Perhaps I shall stand a better chance of pardon when it is perceived that I, too, am fallible, and, what is more, that I am quite aware of the fact.  The reader can see for himself that, from first thoughts to last—­in three years, that is—­not only have my opinions on the art of criticism been modified, but my critical opinions have themselves become less confident.  So, to recall what I did say:  I said that critics exist for the public, and that it is no part of their business to help artists with good advice.  I argued that a critic no more exists for artists than a palaeontologist does for the Dinosaurs on whose fossils he expatiates, and that, though artists happen to create those exciting objects which are the matter of a critic’s discourse, that discourse is all for the benefit of the critic’s readers.  For these, I said, he is to procure aesthetic pleasures:  and his existence is made necessary by the curious fact that, though works of art are charged with a power of provoking extraordinarily intense and desirable emotions, the most sensitive people are often incapable of experiencing them until a jog or a drop of stimulant even has been given to their appreciative faculties.

A critic should be a guide and an animator.  His it is first to bring his reader into the presence of what he believes to be art, then to cajole or bully him into a receptive frame of mind.  He must, therefore, besides conviction, possess a power of persuasion and stimulation; and if anyone imagines that these are common or contemptible gifts he mistakes.  It would, of course, be much nicer to think that the essential part of a critic’s work was the discovery and glorification of absolute beauty:  only, unluckily, it is far from certain that absolute beauty exists, and most unlikely, if it does, that any human being can distinguish it from what is relative.  The wiser course, therefore, is to ask of critics no more than sincerity, and to leave divine certitude to superior beings—­magistrates, for instance, and curates, and fathers of large families, and Mr. Bernard Shaw.  At any rate, it is imprudent, I am sure, in us critics to maintain so stoutly as we are apt to do, that when we call a work of art “good” we do not mean simply that we like it with passion and conviction but that it is absolutely so, seeing that the most sensitive people of one age have ever extolled some things which the most sensitive of another have cried down, and have cried down what others have extolled.  And, indeed, I will bet whatever this essay may be worth that there is not a single contributor to this supplement who would not flatly contradict a vast number of the aesthetic judgements which have been pronounced with equal confidence by the most illustrious of his predecessors.  No critic can be sure that what he likes has absolute value; and it is a mark of mere silliness to suppose that what he dislikes can have no value at all.  Neither is there any need of certainty.  A critic must have sincerity