is praised for its blemishes and not for its merits.  This may be done from a desire to appear singular or from ignorance.  The popular estimate is generally wrong from want of appreciation.  The majority of people praise what is not worthy of praise and dislike what is.  So that it is almost a test of worthlessness that the multitudes approve.  Baron Bramwell, in discharging a prisoner at the Old Bailey, made what he thought some appropriate observations, which were followed by a storm of applause in the crowded court.  The learned judge, with that caustic humour which distinguishes him, looked up and said, “Bless me!  I’m afraid I must have said something very foolish.”  An amusing scene occurred outside a barrister’s lodgings during the Northampton Assizes.  Two painters decorating the exterior of the lodgings were overheard as follows:—­“Seen the judge, Bill?” “Ah, I see him.  Cheery old swine!” “See the sheriff too?” “Yes, I see him too.  I reckon he got that place through interest.  Been to church; they tell me the judge preached ’em a long sarmon.  Pomp and ’umbug I call that!” This was no doubt genuine criticism, but it was without knowledge.  These men were probably voters for Bradlaugh, and the judge and the sheriff were to them the embodiment of a hateful aristocracy.  These painters little knew how much the judge would like to be let off even listening to the sermon, and how the sheriff had resorted to every dodge to escape from his onerous and thankless office.

It is recorded in the Life of Lord Houghton that Prince Leopold, being recommended to read Plutarch for Grecian lore, got the British Plutarch by mistake, and laid down the Life of Sir Christopher Wren in great indignation, exclaiming there was hardly anything about Greece in it.

I am sure, too, that in order to understand the work of another we must have something more than knowledge; we must have some sympathy with the work.  I do not mean that we must necessarily praise the execution of it; but we must be in such a frame of mind that the success of the work would give us pleasure.  I am sure someone says somewhere that a man whose first emotion upon seeing anything good is to undervalue it will never do anything good of his own.  It argues a want of genius in ourselves if we fail to see it in others; unless, indeed, we do really see it, and only say we don’t out of envy.  This is very shameful.  I had rather do like some amiable people I have known, disparage the work of a friend in order to set others praising it.

Criticism should therefore be appreciative in two ways.  The critic should bring the requisite amount and kind of knowledge and the proper frame of mind and temper.

2. Criticism should be proportionate.

By this I mean that the language in which we speak of anything should be proportioned to the thing spoken of.  If you speak of St. Paul’s Church, Beckenham, as vast, grand, magnificent, you have no language left wherewith to describe St. Paul’s, London.  If you call Millais’ Huguenots sublime or divine, what becomes of the Madonna St. Sisto of Raphael?  If you describe Longfellow’s poetry as the feeblest possible trash, the coarsest and most unparliamentary language could alone express your contempt of Martin Tupper.