An author like this, in other words, an author who has a claim to live on in posterity, can only be a man who seeks in vain his like among his contemporaries over the wide world, his marked distinction making him a striking contrast to every one else.  Even if he existed through several generations, like the wandering Jew, he would still occupy the same position; in short, he would be, as Ariosto has put it, lo fece natura, e poi ruppe lo stampo.  If this were not so, one would not be able to understand why his thoughts should not perish like those of other men.

In almost every age, whether it be in literature or art, we find that if a thoroughly wrong idea, or a fashion, or a manner is in vogue, it is admired.  Those of ordinary intelligence trouble themselves inordinately to acquire it and put it in practice.  An intelligent man sees through it and despises it, consequently he remains out of the fashion.  Some years later the public sees through it and takes the sham for what it is worth; it now laughs at it, and the much-admired colour of all these works of fashion falls off like the plaster from a badly-built wall:  and they are in the same dilapidated condition.  We should be glad and not sorry when a fundamentally wrong notion of which we have been secretly conscious for a long time finally gains a footing and is proclaimed both loudly and openly.  The falseness of it will soon be felt and eventually proclaimed equally loudly and openly.  It is as if an abscess had burst.

The man who publishes and edits an article written by an anonymous critic should be held as immediately responsible for it as if he had written it himself; just as one holds a manager responsible for bad work done by his workmen.  In this way the fellow would be treated as he deserves to be—­namely, without any ceremony.

An anonymous writer is a literary fraud against whom one should immediately cry out, “Wretch, if you do not wish to admit what it is you say against other people, hold your slanderous tongue.”

An anonymous criticism carries no more weight than an anonymous letter, and should therefore be looked upon with equal mistrust.  Or do we wish to accept the assumed name of a man, who in reality represents a societe anonyme, as a guarantee for the veracity of his friends?

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.  I find whole passages in my works wrongly quoted, and it is only in my appendix, which is absolutely lucid, that an exception is made.  The misquotation is frequently due to carelessness, the pen of such people has been used to write down such trivial and banal phrases that it goes on writing them out of force of habit.  Sometimes the misquotation is due to impertinence on the part of some one who wants to improve upon my work; but a bad motive only too often prompts the misquotation—­it is then horrid baseness and roguery, and, like a man who commits forgery, he loses the character for being an honest man for ever.