He should be less patient, for instance, of a pseudo-Milton than of a writer who frankly aimed at nothing higher than a book of music-hall songs.  He should be more eager to define the qualities of a book than to heap comment upon comment.  If—­I hope the image is not too strained—­he draws a book from the life, he will produce a better review than if he spends his time calling it names, whether foul or fair.

But what of the equipment of the reviewer? it may be asked.  What of his standards?  One of the faults of modern reviewing seems to me to be that the standards of many critics are derived almost entirely from the literature of the last thirty years.  This is especially so with some American critics, who rush feverishly into print with volumes spotted with the names of modern writers as Christmas pudding is spotted with currants.  To read them is to get the impression that the world is only a hundred years old.  It seems to me that Matthew Arnold was right when he urged men to turn to the classics for their standards.  His definition of the classics may have been too narrow, and nothing could be more utterly dead than a criticism which tries to measure imaginary literature by an academic standard or the rules of Aristotle.  But it is only those to whom the classics are themselves dead who are likely to lay this academic dead hand on new literature.  Besides, even the most academic standards are valuable in a world in which chaos is hailed with enthusiasm both in art and in politics.  But, when all is said, the taste which is the essential quality of a critic is something with which he is born.  It is something which is not born of reading Sophocles and Plato and does not perish of reading Miss Marie Corelli.  This taste must illuminate all the reviewer’s portraits.  Without it, he had far better be a coach-builder than a reviewer of books.  It is this taste in the background that gives distinction to a tolerant and humorous review of even the most unambitious detective story.