ON CRITICISM.
The following brief remarks on the critical faculty are chiefly
intended to show that, for the most part, there is no such thing.
It is a _rara avis_; almost as rare, indeed, as the phoenix, which
appears only once in five hundred years.
When we speak of _taste_--an expression not chosen with any regard for
it--we mean the discovery, or, it may be only the recognition, of what
is _right aesthetically_, apart from the guidance of any rule; and
this, either because no rule has as yet been extended to the matter in
question, or else because, if existing, it is unknown to the artist,
or the critic, as the case may be. Instead of _taste_, we might use
the expression _aesthetic sense_, if this were not tautological.
The perceptive critical taste is, so to speak, the female analogue
to the male quality of productive talent or genius. Not capable
of _begetting_ great work itself, it consists in a capacity of
_reception_, that is to say, of recognizing as such what is right,
fit, beautiful, or the reverse; in other words, of discriminating
the good from the bad, of discovering and appreciating the one and
condemning the other.
In appreciating a genius, criticism should not deal with the errors in
his productions or with the poorer of his works, and then proceed to
rate him low; it should attend only to the qualities in which he most
excels.
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