That is the way to rejoice the cockles of his heart. He can
then compare you to someone else who has also hit the nail on the head
and with whose writings he happens to be familiar. You have a flavour of
Dostoievsky minus the Dickens taint; you remind him of Flaubert or
Walter Scott or somebody equally obscure; in short, you are in a
condition to be labelled--a word, and a thing, which comes perilously
near to libelling. If, to this description, he adds a short summary of
your effort, he has done his duty. What more can he do? He must not
praise overmuch, for that might displease some of his own literary
friends. He must not blame overmuch, else how shall his paper survive?
It lives on the advertisements of publishers and--say those persons,
perhaps wisely--"if you ill-treat our authors, there's an end to our
custom." Commercialism....
Which applies far less to literary criticism than to other kinds. Of
most of the critics of music and art the best one can say is that there
are hearty fellows among them who, with the requisite training, might
one day become fit for their work. England is the home of the amateur in
matters intellectual, the specialist in things material. No bootmaker
would allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather about in a
jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes. The other commodity, being
less valuable than cowhide, may be entrusted to the hands of any
'prentice who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful
hieroglyphics.
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