attorney is not more fortunate, and thero must be some powerful motive which prevents the novelist from presenting to us a publisher deeply stained with guilt. As to the minor poet, he is as much in request by way of a weak-minded but rather malignant sort of fool as any character known to romance. Tho members of the classes thus ill-treated never reply, atleast in print. They suffer and are strong, or, in a less august idiom, they grin and bear it. The critic, too, has his wrongs. He is accustomed to being told that he has "failed" in some art, which, probably, he was never so left to himself as to attempt to excel it. He is malicious, unfriendly, dull, ignorant, prejudiced, flippant, and a coxcomb. The critic, though he can do a good deal in the way of revenge, if he chooses, never answers the attacks on him, any more than do the solicitor and the publisher. He never plays a defensive innings. He murmers to himself that if a man of tasto gives annoyance, as the critic obviously does, people should remember how much annoyance he must first have indured. The world forgets his provocations. Yet, the lot of the critic is not a happy one ; and, before he is condemned, he should at least be allowed to plead extenuating circumstances. People generally begin, when the critic is turned out to be worried, by denying that there is any reason for his existence. It was Mr Ruskin, if lam not mistaken, who denounced criticism as an offence against good manners. No one in a drawing-room, it is said, would venture to discuss people in their hearing, and the critic who prints his remarks commits this social crime.—l am, yours truly, J USTtCE.