Interludes | Page 8

all to nature. Is the work natural? Does it follow nature? Secondly, does it 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, he is jealous. I need not multiply further these suggestions which will occur to anyone. We all remember the dinner in Paternoster Row given by Mrs. Bungay, the publisher's wife. Bungay and Bacon are at daggers drawn; each married the sister of the other, and they were for some time the closest friends and partners. Since they have separated it is a furious war between the two publishers, and no sooner does one bring out a book of travels or poems, but the rival is in the field with something similar. We all remember the delight of Mrs. Bungay when the Hon. Percy Popjoy drives up in a private hansom with an enormous grey cab horse and a tiger behind, and Mrs. Bacon is looking out grimly from the window on the opposite side of the street. "In the name of commonsense, Mr. Pendennis," Shandon asked, "what have you been doing--praising one of Mr. Bacon's books? Bungay has been with me in a fury this morning at seeing a laudatory article upon one of the works of the odious firm over the way." Pen's eyes opened wide with astonishment. "Do you mean to say," he asked, "that we are to praise no books that Bacon publishes; or that if the books are good we are to say that they are bad?" Pen says, "I would rather starve, by Jove, and never earn another penny by my pen, than strike an opponent an unfair blow, or if called upon to place him, rank him below his honest desert."
There was a trial in London in December, 1878, which illustrates the subject I am upon. It was an action for libel by the well-known artist, Mr. Whistler, against Mr. Ruskin, the most distinguished art critic of the age. The passage in the writing of Mr. Ruskin, of which Mr. Whistler complained, contains, I think, almost every fault which, according to my divisions, a criticism can contain. The passage is as follows:--"For Mr. Whistler's own sake no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsey ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."
The Attorney-General of the day, as counsel for Mr. Ruskin, said that this was a severe and slashing criticism, but perfectly fair and