drowned she always is described as having worn elastic boots?”  Such persons look at all things through a distorting medium.  Important things become unimportant and vice versâ.  The foreground is thrust back, the distance brought forward, and the middle distance is nowhere.  The effect of an exaggerated praise generally is that an unfair reaction sets in.  Mr. Justin M’Carthy, in his History of Our Own Times, points out how much the character of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe has suffered from the absurd devotion of Kinglake.  Kinglake writes (he says) of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe “as if he were describing the all-compelling movements of some divinity or providence.”  What nonsense has been talked about Millais’ landscapes, Whistler’s nocturnes, Swinburne poetry—all excellent enough in their way, and requiring to be praised according to their merits, with a reserve as to their faults.  The practice of puffing tends to destroy all sort of proportion in criticism.  When single sentences or portions of sentences of apparently unqualified praise are detached from context, and heaped together so as to induce the public to think that all praise and no blame has been awarded, of course all proportion is lost.  Macaulay lashed this vice in his celebrated essay on Robert Montgomery’s poems.  “We expect some reserve,” he says, “some decent pride in our hatter and our bootmaker.  But no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters.  Extreme poverty may indeed in some degree be an excuse for employing these shifts as it may be an excuse for stealing a leg of mutton.”

Upon the other hand, how unfair is exaggerated

blame.  I am not speaking here of that which is intentionally unfair, but of blame fairly meant and in some degree deserved, but where the language is out of all proportion to the offence.

Ruskin so belaboured the poor ancients about their landscapes that when I was a youth he had taught me to believe that Claude and Ruisdael were mere duffers.  So when he speaks of Whistler, as we shall presently see, his blame is so exaggerated that it produces a revulsion in the mind of the reader.  He said Whistler’s painting consisted in throwing a pot of paint in the public’s face.  Well! we may say Whistler is somewhat sketchy and careless or wanting in colour, but it is quite possible to keep our tempers over it.

“This salad is very gritty,” said a gentleman to Douglas Jerrold at a dinner party.  “Gritty,” said Jerrold, “it’s a mere gravel path with a few weeds in it.”  That was very unfair on the salad.

3.  Criticism should be appropriate.

I mean by this something different from proportionate.  Sometimes the language of criticism is not that of exaggeration, but yet it is quite as inappropriate.  The critic may have taken his seat too high or too low for a proper survey, or he may, by want of education or by carelessness, use quite the wrong words to express his meaning.  You will hear a man say, “I was enchanted with the Biglow Papers,” or “I was charmed with the hyenas at the Zoological Gardens.”  I think one of the distinguishing characteristics of a gentleman, and what makes the society of educated gentlemen so pleasant, is that their language is appropriate without effort.  “‘What a delicious shiver is creeping over those limes!’ said

Lancelot, half to himself.  The expression struck Argemone; it was the right one.”  This is what makes some people’s conversation so interesting.  It is full of appropriate language.  This is perhaps even more the case with educated ladies.  I think it is Macaulay who says that the ordinary letter of an English lady is the best English style to be found anywhere.

“It would be bad grammar,” said Cobbett, “to say of the House of Commons, ‘It is a sink of iniquity, and they are a set of rascally swindlers.’”  Of course, the bad grammar is almost immaterial.  The expression is either a gross libel or a lamentable fact.  “If a man,” said Sydney Smith, “were to kill the minister and churchwardens of his parish nobody would accuse him of want of taste.  The Scythians always ate their grandfathers; they behaved very respectfully to them for a long time, but as soon as their grandfathers became old and troublesome, and began to tell long stories, they immediately ate them; nothing could be more improper and even disrespectful than dining off such near and venerable relations, yet we could not with any propriety accuse them of bad taste.”  This is very humorous.  To say that it is improper or disrespectful is as absurd as to say that it is bad taste.  It is properly described as cruel, revolting, and abominable.

Not being at all a French scholar, and coming suddenly in view of Mont Blanc, I ventured to say to my guide, “C’est très joli.”  “Non, Monsieur,” said he, “ce n’est pas joli, mais c’est curieux à voir.”  I think we were both of us rather out of it that time.

I remember an old lady of my acquaintance pointing to her new chintz of peonies and sunflowers, and asking

me if I did not think it was very “chaste.”  I should like to have said, “Oh, yes, very, quite rococo,” but I daren’t.

The wife of a clergyman, writing to the papers about the “Penge Mystery,” said that certain of the parties (whom most right-minded people thought had committed most atrocious crimes, if not actual murder) had been guilty of a breach of “les convenances de société.”  This is almost equal to De Quincey’s friend, who committed a murder, which at the time he thought little about.  Keble said to Froude, “Froude, you said you thought Law’s Serious Call was a clever book; it seemed to me as if you had said the Day of Judgment will be a pretty sight.”

I ought here to mention the use, or rather misuse, of words which are often called “slang,” such as “awfully jolly,” “fearfully tedious,” “horribly dull,” or the expression “quite alarming,” which young ladies, I think, have now happily forgotten, and the equally silly use of the word “howling” by young men.  Such expressions mean absolutely nothing, and are destructive of intelligent conversation.  A man was being tried for a serious assault, and had used a violent and coarse expression towards the prosecutor.  “You must be careful not to be misled by the bad language reported to have been used by the prisoner,” said the judge.  “You will find from the evidence that he has applied the same expression to his best friend, to a glass of beer, to his grandmother, his boots, and his own eyes.”

4.  Criticism should be strong.

I hope from the remarks I have previously made it will not be supposed that I think all criticism should be of a flat, neutral tint, or what may be called the washy

order.  On the contrary, if criticism is not strong it cannot lift a young genius out of the struggling crowd, and it cannot beat down some bumptious impostor.  If the critic really believes that a new poet writes like Milton, or a new artist paints like Sir Joshua, let him say so; or if he thinks any work vile or contemptible, let him say so; but let him say so well.  Mere exaggerated language, as we have seen, is not strength; but if there is real strength in the criticism, and it is proportionate and appropriate, it will effect its purpose.  It will free the genius, or it will crush the humbug.  A good critic should be feared:

“Good Lord, I wouldn’t have that man
      Attack me in the Times,”

was said of