SOURCE: "James Huneker: Super-Critic," in Current Literature, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, July, 1909, pp. 57-9.

The following essay addresses Huneker's preeminence as a literary critic.

Brilliancy, it seems, begets brilliancy. The scintillant genius of James Huneker provokes pyrotechnics on the part of his critics. Critic of Supermen and Super-critic, his epigrammatic flashes dazzle the elect and the curious. Fitly enough, Mr. Huneker's latest book of essays [Egoists] is dedicated to George Brandes. What George Brandes is to the Old World James Huneker is to the New. Huneker's figure stands out in even bolder relief in America than that of Brandes in Europe. In the tiny lane of American criticism, to quote Percival Pollard, there is not even the semblance of a crowd. We can easily count our critics on our fingers; and, unless we are arrantly optimistic in our own interpretation of the word critic, we need no more than...