and conviction—­he must be convinced of the genuineness of his own feelings.  Never may he pretend to feel more or less or something other than what he does feel; and what he feels he should be able to indicate, and even, to some extent, account for.  Finally, he must have the power of infecting others with his own enthusiasm.  Anyone who possesses these qualities and can do these things I call a good critic.

“And what about discrimination?” says someone.  “What about the very meaning of the word?” Certainly the power of discriminating between artists, that of discriminating between the parts and qualities of a work of art, and the still different power of discriminating between one’s own reactions, are important instruments of criticism; but they are not the only ones, nor, I believe, are they indispensable.  At any rate, if the proper end of criticism be the fullest appreciation of art, if the function of a critic be the stimulation of the reader’s power of comprehending and enjoying, all means to that end must be good.  The rest of this essay will be devoted to a consideration of the means most commonly employed.

Discriminating critics, as opposed to those other two great classes—­the Impressionistic and the Biographical—­are peculiar in this amongst other things:  they alone extract light from refuse and deal profitably with bad art.  I am not going back on my axiom—­the proper end of criticism is appreciation:  but I must observe that one means of stimulating a taste for what is most excellent is an elaborate dissection of what is not.  I remember walking with an eminent contributor to The New Republic and a lady who admired so intemperately the writings of Rupert Brooke that our companion was at last provoked into analyzing them with magisterial severity.  He concluded by observing that a comparison of the more airy and fantastic productions of this gallant young author with the poems of Andrew Marvell would have the instant effect of putting the former in their place.  The lady took the hint; and has since confessed that never before had she so clearly seen or thoroughly enjoyed the peculiar beauties, the sweetness, the artful simplicity and sly whimsicality of the most enchanting of English poets.  The discriminating critic is not afraid of classifying artists and putting them in their places.  Analysis is one of his most precious instruments.  He will pose the question—­“Why is Milton a great poet?”—­and will proceed to disengage certain definite qualities the existence of which can be proved by demonstration and handled objectively with almost scientific precision.  This sort of criticism was brought to perfection in the eighteenth century; and certainly it did sometimes lead critics quite out of sight and reach of the living spirit of poetry.  It was responsible for masses of amazing obtuseness (especially in criticism of the visual arts); it was the frequent cause of downright silliness; it made it possible for Dr. Johnson, commenting