There is also a sense that if the _lusus naturae_, the writer of genius,
were to appear, there ought to be a person or an organisation capable of
recognising him, however unexpected his scent or the shape of his
leaves. Both these tasks fall upon criticism. The younger generation
looks round a little apprehensively to see if there is a gardener whom
it can trust, and decides, perhaps a little prematurely, that there is
none.
There is reviewing but no criticism, says one icy voice that we have
learned to respect. There are pontiffs and potential pontiffs, but no
critics, says another disrespectful young man. Oh, for some more Scotch
Reviewers to settle the hash of our English bards, sighs a third. And
the _London Mercury_, after whetting our appetite by announcing that it
proposed to restore the standards of authoritative criticism, still
leaves us a little in the dark as to what these standards are. Mr T.S.
Eliot deals more kindly, if more frigidly, with us in the _Monthly
Chapbook_. There are, he says, three kinds of criticism--the historical,
the philosophic, and the purely literary.
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